My dog is fuggin' brilliant

So you know how people say animals have psychic links to people they love? And dogs can do weird stuff like seem to know that their owner’s died from like 3,000 miles away? Well, Honey pulled her inner ESP out this Saturday night and it was really amazing.

I have a friend Ann, who lives in my building with her boyfriend. Honey has known her for like 4 years and LOVES her. Honestly, the dog gets more excited over A than she does me (BTW, that’s Ann’s dog in my rack – Pirate) so Saturday Honey and I spent a good part of the afternoon hangin’ with A and her guy. Then they went to a Fucking Champs show and Honey and I went home to watch the history channel and knit *we live right on the edge*

At about 11:30 I decided I was going to bed and I took Hon for her evening constution (I had to wake her up to drag her outside). When we got back inside she flipped her shit – whining, panting, shaking, drooling. She has done this exactly three times before, two times when she had an intestinal blockage, and the first night Cameron worked late and she and I had to go to bed alone. At this point, Cam’s been out of town for 4 nights and Honey hasn’t cared that much, ok at all, and she’s totally physically fine. I had spent the last 3 days with her and nothing weird had been eaten, no meals skipped, no baths given, no new food introduced. So she starts throwing herself at the door, scratching at it, whining and barking, which she has never, EVER done before. When she needs to go out she simply stands directly in front of me and wags her tail until I take her out. So I take her out again, and as soon as we’re outside the building she calms right the fuck down, just strolling down the street, and won’t go to the bathroom, even though I asked her to. So we go back inside, and she promptly flips her shit again. I try to ignore it but unfortunately she’s stubborn-er than I am. So out we go. Again with the calm walk down the street, not trying to pull or go in any certain direction, and this time we run into Ann’s BF, who’s alone. He asks me if I’ve seen A, because she apparently left him at the show 45 minutes ago. At this point I should illuminate that the show was in a neighborhood so charming that I won’t go there in broad daylight. There was race riot there earlier this year (remember that whole LAPD firing rubber bullets at crowds containing children??). He’s walked home from there alone, which is scary enough, but A is out there (waving arm out behind me, over downtown LA) alone, at 12:15 am, and has only a drivers license in her packet, no keys, no cash, no phone. Great. So now I’m flipping my shit too, I have a sick dog and a lost friend. So I do the only logical thing I can think of, I go inside and call Cam, who’s in Florida, and I ask for advice. As soon as we walk inside Honey starts the hurling herself at the door, and even though I had her talk to Cam on the phone, something she usually LOVES doing, she ignores him and keeps trying to break down the door. So back out we go.

At this point I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not be sleeping at all, but strolling up and down the street in front of our building all night. I tried letting Honey lead, not that she doesn’t always, but if she tries to pull me towards the parking garage I know she’s looking for Cam. She didn’t seem to want to go anywhere, just walk up and down the street and not smell stuff. It was weird. If she had been going to the bathroom a lot, or eating grass, I probably would have taken her to the vet, but she was so totally calm once we were outside that there was obviously nothing really truly wrong with her. This walking goes on, twice more I tried to take her back inside, twice I lost the battle of wills and within 5 minutes we were outside again. God that dog rules me. At about 1:30 I noticed that a cab had pulled up and was parked in front of our building, and I walked back towards it to see if maybe A had come back, ‘cause then at least I could focus all my worrying on the dog. We walk to the (all glass) building front door and I see A’s dog in the hall in front of my apartment, so I go inside and grab his ass before he escapes the building and gets hit by a car (in gratitude, I’m sure, he pees all over me & my favorite yellow “I buzzed my tail off at Tybee’s Bat Mitzvah” t shirt). So I open my front door, stuff honey inside and head up stairs to A’s apt to return the dog and check that they’re ok. I run into A in the hall and return the dog, give her a hug ‘cause she’s ok, then book it back to my place to prevent the Hun from ripping the door off its hinges. I walk in….. and she’s got a ball in her mouth and is wagging her tail. No shaking, drool gone, no whining, she didn’t attack the door when I locked it, just played fetch for about a half hour and then fell asleep on the bed with me.

Now, I know Honey never actually saw Ann, but I know she could smell her and knew she was home. And the timeline of the irrational slip out fits exactly with the Ann-lost-in-a-shitty-neighborhood timeframe.