On Training An Alpha
By Joshua Lawrence Durkin
The dish rattled as it does when it is empty and gets whacked by a hungry paw. A hangry paw.
He trots out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Above every third step hangs a picture of a boy in the middle or at the end of an athletic accomplishment. The boy suspended in air holding a gold thing. The boy holding a piece of metal with strings used to whack a bird or something. Skip pauses at the third picture and looks at the proud boy holding up a big cup. Skip considers the meaning, which he has done before, and still cannot figure it out. Why hold up a big cup, tiny human? Are you proud you can lift a big cup?
He enters the boy's cave. It is dark and smells of unwashed things. So many more smells than the other rooms in the house. The girl human is older and smells of fake flowers and fruit. The non-dog parents smell of non-dog-parent smells like bike exhaust, street food, coffee, and chemicals from work. The boy’s dark cave room smells much different. It smells of mysterious things. Things that exist in deep caves where creatures with knobby skin and mud-caked hair live and die without ever seeing sunlight. Skip snorts and looks up at his owner.
His dumb and stupid owner. A pool of water below where the boy hangs off his chair. Look at that puddle of drool! Already bigger than a plate and the sun only woke up an hour ago. He sits there everyday, Skip thinks, and he just whips his hands around this magic device he has staring with eyes that look like the eyes of a dead fish. Yeah, those eyes. The same eyes he has when he has a flu or is sick with something simple that his body cannot fight off because all he eats is some weird smelling food in crinkle crackle plastics, and sometimes the plastics too when he isn’t paying attention. One time he bit his own finger and almost swallowed it. That was funny, Skip thinks. He laughed at that in his dog way.
Skip sighs and remembers all the crying from that day. Stupid dumb owner. But I love him, thinks Skip. I love my dumb stupid beta owner.
Skip sits back on his haunches and the floor starts to vibrate with the whips of his tail. Whap whap wham wham onomato-bam bam. Then the rug flies out from under Skip as he swiftly pounces and starts licking at his owner’s face. Slurp slurp kiss kiss.
“Uggh, No! Skip! Bad dog. Got it in my mouth, man.” The young owner wipes his face and starts saying words that he only says when his owners are not around. Non-dog dad, and non-dog mom. Skip is not one to be discouraged. He has never let a stupid magic rectangle finger magnet get in the way of his own sense of adventure and fun. Skip also knows that it is a phone, but he just does not respect the phone enough to call it by its name. Skip can do all sorts of impressive things, he thinks, while the phone just sits there like a rock. And who talks to rocks?
Skip grabs the phone, the tiny mush-brain box, and bolts out of the room with smacking the door open wider letting in natural light for the first time in many, many hours. The boy squints, unable to see well and then realizes the phone is gone. He runs after him yelling words his mom and dad tell him never to say and starts to throw hard objects at Skip until one connects with his nose and Skip drops the weird tasting rectangle and snorts. That just is not good form. All the times that he has played with his non-dog dumb son beta owner to teach him alpha ways he has still not learned how to play games with sporting fairness. One is only meant to throw near… one never throws at! Skip trots just enough to stay ahead of the boy. It is easy, because the boy is not warmed up. Skip runs down the stairs and turns to stare at the boy at the top.
Time to escalate, Skip thinks. If the non-dog son is going to play dirty. Then so shall Skip. He barks his challenge to the beta boy.
Knowing full well from previous encounters during movies and dinner time and even outside on walks and one time that they all went on a hike…. Wait, how did they only go on a hike one time? Skip wonders for a moment and then summons something inside him. He remembers from many previous experiences a power he has. In order to do so he recalls a well-practiced pattern of special movements he has both learned from trial and error and that he feels comes from a connection with great dog gods of old. He spins a moment and then wiggles his butt and then stretches one leg just in the right way so that he can….
“Skip! Oh god please, Nooooo!”
…. Let out one of his most impressive gaseous bursts he has ever let out. He can tell from the feel of it that it will have the desired effect, and may even change the color of the paint on the walls. He is very proud of his accomplishment. Very proud indeed. He feels much lighter as well.
The boy looks at Skip in severe dismay, like his world is melting, like he knows he is about to choke to death or drown, like he is entering into a boss fight in a game that will change him forever and take away part of his soul – like one time when the boy drank from a fish bowl with a dead beta fish in it instead of his bowl of extra sweet boba chai matcha honey chocolate latte-cino. How did this happen? What did I do to deserve this? The boy is bewildered. Lost. He takes a step down the stairs but the smell smacks him across the face, and he stumbles backward.
Skip snorts with pleasure. Skip takes a quick step toward the boy and startles the boy back a few meters more. Good. Very good, thinks Skip. He may well learn today.
Dog illustration by Richard Robinson.
Grabbing the phone, he trots into the next room, as if daring the human boy-child to pass through the cloud of intense smells he just made. He can hear some rumbling of metal and plastic things, and then a screeching sound, a ripping sound, and then a pounding sound. Skip keeps an ear pointed at the door and takes a long look and smell of the dumb rectangle in his paws. Why does his beta son owner wave his hands at this thing so much? He turns his head slightly and sighs and farts again. This surprises Skip, and he then feels somewhat bad. It is going to be hard for his beta son owner to deal with that smell.
And then through the fogs of warfare like a figure emerging through fog, the boy emerges with his head wrapped in shiny plastic and a snorkel running through with a sponge at the end. His hands have those kind of rubbery nitrile gloves that surgeons use.
Well done, Skip thinks. There is hope yet for this boy!
They race through the house. Chairs are broken. Doors are unhinged. For a moment, Skip is on the back of the boy barking and riding him, and then the boy is riding on Skip, and then they both crash through a table sending broken things all over the place and pause as there is a really cute bunch of capybaras standing in all sorts of casual poses on the phone and they both nod and agree that it is a good video. The boys gloves are ripped, and the snorkel is somehow full of water and leaking all over the boys clothes. He sighs and looks at Skip and the phone and knows it is not yet over.
And then Skip makes sure to take the boy up and down the stairs many, many times to help him strengthen his legs. Then the dumb phone starts singing and beeping and Skip drops it to see a face on it pointing and laughing. Skip agrees this is fun and takes the phone in his mouth again, carefully, and then races into the boys room and slides under the bed with a sound like a basketball all net, no rim, just whoosh.
The boy plods into the room heavily breathing and dripping with sweat. Why do you not run more beta son, thinks Skip. This should be very easy for you. Yet, you are showing some alpha spirit today. We must keep working. Skip snorts with laughter under the bed and the boy hears it and plods over. The boy pulls Skip out by the hind legs and laughs a little.
“Okay, Skip. It’s time to-”
Without warning either to Skip or the boy, he farts a tremendous fart, again. The bed shakes. The walls vibrate. A squirrel in a tree outside turns and gasps, placing a paw over its mouth in very real shock. Skip is so proud of the boy, for he has figured out the ancient pattern of movements to summon his bowel power.
“Oh my god!” The boy screams and then gags and then the rest of his mask falls off in the ruckus of coughs. His face screws up into a mess of painful looks. Hack hack gag cough gag cough. “Ahhhhhhhhhh, why me??!! The boy howls with great emotion.
Skip is proud of the impressive howl and trots out of the room happily and trots down the stairs and trots to the bowl in the kitchen and whacks it one time with precision sending a humming tone throughout the house.
The boy comes into the kitchen, eventually. He is gasping. Soaked with sweat. His eyes are bloodshot and full of tears and his nostrils are now packed with tissues. Skip whacks the dish again and its ringing sound sends a clear message that this alpha dog needs his alpha dog food.
“Skip! I’m really sorry buddy. I forgot.” The boy shrugs and looks at Skip apologetically. Skip whacks the bowl again. With that, the boy takes a bag of food surely formulated by the great dog gods of old and pours Skip a giant bowl of food. He puts the bag away and looks at Skip with pleading eyes.
“Please, Skip!”
Skip snorts and drops the magic finger magnet rectangle to the floor where it rattles a moment and then sits silently. Relief, for a moment, passes over the boy's face. Seeing this, Skip feints grabbing the phone again, and the non-dog son lunges and slides on the floor and grabs the dumb phone. Skip looks at his companion – who he does love in spite of all his beta energy – and marvels at the amount of drool already pooling on the floor. How does a boy produce drool so quickly? Skip wonders.
Skip snorts again and trots over to his bowl and eats slowly with great joy. It has been a good training day, thinks Skip. And one final time, he feels a bit of gas and looks at the boy, drooling and curled on the floor as he twitches and does not seem to notice the smell at all.
