Capone's Cojones

It began at doggie daycare a week ago, when one of the trainers there gave Capone a speculative look.

“Is he still intact?” she asked. It took me a full five seconds to understand her meaning.

“Oh. Yes. Yes. Very much so.”

She frowned. “And how old is he now?”

“Ten months on Saturday. Still a baby. A big, hairy, 85 pound baby.”

She shook her head. “We should have mentioned this before, like two months ago, but there is an extra charge for intact male dogs.”

“How much?”

She winced. “It’s actually double the fee.”

That made a day at doggie daycare sound more like a day at the most exclusive spa in town. “Gosh. Okay.”

I was in a pinch, moving my oldest back to college that day. It would take hours and I couldn’t leave Capone alone. When I got back to pick him up that evening, the people at doggie daycare kindly charged me the regular rate since they hadn’t warned me ahead of time. As I paid and waited for Capone to be brought forth, I explained my dilemma. 

"Quite a few people have encouraged me to wait a year or two before getting Capone neutered. They said it would be better for his health in the long run." 

The girl working behind the counter listened sympathetically. “Has he exhibited any…behaviors?”

“Not at all.” I responded, quite proud of the fact that Capone was not a humper. He did have a brief interlude with a Mexican blanket a few months ago, but nothing at all since then. But maybe there were other things I should be worried about. I frowned. “I mean, he doesn't...uh...hump. Are there other behaviors I should worry about?”

“Well, there is marking….”

I stared at her. “Is that when they pee on every tree, bush, rock, fire hydrant, and anything remotely shaped like a phallus when you take them for a walk?”

She nodded. “My dog started marking, and I kind of ignored it. Then he started doing it inside….”

“Oh, no.” I suddenly imagine pee splattered walls and couches and curtains.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s when I knew it was time to get him fixed."

I called the vet the next morning and made the appointment. Capone is now scheduled to be emasculated on August 27. Not everyone in my house was happy to hear the news.

“Do we have to do it?” asked my husband on a long distance call from Amsterdam. “I feel bad for him.”

“I’ll feel bad for us if he starts marking our furniture.”

“I guess so. Wait. How much is this going to cost?”

It would be roughly the price of a new set of tires for our car. My husband gasped when I told him. “I think we should wait,” he said. “It’s not just the money. I feel so sorry for him.”

“I think it’s time,” I said. As the only person in the house without testicles, I quickly realized I had to be the one to make this decision, and I had to stand firm.

My oldest son, already back at college, reacted with shock. “Can I see him before it happens?”

My middle son quietly patted Capone’s head and handed him extra treats. “Poor puppy,” he said.

My youngest had a different plan. “I think we should breed him. He’d make really cute puppies.”

My husband had been all for this idea, too. “Let him have at least one happy memory.”

I rolled my eyes and messaged the breeder, who really didn’t need Capone’s services. I knew this would be the case, but I had to contact her just to confirm it. Otherwise they all might have wondered if we’d rushed into things and missed out on the possibility of an affair de coeur for Capone.

Then the questions started, mostly from my youngest. “Do they actually cut off his….you know….?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Can we keep them?”

“His balls?” He nodded, very seriously, and I shook my head. “Uh, no. We cannot.”

Whenever the subject of the surgery came up, every member of my household had the same reaction. A wince. A flinch. A sort of doubling over (like someone had punched them very low in the stomach), followed by the instinctual and involuntary covering of their male parts. It was like every time they thought about what Capone would go through, they imagined it happening to them, too.

“It’s not going to be that bad,” I said, rolling my eyes as they did their flinching ball covering dance once again. “You guys are ridiculous.”

Even the neighborhood children were concerned. “Will they put him to sleep for it?” asked one little boy, his blue eyes huge in his face.

“Yes, they will.”

“Phew,” he said, giving Capone a pat. “I’m glad you won’t remember it, boy.”

It was like a conspiracy among males to protect other males. Every conversation I had with my husband (still in Amsterdam) often centered on Capone and his balls. “I think we’re rushing this…” he began, but I stopped him.

“It’s time. He’ll be calmer.”

I looked at Capone, sleeping on the floor and snoring like a cartoon character. A loud inhale of a snore followed by an exhale that sounded like “waba waba waba.” It had to be the cutest dog snore ever. For a lab, Capone was a very calm puppy already. If he got any calmer, he might be comatose. Maybe this wasn't the best argument for neutering.

“I don’t want him marking our house,” I said.

“Neither do I,” said my husband.

“And I don’t want to pay double the price for doggie daycare.”

 “Neither do I.” He let out a sigh. “Lots of dogs go through this, I guess.”

“Yep. Most do.”

And so it’s been decided. Capone will officially be turned into the dog equivalent of a eunuch next Thursday. He will recover very quickly, I’m sure. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the guys in my family. I think it’ll be a long time before they can look at Capone without wincing and flinching.

Capone and the Sooth-Saying Sphincter of Destiny

It started out as most Mondays do, meaning things did not go as planned. My husband had forgotten to set his alarm clock, but (thankfully) I have a preset internal clock that wakes me every single day at exactly 6am. As much as I like that internal alarm clock during the winter, I abhor it during the summer and on weekends. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but in this case it proved to be a blessing since my husband made it to work on time.

Still, we woke up in a panic, adrenaline pumping. Capone seemed to sense our anxiety and began howling from his kennel. I opened the back door, let him outside, and stumbled towards the coffee maker. Before I could even get it started, I heard a strange sound coming from outside, sort of between a whine and a whimper.

I glanced out the window and saw Capone doing an odd squat walk through the backyard. It wasn’t his diarrhea squat walk (a dance I knew quite well). This was different. I opened the patio door and stepped out, trying to figure out what was wrong. Capone looked at me, his expression both mortified and embarrassed, and then I realized the problem.

Capone had a piece of poo dangling from a string still affixed to his anus. Later I discovered that string was actually a strand of my hair (majorly disgusting on so many levels), but at the time I only realized that the poop was a-dangling and Capone had no way of getting it out by himself.

He looked at me, his eyes begging for mercy, and he did an incredibly fast squat walk straight to the house. He planned to squat walk right into the house, so I slammed the door in right his face.

“No. Sit. Stay. Go back.”

He looked at me in confusion, then did a squat walk circle around the patio. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to grab some wipes and my gardening gloves and help Capone solve his problem. Manually. A hands-on approach.

It was easier than I expected. I winced, took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the fact that I held a solid ball of poo in my hand. One tug and it was over. Capone looked at me with a heady mix of relief and adoration.  He followed me around all day, tail wagging, and every so often he’d look at me, as if to say, “Remember when that poo was stuck and you saved me? You’re the best.”

The day that began with a missed alarm and a poo problem gradually turned into one of the best days I’d ever had. Later I got the email I’d been waiting for, an offer for my first book from the publisher I’d really wanted to work with.

After the usual happy dance around the kitchen, I shook my head in disbelief as I smiled at my husband. “Maybe the poo was a sign,” I said.

He laughed. “Maybe Capone should stop eating your hair.”

A little over a week later, I took Capone out for his morning poo, and the same thing happened. This time, instead of the poo dangling from a piece of my hair, it dangled from raffia style packaging material I’d used to pack a gift bag for a friend. Different material, same result. I had to don the gloves again, grab a wipe, and give it a yank.

“Maybe this means I’ll sell another book today,” I said as Capone licked my calves to show did his appreciation.

A few hours later, I did.

My second book sold to a different publisher, also exactly the publisher I’d hoped to work with for this book. I looked at Capone. He was on the floor by my feet, snoring loudly. He didn’t seem like an Oracle of Poo, but he’d only gotten poo stuck twice in his life, and both times I sold a book that very day.

Writers tend to be a superstitious lot, especially when we are trying to sell a manuscript. I tend to be selectively superstitious, remembering all the times the signs were in my favor and forgetting the others.  I didn’t exactly start to believe Capone’s poo had magical powers, but I did pay close attention to his bowel movements for the next few weeks.

I sold my third book without any sign from Capone at all. Well, he did poop out part of the gardening glove I’d used to pull out the first two prophetic poos, but I don’t know if that really counts.

Or does it?

Capone resting with one of my shoes (his personal favorite) after a morning of hard work predicting the future.

Murphy's Law and Mutant Turtles

It started with a dream about giant turtles. I kind of blame my neighbor for that one. She’s an adorable four year old, obsessed with the Teenaged Ninja Mutant Turtles, and we’ve had lots of discussions lately about them.

“I like Michelangelo. He wears purple," I said.

It was a lucky guess, but I was completely wrong. She shook her little blond head at me. “No, he wears orange.”

“Oh, I meant Leonardo.”

She put her hands on her hips and shook her head at me in disgust. “He wears blue.”

She didn’t say it, but I could see it in her big, blue eyes. She was wondering if I’d ever seen TNMT at all. I had, of course. Many, many, many times. In cartoon form. In live action form. In Japan, when the turtles went back in time and lived in a feudal village. But the more I tried to convince her, the more it sounded like I didn’t know what I was talking about.

After several of these discussions (and getting the names, colors and weapons of choice wrong every single time), turtles must have been on my mind. In my subconscious they morphed into giant turtles, scary turtles that invaded my dreams. I don’t remember the details exactly, but it was frightening enough to startle me out of a deep sleep.

I gave up on the idea of getting more rest, mostly because Capone the Wonder Dog, with his super sonic hearing and his ability to recognize the sound of my foot hitting the floor, had already woken up, too. My husband can get up, take a shower, get dressed, and make all sorts of noise, but we never hear a peep from Capone. It’s the same with the boys. But if I so much as place a toe on the carpet, he immediately starts whining downstairs in his kennel.

After he did his good morning dance and stretch, I let him outside. Oh, the beauty of the Dogwatch Fence we just had installed last month! I no longer have to trudge through the wet grass before the sun is up, circling the yard in an effort to get Capone to poo. Now I can watch the event unfold from the comfort of my warm kitchen. Better yet, the fence protects my little Ninja Turtle loving neighbor from Capone running into her yard and knocking her over in an attempt to lick her from the top of her ponytail down to her tiny toes. He outweighs her by about fifty pounds. He could flatten her with one nudge.

Normally Capone trots around, does his business, tries to eat a bush or a tree or something, chases a robin, and comes back into the house. This time, he looked at me in a panic and did the diarrhea squat walk all over the yard.

“Oh, no.” I whispered. "It begins again."

When he came back inside, I wiped his bottom with the dog wipes I’d bought at the all-natural dog supply store (yes, they really do exist) and dried him of with his dog shammy (yes, that really does exist, too). The shammy is adorable. It’s embroidered and has pockets for my hands, which is very convenient. But as soon as I tried to clean his bottom, I realized something. It was swollen. Really swollen. Like swollen enough that I understood his anal glands might need expressed again.

“Oh, no.”

My boys were up by this time and groggily getting ready for school. “What’s wrong?” asked my youngest.

“I think I might have to take Capone to the vet again today. Or the groomer. His anal glands feel swollen.”

“Does he need another butt massage?”

I nodded. “I think so.” I remembered in vivid detail the youtube video I’d seen, and how it described the process as ‘milking’ the anal glands. 

“I’m not doing it.”

My son held up his hands. He’d seen the video, too. “Me neither.”

I decided to take Capone for a long walk. The vet wasn’t open until nine. I knew this fact very well. I'd spent many mornings perched on a chair, holding my phone, and waiting for nine o'clock to hit.  I thought a walk would calm him down and make the whole potential anal expression much easier for both of us.

The walk went well at first. He passed a group of children waiting at a bus stop and didn’t try to lunge at them. He passed an unleashed older lab and paused, hoping for some play time, but didn’t even bark when the other dog just trotted past him. He walked next to an entire herd of small children on a narrow path and didn’t try to eat any of them.

“Good dog.”

I fed him a constant stream of treats and realized Capone is getting older and everything is so much easier. He was also getting much bigger, a fact I didn’t consider until he rammed me in the knee on our way home, bending it in ways nature did not intend knees to be bent. Then he stopped in front of me suddenly, almost sending me crashing down to the sidewalk. Then he bit my thumb (totally by accident) when I tried to retrieve a rock from his mouth.

When we got home, it still wasn’t even close to nine, so I decided to clean Capone’s deposits from the backyard and do some weeding. When I stepped into the house to get a bag for the weeds, Capone followed me in, a giant weed in his mouth - roots, dirt, and all.

This soon turned into what Capone thought was the Best Game Ever. I chased him round and round the island. He shook his head happily, dirt flying all over my clean kitchen floor. Finally I managed to straddle him and remove the weeds from his mouth, but by this time my entire floor had been sprinkled with dirt.

Capone looked completely confused when I said, “Bad dog.” After all, the whole thing had been a blast. He felt better when I took out his second favorite thing in the world (his first being food of any kind), the vacuum. He did his happy vacuum dance as I plugged it in.

“I am not doing this for your pleasure. I just want you to know this.”

The fact that I have conversations with my dog has stopped bothering me at this point. I had too much on my mind to worry about already. Tomorrow was my middle son’s junior prom. I needed to pick up flowers, iron his shirt, and do about a million other things today. Cleaning the kitchen floor for the second time and taking a puppy to get his anal glands expressed was not on my list.

The dirt wasn’t coming up very well, so I lifted the hose off my Dyson to suck it up that way. Usually the hose lifts up and clicks. This time there was no clicking. The top of the hose nearly lifted completely off. A small wire that looked like part of a slinky was the only thing that held it together.

“Not today.”

I didn’t have time to buy a new vacuum today. I looked at the dirt on the floor and nearly cried. Capone wagged his tailed and licked the vacuum.

I managed to hold the hose together and get most of the dirt off the floor. As soon as I turned off the vacuum, I realized I had a voice mail on my phone. It was the school nurse. My middle son was in her office throwing up.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I said when I called her back. And on the way to the school I looked at the clock and realized it wasn’t even 8:30 yet.

There are just some days that nothing goes right. My son was well enough that I decided to tackle all my errands today, just in case I was the one who came down with the stomach flu tomorrow (usually the case in our house).  I went to Costco to get roses to make a bouquet for prom, then to JoAnn Fabric to get ribbon to match. I decided the anal glands would have to wait.

I love making my own bouquets when my boys go to dances. It relaxes me, but it’s also a way to be involved. As the mother of three boys, I don’t get to do the girly stuff like dress shopping. The bouquet making gets that need out of my system.

I found ribbon and lots of sparkly things at JoAnn, and had a very helpful and clever girl at check out who found several coupons for me and was all together lovely. As she bagged my items, I realized something.

“Is that a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles apron?”

She posed rather proudly, turning around so I could see the back was an actual turtle shell made of green fabric. She’d sewn it herself.

“Today is the last day for this one. I wear a different apron every month. Tomorrow I’ll wear a new Darth Vader one, as long as I get it finished tonight. It has a hat and everything.”

I wanted to take her picture to show my neighbor, but there was a long line and I knew some of the crafters waiting behind me might get annoyed. Crafters are not the most patient of people, especially when there is a huge sale on raffia and their coupons are about to expire.

Instead I told the girl how completely awesome she was and promised to come back to see the Darth Vader apron.  When I told my neighbor about the apron, she listened politely, but didn’t believe me.

“Turtles don’t wear aprons.”

I wish I’d taken that photo.

I did get a photo of the prom flowers. They were lovely, and Capone never needed to get his anal glands expressed after all.

The Care and Training of Husbands...And Teenagers

It probably wasn’t my best idea. I got my husband at a weak moment (nearly asleep on the couch) and decided just to drop it on him.

“I think you should take Capone to doggy obedience class tomorrow.”

We were having a glass of wine, and feeling very mellow. “Sure,” he said. Then he opened his eyes a bit wider. “Wait. What did you say?”

“Tomorrow Capone has a class, and oddly enough we have nothing else going on. I’ll go with you, but I think you should do the class.”

He swirled his wine as he considered my proposal. “I have a better idea. Why don’t we leave Capone at the class, and you and I can go to breakfast.”

“Uh, it doesn’t work that way.”

I poured him another glass. He needed it.

“Well, I guess it might be fun.”

I tried not to snort. “Yeah. Fun.”

On the way to obedience training, I thought I should prepare him a bit for the reality of the situation. “Just to let you know…it’s hard work. It’s 45 minutes of hard work. For you and for the dog.”

“Work?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe you do the class and I’ll watch.”

“Fine, but you have to pay attention. You can’t sit on the balcony and drink your coffee.”

“Come on. How hard can it be?”

I just stared at him. “It’s stressful and I sweat. A lot. It’s better than doing zumba.”

I clipped on my bait bag as soon as we arrived and let Capone out of the car, confident that he would once again rock obedience class. He’d been one of the best-behaved dogs lately, and I was sure my husband would be very impressed with his progress.

He wasn’t. Capone decided that day to be non-compliant. And a little obnoxious.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Capone, overwhelmed with the sights and smells of the dog park, leaped out of the car with crazy gleam in his eyes. He did his best to pull me away from the door to obedience class and straight to the dog park.

“You take the dog,” I said to my husband. “I’ll sign us in.”

To say he looked terrified would have been an understatement. “What do I do with him?”

“Walk him around. For five minutes.”

He looked less than convinced. I’d hoped Capone would calm down before I got back, but no such luck. He had on his Gentle Leader collar, a device that fit over his nose and prevented him from pulling. The Gentle Leader is a lifesaver for me, but it sometimes irritates Capone. Today was one of those days. Capone rubbed against every possible surface, trying to get the Gentle Leader off.

“I hate this collar,” said my husband.

“It’s a valuable training tool,” I insisted as Capone wound the leash around my legs and tried to use my shoe to pry it off.

We’d come for the early class, and it was small, but it was entirely filled with labs and German shepherds, a lively mix. One gorgeous Italian bull mastiff joined the group, and also a small brown dog that was a mix of a shar-pei and a pit bull.

“What is that thing?” asked my husband.

“A shar-pit? Or a bull-shar? I don’t know.” 

I secretly wanted to call it a Shit-bull, but held myself back. He was a cute little dog, although he seemed a bit wound up. He was leaping into the air, barking and twisting his entire body around. 

“He’s the worst dog in the class,” said my husband.

“Yep.”

“Our dog is the second worse.”

Capone was rubbing his face on the floor, frantically rolling back and forth. “Yep.”

My normally calm and attentive dog now acted like a giant squirrel with ADHD. He eventually calmed down and got a bit of focus, but it was probably the worst class he’d ever had.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked my husband as Capone continued to roll around on the floor.

“I don’t know. He was always so good. I blame you.”

Capone tried at that moment to wiggle out of his Gentle Leader and almost succeeded. “It’s not me. That dog is psycho.”

Then I realized exactly what was happening.  “Not psycho, although he’s close. Capone is now a….teenager.”

I was kind of an expert on teenaged males at this point. My oldest son was now twenty-one, but the younger two were still firmly entrenched in teen-hood.  I knew the signs when I saw them.

How six months old puppies are like teenagers:

1.     They are defiant. Capone had suddenly become headstrong and a bit stubborn, usually when I want him to come back into the house after playing outside. This applies to teenagers, too. They always want to stay out late, and they always think it’s unfair when you cut short their fun. Capone might bark, but at least he doesn't have a smart mouth. That's definitely a point in his favor. He also never rolls his eyes at me, another plus.

2.     They think rules don’t apply to them. We’d trained Capone months ago not to go on the couch and not to go upstairs. We used something called a Scram Mat, which emitted a sound like a smoke detector and scared Capone (and anyone else in a two mile radius). It was effective. It was wonderful. But suddenly and without warning, the Scram Mat has no effect on him. At all. He loves to jump on the couch now just to challenge me. Fortunately he understands "off", especially when accompanied with me running at him like a crazy person.

3.     They smell. On the way to obedience training, my husband had sniffed (repeated) and said, “Something smells like old socks. I think it’s the dog.” He may have been right, or he may have been smelling the dirty soccer socks I found under his seat. Both kind of smell the same. When my mom rode in my car today, she tried to be gracious about it, saying, “It doesn’t smell like dog…it smells more like dog food.” Judging by the dog treats scattered throughout my vehicle, that isn’t a surprise.

4.     Which takes me to my next point – teenagers and puppies are both food motivated and like to eat. A lot. My boys wake up hungry and as soon as breakfast is over they are thinking about lunch. Capone is the same. His favorite words are “eat”, “meatball”, and “treat.” The only way I can get him to come inside when he’s being defiant is to say, “Meatball?” in a happy, singsong way. If I do, he runs right in.

5.     They don’t understand consequences. Capone and I regularly engage in a sort of Mexican standoff. We face each other, like gunfighters, and there is usually something in Capone’s mouth that should not be there.  “Drop it,” I say in my harshest voice. He doesn’t reply of course, but he mocks me. I can see it in his eyes. At this point I have two options. If another person is available, we engage in a merry chase that always ends under the dining room table. One person goes behind him, and one person crawls under in front of him. Once he’s effectively trapped, I take whatever it is out of his mouth and say, “Bad dog.” If no one else is around, this technique does not work, so I go for my next best option. I say, “Meatball?” in my sweetest voice. Capone immediately drops whatever he has in his mouth, and looks surprised when I don’t give him a treat. Instead I just point my finger at him and say, “No meatball. Bad dog.” He never holds a grudge. He just wags his tail and hopes for another meatball-earning opportunity.

6.     They like to hang out with their friends and start to have an interest in the opposite sex. Capone loves the ladies. All the ladies. He loves dudes, too. He loves everyone. Watching him play at the dog park after obedience training is honestly half the reason I like to take him there. He frolics, free of his leash and safe within the confines of the park, and has the BEST TIME EVER. Just like I know when Capone is mocking me, I know when he is thinking those words. BEST. TIME. EVER. Those times usually involve running around in circles with his friends and a lot of butt sniffing. Although teenaged boys don’t usually engage in butt sniffing, they do play like puppies – with lots of running and wrestling and shows of dominance. Watch a bunch of teenaged boys interact sometime. It isn’t that different from a dog park. The only difference is the dogs don't use Axe.

7.     They can sleep through anything. Last week at 2:30 am, I was awoken from a deep sleep by the sound of coyotes outside. They were probably in the field across the street, but they sounded like they were in our yard. They yelped and yipped and howled, and it sounded an awful lot like they had caught something and were tearing it apart. I listened to them, waiting for some sign from Capone that he’d heard them, but the only sound that came from his kennel downstairs was the sound of him snoring. He didn’t hear a pack of crazed coyotes, but he can somehow hear it as soon as I step out of bed and my big toe touches the carpet.  That makes him bark. Coyotes? Not so much. My boys didn’t hear the coyotes either. They also don’t hear alarm clocks, storms, smoke detectors, Capone, or the Scram Mat.

After I explained this brilliant realization to my husband, he just shrugged and said, “We’ve survived three teenagers already. At least Capone will only be this way for a few months, right?”

We can only hope.

                                            Capone with his best girl, Gracie, at the dog park.