Elegy for Sleeping Dogs

Sugar we called her.  Not because of sweetness.  A black lab-collie-something-or-other mix, she had a lot of browns and blacks, with a single twinge of white on her back.  A sprinkle of sugar.  She could be sweet from time to time, often when we were not around.  She was sweet enough to leave the house intact.  Mostly, though Sugar was cold, remote, Ibsen.  

Chasing did not always suit her, but occasionally Sugar could be seen dashing and leaping for novelty flying discs.  We would push he bounds with her, tossing further and higher.  This led to a defiant Sugar.  Well aware of our schemes to send her past her comfort zone.  Sugar scolded us with stillness and stares.  

Where couches were concerned, Sugar was a champion of sitting.  Taking umbrage at the plague of miniature lapdogs and their diminutive sits, she sat in bulk.  She invaded space, kicked us aside, dominated cushions.  She cared not for television or conversation.  Sugar like to be scratched on her haunches.  Occasionally on her sugary back.  She fell asleep.  Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.  Always on the couch.

At that park, again with the flying disc.  Toss, run, catch.  Toss, run, catch.  The rhythmic process of fun.  Toss, run, catch.  She jumped, she caught.  We threw the disc, she returned it.  And then a toss, she jumped, caught the disc between her teeth, and fell to the ground on her side.  Still breathing, disc between her teeth, fast asleep.  We did not know what to do, so we let her sleep.  She woke up and looked at us blankly.  We took her home.

We mulched together the dry with wet for her dinner.  She set to, her tags clanging against the metal bowl.  The pinging crunch-crunch clang cacophony of supper.  We ate in the other room, having long adjusted and accepted the clanging of metal as our mealtime musak.  White noise of pots and pans.  Then the sound stopped.  We stepped into the kitchen to find Sugar on her side, asleep in her meat mounds.  We pulled her nose out of the bowl and wiped it clean.  Let her get her sleep out.  She woke up and denied the remainder of the meat meal.

We walked her, allowance to do her natural duty.  A dog of pride, of privacy in all places, Sugar peeked around before assuming a most unladylike position.  She pressed and squeezed, teetered on her toes, haunches tense.  She fell over on her side, asleep, only half-finished excreting nature's call.  We had a plastic bag to clean up the half-seen seen half, but what of the rest?  Strangers walked past spying us with a dead, half-pooping dog.  How could we explain that we have a narcoleptic dog?  She does this!  we could shout.  But who would understand?  We waited, but still she slept.  So, we took the plastic bag and began cleaning up around Sugar's end side.  She woke up just as we began.  A scolding of silence ensued.  No proud hound finds a person peering in the nether regions of puppy privacy.  She never spoke of it and neither did we.

Our narcoleptic dog.  In seconds, alert to a coma.  Dragging her home from walks that Sugar dog.  A canine somnambulist she was not.  We dragged and carried and wiped food from her face.  She fell on our toes, trapped our legs.  Once she blocked the front door.  Don't mind the dog.  She's not dead.  Just a narcoleptic.  Always she awoke with a blank stare, scolding us for caring.  Sugar.  But not for sweetness.