Your Perro pooped on our Césped

Perro pooped on our Césped

The time has come to introduce Skippy. He’s reclining with his back against my thigh as I sit on the couch typing this. Yes, Skippy is the family perro, a long-haired Chihuahua. He’s of the deer-face variety, a much more handsome animal than the apple-head breed—the freaky little shivering wimps typically portrayed in entertainment venues such as the Ren and Stimpy cartoons. That’s my personal opinion, por supuesto, but I bet most real hombres would agree. 

Both varieties of Chihuahuas, however, share the characteristic lightbulb round forehead. This is a textbook example of neoteny—the retention of physical or behavioral traits reminiscent of infancy. In the case of the selective breeding of domestic dogs, neoteny shouts out from the large round forehead, bulging eyes, and reduced snout of the Chihuahua—all bringing this descendent of a timber wolf closer, in appearance, to a human bebé. These qualities, along with a constant need for contact and affection, allow Chihuahuas to fill the void felt by nurturing ladies bereft of actual children. Happy and spoiled is the Chihuahua owned by such a woman. Sigh.

Anyway, it wasn’t my idea to get a dog, much less a wee parody of a dog that demonstrates the humorous side of artificial selection.  And this is ironic because Skippy has adopted me as his human of choice. When I come home and plop down, he is immediately on my lap. And I’ve begrudgingly grown fond of him, and not just to connect to my heritage through Mexico’s famous dog. Yes, Chihuahuas truly are from the state of Chihuahua. In fact, as a child I thought they were a species of wild animal caught in the Mexican desert, like a kit fox or a jackalope.

So one day, about six years ago, I came home from work and there he was, purchased off of Craigslist-Seattle by my wife and daughter sin permisso. For years I maintained, as the hombre of the house, that I didn’t want a dog— not even a cute Mexican one with a diminutive body that entices rodent-hunting owls to swoop closely overhead  (true story.) I just didn’t need another pet, even if his ancestors once warmed the laps of Mayan royalty.

But Lori La Guëra was trying to do something special for our daughter Summerlyn.  As a young teen, Summerlyn really wanted a Chihuahua. Not because she was trying to connect to her one quarter Latina heritage, but because high-profile celebrities were making tiny dogs quite appealing, like little canine accessories. Paris Hilton had Tinkerbell, Britney Spears had BitBit, Hilary Duff had Chiquita, and by golly, Summerlyn was going to have…Skippy. $400 later and our family grew by one undeniably cute young Chihuahua.

Within a year it became apparent that Skippy was an alpha male—or so he thinks. Whenever he’s on a walk, he asserts his dominance over any dog that listens. GUAU GUAU! But he reserves most of his verbal venom for Hunter, the big German shepherd across the street. Owned by a family of Mexicanos, he is black and massive and apparently understands Spanish. I have heard Regino, the hombre of the house, bark orders (sic) at him in Spanish and Hunter dutifully complies. Regino speaks English perfectly, but his wife Alicia does not. Her English is as bad as my Spanish, so she and I can only communicate on a perfunctory level.

Anyway, Hunter spends his days behind a sturdy wood fence. Whenever Skippy gets loose in the front yard, he immediately charges across the street and barks through the bottom of the fence at Hunter, who is maybe twenty times more massive, but is safely confined. Their shouting match exudes great enthusiasm on both sides, and after a few seconds Skippy proudly strides back home with his chest puffed out. The neighbors, thankfully, don’t seem to mind at all.

The only problem with doggy communication is that it is sometimes accompanied with the exchange of bodily excretions. Often when Skippy finishes his barking performance, he accents it by raising a hind leg and anointing the neighbors’ grass with his urine. This is undoubtedly enraging to Hunter who can smell the puny interloper’s deposit. “How dare that little runt to mark his territory on my turf,” he thinks. What’s worse is that dogs, when possible, leave feces rather than urine. I have witnessed Skippy squat in sight of Hunter for just that reason. It’s usually followed by a gesture whereby Skippy kicks his hind legs forcefully behind him, scratching up fragments of grass to rain down on his droppings.

All this is turf war using chemical tools we short-muzzled humans just don’t get. Scent glands near the anus add chemical signals to the doggy poop that are meaningful in a canine sort of way. Glands are also present in the paws, so when Skippy scratches grass behind him in that insulting manner, he’s releasing pheromones into the area that proclaim his presence. These are identification markers, attempts at social dominance.

Fortunately our neighbors are better at keeping their perro where it belongs than we are. But once in a while Hunter does get out. When he does, he understandably rushes to give Skippy a taste of his own medicine. I don’t mind—Skippy deserves it. The only problem is that if Hunter decides to leave a solid calling card in the yard, his deposits are pretty much as big as Skippy himself. This happened the other day, and luckily I saw the land mine before anyone stepped in it. Regino told me that if Hunter ever does this to let him know—a neighborly gesture I appreciate—but as I gazed across the street I could tell he wasn’t home. I could see Alicia, along with Regino’s padres who were visiting from the old country, so I knew that if I were to go over there I would have to communicate in Spanish.

But how do you say “your dog pooped on our lawn”? I decided to march over before I chickened out and just say the first thing that popped into my little Pocho cabeza. I started with a Buenos días to the anciano, to which he replied in kind. This was followed by a “¿Regino no está aqui?” (to which I already knew the answer.) The old man responded with a sentence I didn’t really understand. And then I delivered the finale to Alicia, “su perro usó nuestro césped como un baño.”  Everyone laughed, and that’s always a relief. Alicia came over with plastic bags on her hands saying “where’s the poopy”, an cross-lingual effort as glorious as my own. Amazing how a little doggy doo can be the catalyst of both foreign language practice and neighborly communication.