A little introduction to Melvin for those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting him. According to his DNA test, he is 29% Chihuahua (I think his swab must’ve got mixed up, a little bit Dachshund (which does makes sense as he resembles the slinky dog in Toy Story) 33% Cocker Spaniel (check), and the rest Poodle (check check). The DNA test also confirmed he is 100% the best dog that ever lived.

Anyone who meets him agrees with this.

Except for the lady we just ran into outside the Catholic church.

Melvin is love in its purest form.  He is my soul mate. John has accepted this, just as he’s had to accept that Melvin sleeps between us under the covers. When Melvin dies I’ve already decided I’m having him turned into a one carat diamond that I will then wear on my ring finger (this is an actual thing – they microwave the ashes). Don’t tell Alula – she was horrified when I mentioned I wanted to clone him, if she knew my (cheaper) plan for a diamond ring she would likely never speak to me again. I can write it here because as if she would ever read anything that I wrote. She’s too busy reading Hobbes (not as in Calvin and Hobbes but Hobbes the political philosopher from the 16^thcentury). 

Melvin follows me wherever I go – including to the bathroom. He sits guard at the hot tub’s edge like a damp Sphinx. Bemused, he watches me do Pilates every morning with his tongue lolling out. He lies beside me while I write like a little totem animal spirit. He pines by the window when I leave, and sleeps in the closet among my clothes when I’m gone. Right now he is sitting on my feet, keeping them warm.

Melvin is 14 and toothless and loves cheese and does not like baths. He is also partially deaf (though possibly this is selective because he always manages to hear the word ‘treat’). He is quite blind and, though once he would chase after balls for hours on end, now he’ll not give you his ball for fear you’ll throw it.

Like me, Melvin has a bad back (because he’s part slinky-dog) and has grown lazy in his old age. He just wants to stay home and eat cheese and nap. Most days I’ll try to get him to walk at least as far as the field behind our house to do a poo. Sometimes we’ll also take a little amble beyond the field to the meadow preserve. To get there we have to cross a parking lot in front of the Catholic church. 

We rarely make it to the meadow anymore however because Melvin is very slow – slow like a sloth, slow like treacle, slow like the living illustration of stopping to sniff the roses – which might be his favorite thing to do after licking retinol off my face, eating cheese and napping. He likes to sniff every inch of the path, and he likes to cock his shaking back leg, like boy dog’s do, and mark the places other dogs have marked.

And then, after he’s sprayed every piece of grass and bush on route, and finally done his poo, he likes to turn around and head for home to celebrate a job well done with another nap. 

He’s the dog equivalent of an old man shuffling to the pub at the end of the road for a half pint and the crossword then heading for home to put his feet up in front of the telly.

Today, Melvin and I made it to the church, and I looked up from praising Melvin for his marathon effort, to find a woman glaring at me. ‘That’s incredibly disrespectful,’ she informed me, her mealy mouth pulling tight as a drawstring bag.

I glanced back to find Melvin happily grinning at me as he cocked his back leg and sprayed a bush. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said apologetically. ‘He’s a boy dog and boy dogs spray. It’s just what they do. He didn’t poo. He didn’t even pee. He’s marking.’

‘This is sacred ground.’ 

I wanted to point out that it was sacred to the Chumash people long before the missionaries came along bearing smallpox. Instead, I told her most days I pick up other people’s trash from the church grounds and put it in the bin and if Melvin had pooed I would have picked it up. But she wasn’t interested. She pointed at the preserve in the distance and told me to take him there to do his business, then stormed off.

In retrospect I should have told her that Melvin was an atheist or thrown Saint Francis at her as an example of a much better Catholic than her. But I turned to Melvin and told him that now would be the perfect time to do a giant shit.