Why Your Dog Isn't Special, and Other Thoughts

    There’s a bird that wakes just before dawn and sends its song, solitary and repeating, ringing through the streets of my neighborhood. We get up at about the same time most days, and I do morning things listening to the sharp notes echo from the houses for blocks around. The neighborhood is empty and lies on the side of a hill. I imagine that once it was a forest. When my friend the morning bird and I are the only ones awake, it’s easy to imagine it that way again.

    Living in a city can be like that, these rare moments of solitude a reminder that one day, maybe not that long from now, this will probably be a ruin. And then people awake and the sound of the freeway begins, and before very long all is motion again, and that’s good, too. I don’t think I would like to live somewhere where it was just me and a lonely bird all the time. I would get bored.

    There are disadvantages. Once I found a substantial chunk of human feces crammed into a wax-paper bag of the sort that usually contains crackers. Another time someone smashed out a window from my car and tried to pull out a bike pump. When it wouldn’t fit through the tiny rear side window the thief had smashed, they decided instead to grind out a cigarette but on the car door and drop it in the back seat. At least they didn’t light it on fire for no reason.

    I would swear to you that once, not that long ago, Portlanders kept their dogs on leashes, as is the law. Now, however, everyone seems to have decided that this law is for other people, people whose dogs are dangerous, rather than harmless, like my dog is — irrespective of his enormous teeth and slavering maw, my dog is perfectly polite and well-behaved, thank you very much. Of course, this isn’t true. There is no dog on earth so completely docile that it can be trusted off-leash in a city. The temptations are too many. When I go running, I am one of those temptations.

    This morning I was huffing down the hill on which I live when a black streak bolted across the street after me. A woman had been standing sort of in the vicinity of this black streak back when it was just a dog, but she hadn’t had it leashed, I’m sure because the dog is her pet and she’s sure it’s harmless. It didn’t seem very harmless as it barked raggedly in full fly. It seemed like an animal bred to kill — which at least some of its ancestors most surely are. I went from a discomfited jog to a dead sprint, leaping over an abandoned tricycle, zig-zagging between bushes, trying to keep anything I could find between me and my pursuer. After about a block — lord knows what would have happened if I hadn’t had a head start of several yards — I vaulted over a picket fence and into someone’s back yard, where I landed in a heap in splintery dirt. The dog barrelled head-on into the fence and fell back, stunned. Then, from what sounded like miles away, its owner called its name. The dog stood, snuffled at the fence a couple of times, and then galloped back to her side. Harmless. I mean, I guess I wasn’t harmed.

    In the end, there were some bonuses to this experience. My ankle, which I have been babying and rehabbing and worrying about for fully six months now, felt fine, and continued to feel fine as a I ran several more miles, though there was one close call as I was going down some stairs. According to my Fitbit, I cleared that first mile much more quickly than I normally would, despite several seconds spent lying in a stranger’s yard, contemplating my own mortality. And I managed to prevent myself from following the dog back to its owner to let her know what I thought, on the theory that perhaps she’s learned her lesson, and yelling at her would probably get nobody anything.

    Now a crow is cawing, and other birds go po-tweet-tweet from trees all over, and cars roar by on Division Street, and everything’s basically fine.