My Life in Dog Years by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online

Caesar got loose. Indeed I
wanted
him to get loose. But the leash loop was tight around my wrist.I found to my horror that I was along for the ride, and what a ride it was! We went through three more yards and the back of a bike rental shop along the road and finally slammed into the back doorway of a small cafe where, I learned later, Arnie sometimes went to beg his meals.
    Arnie disappeared into the kitchen. Caesar tried to follow him and would have made it except that I became jammed in the door opening and even he could not pull me free.
    There was a large woman there holding a very impressive cast-iron frying pan and she looked at me as she might look at a cockroach—looked directly at my head and then at the frying pan, which she hefted professionally. “Who are you?”
    “I’m with him,” I said, pointing at Caesar while trying to cover my body. My shorts were in tatters and my feet were badly scraped.
    “It’s wrong to chase cats,” she said.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. Perhaps more than any time in my life I meant it.
    “Go away.” She pointed to the door with her frying pan. “And take your dog with you.”
    And so Caesar entered my life.
    He became many things to us—friend, entertainer, horror show—but he was never, never boring and his life comes back now in a montage of memories.
    There was the Halloween when he greeted a little boy who came to the door in a werewolf costume. There was one moment, priceless, when the two eyed each other, hairy monster-mask to Great Dane muzzle, at exactly the same height. I’m not certain what the little boy expected but he didn’t quail— he leaned forward and growled. I’m not sure what Caesar had expected either but it certainly wasn’t an angry werewolf. He madea sound like a train in a tunnel and disappeared into a dark corner of the bedroom closet and would not come out until all the little people stopped coming and the doorbell quit ringing. And it might be noted here that he had a remarkable memory. Every one of the seven years that he was with us, when the first trick-or-treater came to the door on Halloween, no matter the costume, Caesar went into the bedroom closet, pulled a housecoat over his eyes and would not come out until it was over. He had great heart, but courage against monsters wasn’t in him.
    Then there was the time I was playing “get the kitty” with him. Arnie wasn’t there— usually he was off eating or trying to get married—and I would run around the house yelling at Caesar, “Get the kitty, get the kitty!” He would lope with me, jumping over furniture and knocking down tables (for obvious reasons I usually played this game only when my wife wasn’t there), and I would run andyell and yell until he was so excited he would tear around the house by himself. (I know, I know, but it must be remembered we had no television or other forms of home entertainment.) If it worked well enough I could go and pour a cup of coffee and drink it while Caesar kept galloping, looking for the mystery kitty.
    On this one morning I had done it particularly well and he was crazy with excitement, running up and down the stairs, spraying spit (we often had gobbets on the ceilings when he shook his head), bounding through the air with great glee, and just then, at the height of his crazed romp, just then the front doorbell buzzed and without thinking I opened it to see a package-delivery man standing there with a box in his arms.
    Caesar went
over
me, through the screen and into the guy at shoulder height. He didn’t bite, didn’t actually hurt the man at all. In fact when the man was down on hisback Caesar licked his face—an experience which I think could be duplicated by sticking your head in a car wash—but the effects were the same as if he’d attacked. The package went up in the air and crashed to the ground with a sound of breaking crockery (it had been a family heirloom vase sent by an aunt—and
had been
would be the