Sleeps with Dogs by Lindsey Grant Page B

think was that all the egg and cheese and kibble must be blocking him up. I’d be constipated, too, if I ate like that. He had to walk it off—get it out—before he went to sleep. But he was clearly not in a walking mood. I engaged him in a brief tug of war, cooing soothingly. I was nearly parallel to the ground, pulling with all my might, before he budged an inch.
    I settled for walking him up and down the cobblestone path over and over again, hoping each time when we reached the sidewalk that he’d relent and continue on down the road with me. After about the eleventh lap, I tried another pull-a-thon with him. But as he skidded across the pavement toward my firmly planted feet, I was afraid that I’d hurt his neck or break one of his toenails or scuff his footpads.
    Charlie ended up fertilizing the bonsai in the courtyard, and then we sat on the kitchen floor while I tried to get a blob of tree sap out of his velvet fur. I’d already tried using a soapy paper towel and was still rubbing at the sticky fur, trying to scrape the resin off his short, fine hairs. In my determination, I yanked out a pea-sized patch of fur along with the sap. Charlie yelped and pissed a little on my leg before skittering down the hall into Katherine’s room.
    The next morning, I found Charlie huddled in the back of his crate, his cushion soaked in pee. Not even one day gone and I already had to use the washing machine. Ignoring my all-caps note to myself about not doing laundry, I stuffed the waterlogged cushion into the washer. I added a healthy scoop of liquid detergent and flipped the temperature to hot.
    The laundry room flooded in no time. Frothy waves of piss-tainted water belched from the lid of the washer, spilling over ontothe floor and making its way closer to lip of the laundry room door toward the hardwood floors beyond.
    Clean as her house was, Katherine seemed to live without any cleaning supplies—no mop, broom, rag bag, bucket, or sponge—save two ultra-absorbent rolls of paper towels under the kitchen sink. The paper towels were soft enough to bathe with, and I used every last one as I tried to stop the flood that was now starting to leak down the hallway. I weighed my options: call a travel agent, or a vet?
    I’d quit the business before using one of Katherine’s fluffy monogrammed towels to such a filthy end. And it, too, would have to be laundered. There was nothing towel-like in my car, just some Starbucks napkins and a fleece hoodie. With the recent reprieve from rain, I’d washed all the rags and towels for wiping down the dogs and never returned them to the trunk.
    Back inside the house, I found a faded beach towel in the back of the hallway linen closet. After squeezing and re-squeezing it into the laundry-room sink, I was able to clean up most of the water. Half an hour later, sweaty and a little sudsy, I stood back and surveyed the reasonably—manageably—soggy floor. The hardwood floors, at least, were dry.
    I hand washed the beach towel in the deep sink adjacent to the washer and threw it in to dry with Charlie’s bed.
    Soon after getting into animal nannying, I started having anxiety dreams about work. The common theme of all the nightmares was that all the animals were in grave peril and it was my fault. In most scenarios, I realized the error of my ways when it was too late to make it right. One night, a parrot’s feet fell off from neglect. He couldn’t stay on his perch because, below the feathers, he had only stumps. I tried to glue his feet back on to no avail.Before that, it was fish. I forgot to condition their water, and they immediately started floating to the top of the bowl. Then the tanks tipped over and there were fish everywhere, gasping for air. I couldn’t get them back in the water fast enough. In one dream, hamsters were getting crushed beneath their exercise wheels. As soon as I got everything upright, the lid fell in and pinned