Stepdog by Mireya Navarro Page A

doggie Mordor. With the leash in my tight grip, Eddie started with a swagger, like a cowboy out to collect a debt. We strolled our street, Avenida De Cortez, and it wasn’t too bad. I discovered Eddie ate poop, apparently a delicacy for the refined palate of the cattle-herding blue heeler. He went for a turd left behind by a friend—or, more likely, a foe—but I pulled him away just in time.
    We turned left from our house and right up the hill to the next block. Seattle waited behind a wrought-iron gate. Kisses all around.
    Then sniff, sniff every blade of grass with identifying markers from other dogs, and we soon ran into some stranger, which was okay, Jim told me, as long as it was a girl or a geezer or a puppy. This one happened to be Buddy, a tiny terrier-looking thing with a mop of straight hair hiding his eyes. He was merrily lapping up water from the gutter with no owner in sight. I found a tag in all that hair and was able to track the owner to the house right in front of us before a coyote ate him. Buddy was a repeat escapee, the owner said apologetically. Eddie, anxious to resume his walk, couldn’t care less about Buddy.
    But down the same street, Eddie tensed up and started growling as we approached the house of a black and brown German shepherd lolling in the grass behind an iron gate that allowed him to view the front sidewalk. Jim had not mentioned this one, but there was obviously some serious bad blood. As we got close, the German shepherd threw himself against the gate with great force and Eddie battled against the leash, snarling. It was so bad I could almost hear them think.
    â€œI’m going to rip your head off!”
    â€œNo, I’m going to rip your head off!”
    The exchange was ferocious, but it was over in seconds. At some point Eddie grew bored and thrust his acrobatic rear leg into the air to let loose his most fragrant stream of urine on a nearby planter. The German shepherd went loco and I feared he’d impale himself on the gate as we walked away. Then, back on our street after circling the block, almost home free, our fearless hero made a totally dumb move and put his snout through the hole of a wooden fence so that two badass Pomeranians could bite him. I thought I’d be in trouble when I got home, but Jim totally understood. He knew his dog was basically a dumbass. But I felt sorry for Eddie later when I saw him curled up in one of his round beds, licking his wounded face. Every now and then he’d look up—giving me his “Do you have food for me?” pleading face—and I even felt affection.
    I avoided dog walking like the plague after that experience, but sooner or later the time always came when Jim was not available, Arielle and Henry were not around, and it fell on me to take Eddie out. Then one day the inevitable happened. In Eddie’s defense, the mail carrier drove his truck into a parking spot right in front of us as we minded our business on the sidewalk across from our house. What would Dum-dum be expected to do but lurch at the carrier through the open cab, bite a bundle of letters off his hands, and send paper straight into the wet gutter.
    â€œJust go, just go,” the mortified mail carrier told me, so off we went.
    Then our mail stopped coming.
    Apparently, thousands of carriers are bitten every year on their deliveries, forcing contrite dog owners nationwide to pick up their mail at the post office. In our case, no one was hurt, but the post office still made Jim sign some document giving assurances that we would contain our monster.
    I became even more reluctant to walk Eddie after that incident. For bonding purposes, it was much easier to run with Eddie. The previous winter—the time of the year when the average Los Angeles temperature plunges to 68 degrees—Eddie had lounged around too much, even for him, and started looking like a sausage. Jim took him out for power walks and I decided to pitch in. Up and