What Scares Howard

Now that I have guest author tags it is not as urgent that I intro these pieces but just a reminder that a) Anne-Michelle Tessier is Linguist-in-Chief at Rose-Coloured, b) if you want to find out more about Anne-Michelle, her dogs Howard and Bagel and their whole deal you can read more here and here, and c) AMT and I once went to Jasper, which was glorious, but we were menaced by a late night pack of elk standing perfectly still in a threatening manner, and now that I am reading The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones in which the elk are all terrifying (I’m early in the novel as yet, but I do not think a human-elk accord is at hand) I can say we were RIGHT to be afraid. AMT and RR instincts correct according to this acclaimed horror novel. Also the header image is some piece of terrifying public art in British Columbia, which sets an appropriate tone for this post.

More horrifying things from Anne-Michelle and Howard…

To prepare for the upcoming month of spooky ghosts and pumpkins that go bump in the night: today’s piece on the interior life of my dogs is a fistful of lists, beginning with: 

Things Howard is Suspicious of, in Descending Order of Understandability, Allowing That He’s a Dog

1. The crack of a baseball bat, cars backfiring, actual gunshots near an outdoor shooting range [absolutely fair, this should in fact signal danger to anybody]

2. Bicycles, scooters, tricycles [yeah, they move at an unnatural speed and unpredictable directions, especially when piloted by reckless children, true]

3. Strangers approaching our car or front door [ok, it’s your castle, although honestly you would be sad if Amazon stopped delivering your stuffies, but.]

4. Voices raised, like, at all [sadly, I worry this is PTSD from however humans treated him before he was rescued as a young boy? Poor previous-life Howard! See below]

5. Crowds, as in more than, like, four people [sir, why are you the mob police? It’s called Freedom of Assembly, calm down]

6. Older men with hiking poles [balance goes as you age, friendo, it’s got nothing to do with you]

7. Flies [you’re so much bigger and fang-ier than them, buddy! – but also see below]

Things Howard Is Significantly Terrified by, Ranked According to How Much I Get It

1. Fireworks and thunder [an unfortunate classic, poor guy thinks we’re at Passchendaele]

2. Tai Chi performed very slowly, usually on a tennis court [while this might seem perfectly innocuous, especially at that speed: one time we passed a group that had a GONG, and Howard cannot forget]

3. The possibility of children, even when displaced in time [so that if Howard knows there are sometimes lots of little children in this park, he will have NOTHING to do with it at ALL times, even in the middle of the night, as though there might be delayed-release children waiting to pounce]

4. Cold toes somewhere in the vicinity of his butt [it’s my couch too, but Howard feels curling up with a good book is a full-blown felony in the making if you’re not wearing warm socks]

5. This one elderly man who walks slowly around our neighbourhood wearing a backpack [… I just, I don’t know what Howard has against this man. He doesn’t appear to speak English. Howard wants him dead. There’s no way forward.]

Sidenote: Howard expresses three main levels of fear, as follows:

1. Threat Level Moderate:  quite scary, not happy at all, look at my ears and tucked tail, why is this sucky thing still happening

2. Threat Level Serious: real and present danger, definitely time to shake/bark/hide

3. Threat Level Apocalypse: everybody you know and love will die in the next five seconds if we don’t sprint at top-speed back to the car, and/or pee in bed

(A compounding problem: Howard is a much better sprinter than I am. RIP my shoulder joints, and one reason I’ve become an expert in Things Deemed Threat Level Apocalypse)

Things Howard is Not Afraid Of

1. Crazy loud freight trains blowing their horn even five metres away  

2. Bears

3. Bees (cf flies above) 

Things Howard Hasn’t Decided the Threat Level of Yet

1. Horses 

Some Summary Generalizations

• Up until the age of about 6-7 months, Howard lived in some dangerous way  on the streets, in either Louisiana or Texas. When we met him (in a Petsmart in Bellingham, WA) he was so happy to meet everybody … but clearly he must have gone through some shit as a puppy, and in particular his fear when he thinks me and my other half are “fighting” is so heartbreaking. The compounding problem is that Howard cannot reliably distinguish between us yelling at each other (vanishingly rare) vs. us expressing any heightened emotions (regardless of their valence! Group joy can also apparently be terrifying!) vs. us complaining about a third party (Howard, politics are not your fault! You don’t have to go hide; unless you wrote that op-ed, you’re safe!) 

• Howard was once stung by a bee. On his little butt. It was apparently very scary and confusing for him? Unfortunately, he somehow believes the danger of that incident could be brought upon him again by any bug that flies… except, of course, bees, which he will either try to befriend, play tag with, or eat mid-air (!!!). … Well, even genius dogs can’t get everything right.