Luci knows something is up. She eyes my suitcase suspiciously and she follows me around, a miniature shadow. She wonders if we're going on a trip, but it hasn't occurred to her that we're going in two different directions tomorrow. She senses my apprehension in leaving her.
Teenagers across the street had the temerity to rouse her from her peaceful sleep and she bolted to the window to bark almost ferociously. I turned on the porch light. Just kids standing in their driveway, playing loud music, bright truck lights.
"You take such good care of us," I told her, handing her a treat.
Earlier in the day, we had a leisurely sit and a salad at Piati's, just the two of us and the flurry of attention a dog brings. Waiters and diners squatted to pet her, cooing the way humans do. She returned their affection, jumped on our waiter's knees, and checked out the competition when a dog named Cooper arrived. She whined: please take off this leash so we can play properly!
An elderly Asian American man told me his dog was a spy. "He's always watching me even when I'm in the shower."
"I love your one up one down ears and your big gorgeous tail," a waiter told Luci.
Another man said, "I like dogs better than kids. You can train a dog in a couple of months, but kids ain't even trained when they are thirty."
A young man told me he got a rescue dog during COVID, too, but the dog had to stay with his mother when he got this job. After three days of that, the mother said, "You have to give me that dog!" So he did. "She's retired and home all the time, it's better for them both. I couldn't stand leaving him alone all day."
Until I got Luci, I never realized how quickly people connect with tales of dogs. I can't count the number of times strangers have taken out a phone to show me pictures of their dogs at home. Name, pedigree, weight, quirks.
These nonverbal creatures tell us so much about who they are--and who we are.
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