I love Luna (40)

UNITED STATES—It was just one of those days for my “master,” all around humiliating and ultimately redemptive. He’d left early for a business meeting, and when he got to the curb, he felt the jolt: I have left without the canvas satchel that contains my books and important papers. It is always harrowing, that moment when just by conceiving something has vanished, the tension-tautened body reacts.

(Now now now, Luna, what are you barking at? he thinks. And the inspiration mustered to relate yet another episode of my never-ending career as a pit-bull lab, who instills fear in and of the master himself. It might be a squirrel, a possum, a coyote or a mouse at the very least. After coming face to face with a possum and seeing that elongated rat tail, the master has the well-founded hypothesis that the long-term dweller in the rafters in indeed a possum. And what are we to do about it.)

Now Luna is whining so tenderly at the master who taps away. Who cannot be touched by that lovable dog, Luna? Well, actually a lot of people who cannot fathom how full of love she is and how her energy dwarfs that of the cartoon dog Marmaduke. At present, she is tenderly asleep at the couch armrest nearest his desk. At the master’s elbow she is soundly asleep, eyes closed, dreaming a doggy dream.

She might sense that the master is still smarting from speaking out of turn at the round robin business meeting, as the different department heads shared their reports. Being terribly naive in some matters, the master thought that Round Robin meant raising your voice when you found the courage to do so.

The master must now muster the courage to go back to the home office and not ask for a reassignment in Phoenix.

He turned to me tonight and said, “Luna, you’re not going to get schizophrenic on me, are you?”

The fact is, when those so tender eyes flicker open from my slumber, I might well be fearing for his sanity, too. Tonight the master panicked on his way out of the house to pick up a bag of peanuts, which is the one food we can both share. The truth is, he harbors resentment that he introduced me to the snack that made Mr. Planter a millionaire. He trembles now when I trot into the kitchen at the sound of the zip-lock coming out if the kitchen drawer.

Oddly, it’s little Baby DeVille, who really gets the master’s hackles up.

He’ll stand on hind legs and aggressively dig his sharp-nailed paws into the master’s leg. It’s ironic how the little pooch has so far avoided the curse of the pit-bull blood in me to turn him into my own snack.

To be continued…