Wally's body was like a little brown bullet. Thick across the shoulders and a chest like a fur-covered bowling ball, he defied the mental image of a yappy, small dog. Twice the size of a normal dachshund, he took up half the bed when he climbed in at night. His head rested on the pillow and many mornings I woke up staring at his wet chocolate eyes rimmed with black. Like a teenager at a party full of four-year-olds, he endured my roughhousing. Cops and robbers, with him as the fugitive, or wrestling matches with him as the doomed villain, Wally was struck, knocked off his feet, rolled and dragged, yet never bit and never fought back. He was more a plaything than a playmate, and I believed he enjoyed every minute of it.
Outdoors, his forbearance came to an abrupt end. Straining at the end of his leash, he would inevitably make his way toward the woods behind our house, pulling me along behind him. He strained at the end of his leash, his nose forming the tip of a soft brown arrow. I would often let him in just enough to stuff his nose under the damp leaves but for only a moment or two. I didn't feel welcome in the woods, particularly at night. But for him, it was the constant destination. I wouldn't let him go, but like a teenager dead set on skirting the rules, he found a way.
I had learned that the only way to keep Wally on the leash was to maintain a 45 degree angle with a taut leash. His goal was to get behind me - directly behind me so as to straighten the leash and pop his head out of the collar. He used a method akin to Houdini flexing his muscles before he was chained and sealed inside a safe. When Houdini relaxed his muscles, he'd give himself just enough slack to work his way out. Wally used the fleshy folds of his neck the same way. Gathered up in your hand, you could nearly pull his skin over his head like the hood of a robe. It also provided just enough extra slack that when the collar slipped straight forward towards his nose, the skin flattened out and slipped right over his head.
Free from his collar, he streaked for the trees, plunging deep into the browns and tans of the fallen leaves and branches, hiding him almost immediately. At night, the woods simply swallowed him whole. Shouting for help, I would call my mother and sister out to the front yard to help find him. Once there, we would stand, motionless and silent, like a game in which we were blindfolded and forced to rely on our hearing to find our mark. A rustle of leaves would draw us to one section of the backyard, searching for a two foot section of shadow to break away from its surroundings. A step toward the sound, a breath while the crunch of the grass and brittle sticks fell away, then another step. Suddenly, Wally exploded out of the darkness, first in a flurry of pounding footsteps, then the steam of his breath, then the entire little body racing toward us, pounding across the backyard.
Then at the last minute, just as he reached our arms, he would cut to one side, giving is a new view of his streaking brown form - one wild eye and a tongue lapping the wind. Back into the woods to do it again.
And then, one time, he came tearing out of the woods, right past the three of us and headed for the street. Thankfully, a dead end like ours didn't have many cars and yet the surge of panic leapt into my chest as I watched my dog race down the slope of our yard, across the curb and onto the blacktop. There, stood another dog. A large black dog whose fur reflected the sheen from the spotlight as it turned laconically toward Wally as he bore down on him. Once there, Wally danced around him, sniffing, licking as the big dog patiently watched, unmoving. As I approached, I thanked the dog's owner who, also, simply stood watching. I skipped the collar into place and tightened it a notch to be sure. Wally looked up with a damning look as if the click of the catch on the leash signaled an end to the game which, of course, it did. I pulled him gently away from the giant black dog, making sure I tacked ahead of Wally at a 45 degree angle. He stumbled and barked, a rare thing, trying to get back.
No matter how tightly I would fit the leash, Wally still managed to escape several times. I no longer chased him, or screamed at him, or brought out dog treats to wave. I simply went to my neighbor, asked for the big dog and walked him down the center of the street, under the lights. Eventually, my dog would find me.
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