Nancy Bartholomew

What happened to Bailey shouldn't have happened to a dog...

On the floor at my feet, poor Bailey the Big Dog, is sleeping, gorked on painkillers.

As if it weren't enough that I gave him a VERY bad haircut on Sunday, today we added insult to injury and sent him to the vet to have his teeth cleaned. They pulled four of his front teeth! Poor guy. Now he'll look like one of my nursing home residents...I wonder if his lower lip will pull in eventually and pucker up around his gums?

If Bailey were morphed into an old man he'd wear faded blue jeans a few sizes too large and big red suspenders. He'd totter down the hallway, pushing his walker- which would have a plastic flower-trimmed, white, fake wicker, bicycle basket hanging from its front bar.

And he'd have an I-pod.

Bailey always roams along to the beat of his own peculiar drummer, so if I turned him into a human I'd give him a real soundtrack. Probably the Beatles- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He'd sing loudly and out of tune as he strolled through the house and out into the backyard.

"Back in the US, back in the USSR," he'd wail.

I'd walk up to him as he sniffed along the back fence and tap him on the shoulder.

"How you doin', Bailey?" I'd say.

He'd slowly whirl around and squint up at me, recognition slowly dawning as I came into focus.

"It's all good, man," he'd say. Bailey as an old man would be the Maynard G. Krebbs of old people- a stringy goatee clinging to his chin, his brain always slow to make the connection between what is real and what is imagination.

"At least it was all good 'til the day you whacked off my hair and had my teeth pulled...It's been downhill ever since...But you meant well, I suppose."

He'd heave a big sigh and keep on moving. "Those were the days, my friend," he's sing softly.

Thank God he's too old to remember that little neutering incident!