The Coward Soul of Bon-Bon The Dog Triumphs

Bon-Bon’s is a coward soul. If ever there were a trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere, whose Faith does not shine equal to arm itself from Fear, Bon-Bon is such a trembler. His life has been soft as butter from the day of his birth to this. He toils not, neither does he spin; the greatest exertion life has ever required from him has been to occasionally take a ride in the car.

(To be fair, many dogs dislike getting in the car, and I cannot fault them for this. Getting in the car is unnatural, an artificial element of human civilization like phone etiquette and wearing underwear, and something that beasts of the field ought to be held exempt from.¹)

Until very recently, Bon-Bon has only experienced life in New York City, where he passed most of his time playing inside the apartment with Gogo, punctuated by a few daily walks and the occasional trip to the dog park. My understanding of his character was formed there; I merely thought I knew him without realizing the degree to which his habits had been shaped by the temporary circumstances of our acquaintance, like a Jane Austen heroine who has only seen a charismatic man in her hometown and not in a second location.²

I knew, for example, that Bon-Bon hated going up and down new staircases, despite the fact that he has walked unassisted up and down three flights of stairs multiple times a day for the last four years. Whenever he is presented with an unfamiliar flight of stairs, he delivers such a speaking look of baleful resentment that I feel as though I am trying to prod him into a slaughterhouse. He splays his bantam feet on the floor and initiates a beautiful, wretched little display of weaponized incompetence. He bobs his head, waggles from side to side, and gingerly places a single paw on the next stair, as if he is being asked to swim the English Channel. Sometimes he will walk exactly halfway up the stairs before turning around, at which point he realizes he has also forgotten how to walk downstairs, and he waits patiently for me to airlift him to safety.³

He is also afraid of rounding the corner of a sidewalk. Unfortunately, I ask him to do this multiple times every day, since “taking a walk” is an essential element of dog ownership. He gets a wary, paranoid gleam in his little raccoon eyes the closer we get to the corner of a block — any block — and tries to throw himself in the path of the nearest pedestrian walking opposite us. If I tug ever so slightly on his leash to encourage him not to dash under a stranger’s feet, he throws himself to the ground in protest, and waits again to be carried around the corner. Once I have done this, he will happily walk down the straight part of the sidewalk, but the process must be repeated at the next corner, and so on, ad infinitum.

Then a series of rent increases brought our family out to a brief sojourn in Michigan, where we have a fenced backyard that has brought about an almost-total personality change in Bon-Bon over the course of a fortnight. Gogo is the same everywhere. He bounces and howls and makes constant demands regardless of circumstance. But the Bon-Bon of a Michigan backyard is an entirely different animal to the Bon-Bon of a Brooklyn apartment.

The experience of running around a yard with grass in it deranges Bon-Bon’s mind with joy. He becomes absolutely demented with pleasure. I had thought I knew what happiness looked like in him; I saw through a glass but darkly, where now I see face to face. He bounds through the yard like Pepe Le Pew and he answers to no one. If I throw a ball, he will chase after it in a frenzy, then completely abandon it once it has stopped moving. He will buck off imaginary riders and dash under the deck to check for skunks to wrestle. He has honest-to-God chased after butterflies, which is something I thought only happened in cartoons. He will resist being brought back inside for any reason, including food and sleep, which were formerly two of his favorite things.

This great weltering joy has brought with it the natural consequence of high spirits: Bon-Bon has discovered willful disobedience. Before this move, he sometimes inconvenienced me, but he was generally animated by a friendly, if vague, desire to please. Now that he has Yard Access, he has discovered the laws of the wild, and he disdains to consider what allegiance, if any, he owes to me. If I call his name, he merely laughs in white-throated delight, and turns his bandit face away from the sound of the law. If I try to lure him onto the porch with the sounds of dinner, he thrusts his hands in his pockets and sneers: He knows the ways of the forest, and can live off of the land for years without ever having need of applying to human society for aid.

There is in the far corner of the backyard a fenced-off compost heap. Lily likes to compost, and so a few times a day we carry out our old tea bags and coffee grounds and wilted lettuce. It is black and fascinating and full of crushed-up eggshells. The Pile speaks to the deeps of Bon-Bon’s spirit, and he longs more than anything to commune with it.

Communing with the Pile is of course strictly forbidden. Any patch of flowers or grassy hillock or fallen branch in the yard are free for the dogs to investigate or roll around in or dance across, as they see fit, but of the Pile at the corner of the yard I have said, “You are not to eat from it, nor are you to touch it, for the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely be given a bath.”

Gogo, like most brats, does not really want to transgress; he wants to make a playful movement in the direction of transgression, get caught in the act, and be fussed over. But the newly grass-emboldened Bon-Bon longs to violate the law. A few days ago he experienced the greatest high, and the lowest low, that a ten-pound lapdog can possibly experience: He entered the Pile. And in the Pile he was caught, led out to the driveway, and given a bath.⁴

Lily and I were standing on the porch with the baby after a long ball-throwing session with the dogs. I was feeling especially pleased with myself, as there is something profoundly satisfying about successfully tiring out dogs and toddlers. After some time had passed, Lily said something like, “And how quiet the dogs are being. They really must love being in the yard,” and I knew immediately that what I had taken for a peaceful silence was in fact the silence of dullness, lapsed vigilance, and successful banditry.

For the Pile is not visible from the porch. The view is blocked by the garage. Before I had even rounded the corner, I already knew what I would see: A broken fence and a ten-pound dog, soot-footed and triumphant, an eggshell delicately balanced over one ear, his mouth full of unspeakables, dancing on the Pile, heedless of the bath that was to come. The dog Bon-Bon has come to know what it is to live in a house with a backyard, and my house will never again know peace.

1. Although it’s not really fair to call Bon-Bon a beast of the field. A creature of the lawn, maybe.

2. Jane Austen heroines must follow the reverse of the Donaghy principle (“Never go with a hippie to a second location”) — if they like a man, they must see him in a second location, with a new set of people, before they can safely risk liking him.

3. Gogo, who has similarly led a life of debauched indolence and leisure, and who weighs a mere 5.5 pounds to Bon-Bon’s 10, can perfectly understand the concept of “new stairs,” and runs up and down without the slightest trouble.

4. In Bon-Bon’s culture, there is a strong cultural taboo against the driveway. It is a place invariably associated with great shame and punishment, the anti-Pile. Also, the driveway is where the Car lives, and the Car is a terrible enemy.