Good Dog by Editors of Garden & Gun

Author:Editors of Garden & Gun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Literary Canines

BY CURTIS WILKIE

Among the many things that journalists can’t keep, it’s been said, are pets and plants, and for most of my career I was proof of that axiom. We travel too much. But after I moved to New Orleans in the 1990s and began to settle down, a dog sounded appealing.

Although I never hunted, I thought yellow Labs, with their soulful eyes and long, floppy ears, were especially neat and asked my friend David Crews, who was looking for a Lab for himself, if he could find one for me, too. He located a kennel in South Mississippi and brought away a pair of six-week-old puppies. David took the female and named her Lion, after the dog in the Faulkner story “The Bear.” I got Lion’s brother, all ears and paws and energy. Not to be outdone, I seized on a literary name, too: Binx.

I wanted to name my pet for a fictional character with a New Orleans background but dismissed Ignatius J. Reilly and Stanley Kowalski. Neither name sounded lyrical. But Binx had a nice ring to it, and there had been times in my life when I identified with Walker Percy’s creation, Binx Bolling, and the fugue state he moved through in New Orleans in The Moviegoer.

So Binx came to live on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter, and I discovered that in lieu of game birds he was quite willing to snack on shoes or ties or handles of cooking implements. Or, as a special treat, the Oriental rugs I brought home after years in the Middle East. Yet it was impossible to get too angry. When I yelled, Binx would lower his tail and look at me sadly with his big, deep brown eyes. And I would be the one who felt guilty.

We fell into a comfortable routine. Cabrini Park, across the street from my house, was known in the neighborhood as the “dog park,” and in the late afternoon Binx and I joined dozens of residents, bearing their cocktails and their own pets. It was a daily festival of greyhounds and shepherds, dachshunds and poodles, AKC purebreds and rescue animals.

Almost every day we’d also walk along the levee. If it was especially hot, I’d let Binx dip in the river while I held his leash. Once, as we strolled in front of Jackson Square, an overheated Binx jumped spontaneously into a water trough for the mules that tow tourist carriages.

“Get that goddamn dog outta there,” one of the carriage drivers shouted.

“Buzz off,” I barked back, or words to that effect. “My dog is a helluva lot cleaner than your mule.”

Better swimming was available across town in Bayou St. John near City Park. I’d fling a rubber chicken into the water, and with a running start Binx would dive in with a big splash to retrieve it. There were real ducks to chase, too. But I watched out for alligators; I had nightmares of Binx in the jaws of a predator.

At home, we’d play “hockey.

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