The Smoky Dirt Road

                My old dog Ari wasn’t very friendly.  That’s kind of an understatement, really.  Ari was a prick.  I mean he liked me, of course, and he at least tolerated my friends.  He liked a lot of my friends, too, but he merely put up with plenty of them.  I’m not sure if he was the kinda dog that when he really likes you you feel flattered or not, but I’ve met dogs like that plenty of times.  He was pretty smart, he just didn’t see too many reasons to get all excited to meet a stranger.

                Unless the stranger had food, of course.  Like I said, Ari wasn’t stupid.  He knew how to beg with the best of em.  Well, maybe not the best.  He could look hansome but he wasn’t very good at looking cute.  He’d pull it off once in a while but yeah.  The dog wasn’t a cute wittle puppy wuppy.  We were in Tennessee for a while and one of our friend’s dogs taught everybody else that they could sneak off to the gas station a couple miles away and panhandle for chicken and hot dogs.  We’d all be freakin out, wondering if they were ever gonna come back and then you go up to get a beer and the fuckers are hangin out lookin pathetic in front of the Texaco.

                Another thing that would win Ari over was marijuana.  He loved weed.  I only saw him drink beer a couple of times and that was cos he was really thirsty and there wasn’t any water.  But man, that dog liked to get stoned.  I used to get dogs and cats high.  I still would if I still smoked weed.  Like I wouldn’t hold them down and force them but you just kinda hold their face and blow in it.  If they really hate it I just let em go.  But some of them get all into it.  Shit, we had this cat who used to sit on the table while we were smoking pot and we’d all blow it at him.  He’d sit there and bask in it until we were done or until he was good, then he’d saunter off and go hang out on the fuckin bannister or somewhere cool like that. 

Ari, though, Ari would lick your face or at least attempt to while you were blowing pot smoke at him.  He was usually good after a few hits, then he’d go fuck around and be a stoned dog.  Everything smells a lot more interesting when you’re baked, he seemed to think.  And if you were getting high, he’d come up and beg.  And I mean he’d sit and beg like you were eating a fuckin steak or something.  And he’d do this to anybody.  I can think of at least a few times that some random schmuck walked up to me on the street, Ari would growl at him a little or at least give him an attitude of complete indifference until the stranger busted out with a joint.  All of a sudden ol Ari was a real friendly dog.  Stoners get a kick outta that shit.

I remember one time my girlfriend at the time and I were walking our dogs home to the squat in West Philly and this crazy old dude with a fuckin wide brimmed Army Ranger hat and a dirty trenchcoat and about a 4 day growth of beard asked me for a paper.  The guy had about a thousand buttons all over his hat and coat.  Plus it was like June or something.  Not overcoat weather.  I don’t remember what any of the guy’s buttons said, but he seemed like he was gonna tell us all about what the CIA didn’t want us to know or some shit.  I’m not sure why wackos are always revealing all these secrets about the government.  How the fuck does some guy who talks to mailboxes get classified information.  Hell, maybe the mailbox tells him.  If mailboxes could talk, they’d probably know some pretty alarming shit.

So anyway, the weirdo asked me for a rolling paper and I smoked rollies so I always had papers.  I gave him one and he asked if we wanted to smoke a joint.  Of course we did.  What kinda question was that?  The dogs looked a little annoyed that we had stopped cos we were getting close to the park where we’d usually let them run loose.  The guy twisted up a joint and asked for a light.  I gave him one and all of a sudden Ari turned into a tail-wagging doofus, deciding that this guy who’s all bundled up in buttons was okay in his book.

After the joint had gone around a couple of times, the old man asked if he could get Ari stoned since it was so obvious that he wanted to.  I said “sure” and was about to tell him how to do it when he took a big hit off the joint, picked up Ari’s tail and started blowing smoke at his asshole.  And I mean this dude had his face right up in the dog’s butt.  Ari kinda flinched playfully and spun around, wondering where the warm breeze was comin from.  By this time I was kinda high and me and my girl exchanged glances, trying not to totally lose it.  So the old man starts explaining to us that dogs get really high if you blow smoke in their asses.  I sorta mentioned that they seem to get pretty high if you blow it in their noses, too, but he ignored me and blew another stream of marijuana smoke at ol Earl’s butthole. 

I don’t think Ari was very high for his experience at the park after that, but I’m pretty sure he had a good time sniffing around and chasing squirrels anyway.  Dogs like that stuff.  Weed or no weed.