“I don’t want to let you down,” I plaintived. “Either of you.”
“It’s Saturday—you’re entitled to a day off, and my emotional well-being is not tied to whether you sit out one of the many walks that now lie in our future.”
“But it’s Spud’s first proper walk. With, like, a park and a real risk of seeing rabbits and other dogs and things. I can’t miss that. That’d be like missing his first birthday or his first word.”
“If Spud has a first word, we’ll have bigger problems than whether you miss it or not.”
Spud had finally decided I was more interesting than the carpet and trotted over to say hello. “I suppose,” I mused, as I bent to ruffle his ears, “he’s had his first word, and it’sruff.”
“Ruff,” agreed Spud.
“I think”—Oliver fished out the lead and clipped it deftly to the harness—“that’s technically a vocalisation.”
“I thinkyou’retechnically a vocalisation,” I told him. Very maturely.
He lifted a brow. “Have you been talking to Colin again?”
“He bugs me when Spud’s pooing.”
“I still think he’s just testing your boundaries.”
“He’s not testing my boundaries,” I protested. “He’s being a little shit.”
“He’s a child.”
“Yeah, and some children are shits. That’s, like, a basic child fact.”
I didn’t like to think Oliver looked sanctimonious, but he was beginning to look sanctimonious. “If you think of him as a shit, he’ll live down to your expectations.”
Internally, I would die on the hill of Next Door’s Kid’s little-shit status. But it wasn’t an argument I wanted to have with my partner on a Saturday morning in my schlumping pants on what was supposed to be Big Walk Day. So I just said “I guess” and then “Give me a second” and went upstairs to change.
One pair of slightly less schlumpy pants, a pair of actual trousers, and a marginally better T-shirt later, Oliver, Spud, and I were on our way to the park.
“Morning, Mr. Blackwood,” called Next Door’s Kid cheerily.
“Good morning, Colin,” Oliver called back, turning briefly to wave and then turning back just in time to miss the look of pure, satanic evil that Next Door’s Kid shot me a moment later.
One of the things that had sold us on the house when we were first looking at it was that we were within a street-and-a-half’s distance of a very pretty park. At the time we hadn’t quite articulated to ourselves what we might want a very pretty parkfor, other than that it seemed like a good thing to have access to. I think we’d vaguely assumed it would be nice to go for walks in. Possibly dog-related walks in, although that was slightly before we’d had the wholeIs a dog a thing that is anusthing?conversation and the increasingly uncodedIs a dog actually a trial run for something more bipedal?conversation. Of course, in practice we’d never gone for an actual walk in it because as soon as you live in a place, you start blithely ignoring everything that made you want to live in that place to begin with.
So, it felt pretty vindicating to finally be taking our puppy to thepark that we’d each secretly dreamed we’d one day take a puppy to. It was one of those crisp autumn mornings, with a pale blue sky and ducks pissing about on the lake, and Spud was skipping around ecstatically like he’d never been out of doors in his life. Which, now I thought about it, he mostly hadn’t, unless you counted short training walks and being taken outside to make an entry in the Defecation Chronicle. Of course, that did mean from his perspective we’d essentially taken him into a massive massive toilet. In fact, from Spud’s perspective, the whole world was a massive massive toilet.
And, honestly, I could relate.
“Are you all right?” asked Oliver.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just thinking how from Spud’s perspective, the world’s a massive massive toilet.”
“Lucien, I don’t even know where to begin with that.”
“How about telling me how extremely charming and quirky I am.”
“Truly”—Oliver cast his gaze dreamily upwards—“I don’t know how I lived so many years without realising that the one thing I needed to complete me was a man who would tell me that, from our dog’s perspective, the whole world is a massive massive toilet.”
“Okay,” I said. “But it is. And you do.”
He adjusted his grip on Spud’s lead and took my hand. “You’re right. I do.”
“And it is.”
