Isabella Gross How to Get a Dog

How to Get A Do g by Isabella Gross

Imitation of Jennifer Howard’s “How to End Up”

You’re sitting on the floor of your apartment leaning on the coffee table. Your roommate took the couch when she moved to Los Angeles last week. You asked her, what, are you gonna buy it a row on the plane? She said it was her parents’ old couch and they were going to give it to her younger brother when he starts college. You tell her you’re glad that they’re so concerned about giving him a comfy place to get laid, and she didn’t text you back. And so you’re sitting on the floor of your apartment, scrolling through Instagram. You’ve fallen into a hole of dog videos, and you’ve found yourself double tapping on each wiggly corgi butt and singing husky. You look around your quiet kitchen and down the dark hallway, and a bright thought jumps into your head. You should really get a dog.

You imagine strolling down the aisles of PetSmart, filling a cart with a wonky front wheel that keeps swerving to the left with low-cal training treats and chew toys. You pick up a tiny puppy puffer jacket and wonder, will she need this? Yeah, yes, of course she will, and you’re imagining your Instagram full of stills of her running though the January snow and you toss in into the cart. And then you imagine your ex-boyfriend’s best friend who’s still following you for whatever reason commenting that you don’t need to put a coat on your dog, they used to be wolves for fuck’s sake and you take it back out. Then the employee at the end of the aisle in the ill-fitting blue vest smiles at you kindly and you throw it back in.

You imagine bringing her home in a tattered blanket and showing her to her baby pink bed for the first time. You think it would be so cute if she woke you up in the morning with happy kisses. You dream about the Hal

loween costumes, watching Modern Family on winter weeknights, chasing her down the hall to take back your missing sock. Yeah, a dog would be really good for you. You could be more active. Less lonely.

You’ll go to the dog park, meet people, be outside. Maybe a cute guy with wind-rustled hair will get his goofy mixed lab’s leash tangled up in yours. He will cutely apologize, and you will laugh and sweep the hair from your forehead with your finger. He will ask your name and you will tell him and he’ll say ah, how beautiful. When your dogs are untangled he’ll pull out his phone and ask you to put your info in it, you know, for play dates and stuff. And so you’ll see him there tomorrow. And the day after. And the next week. And the dogs, they’ll play so nicely together. Maybe they’ll play so well together that they won’t notice when you slip him behind a urinesoaked tree and let him feel you up. Then he’ll come over, and he’ll bring his lab mix, and your dogs will be so happy to see each other. And you’ll close the bedroom door quietly, and they won’t start scratching at it for twenty minutes, which is about all you can ask from them.

And so things are pretty good for a while until your dog-park boyfriend tells you that he has to go back home to Detroit to take care of his sick dad. You really don’t like that, ‘cause things are just getting good now. He’s been leaving you sweet drawings of your dog on the kitchen counter when he has to go to work early and you guys had just started rewatching the old Power Rangers TV show that you grew up with. Who else did that with you since your brother died? You ask him, what, they don’t have nursing homes in Detroit? And his face gets all red and he closes his eyes for a long time and says he’s sorry, which makes it so much harder for you to watch him grab his coat and close the apartment door so gently that your dog doesn’t even wake up from her nap on the couch. You wished he would’ve started a big loud fight with you and slammed the door so hard that the pictures would fall off the wall, and your dog would wake up and bark her head off and you’d say that’s right, girl! What a dickhead! And then you sink down onto the couch that your ex-dog-park boyfriend helped you pick out next to your dog and you stroke her soft ears as the tears burn down your face. You ask her if she’s going to miss his mixed lab. She watches you with half-open eyelids.

Jenna Keson is a third year student majoring in Secondary English Education with a minor in Physical Education and pursuing a certificate in Creative Writing. She enjoys reading, writing poetry, spending time with her puppy, and napping.