Steven Winn - Come Back, Como: Winning the Heart of a Reluctant Dog

On the Loose

I t was a gorgeous September morning in San Franciscos Inner Sunset District, glowingly warm and bright. I was spending it on my knees in the middle of Eleventh Avenue, pleading with a dog.

Como, I called out in the most casually reassuring voice I could muster. Lets go back home. Cmon, boy. Lets just do it. I inched a little closer to the cream-colored terrier mutt who had just fled from our house a few blocks away and led me on a frantic chase that didnt show any signs of ending well. Como, his tawny ears lifted in high-alert mode and brown eyes widened, inched back. He kept a safe distance on the sidewalk, twenty yards off. His tail was raised and furled like a raffish feather over his back end.

This wasnt working any more than trying to outrun him had. At fifty-two, I wasnt about to win a footrace with a nimble, two-year-old terrier. The moment had arrived for a fresh approach if I ever hoped to recapture this scruffy shelter dog my wife and daughter and I had adopted ten days ago, which had been more than enough time to learn his distaste for mennotably meand highly developed flair for escape.

Hey, Como, I said, ditching my phonily unrattled tone for something even more phonily playful. Check it out. I got off my knees but stayed down in a passive, nonthreatening crouch. He watched closely and came a few steps closer. Encouraged, I sat down, braced my hands behind me, and stretched out my legs, as if I were settling in for a placid picnic in the park. I was careful to stay in profile to him, to keep him in sight while avoiding even the slightest hint of confrontation. I slowly extended a hand in his direction, rubbing my thumb and index finger together.

Cmon, Como. Cmon, boy. After a while it was clear Id rub the skin off my fingers before hed come all the way. I was rested now and considered springing up and making another direct dash at him. But as soon as I shifted my legs a little to get up, Como laid his ears back and retreated. So much for that plan.

At that point I was fresh out of human tactics. My next idea wasnt an idea at all but a kind of unformed impulse to act like another dogsomething Id probably last done forty years ago or more. I stood up, dusted the sidewalk grit off my palms, crossed the street, and started up Eleventh Avenue on the opposite sidewalk. I was respecting Comos territory but claiming some for my own, just as dogs do. What a great idea, I meant to say in his language, to explore this stretch of town. Youre the leader, natch, but lets do it together.

Como looked completely nonplussed when I gave him a quick glance. He watched, his shoulder blades suspiciously hoisted, as I started plodding up the hill. But soon enough he seemed to sign on to the deal and continued on his side. We both hit Moraga Street at about the same time and kept climbing. Oddly, on that choice morning, there wasnt a car moving or a person in sight. We had the Inner Sunset to ourselves.

Forcing myself not to look over at him, I stepped off the sidewalk and started walking in the street on the next block, gradually narrowing the distance between us without seeming to. It was like an algebra problem about slowly but steadily converging lines destined to meet at a certain point on the graph. And it might have worked out that way if I werent running out of breath, with several more blocks of steep hill ahead. We were nearly to Ortega Street when a final, desperate inspiration hit. I let out a huge, resigned sigh and went down in a heap. I was counting on the sheer animal surprise of it to seize his interestand I was right. Como lowered his nose in my direction and came out in the street to investigate.

I played along as best as I could, sinking from a propped elbow slump to a full-body collapse. I could sense him, almost hear and smell him creeping closer, but I had to stay in character if this was going to work. I had to be in the moment, as actors say, shut out everything else and become a helpless, incapacitated, fallen beast. It was a reckless gambita car might turn off a side street at any moment and come whipping down that hill straight at usbut there was something strangely peaceful about it, too. I was both giving up and giving it all to this last, best shot I had. I felt the heat rising from the macadam. I heard the traffic whispering over on Nineteenth Avenue. I smelled the oil stains nearby and the rubber tires of the cars parked beside me. Id lived in this neighborhood for twenty-two years and never experienced it this waylying flat on my back in the middle of the street and gazing at the rooflines, telephone wires, and cloud-studded sky.

As slowly as I could, I rolled my head sideways. There was Como, two feet from my face, his nose busily twitching. We looked right into each others eyes. It may have been as close as wed been in the tumultuous ten days hed spent with us. With my fingers crooked to snare his collar, I arched my arm above his tail and back. I had him. He was hypnotized. He didnt move, still didnt move. It was over. We were going home, with both my arms wrapped around him.

Thats just how it would have happened, Im convinced of it, if at that very, perversely well-timed moment a gardeners truck hadnt clattered across Eleventh on Ortega. It was the first sign of other life wed encountered all morning. The noise of it startled both of usthe snarly engine, banging suspension, and rakes and hoes rattling in back. I flinched. Como sprang free. I sprang after him and ran.

As I went thudding up Eleventh Avenue, a leaden certainty that Id never catch Como settled in my chest. I knew that Id soon be telling my wife, Sally, and daughter, Phoebe, that our new dog was gone. That Id let him loose and that hed run up the hill away from me and out of sight and that he was never coming back. That it was all my fault. That I would understand if they never forgave me. The air felt poisonously hot and acrid as I gulped it in.

But there was also something fitting, even a little weirdly thrilling, about this maniacal morning run through the neighborhood that kept me running as hard as I could. One way or another, wed been chasing the elusive Como for a very long time. Hopeless as my chances looked, I wasnt going to give up now. My feet slammed the pavement. After all wed been through, I kept running, ran until that leaden certainty melted into a burning physical pain that flowed across my rib cage, up into my throat, and down through my thighs. And then, with Como running ahead of me, I ran some more.

I wanted Ecstasy.

That, it seemed clear to me, was the direct route to the other things I wanted, too. I wanted family harmony and companionship. I wanted laughs now and stories to tell later. I wanted rituals and something new to photograph on holidays. A reason to be outdoors and a potential bond with neighbors and strangers.

I wanted a twelve-year-old daughter made happy and fulfilled beyond all she had patiently imagined and a wife beaming back at me in the mutual glow of a marital mission accomplished. I wanted reunions and separationsand more joyful reunions. A counter to my own bouts of loneliness and isolation. An end to this endless search.