Language Requirement

I believe the ability to speak more than one language is a talent. Like music, or armpit farts.

When my European friends moved between French and English as effortlessly as I move between the beer in my left hand and the wine in my right, I was filled with awe. Americans are so language-challenged. The only other language I've ever mastered is Pig Latin.

But now, I realize, I've been short-changing myself. I do speak another language, and have been since the seventies. Dogspeak. Prior to Dogspeak I was conversational in Catspeak, though an informal slang-riddled variation at best. Then along came Chinook, and a new mode of communication was born.

Chinook introduced me to a few basic phrases, adequate for a short vacation ("Dogspeak for Tourists!"), which, sadly, our time together turned out to be. I was shamelessly young and selfish, had absolutely no business having a dog, let alone a dogdog. No Paris-Hilton-style cat-dressed-up-like-a-dog for this girl, nosiree bob!

I fell in love with a dogdog for the first time on a beach in Malibu and tore ass home to the dogforsaken Midwest to find one of my own. Enter Chinook, half malamute/half husky/half wolf, whom I found pacing her pen at the local Humane Society, waiting to lock eyes -- those great steady golden eyes -- with destiny.

Call me Destiny. The rest is dogstory.

Chinook taught me three things:

1. There's no love like doglove.
2. There's no dog like a dogdog.
3. Beginning Dogspeak.

After Chinook's tragic death-by-truck, I grew up. Overnight. No more Santa Claus, no more Tooth Fairy, no more Heavenly Hosts. We all have such moments, no less life-altering that mine was at the hands, er, the paws of a dog.

I'd learned a hard lesson about timing. If you live in an apartment in The City and don't want your bedspread -- or your boyfriend -- to become an hors d'oeuvre, don't get a dogdog, particularly one of the malamute/husky/wolf persuasion.

But there's no accounting for chemistry, Virginia.

I embarked on a Vision Quest to find the next dogdog who would fill the gaping hole in my heart, promising whatever powers might be that this time I would strive to be more deserving. Though it would be years before it came to pass.

Eventually, however, the planets aligned, the gods smiled, and a Star was born.

Star and I were soulmates for 98 dogyears, cohabiting 24/7 in full Dogspeak immersion. Which is why I'm so fluent today.

If you want to learn French, go live in France. Touche! I live in a Doghouse.

As a result of my continuing inhouse education (I'm currently ABD on my PhD), I can move easily between formal and informal Dogspeak, depending on the situation.

Daisy being the current situation.




Whereas Chinook and Star were comfortable with the common idiom, Daisy prefers the formal. My grammar and usage, not to mention cursing, has vastly improved these five years with Daisy, who responds to nuance and detail in a way her predecessors did not.

For instance, when I would take Star outside to do her thing, I had but to say,

"Can you go, girl?"

in a normal everyday tone, slight inflection at the end, and she would oblige. With Daisy I have to ratchet it up, using the formal mode and the appropriate high, lilting, top-of-the-throat pronunciation,

"Kudu go-lee, girlo-lee?"

often adding a small embellishment -- "farlo chee-lonzo!" -- at the finish, to satisfy her poetic nature. Also to keep her from knocking me on my ass out of sheer joy of accomplishment.

There are many examples, impossible to list. "Girl, come!" versus "Day-lee Bay-lee!" or "Girl, no!" versus "Singko vello-cho!" Suffice to say I practice a living breathing Dogspeak, as opposed to the classroom type.

Conversely, Daisy is showing an innate talent for Humanspeak, a tendency not often encountered outside the hound group.

Daisy is a parrot. Does that make her a birddog? And she laughs uproariously at her own jokes. She's an amateur stand-up, actually, she can make it halfway across the room on her back legs yodeling her latest version of "Two cats walk into a bar..." And she can monologue nonstop for twenty minutes -- soup to nuts, chipmunks to skunks -- if I but interject an occasional encouragement,

"Is that so?"

"Oh what a low-lee!"

"No shit, Sherlock!"

"You little marlow-chee!"

Note how I move effortlessly between Humanspeak and Dogspeak, which has greatly influenced Daisy's learning curve, not to mention my own. The problem being this tendency occasionally manifests itself in social settings of a strictly human variety, resulting in the dreaded raised eyebrow. And everydog knows what that means.

I saw enough of those eyebrows in France, where most of the time I was just some dumbass American parlay-vooing all over the place. In reality I'm as bilingual as the next European. Provided you're not overly species-specific.