Fox & Lamb

Charlie, the red-haired, bat-eared fox-dog;
instinct upon instinct,
he understands perfect English
and communicates his thoughts via ear semaphore
and deeply engaging stares of meaning.
Perhaps the only dog who will check on you regularly
if he reckons you’ve been in the bathroom too long for a human.
He waits for verbal confirmation before returning
to the living room couch
and checking his wristwatch again.

In a state of excitement, Charlie will leap
upon a pillowed and blanketed couch,
he will dive beneath the pillows,
nosing them up like a hedgehog.
Then he rolls over, using his powerful hindlegs
to fend off the pillow’s counterattack, and knocking it,
once and for all, to the floor.
He stands in victory, and proceeds
to de-blanket the beast.

And Ginsu, the rotund lamb-dog,
not sheep-dog, but lamb-dog.
With an unshorn curly-poodle coat and all the instinct that that entails,
Ginsu sits at the end corner of the couch,
resting on his short tail and extended legs,
arms upon the very human armrest,
belly extending almost to his stretched-out toes.
He watches silently the front yard goings-on,
and rarely cares about any one of them.

Ginsu, a fair opponent in biscuit battle, rarely displays aggression
except against an unprepared snack.
He stares at the biscuit out of the corner of his eye, nose pointing
so as to confound the milkbone.
With unmatched genius in trickery, Ginsu is rarely beaten by the bone-shaped cookies
(unless, of course, they are guided into battle by the human hand).
When he decides the decoy successful, Ginsu rears his head away
(for just a moment!),
swiftly doubles back, opening his sharky jaws on the downswing,
and lightly bites the biscuit, ensuring a lengthy snacktime.