This story is based on a real dog who was owned by some friend, Phil and Diane. 

What’s My Name

By Barry Schatz

     “Get out of the road mutt!”
     The chubby black lab slowly lifted his heavy eyebrows and focused on a man driving the blue car.  He was often called names like Stupid, Idiot, and Road Kill by people in cars.  It was enough to confuse any dog. 
     The man in the car pushed on the steering wheel to make the horn honk.  The noise was annoying enough to make the dog roll to his stubby legs and waddle to the edge of the road. 
     “Every time I drive by here, you’re laying in the middle of the road.  I’m surprised you haven’t been run over by a car for real.  Your name has gotta be Lucky.”  The man shook his head and drove away.
     “Lucky?  The dog sat down and sighed the kind of sigh dogs do.  Another name to add to the confusion.  It seemed everybody called him something different and he didn’t know his real name.
     It didn’t help that most of the people in the neighborhood were seasonal residents and didn’t know his real name.  Everybody just called him something different.
     The growl that came from the dog didn’t come through his muzzle.  It came from his round belly which was telling him it was time so start his rounds.  He licked his muzzle once, then waddled down a gravel driveway.  His first stop was a small log cabin that sat at the edge of Grand Lake.
     “Flea Bag’s here,” a woman shouted as she pushed the screen door open.
     The dog looked up at her and licked his muzzle again.
     “Well get in here if you want breakfast.”
     With a bit of effort, the dog climbed the one step into the house and flopped onto the kitchen floor.
     “He doesn’t like to be called Flea Bag,” came a gruff voice from the next room.  An unshaven man in purple boxer shorts and a white tee shirt walked into the kitchen.  “His name is Chester.”  The man grabbed a plate piled high with pancakes and walked into a the living room.  “Come on Chester, the news is about to start.”
     The dog sat on a couch and spent the next 60 seconds gulping pancakes, burped once, then stared at the TV.
     When the news was over, the dog pushed the screen door open and went back outside.  He bit the stem of a daisy and carried the flower past several cabins until he reached a red house.
     “My prince has come and brought me a flower.”  A white haired woman bent over and took the daisy from the dog.
     The dog waddled into red house and listened patiently while the woman explained what was happening on her daytime drama.  It was always worth the wait because she gave him a snack when the show ended.
     “I made oatmeal cookies last night Prince.”
     The dog approvingly slapped his tail against the checkered tile floor. After gobbling down a plate of cookies, he continued his journey down the lakeshore.
     The next stop wasn’t his favorite visit but the food made it worthwhile.  A woman in a pink bathrobe and thick glasses was waiting on the porch of a stone house.
     “Where have you been Richard?  She’s been waiting inside and is getting sassy.” 
     The dog swallowed hard and sat on the porch.
     “My hairdresser’s name is Richard too,” the woman told the dog as a prissy white cat pushed through a tiny cat door.  The dog sighed, licked his muzzle, and began to wash the cat.  He looked around often as if to make sure another dog from the neighborhood wasn’t watching.
     When the cat was thoroughly soaked, the woman set a bowl of greasy sausages in front of the dog.  There was nothing better to get cat taste off one’s tongue than spicy meat.  When the plate was licked clean, the dog rolled in the gravel driveway to clean the loose cat hair off himself before continuing his rounds.
     “Hi Dusty,” a woman shouted from her deck as the dog hurried past her house and down the Grand Lake shore to where a gray bearded man waited on a pontoon boat.
     “It’s about time you got here Skipper.  I was about to think you weren’t coming today.”
     The dog curled up on a padded bench seat as the man pushed the boat away from the dock.  The gentle rolling of the boat rocked the dog to sleep within minutes.
     The next thing the dog new, he felt a gentle slapping against his muzzle.  He opened one lazy eye and found himself having a stare down with a very big fish. 
     “Do you like walleye Skipper?”
     Since they were back to shore, the dog turned his back on the fish and stepped onto the dock.
     “Apparently not.”  The man reached into a cooler and pulled out some food wrapped in wax paper.  “I’ll give you half my peanut butter sandwich since ya don’t like fish.  It’s extra gooey.”  The man threw the sandwich onto the dock.
     The dog bit into the sandwich in one gulping bite then spent the next twenty minutes licking peanut butter off the top of his muzzle.  During his walk home, he considered his morning.  He had already been called Mutt, Lucky, Fleabag, Chester, Prince, Richard, Dusty, and Skipper.  What was his real name?
    The people the dog lived with were waiting for him on the porch.  The dark haired woman held a small plastic bag in her hand.  The man was standing over a bowl filled with dog chow.
     “Why aren’t you eating your food?” the man asked. 
     The dog sat down and looked at a full pan of dry kibble. 
     “We have brought home every brand of pet food we can find and you still won’t eat.”
     The woman stroked the dog’s ears.  “You’re sure chubby for a dog that never eats.”
     The dog thumped his tail on the porch floor once.
     “I’ve got something for you,” said the woman.
     The dog only had enough ambition to move his eyes as he studied the bag the woman was holding in front of him.
     “I bought you your very own I.D. tag.  Now when you wander off, people will know your name."
     The dog stood up for a better look.  His tongue hung to one side of his muzzle as he looked at a small piece of metal in the shape of a bone.
     “It has our phone number on this side.”
     The dog licked his muzzle as he anxiously watched the woman turn the tag around.
     “And on this side, it says Dufus.”
     The dog accidentally kicked over his food bowl as he danced in a circle. He didn’t know what the name meant but figured it was something grand.
     The woman attached the tag to Dufus’s collar.  He couldn’t wait to make his rounds the next day.  All his friends would discover the grand name of the most popular dog on Grand Lake.

Author's note:  Dufus was in fact a real dog that liked to sleep in the middle of East Grand Lake Road in Presque Isle.  I often drove by Phil and Diane's house and thought saw Dufus laying in the middle of the road.  I thought he had finally met his end.  There were several people on that part of the lake that had their own name for Dufus.  This story is dedicated to the memory of Dufus who got out of the house one day and mysteriously disappeared.