A Sasha Story.

It's been odd around here. No pooch at my feet as I put on my socks and shoes. No black furry blur running to the door in anticipation of the great morning walk, sniff and pee ritual. I figure I walked Sasha close to 80,000 times or so. That's a lot of walking and sniffing. A lot of memories are wrapped up in those walks. A lot of stories are wrapped up too. Here is one of them...

Back in the day - in this case "the day" is an early summer morning about 6 years ago - we lived in Peekskill. Not in the artistic district, but in a bizarre duplex in the historic Depew building at the end of Rt. 6. We had French doors, wood floors, two marble fireplaces and a kitchen and a bathroom that were downstairs and below ground. It was spacious and distinctive but a really odd set up living wise. A big problem was the stairs down to the kitchen and bathroom. It wasn't just a few easy steps, but more like the steps Father Karrass gets tossed down in The Exorcist. They were steep and there were a lot of them. I hated those steps, especially if I ever sprained my ankle or got a heel spur or tore my knee. As for the neighborhood, we had the occasional drug dealer and prostitutes and other suspicious looking folk.

What does that have to do with the story - not too much - I just wanted to paint a picture for you.

Back in the day I also had a raging case of insomnia. Even if I managed to sleep I was sleep walking and even worse - sleep eating. We'd wake up to discover boxes of cookies devoured and all sorts of bizarre concoctions I'd made when, apparently, no snacks were handy. It not unusual to come downstairs to discover some milk in a pot with an egg and a slice of cheese in it. WTF was I trying to make? Thank god I seemed unable to get the stove working or we would have been in real trouble.

I eventually went to my doctor about it in hopes of getting a sleeping pill or other suggestions. He told me I was stressed out (no shit) and sent me on my way empty handed.

So it was early on a summer morning in the hood back in the day and I was in a stupor from a raging Ed Norton Fight Club style of insomnia. Sasha, bless her hyper heart, was up with me so I looked at her and thought we might as well go for a walk. Usually I kept her on a lead because there were cars and kids and the aforementioned suspicious people around, but it was 3AM and no one was around so I took her out off lead.

Right across the parking lot from our building was a hill. The first twenty yards or so were fairly steep and grass covered then came some woods and then a street above us and then above that the house and building of the hit 80's show, "The Facts of Life". The walks were generally relegated to the grassy part of the hill, known to us as "potty hill". Sasha knew where to go and what to do - though when we first got her she had bolted through those same woods and was finally captured by some Lutheran nuns from the convent above us and their Ecuadorian landscapers. But she had sinced claimed us long before and there was no fear of her bolting on this night. So I thought.

We get about half way across the parking lot toward the hill and Sasha bolts across the pavement and right up the grassy hill to the edge of the woods. I had no idea what she was going after or doing. It was surreal, I just watched her as she raced along the edge of the woods, traveling left to right and wearing her home jersey until she just stopped dead in her tracks and did the big "play with me move".

A big-ass white striped tail shot up in front of her. Her new friend was a gigantic skunk.

Oh Fuck. I thought.

"Sasha! Get your ass away from there! Cmon cmon cmon back over here! Get the fuck over here!!" I yelled and miraculously she came back to me over. I hadn't seen him spray her and I still held some hope for the few moments it took her to run back over.

I bent toward and sniffed. eeeeew. Skunky badness. Not a direct hit, but nothing I wanted to live with.

So, we went back into the house and down the steep Exorcist stairs without waking Clarisa. Why bother her?

I toss the pooch in the tub and turn the shower on and just jump right on in with her and start scrubbing away. Anything that was flowery scented got used. It wasn't working though. I locked Sasha in the bathroom and went into the kitchen in search of tomato juice. I'd heard that worked, and was willing to give it a shot. Alas, no V-8, no tomato juice and no tomatoes. Ah, but in the pantry was a cornucopia of spaghetti sauce. We had a few chunky Hearty Italian bottles, Garden N Herbs and an A La Vodka Sauce. This would have to do. I figured it was worth the shot.

I go back into the bathroom with the 3 bottles of chunky sauce and Sasha is still in the tub, blissfully enjoying the water. She'd shook herself though and fur was stuck everywhere. Stinky skunky fur. I climb into the tub and start working the chunky Hearty Italian sauce into her coat and this starts to annoy her. I keep scrubbing and working in spaghetti sauce and she keeps shaking and the fur and the sauce is flying everywhere. First the chunky garden style and then the garden and herbs and the a la vodka.

By the time I was done, the bathroom looked like someone had been blown to bits in there. There was chunky read sauce and clumps of hair everywhere. No matter though, because the pooch was deskunked (mostly) and I'd done what had to be done. I was beat - cleaning up could wait.

Around 5AM I climbed back into bed without telling Clarisa and somehow got to sleep. I figured I'd tell her later and clean up when I got up.

She got up at 8AM. Man was she surprised.