I hike with my two young girl dogs early in the morning, mostly because they expect it, and they both sit on my chest like the winged incubus from “Gothic” until I cannot breathe. A little like waterboarding, this is dogboarding, but it is not torture for information, it is gentle persuasion in order to get a walk. I am an early riser anyway, and I’m crazy about hiking. It’s true. I am a bit of a creepy nature girl, riding my bike everywhere. Next time you see me I will be wearing a beard made of bees (I know I have said this before but it is my favorite nature girl joke). We hike up in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, to avoid city debris like broken glass and Styrofoam containers of old fried rice from Panda Express. Also we go there because I am always semi-searching for a dead body because I watch too many crime shows on cable.

The best time is right after the sun comes up, and the dew is shiny on the grass and makes a refreshing dog beverage. This morning we went, The New Pornographers loud in my headphones, us three all on leash, into the hills. I saw a pack of coyotes, or I didn’t see them as much as I saw the trees and the grass and the bushes all move in a way that wasn’t the wind rushing through them. A flash of fur, gray and brown and like the dirt and the sky mixed. But a big one stayed behind, his steely eyes locked on mine. I wanted to be scared, because coyotes are known for dognapping, especially delicious little ones like mine, but this big boy, this beautiful wild creature wasn’t interested in them. He was looking at me, and his eyes were soft, and we just stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. His gaze was longing and deep, and seemed to say, “You know, I may not seem like it, but I am a dog too. Not here, not now, not in this life, but maybe, in another time, in another place, I could have been yours.” He turned to join his pack, but then looked back at me, as if to say it again.

My first true boyfriend is my beautiful manchild German Shepherd mix Ralph, pronounced “Rayfe” like the actor Ralph Fiennes. I got Ralph from the West Valley animal shelter and it was right when “The English Patient” came out. Ralph was such an injured baby. He had a bad wound on his head from unknown causes, and also the people at the shelter said that he had likely been kicked pretty hard because he had some bad problems with his hip. He was really bloody and raggedy and messed up, and I got him because I was depressed at the time and looking for someone to die with. I took him home and put him in the kitchen sink. The water flowed and ran red underneath him from all the dried blood. He was so small when he was wet I could have put him in my shoe. From that moment he was only happy if he could see me or be next to me, just as he is now.

I took him to Janeane Garafalo’s house and she held him tight for about 3 and a half hours and I think it cured him. It was the garafalo holding treatment, implemented by many kisses from her all over his little injured dog body. I named him Ralph because I thought he looked like Ralph Fiennes in that movie, and I felt like Juliet Binoche, nursing him back to health, lying with my head on his little dog chest and listening to his stories of the war. Ralph got better as I got better and he amazed all the vets by how fast he recovered. Then he broke all the records with how fast he grew! I thought he was a chow when I first got him because he didn’t have much of a snout but then one day I turned around and when I looked back at him, he had a snout! It just popped out!

Soon he wasn’t an injured dog child but a dog man and soon like a dog husband. He would lie next to me on the bed, flat on his dog back with his head on the pillow. We would wear one set of pajamas – he’d wear the bottoms and I would wear the top – just like newlyweds. He was so strong and fast that when we went to the dog park together he would outrun me when I wanted to go home. We could only go home when he was ready to go home. He called the dog shots! I had to make deals with other dog owners at the park to catch him for me, but he got wise to that really quickly. People had to walk sideways toward him like crabs, put their hands in their pockets and whistle. He was a dog who moved like lightning. He loved tennis balls with a passion, and the best day of his young man dog life was when I got him a giant box of 500 old, used tennis balls off ebay to play with. My whole existence for those years was all about picking up a saliva slimed tennis ball and throwing it as far as I could, sticky droplets of drool flying off it back at my face. The slime would always slow it down, but Ralph would never be slowed by the slime or time or anything. The only time he slowed down was when he had to have hip surgery for his injured pelvis, which resulted in a lifelong fear/revulsion of the vet. He continues to salivate all over the waiting room floor and hide his snout in the crook of my arm, like if he couldn’t see it, it meant it wasn’t happening. Sometimes I want to do this at auditions, put my snout in the arm of the casting director. This isn’t happening. He is my big dog and I love him and I love everything about him and of him and in him and outside of him. Even his big big big XXXL size poos. I weirdly like picking up dog poo because it is hot – like laundry out of the dryer – but or course, it isn’t laundry because I wouldn’t wanna fold it and it isn’t as nice when it gets cold. I also really enjoy his old man sulfurous dog farts. It smells like I am at a hot springs and I feel really relaxed.

I took my big boy on a rare walk yesterday. He doesn’t go on many walks nowadays because his dog body is not what it used to be, and so he can’t go as far as my young dogs. When he started having more old man dog issues like trouble negotiating stairs, my husband and I moved all our stuff to the top floor of the house, so he wouldn’t have to go up and down for anything. Who needs a downstairs anyway when you have an upstairs filled with good dogs? My beautiful old boy still got a nice walk yesterday, because it was windy, and when the air gets dry and the barometric pressure drops it makes his hip ache like nobody’s dog business. So we took a peaceful stroll, just my old friend and me. If he were an elderly retired gentleman, he would be the kind who would walk slow, bent over a little and wearing a hat, with his hands clasped behind his back, quietly marveling at the how all the gardens in the neighborhood have grown so wild, saying hi to all the kids but getting their names wrong, maybe getting a bit lost on the way home, but then remembering the familiar streets by intoxicating perfume of the flowers that bloom along his path.