In the dog-walking business, corners are places loaded with anticipation and dread. Daisy looks up to ask if we’re turning east up Clark Street, toward what I think of as Pizza Place for the food tossed in the gutters, while Pickering and Hermia look west, to Cranberry (i.e., Squirrel Street) and Hillside Park. The concrete building corners and iron fences are redolent with scents, making any corner an adventure in history, but they are also blind spots for who or what is coming our way. I often wish I had a periscope and rearview mirror when I’m out with more than one dog so I’d know if Bangor’s Akita enemy was about to intersect us or what the jingle – keys or tags – is that’s creeping up on us.

This is also the summer that my family has had to bow to the toll of old age. I missed more than three weeks of walks because I was in Arizona trying to help my blind father cope while my mother was in the hospital and nursing home. I learned a lot in those visits to the nursing home and one thing is how important it is to have earnestly living lives around people who are losing their bodies and their minds. Two dogs live there and while they aren’t therapy dogs – they aren’t there to offer succor – they make people’s days when they stop for a pat. One of them howls whenever a newcomer arrives, a warning to everyone that someone new is on the scene. When being with my mother became too painful, I sought out Cassie and Freckles, with whom I’d immediately taken steps to make friends. Cassie and I played I-dare-you and Freckles simply dropped to her back for a belly rub. Mother was enormously cheered by them but I’m not sure I could have been as cheering to my mother as I managed without the dogs to turn to.

I came back to Brooklyn in a state of exhaustion, grief, worry and confusion about my mother’s failing health and cognition and there came a moment when I broke down in ragged tears. Daisy sat down to watch and worry, but Pickering, my shaggy pony of an English Lab, climbed up next to me on his couch, stretched out and put his head in my lap.

Pick is always ready to be loved: he squirms for it, bouncing from one vantage contact to another in relentless pleasure. But whereas Daisy wants to know I’m OK so that she’s reassured that she’s OK.

On Thursday I turn another corner: Pickering is moving to Bronxville. He’s going to join a dog-hiking club and will be closer to his family’s farm so I know he’ll thrive. There are going to be some days to come, however, that not having him for five days a week will be an out-and-out loss. He’s the only dog I’m not scared of turning corners with and the best dog I know to have around when I’m taking my own 90-degree turn into a grim unknown

Bangor likes to remain in his spot at the head of the stairs. His eyes glow green as he stares at me with fake suspicion. I narrow my eyes and bore into him and then explode, “Bangor!” He flies down the stares at that and jumps up to gently bite my chin. I take his paws and, often as not, begin singing “Shall We Dance” as I waltz him around the foyer. He’s the only one of my dogs who loves to dance. When I bend over to put the prong collar on him, he weasels between my legs so I can scratch his butt, at which he begins to stamp is back paws. The better the butt rub, the harder her stamps.

I open Hermia’s door just enough to see one eye. Her tail begins thonking the wall at that and she rushes out of the apartment with a shoe or her human sister’s Elmo in her mouth. I reach down to rub her (she and Milly are silky as otters) and she starts turning tight circles, trying to get scratched everywhere at once. After a couple of turns, she heads toward the stairs, then stops, looks back and decides she wants more. We do this three or seven times before she runs down where she walks in circles near the door. I stalk her slowly down the staircase. We both halt. She drops into a play bow and gives one woof, at which I laugh and say, “I got your goat, Goat,” and her tails starts thonking the walls again.

Pickering is my all time favorite pick up because it’s all about getting as close to me as he can. I sit down on the couch and he burrows his head into my side while flipping over for a belly rub. We can do this for hours as he tries fruitlessly to find a way to become a part of me, with breaks to sit up and gaze at me with his Bette Davis eyes in disbelief that life could be so good as I rub his ears and he leans his big head on my hand.

Farmer was a solo dancer, his butt in syncopation with his head. I had to dance, too, doing the twist while shaking my hands in the air, chanting, “We’ll do the Farmer dance, let’s do the Farmer dance,” winding him up until his tail was a yellow blur of rhythm.

When I walk in after a long separation from Daisy, she turns into Alice Roosevelt, hopping on the couch and pawing the air until I sit down with her and say terrible things about what I had to endure while I was away. She hurls herself into my lap, twisting for a belly rub then jumping up to lick my face only to fall into belly rub position again. Soon she actually climbs into my lap and barks out why I should never leave her.

It would behermia-must-retrieve1 flattering except that she pretty much does this with every visitor or visit.

The last four weeks have been a nightmare health crisis for my mother who is 2,000 miles away. As I lay awake each night in Arizona, praying the Klonopin will knock me out before it’s time to get up again, I think of Milly racing up and down her steep stairs and of Pickering nesting between my ribs. I think about the long moment that Daisy will look at me before she takes it in that I’ve come back after a week and the moment she decides to become a turban. I keep playing over those greetings until sleep comes. That happiness is the love my mother, like most mothers everywhere, promised her babies would always be.

Here’s how I deal with Daisy, Pickering, Hermia: I take three or four balls, most of them the orange and blue Chuck-it balls that get a good bounce, and one squeaky ball for emergencies. Daisy is insane about fetch. Pickering learned the second half of fetch (bring the ball back) from Daisy, but would really rather get some rough play that turns into a game of catch-me. Hermia likes to trot or lie around clutching a ball in her mouth. She’s interested in chase and battle, but will carry the ball into the fray, somehow barking around it.

This is the basic canine personality template from which I work. There are, however, a number of kinks along the way.

Daisy is the loudest and safest dog in Hillside Park. The only thing she wants is to fetch her ball and occasionally collapse and monopolize a watering spot. It doesn’t matter which ball she gets on the first toss, but after that she is exquisitely sensitive about whether it’s hers or not. She will follow a dog that takes her ball, barking, but she will never fight for it or go in too close to grab it when the dog has dropped it. Daisy comes from solid hunting stock and I’m convinced that she is transported to a Montana watershed where she would never tear the duck by competing with another retriever. Interestingly, she will pee on her way out of the park but has never taken a dump in it. The dog run is her holy, ancient ground.

Hermia is a thief if she likes some other ball better and she’s incredibly stubborn. I have a 50/50 chance of getting a ball back from her. Squeaky ball usage #1.

daisy hermia If the owner says something like, “It’s your fault for bringing balls in the park.” I go after the ball myself, firmly but soothingly. Squeaky ball usage #3.

Recently, I had a situation I couldn’t read. An owner threw out a Wubba (a sort of octopus-shaped toy made from fire hose material) for his dog, who carried it around for a minute and then dropped it. Pickering eventually got around to finding the Wubba and another dog started tug-of-war over it. They had some fun and then Pickering went back to chewing sticks or chasing his ball, and the other dog chewed the Wubba pretty much to threads. On the way out of the park, the owner made a noise that might have been in my direction and might have been a reprimand, possibly about the Wubba.

I honest-to-St. Rocco don’t know what the owner (who I call “Mother Superior”) or my responsibilities in this scenario were. If my dog had ignored its Wubba, I’d have packed it up. If a dog took it, I’d either ask for help or, less preferably, get it back myself. Finally, Pickering lost interest in it and it was a dog unknown to me who killed it. Mother Superior did nothing about the Wubba until that noise seemed to drift across my radar as we climbed the hill to the gate.

I’ve had run-ins over toys before, when my dogs thieve or are thieved from, and I have plans of action. Mother S. seemed to have no such thing but I remain bothered by the feeling that I should replace the Wubba.

At which point, Pickering or some other dog will pick it up and the whole thing will start again.

When I was about three years old, I ran crying to my mother. “Pat bit me,” I sobbed.

“You deserved it,” she answered.

That is as fair a portrait of a Family Dog as I can give you. My mother knew her dog, a black Lab bitch that was the envy of my father’s hunting friends and the dame of two large litters that would include two Montana Field Trial Champions. If my mother’s protégé bit me, I had teased her or annoyed her and ignored her growls until she was pushed to the edge. It was the kind of thing I would do and my mother knew Pat’s patience extended pretty far. In that sense, Pat and I were equal members in the balance of my family’s life.

There have been notices up in the local pet stores and on Craigslist for the last few weeks regarding Madison, a hound-Lab mix adopted at eight weeks from a City shelter, who may be a family’s dog but is not a Family Dog. She’s now 60 pounds and over four years old. Her owners have had two kids in that time and have decided she doesn’t fit their new lifestyle. Despite Madison’s affection for the youngsters, they want to find the dog another home. Their patience is running out. If the dog isn’t adopted by Saturday, March 21st, they intend to take her back to the A.S.P.C.A. shelter they got her from.

It’s lucky they got her from the A.S.P.C.A., a no-kill organization, because it has a policy of taking back any dogs adopted from its shelters. Otherwise, they evaluate dogs that are given up for adoption for physical and behavioral problems. Dogs over 40 pounds go on a wait list for acceptance because they have so little room for them, and so few people want them.

There lies the rub. The tragedy for a dog like Madison is that she thrives on exercise, attention, companionship and reinforced training. How, if she doesn’t luck out and get adopted quickly, does she get that in a cage? Her unmanageability and excitability, not unusual qualities for a dog that doesn’t have consistent training, will get worse in a shelter. A dog that needs love and a certain amount of freedom will die from the same medical condition that kids die from when they’re habitually ignored: failure to thrive. The A.S.P.C.A. can guarantee she will be fed, medically treated and even given as much affection as a busy shelter can provide, but it’s not a home, it’s a benign prison.

Last week, a respondent to my post wrote of “what a great neighborhood we live in”. Maybe we can put our kibble where our snarkiness is for once. Maybe someone reading this wants a Family Dog rather than a dog hanging out around a family.

I’ll put you in touch with Madison if you respond to this post, whether she’s in Brooklyn Heights or in the shelter she came from. She comes with three months of free walks and a bag of Iams, out of gratitude from a couple of her fans.

(Send inquiries to webmaster AT brooklynheightsblog.com)

“Would you please leash your dog?” the boy’s father asked. “This isn’t a dog run.”

“Actually, it is. From nine to nine, the Plaza is off-leash.”

“Where does it say that?” he snapped.

“Just read the signs,” I said as I scooped up the ball and threw it down our alley of trees.  I didn’t add, “…the same signs that prohibit bike-riding on the Astro Turf,” nor did I point out the dogs flittering around at the far end of the field or the sixteen of dogless places he could have taken his kids.  He stomped off and I was left with a slow burn of righteous indignation.

The primary definition of righteous, should you care to know, is ugly in its narrowness: “without sin or guilt”.  I had no right to my anger because I’m not without guilt in handling my dogs.

Word on the street is that someone’s looking for me.  One of the dogs I walk has taken an intense dislike to a woman’s indistinguishable shepherd mix. Recently, in fact, in the midst of untangling leashes, my dog saw it crossing the road and booked on over to taunt it in her usual fashion.  Without going into further details, I’ll leave it as an incident that was terrifying for both humans but blessedly brief. The owner and I crossed paths not long after and she launched into righteous indignation. I apologized but she wanted to hammer it. Apparently it still isn’t over. She either wants my dog’s owners to fire me, get rid of the dog or, more probably, suffer a long harangue of the guiltless addressing the mortally guilty.

In two weeks, I’ll have a year of Lab Lady posts on the Brooklyn Heights Blog. I’ve been treated to some lovely responses and others that run from petty to hateful. I’m pissed off at all the righteousness directed at dogs and, therefore, at their owners and walkers.

Has that generic looking shepherd never been too rough with another dog? Has it never snarled or barked at another dog or a human? Had the owner never dropped its leash and suffered the fear of seeing the dog skip off?

Because I’m on the Most Wanted List, I’ll quote more of the word on the street, which was that the shepherd was yacking its head off at a dog sitting with a ball in its mouth as this conversation took place.

I spend my days weaving dogs in and out of traffic in order to make the Brooklyn Heights sidewalks as dog-free as possible. Sometimes I f**k up and sometimes I’m right.  It feels a whole lot better to be in the wrong because I can apologize and learn from it, while wallowing in the love of my righteousness means I don’t have room for something more honest and more entertaining in my brain.

If you want to learn about people, get a dog. If you want to know the depths of people, become a walker.

I re-collared her, tossed in one of the oatmeal cookies I’d baked and packed for a friend in the Heights, and led her back to the crate. She gyrated out of my grasp. I broke up a second cookie, fed her a bit of it and grabbed her again. This time she flew at me, grazing my knuckles with her fangs before scuttling into a corner behind a table, barking angrily.

I turned to the package clerks and said, “She’s a lot more docile when I’m not here. Would you mind if I stepped outside and you try to put her in?” They agreed, trepidatiously, and I left. Standing outside the Quonset office, I heard banging, thrashing, overturning chairs and the plastic bash of the crate being knocked around. I took a deep breath and walked in again.

“She really doesn’t want to crate,” one the men told me.

Oh.

I went back to my campaign of force and seduction, my long sleeves pulled down over my hands which were bleeding within minutes of resuming my effort to go home.

I almost had her when I upended the crate and tried to pour her in. Maybe, that first try, if one of the guys could have helped hold the crate still, she wouldn’t have figured out her paws can bend and grip as surely as human fingers. By my second attempt, she’d had her epiphany and held on to the door rim with every fiber of her soul.

We wrestled through four oatmeal cookies, a complete rearrangement of the furniture, two puncture wounds, numerous scrapes and bruises that were wonderfully livid after my shower the next morning, a stream of barking and my tears, pleading and blood for 75 minutes. I figured, by the time the clerk informed me the plane would be closing its doors in ten minutes, that I’d done ten 75-pound lifts.

I hate the word “feral”. It’s a writer’s word. Looking at the snapping, snarling, flashing fangs of my bed mate in the corner of the office, though, I had to say it. Daisy had gone native. She was feral. She made Regan’s spinning head look like a merry-go-round ride.

For the 45-minute shuttle ride back to Sun City she kept tried to climb into my lap but I was so furious I kept pushing her away as I called my father to inform him of our return and my demand of a margarita the minute I walked in. While my father’s margaritas are God in a glass, a marguerite is a daisy. God knows Daisy had drunk my blood that afternoon. Now I badly needed to drink, at least metaphorically, some of hers.

“Maybe she didn’t want to leave us,” he said as he handed me the cocktail and took his seat. Daisy swanned her neck up for a rub from her beloved grandpa. “You better start making some calls, kid. You gotta figure this out.”

When my brother stuffed Daisy into the crate at the airport, he turned to me and said, “You know, you don’t have to keep this dog.” His words sealed my pact with the little pagan, although everyone on the plane had to listen to her barking in the hold for the Twin Cities – La Guardia leg of the trip.

Daisy has hated crating ever since. When she was small, I could wrestle her in when I abandoned her for such frivolous exigencies as appearing on The Today Show. I kept the crate out for a long time in the hopes she would remember how much she liked it in her Montana infancy but at best she showed only contempt for it.

While my brothers kindly produced grandchildren for my parents, I am the child who has brought home the sole grand-Lab. I learned to walk in the midst of a litter of 15 Labrador puppies and my father relishes stories of hunting with the Pat and Sandy, Jet and Buff. Labradors are part of my family’s lore and if I showed up at Christmas without Daisy, my mother might refuse to let me in the house.

We’ve done a fair amount of flying. Daisy’s five now and shows a remarkable sensitivity for the nonagenarian pace and abilities of my parents’ life in an Arizona retirement city. She spends a lot of time getting belly rubs while sandwiched between them in bed and my father, ever one for canine discipline, feeds her at the table.

She’s still capable of tantrums for me. I have to muzzle her at her veterinarian’s, and we’ve worked out a system whereby I walk her to the scale, which she hates more than I do, and hand her off while I go straight out the back door. When I’m not there to play to, she gives up and submits. I’ve found that Western vets tend not to put her up on the table, which is enormously relieving to her, but we don’t have a veterinarian in Arizona who knows her history of hysteria.

After her first flight, her vet prescribed something wonderful. An hour after taking it, she can’t walk a straight line and her third eyelids roll around like a liver and oyster casserole. It’s against one Continental’s rules to tranquilize animals so at check-in, I lie about her drug usage, she balks enough to convince the handlers, and we’re on our separate ways to the same place.

We performed this routine when we flew out of Newark on December 18th. Unfortunately, while I had thought of everything I might need for myself, and more than enough to make a memorable Christmas for my parents, I forgot one thing: her travel pills.

This is her ninth airplane trip, I thought when I emptied my luggage and discovered the missing magic red bottle, she’s smart enough to know this is how we stay together. And I know Daisy’s greatest fear – beyond crates, Havaneses and other suspicious dogs and people, snowmen and abandoned inside-out umbrellas – is not being with me. We’ve been a team ever since my brother suggested I give her up.

I didn’t know what true fear could turn her into until our departure time was delayed two hours. We had sat together in the Pet Pack office and I read John LeCarré while she trembled, huddling close to me. Those shivers were the rats in the attic that preceded Regan’s spinning head. I was about to meet Captain Howdy.

BHB columnist Frances Kuffel has lived in the Heights for twenty years. Her dog walking clients include Augie, Barley, Boomer, Faith, Gus, Henry, Hero, Panda, Roger and Zeke. For more information, visit http//franceskuffel.net, http://caronthehill.blogspot.com, or http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuffelscrapbook. She is the author of Passing for Thin.

Alaskan, American, Midwest, Northwest, United, and limited non-stop flights on U.S. Airways allow dogs over twenty pounds to fly as cargo or as a “checked bag”. They fly in a different hold than baggage, which is not acclimated like the cabin to compensate for the lack of oxygen and below-freezing temperatures of high altitudes. But there are major restrictions about the ground temperature, which has to be between 32 – 80 degrees unless your dog is veterinarian-certified for timed exposure to 20-degree weather. This makes dead of winter and the dog days of summer extremely difficult to ship your dog in – Daisy once had to stay behind in Montana for two weeks while we waited for heat waves to break there, in St. Paul-Minneapolis and in New York.

If you’re going to a major city in those seasons – especially a hub city – Continental and Delta have special programs in which your animal is not exposed to ground temperature. The destinations are limited though, so that when Daisy was a year old and we went to Montana, we flew Continental to Seattle, then rented a car and drove the 500 miles east.

These temperature-protected programs are expensive because the dog’s fare is based on its weight combined with the crate. Daisy and crate are about a hundred pounds or $375.00 each way. All dogs must fly with a health certificate but Continental requires that it be no more than ten days old, which means two veterinary visits. Add in car services and it’s easily a thousand-dollar proposition.

Jet Blue, U.S. Airways, and AirTran Airways allows a combined weight of dogs and carrier of 20 pounds as carry-on luggage, with the caveat that the carrier must fit under the seat and usually only one per customer.

All of these airlines require prior reservations but Continental and Delta at least have frequent flyer miles for animals flying cargo. Owners of short-nosed dogs that include Boston and bull terriers, English and French bulldogs, Shih Tzus and pugs, need to check out the airlines’ regulations because of hereditary respiratory problems.

Last, but not in our case, least, Southwest Airlines does not accept pets at all. It should also be noted that all airlines accommodate service dogs in-cabin.

“Maybe it’s just too stressful,” the owner of a border collie we’re friends with said of taking Zooey to California for Christmas, but I countered that when I’m going to go away for two or more weeks I know Daisy would rather be with me than avoid crating.

“She’s used to it now,” I told him cockily.

“If you done it, it ain’t bragging,” Walt Whitman wrote. Surely the bard of Brooklyn was right?

BHB columnist Frances Kuffel has lived in the Heights for twenty years. Her dog walking clients include Augie, Barley, Boomer, Faith, Gus, Henry, Hero, Panda, Roger and Zeke. For more information, visit http//franceskuffel.net, http://caronthehill.blogspot.com, or http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuffelscrapbook. She is the author of Passing for Thin.

One evening this week, Daisy and I walked Pickering home after a small snowfall. We went through Cadman Plaza and the nearly pristine snow was like cocaine. Pickering went into what is known as the Mad Lab Run, a repetition of great, pointless circles of joy, while Daisy ran, nose-to-the-ground, like a shovel. They rolled, they shook, they tossed the snow in the air, they chased each other: it’s an electrifying moment to share with Labs.

Winter introduces a host of new sensations. November’s favorite sniffing places are no longer Wi-Fi peemail. Now dogs check their messages from the corpses of Christmas trees and the stubborn snow that is the equivalent of indelible ink.

Alas, this is the most dangerous time of the year for dogs and walkers. With patches of frozen pee everywhere, the dogs dart from place to place while their walker prays the dark sidewalk coming up isn’t black ice. And there is nothing more pathetic than a dog that has walked through salt. It sits, lifts its paws and looks up in excruciating pain until its walker can get a handful of pure snow and rub the paws clean. Last night, I saw a molecule of a dog in red and silver moon boots that were so nifty I wanted a pair for myself. A Lab would have none of that. In the years I walked Zach, the only time I saw him fight was when his groomer put booties on him.

Booties are for sissies, but my Labs are sissies when their paws are burning. Humans are sissies in the cold and the dark and the precipitation. These days, the Heights is not only lined with tinsel-trailing Christmas trees but ellipses of dog poop.

One of Bangor’s winter delights is frozen poop, a not terribly uncommon quirk among dogs. Poopsicles provoke yet more tugs on ice that a lot of pedestrians are simultaneously trying to avoid.

I’m a big woman. I’m tall, overweight, 52 years old, tired and achy. Every time I see a pile of poop I marvel that I can strip off my gloves, stoop while holding three big dogs with one hand and bag poop with the other, and then carry it to a trashcan. Surely those piles on the street aren’t the neglect of fat or old or handicapped people? If I can clean up, why can’t other people?

These bleak days are also the season of compassionate humanitarians out to feed the birds. I seethe at the bread and cereal strewn about that my dogs are exerting their collective 220 pounds to get to. BIRDS CAN FLY. They can dine on the mezzanine or behind a tall fence.

In the spirit of Yes We Can, I’m advocating a bargain. Invest in Safe Paw, Pet Safe, Magic Salt, a bag of sand, a snow shovel, an ice picker or straight-edged hoe. If this is a physical strain for you, remember New York’s unemployment statistics and put the word out. Safe alternatives save money by protecting concrete, cars and shoes. Put the chunks of Wonder Bread up or in. Between the birds’ meal tickets, poopcicles and chemical de-icing pellets (poisonous for dogs), the diarrhea smudges will be fewer because our dogs won’t eat so much of what they’re not supposed to.

In return, dog owners: pick it up! If you can’t – well, keep in mind those unemployment figures and hire a walker.

We love our dogs and love finding the gift that shows our intimacy and enjoyment of them.

I emailed Hermia’s owners this week to keep an eye on her. It’s hard to explain, but she doesn’t do the Bunny Hop when we leave the house, a dance that exactly matches the beat of the old song, accompanied by nips at my sleeves. They’ll take her to the vet this week.

The last time I observed a change in her verve, she had Lyme disease.

When Sweet Tooth began skootching her behind on the ground, her walker ended up taking her to Animal Medical for anal cancer surgery.

Our job is to concentrate on the dog rather than hiring a new secretary. We see the dog in and against the context of a other dogs. Part of our expertise is observing changes in energy and behavior.

It’s Saturday night and I’m rushing to give an Italian greyhound his Prozac. I’m the first one notified of births, engagements, deaths, travels, redecorating and moves because I step in when labor pains start and I have the keys when an owner can’t be home for the arrival of a sofa.

This is the only job in which I have taken exactly one sick day. It’s also the only job in which I incur an ongoing roster of abrasions, bruises, scratches, pulled muscles, bites and excrement under my fingernails.

With no benefits.

Each of us got into this business from something else. We stay because of the ecstasy and trust of our dogs. We each have our own style. Some of us are cozy with our dogs and each other, while some of us maintain the silent disciplines of a New Skete monk.

It was with some trepidation, then, that I entered into the space of work styles for a completely unscientific sampling of the taboo topic of what we like getting from our clients at the end of the year. Of the eight walkers I spoke to, only one demurred that he expected nothing and was pleased by anything he got.

I guess we know who gets the re-gifted fruitcake.

From there, the answers got more uniform. Money is our favorite holiday gift. One walker added that money enclosed in a sentimental card thanking her for what she’s done for the dog is at the top of her list.

All the women melt at spa gift certificates. We’re bundled beyond gender or fashion this time of year and girly time is a rare. A massage (see pulled muscles above) or hot wax manicures for the cracked hands of winter is a blessing.

Men won’t admit to wanting the spa experience but like gift certificates for other stuff. If chosen carefully, rough weather gear is welcome. (If a store caters to hunters and ice fishermen, you’ve chosen correctly.)

One walker swoons for homemade goodies, another for booze.

The worst gaffe is no recognition of the holidays at all. We know which families are busy and/or struggling and we don’t carry grudges when there’s no fudge or an extra Andrew Jackson. But not being thanked for a year of showing up – in 38-degree rain with cookies in our pockets, hoarse with bronchitis, bloody from an encounter with an intact male golden retriever, on a humid afternoon in the 90s – is plain Scroogery.

Because that’s just the beginning of what we do.

Given the impotence their friends and family are feeling, I feel lucky to have the dog. Words don’t fail with Mr. Happy: any oogly-googley will do. He carries my heart in his Lab’s soft mouth and drops it at my feet in a continual offer to play. I can love him to distraction and he absorbs it with a smile as bright as the skyline. The tummy rubs and ear-scratchings I give him are the solace I can’t give his owners. I have the one member of the family unit who can be cosseted and loved into peace.

It’s been a hard year for loving dogs. Seven familiar faces have disappeared, among them Daisy’s first friend, Godiva, and one of her first boyfriends, Hopkins. I’ve witnessed the grief that crosses their owners’ bodies like the December wind of Montague Street, and in loving Mr. Happy over the last weeks, I’ve begun to appreciate what our dogs do – or did – for us.

We humans have enormous reserves of love and affection. Somewhere in Pack of Two, Caroline Knapp observes that the stroking, baby-talk, nicknames and other forms of doting we mete out to our dogs would oppress the most passionate of lovers and would be soon outgrown by a baby.

The concept that dogs give unconditional love is flat-out wrong. Their love is highly conditional with the single caveat that the conditions can be counted on two hands and are easy to satisfy. A cookie, a walk, a tossed ball, a belly-rub, leaving the vet’s office pretty much prove our love and earn us the privilege of doing it some more. We bend to our dogs’ wills and personalities and maybe the best way of seeing how they bend to us is how they meet their human friends.

“Miss Daisy!” Hopkins’s owner said whenever we met, sending her into a delighted frenzy. Hopkins would pull his nose away from his contemplation of the Coptic gospels and grudgingly gulp a cookie and allow me to give him a butt rub. I miss Hopkins a lot. Still more, I mourn his owners’ emptier hands, emptier time, emptier bed and emptier nonsense, and I mourn not seeing them and thereby losing one of my dog’s bright spots.

I’ve been thinking of the Pete Seeger song based on Ecclesiastes and found myself interested in what followed the “everything has its season” verses. “…[God] has set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” Along with those reserves of love, humans are cursed with memory and broken hearts and the despair of the future based on them.

The winter holidays are tinged with loss this year. But recently, Godiva’s owner boarded a larky golden doodle that made her realize it’s time to get a new dog. The golden retriever sprite that is Lila has regilded the lives of the owners who lost Maggie. The doodle didn’t know he was forcing need over memory, nor does Lila know there was a perfect Maggie who preceded her.

For the most part, there is only now for dogs. Every time I walk into Mr. Happy’s apartment, I announce, “Merry Christmas!” Life is a cabaret for this young chum. He is rarely under foot but always at hand, glad to get what he gets. Last week he, Daisy and I chatted with a friend on a stoop. He climbed behind me and rested his head on mine. Every waking movement of a dog is deliberate and reactive. The sensation of a resting paw or a head, an expression of connection, is part of the words I don’t have for Mr. Happy’s owners.

They will be back soon. I’ll leave a happy Mr. Happy to need the love they desperately need to give.

BHB columnist Frances Kuffel has lived in the Heights for twenty years. Her dog walking clients include Augie, Barley, Boomer, Faith, Gus, Henry, Hero, Panda, Roger and Zeke. For more information, visit http//franceskuffel.net, http://caronthehill.blogspot.com, or http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuffelscrapbook.

She is the author of Passing for Thin

In military parlance, a “dog fight” is two or more planes in harrowing chase through the skies. I think the term came not from the dogfights that are to the death, but from play fighting. Knowing the distinction can make visiting the Hill or meeting new dogs pleasanter as well as safer.

When I sit among or supervise my Labs in full Battle of Britain mode, there are predictable scripts they follow in what looks, to the unfamiliar, to be a lethal situation.

It can begin with tug-of-war, which escalates into snout-to-snout determination to snatch the contested object. Soon enough, the object is dropped and the dogs begin snarling and barking, teeth bared, as they nip at each other’s limbs and, most especially, each other’s necks. When Bangor or Pickering get very wound up, they will break away from the fight and run in great circles, dashing in to nip at his play-fellow and ricocheting back to his hunched all-out run. It’s a magical moment, this rocket’s octane overflowing so lavishly that it can only be expressed in what is known as the “crazy Lab run”.

When Daisy was very young, a woman in the State Street dog run shuddered and reprimanded me when my pup shook a tug-toy and I encouraged her by saying, “Kill the bunny!” To shake a toy is to snap the neck of prey, and all dog play is a spin-off from the prey drive. It’s natural that my dogs’ intramural play is focused on someone else’s neck.

I’ve had some upsetting moments when people don’t understand how dogs play with each other. Pickering is very necky, but I’ve put my hand in his mouth while he’s got a chunk of Daisy and all I get for it is slobber and fur. Hermia will run after a dog but she always carries a ball and rather than biting, she kind of whams her jaw against its neck. What looks fierce can be deceiving if you don’t let the scenario play itself out a bit.

Given enough leeway, Pickering or Bangor will throw themselves on their backs so that their partner can grab their necks as well. Daisy, who is no wienie, actually prefers to loll around on her back and be chewed, although she will bare her teeth and joust from her supine position. “Jousting” is the term for the dance of the teeth, a form of playing chicken in which they go mouth-to-mouth snapping at each other’s faces. Daisy and Bangor have been jousting so long that the act is as finely tuned as an 80-year-old Cajun couple doing the two-step.

I warn other dog-owners that, on-leash, Daisy will stalk, pounce and then grab her own leash to play tug-of-war with a new acquaintance. It’s the best I can do when I see her head go level with her back and I can’t haul her out of the way. If it’s any consolation, Daisy is playing at her upland bird hunting breeding. The operative word there is “play,” because her last motion is to offer her leash as a toy for the other dog. My warnings don’t always reassure and once again I leave the scene of an un-crime wishing I could articulate better what is happening and what its outcome will be.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not always innocent. I’ve been on the verge or in the middle of fights that were meant to go to the last breath. There’s no time to talk in those moments, and the dogs’ entanglement is such that there’s no collar grabbing on the human’s parts, no coming up for air on the dogs’ parts.

The test of whether it’s violence or mutual play is in whether I can grab my dog’s collar and pull him off; whether his “victim” is crying or whether it comes back for more; whether, when a margin of time is allowed, my dogs rolls over in fair play. Puppies want to play with Pickering but sometimes owners find the roughhousing overwhelming. I usually walk on when that happens, but again I wish I could articulate how that puppy come to dead halt upon seeing Pickering, how it went down in an iron determination to meet, and rolled over as soon as they did. Puppies need to mix it up with older dogs, even if it looks like the baby’s going to be smashed. It’s how they learn to be a dog among dogs rather than a furry humanette.

His owners were humiliated and apologetic. I laughed and said, “I came on too strong. It’s my fault.” I lay down on the floor and asked them to tell me about their new dog, a Lab-terrier mix I had already deemed “Cutie-petutie.”

“We got him from the shelter,” Rachel told me. “They warned us he doesn’t like men and was probably abused but he’s so cute they thought maybe he’d be adopted. He liked me right away but was shy with Sam. When I came back from the restroom, he was lying at Sam’s feet and they were already old friends.”

As she told me this story, I tossed the occasional cookie, which got Allen’s interest. He began sniffing my feet, then my butt, gradually working up to my hair and, finally, my face. I rolled over on my back so that he towered over me. He looked me in the eye. I smiled. He sniffed my face and turned around twice before curling up against my chest.

“See,” I explained, “Allen has to choose his own friends and he needs to know his friends aren’t a threat.”

“I think he’s hired you,” Sam said.

Allen didn’t often get to go to the dog run. He was either the life of the party, taking off in great circling bursts that had all the other dogs chasing him, or Satan’s representative. I never knew which Allen would bust out.

The saving grace was that he weighs twenty-five pounds. When he was scared, and therefore vicious, I could pick him up. I’d already fallen in love with his intelligence but the first time I scooped him up so that Pickering could play with Uba and Allen went limp with trust in my arms, he became my walker and I was his. Not long after that incident, he began greeting me by rolling over for a belly rub, then hopping up to kiss me and hump my leg.

Winning the trust, and then the love, of a difficult dog is a dog walker’s badge of honor.

He respected Daisy, and was in love with Hermia. He kept an intelligent distance with Bangor, although walking them was a series of co-signing and triple-signing pees as threaded behind the other to have the last word. He bullied Pickering but I have the scratches on my thighs and left arm to prove that Pickering is not the pacifist he presents himself as. I was glad, in a way, to see Pickering fight back. Every dog should know he can protect himself.

That squabble took place the day Allen moved to the suburbs. I hauled him well away from Pickering and sat down with him. I explained that I know he’s jealous of other dogs wanting my love and that I understand. I’m jealous of lots of people and circumstances, too. I cried hard as I asked him not to forget me or forget how much I love him. He huddled close to the thigh he had just left a foot-long bruising scratch on and he listened. Allen always listened to me – to what I was worrying or thinking about, not just to commands or reassurances. Sometimes Daisy listens to me but my other dogs blithely carry on in the world I’m only there to take them to.

Rachel writes that Allen is having a good time trying to catch a particular backyard chipmunk and that suburbanite dogs don’t mingle. I know Allen is happy because he has Rachel and Sam; they’re his world.

But I miss talking to him.

But there was someone there. She had smelled a Pembroke-duck-toller mix at the end of the block, walked by a man reading a magazine who laughed as my Labs strained against their leashes at that half-Enemy Number One to nearly all Labradors: the herding dog.  I was back to West Side Story again, assuring them that,

You’re never alone,

You’re never disconnected!

I’ve got a leash on your bones,

When company’s unexpected,

I’ll keep you protected!

With the some big exceptions, Labs can be counted on to tolerate other Labs as long as they maintain the breed’s notions of propriety and turf. If my dogs go gnarly on a new Lab, I always remind them, “That’s a Labby. He’s one of us – ,” meaning, he’s a Jet.

The herder is a Shark. This is an over-generalization, of course. Daisy’s canine godmother is the recently deceased Godiva, a Bouvier des Flandres whose DNA is herding and carting. When Godiva gave a deep woof and went after Daisy, it was soccer without a ball, sidestepping, zig-zagging, crouching and cutting off, slithering under and sprints with Daisy’s head turned in an I-dare-you. Those minutes were laugh-out-loud zaniness and love.

Aside from the Bouvs and several other old friends (Sugar Plum, Digger and Chadow, an Australian cattle mix, boarder collie and Australian sheperherd, respectively), when I’m with Daisy, I cross the street when I see the pointed ears or the mop-body of a herder. It’s easy to see why the groups are inimical when you watch them in the dog run.

Labs seem to have many interests but they all come down to one thing: oral gratification. Whether it’s carrying a ball, tug-of-war, wrestling, or chewing sticks, Labs like having their mouths full. Take away the mouthful and a Lab will go to extremes to get it back, running their flat-out hardest, pulling like a gold rush dentist, or leaping so high they can look me in the face (I’m 5’8”, for the record). All of this activity looks chaotic to a corgi or a Wheaton.

In contrast, a herder’s interests are in bookkeeping. How many animates are there? Where are they? How can I get them together so that I can make sure my numbers add up? Said-herder’s answers are to run in ever-tightening circles, gathering the animates in as close a knot as possible. Rebels are quashed into place or nipped on the butt to urge them along.

Labs don’t run in ever-tightening circles unless it’s an accident of ecstasy or there’s a game of prey going on, whether they’re the object or in pursuit. Labs don’t like being nipped on the butt. When the chase ends, they like to gnaw on necks, possibly because they’re hunting dogs and the neck is the kill-site. This gnawing is natural and, having spent too much time on the floor with them, so gentle that one can insert a hand into their mouths while they’re at it.

The collie’s nip is a nip, sharp enough to get a rebel wooly or leathery hide’s attention. And sometimes a Lab will nip and bark back. When this happens often enough, it becomes habitual: Hermia’s teasing as she threatens a fight while clutching a ball in her mouth and barking around it, timidity, which Pickering displays, or dislike, in Bangor and Daisy’s cases. Whatever their reaction, it’s because, as Sondheim wrote in “Jet Song,” “the spit hits the fan”.

In defense of the herder, bookkeepers don’t really have enemies. They stick to the numbers, using their intelligence – and they fill the ranks of the most intelligent dogs – to make the numbers stick together.

When I’m hunting for just the right dog gift, I often find myself at rowf, four-and-a-half blocks away from NYCPets, on Middagh Street. rowf has the airy deliberate quality of a SoHo designer store, with a photo board of their canine customers, a bowl of water near the door and a treat-of-the-day (some kind of dried fish on Sunday, something I couldn’t snap in half for Hermia and Daisy on Tuesday) on the counter. The shelves feature a few bags of kibble but a broad range of leashes and collars. Yuning, the proprietress, expresses little concern for the new store, secure in the specific niche she has created for herself, her caramel spaniel and gray poodle, who bark a welcome at passers-by. As Yuning squatted to pet Daisy, she said, “We specialize in treats and toys,” and the matter was closed.

Pet Emporium’s legendary Sammi, for 18 years the de facto mayor of Montague Street, gave his famous shrug when I asked him about it. “What can you do?” he said resignedly. “Competition is good for everybody. I wish them the best of luck.”

“Are you concerned?” I asked.

“Of course. They’re going to take some of my business away. But some customers will be loyal. I wish them the best of luck.”

“Some” customers will be loyal to Sammi because he’s a good friend and neighbor. If I need to leave keys or a business card for someone, Sammi is happy to play postmaster. Because Bangor is obsessed with one kind of ball, Sammi keeps them in stock. When I’m having a bad dog day, I find myself telling him about it and being absolved. “Sometimes it’s like that,” he shrugs. “What can you do? But you’re a wonderful dog walker. Don’t take it so hard.” Then we try to top each other with jokes involving his products (think fetch; think pizzle sticks) and I’m on my way, feeling better.

Beyond his generosity and presence, Sammi is probably the most beloved human in Brooklyn Heights. Most of the neighborhood dogs know he’s lavish with treats and he’s unflappable when a dog jumps on the counter or knocks over a display of Cod Chews or tennis balls. Daisy, Bangor and Hermia stop at the corner of Hicks and Montague and plant themselves, panting in his direction. Sammi is the only pet store owner they know by name.

When I spout my fondness for Sammi to Tom, the co-owner of Perfect Paws, he agrees whole-heartedly. If Sammi doesn’t toot his own horn, Tom toots his and everyone else’s. “When I was broke, Sammi would float me a bag of kibble and tell me to pay him next week. And he never hounded me about it,” he recalls of years gone by. Perfect Paws has been a decorative feature on Hicks Street for four years and, before that, for 13 years on Atlantic Avenue.

“NYCPets isn’t going to affect me or Serena (the owner of The Tailored Pet, on Pineapple Walk). We rely on grooming and boarding as much as retail. The rumor is, though, that they haven’t been very cool about cooperating with BARC in Williamsburg.” BARC [Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition] is a not-for-profit, no-kill shelter on Wythe Avenue, where somewhat higher kibble prices generate revenue to support the maintenance of the kennel facility. BARC has also been the recipient of the profits from the Brooklyn Heights dog Halloween Parade, an annual fundraising event that originated with Perfects Paws’s desire to help animals displaced by Hurricane Kathrina. The parade is supported by Friends of Hillside Park, Pet Emporium and other vendors. Perfect Paws is a community resource for local fundraising.

“We donate to the neighborhood schools and synagogues, and we don’t take administrative fees out for our work on the Parade. We have a deal with BARC: adopt a dog, we’ll give it its first grooming for free and Sammi kicks in the first bag of kibble for free. It’s important that you give back to the community that’s paying you,” Tom says as a bulldog pushes to the gate at the counter and starts baying at something above its nose.

“Aw, Agnes,” Tom sighs. “Are you seeing ghosts again?” Daisy takes Agnes’s vocalization as a challenge and starts to bark as well. “Shut up, Agnes, or I’ll hit you with my rubber slipper,” he threatens, waving his flip-flop around. He turns back and says, “I did that once and she snatched it and ran away. Daisy, you are going to have the runs all week,” he adds as my dog settles in to eat her third rawhide curly.

Tom is the person many of us go to before the veterinarian. Having worked for many years as a vet tech, he’s calmed us down when we’re distraught, taught us to treat our dogs’ wounds, and given out training advice.

Serena, the owner of The Tailored Pet, thinks the incursion of a franchise pet store is “silly”. After admiring Bangor as the prettiest chocolate Lab she’s seen, she leaned over the counter and told me how she heard of the new store. “I call them the `crepe hangers’ – the customers who come in and say, `Did you hear…’ There’s always going to be gossip, always going to be factions, but I’ve been here for 35 years,” she says. “I got nervous when Sammi opened up his store. I don’t get nervous any more.”

I remark that it looks like Pet Emporium is going to be the most affected and she nods sadly. “The location is smart, right off the train, and Gristides is closed. It’s on the way home for a lot of people.”

The location is also expensive. The rents I heard were around $12,500 a month, which is a lot of Wellness and Greenies to sell.

Word is making the rounds that the personnel aren’t very friendly. One Labrador-owning friend told me of friend’s encounter. “He stopped in to say hello and the guy said, `We’re not open,’ and shut the door on him.”

Lately, Brooklyn Heights Blog has been full of woe at the mortality rate of mom-and-pop businesses and the drain on the character and variety of the neighborhood that goes along with it. It’s as much our fault as it is bad business and high rents, and it’s got me thinking about how the pet stores are a reliable part of the fabric of my days. At least once a month, I carry Hermia’s prong collar to Sammi when it’s been turned into one of those Chinese finger-lock puzzles and how he let me take a couple of pizzle sticks when I had two Labs to entertain while I administered an I.V. to a cat. Daisy goes batshit for joy when she sees Sammi’s son out on a delivery or hears Sammi’s voice on the street.

Allen, a terrified former shelter dog on my roster, allows exactly four people in the world to pick him up – his humans, me, and Tom. Daisy and Bangor find Tom as hugely funny as I do. Bangor hates cats but calls a truce in Perfect Paws and The Tailored Pet. I found the perfect going-away present for Mully when she moved to New Jersey among the New York-centric toys at rowf.

I know who will be behind the counter when I walk into Pet Emporium or rowf – and so do my dogs. We know she or he will know our names. I got sucked into helping with the parade while talking to Tom about NYCPets and referred his co-owner, Aaron, to Overtures for advice on getting paint that won’t fade in window dressings. The business of pets – and especially of dogs, the most public of pets – is very small, very internecine – and extremely passionate. NYC Pets has big footprints to filll and some people might stop for kibble on their way home from work, but I wonder where they’ll go when Bowser eats too many rawhide curlies or the Big Red Puppy is so hyper that his humans can’t read the morning paper. I want to know the salesperson is going to come out from behind the register not to promote the genius of a Cuz, but to rough up my dog just the way she likes. I want to be looked in the eye and, even more, I want Daisy to be looked in the eye and I want her to smile at the jolt of contact.

I already know where I can find I.D. and Kongs: they’re just the excuses.

NYCPets is two half-blocks away from my apartment. Sure, I can whip in to buy a bag of kibble, but I’m a lot more mindful that in doing so, I’ll be selling out the neighborhood.