Surprising, the way my day is structured around walking the dog.

Each morning and evening I stir my lethargic shanks, pull on my shoes, retrieve a plastic bag from the kitchen cupboard and head for the front door, where Gus awaits, impatiently—we're talking tongue extension, maniacal grin, quivering with anticipation. You'd think it was Christmas Eve.

We are going for a walk.

When I first acquired Gus, uncertain what my associate knew or didn't know, I kept him on a leash. He didn't object, but he didn't much like it either. You could tell he found it patronizing. This he conveyed to me in several ways; for example somehow the leash would end up between his front legs and out the wrong side, or down the length of his belly and under the tail so that it got peed on. An accident? I don't think so.

Another tactic was to scrupulously defer to the slightest pressure of the leash while refusing to look me in the eye—a classic passive-aggressive tactic I myself have employed when at the nadir of certain past relationships.

As a result Gus and I have become outlaws, offenders against the Leash Law. True, many dogs should be on a leash (if not in a cage); yet I have my doubts as to its relevance to the safety issue, having seen people walk (or be pulled along by) rottweilers, mastiffs, dobermans—dogs of muscle and teeth, dogs that sometimes outweigh their owners and are unlikely to be slowed down by anything short of a wall.

Gus as well disagrees with the Leash Law. After a few days of leashed humiliation, it became apparent that, without prompting, he will unfailingly wait for permission to cross the street, come when called and stop or heel when told to, and that the only damage he is capable of inflicting on a person would be to lick their face off.

Away went the leash, and the experiment has been a success. If an object of nasal interest holds him up, he will soon catch up; if he runs ahead to woot at a squirrel, he glances back to see if it is okay with me. But more important, without the leash to put us in our respective places, Gus and I become equals—curious companions in a world that is our kitchen, living room, rec room and toilet, and all for the price of a plastic bag.

Of course at some point between three and 10 blocks into an excursion, the apparently inevitable occurs: he stops short, sniffs, considers and then by some incomprehensible criterion, chooses a minuscule spot of grass on a median or lawn, indistinguishable to me from any other spot, circles it twice—and goes into that unmistakable crouch, glancing at me sideways with a moving expression of hapless vulnerability, until the deed is done. Then he steps forward, scratches the ground twice with his hind paws and continues on his way, leaving me and my plastic bag to pick up, using the technique of a baker retrieving a bun from the bin.

And with that we walk onward together, me with my little plastic purse, Gus following his nose with the intensity of a detective—until he sights a squirrel or postman and runs ahead to give them a woof. Mail carriers stash dog biscuits as a measure against aggressive dogs, thereby making themselves woofing targets for any dog in his right mind.

Of course no walk would be complete without an encounter with at least one other dog-walking expedition—well, talk about your classless society! Whether it's a thousand-dollar pedigree or a mutt from the SPCA, all canines (except antisocial yappers and shark dogs) do the circle dance, the nose touch, the sniff from stem to stern, perhaps a playful woof or two, while we "owners" stand by like benevolent caregivers, saying pleasant things about each other's dog. And as with the canine, human social status means nothing. How could it when each of us has a plastic bag of dog poop dangling from one hand?

Next month: Walking the Dog 2.

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