Table Talk: Arf!

          Antonio and I are addicted to drinking coffee together. We became acquainted at a coffee shop that serves great drinks and has couches that often serve as our living rooms. I noticed him there occasionally over several months before we talked with one another. I appreciated the way he greeted and conversed with many different kinds of people--beautiful and unbeautiful, outgoing and shy, young and old. Eventually, we started acknowledging each other’s presence with a nod or a smile. Now we talk while I sip coffee, he a mocha.

      As our coffee drinking demands grew, we started fixing brew in one or the other’s apartment, and when I’d come to his place, I was enthusiastically greeted by his miniature poodles. Shinti, a white fluffball of energy would immediately jump into my lap, greet me with licks and love, and hold court over the rest of the house from her high throne. Konti, her more reserved brother, would sidle up to me and quietly lean against my leg. Nice dogs. Nice master. I enjoyed petting the dogs and drinking coffee with Antonio.

     One day, when I was still a student at the massage school, I was having a cup of coffee at Antonio’s apartment. I reached down to Konti and massaged along his backbone from his neck down to his hips. He arched his back into my touch, encouraging me to keep up the good work. With my fingertips I made circles around his hips and shoulders thinking about how the musculature was similar to that of humans. When I finished, Konti shook his ears and whole body, looked up at me, and then trotted away.

     Next time I showed up at their apartment, Shinti didn’t have a chance even to greet me before Konti was on my lap, pushing his little hiney into my stomach. When I didn’t immediately put my hands on him, he looked around at me with his big eyes as if to plead, “Massage me.” I did and was amused at how he took control. When the pressure wasn’t quite right, he leaned into or away from me. When a particular place seemed finished, Konti presented me with another spot he wanted me to palpate. Over the next weeks I watched this quiet, beautiful poodle metamorphose into an insistent massage hog.

     Since that time I’ve met other dogs and found out they all like massage. My friend Michael had two cute dogs. Willie was a White Westie, and Ozzie, a Blue Karen Terrier. Always-friendly Willie and often-grumpy Ozzie enjoyed my improving doggie massage technique. (Konti and Shinti had taught me almost as much as my schooling.) Willie got more massage because of his easy-going ways. Ozzie, on the other hand, was more insistent, and when he wanted a massage, like Konti, he turned his back or shoulder or head to me. He’d paw my hand anytime it went slack and would try to lift it with his wet nose to get it back into action.

     This summer, Ferdinand, the house painter’s pooch, started getting massage. Large, reddish, and long-haired, he accompanies his master to the building where I live and hangs out in the shade while Jay paints. The dog loves my touch. He likes whatever I do to him, but he always presents his right hip for massage. If I forget to work it, he follows me, pushing his nose into my hand and his hip against my leg.

     I keep looking at advertisements for canine massage training. Some days I think I might enjoy study and work in that area, but most of the time I realize I simply want to work on these dog friends, small and large, and enjoy their individual responses to my massages. I did learn a therapeutic move from Willie, who loved to shake his soft toys back and forth when he finally won a tug-of-war. Now, while doing chair massage, I sometimes grab a client’s shoulder and give it a doggie shake to loosen the upper trapezium muscle in the effective way Willie demonstrated. (I usually refrain from growling while doing so.) My best hope from these dog contacts, though, is to be the kind of massage therapist that combines Shinti’s enthusiasm, Konti’s calm, Willie’s good nature, Ozzie’s clarity, and Ferdinand’s beauty in my work, along with a strong brew of Antonio’s vast charm.

Photos of Shinti and Konti provided by Tony Garcia Pelaez