Glossary

bluburb

(n.) the flabby outer layers of a city where the houses, the dog bathrooms, and even the people are bigger than in a city. 

It’s against the rules to sleep inside a covered wagon in the bluburbs.

boogeyvirus

(n.) an invisible, evil force that travels on microscopic boogers, infecting people with suspicion and fear.
The boogeyvirus was a kind of wildness that people carried inside themselves, so there was nowhere to escape except from each other. 

butt

(n.) When a hill shaped like a stump pokes out of the ground where it doesn’t belong.
There are butts all over the southwest, but none that looks like Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

car kennel

(n.) a safe place for your car or wagon to stay when you need to leave it alone while you’re away from home.
As we rolled toward the exit, I thought I saw something wooly moving between the only two pickup trucks in the car kennel.

cheesology

(n.) the study of how the Earth was made, usually while thinking about cheese. Since most living things think about cheese more or less constantly, cheesology is more commonly used to refer to the study of rocks, even when cheese is the more important part of the thought. 
“What a lucky coincidence that Mount Rush More just so happens to look like those four guys! Cheesology sure is amazing.

the City

(prop. n.) a place with gigantic buildings, two bridges, zillions of people, and some pigeons. People from far away sometimes call the City San Francisco. People who call it Frisco are not welcome in the City.
From the sandy canyon bottom, the rocks had seemed like buildings in the City—close together, but each one standing on its own.

civilization

(n.) a magical spell that makes humans the most powerful of all beasts, strong enough to defeat any danger. To keep the spell alive, everyone must say or do the same thing at the same time, like a worldwide game of Simon says.
Most people spend so much time in civilization that they forget it’s all in their imaginations and they can step out of it at any time.

collie

(n.) a Friend you make at work.
A new group of collies sat unsupervised at the lunch table, probably dropping chicken and hamburger on the floor. 

contamomate

(v.) ​​to make impure, harmful, or unusable through contact with something unclean or bad, usually Mom.
Mom kept her back to the trail so that her contamomated breath couldn’t hurt anyone.

demomstrate

(v.) to show someone less competent than yourself how to do something correctly.
I ran in circles to demomstrate what expert hiking looked like from all angles.

diagnostics

(n. pl.) big fat lie used to take more money than something should reasonably cost.
“He may not sell me the fuse and insist on charging a lot of money to run diagnostics.” She made bunny ears with her fingers to show diagnostics meant big, fat lie.

dog bathroom

(n.) the open-air potty beside a stuck house traditionally only used by dogs. When traveling, the whole world becomes a dog bathroom and may occasionally even be used by humans.
What’s gotten into you? I thought you made peace with using the dog bathroom. Have you been holding it this whole time?

doom

(n.) a hill made out of sand;

(n.) a devious torture device when all you were hoping for was some pretty pictures and an easy run.
On every climb, Mom shook her fist and whispered threats about the nasty things she would do if the dooms didn’t cut it out.

dreadmill

 (n.) a piece of furniture that takes up as much space in the living room as a couch and lets you run great distances without ever leaving your stuck house.
I sat in my Mom-watching chair and coached Mom through her morning workout on the dreadmill.

dysinformation

(n.) information that is deliberately false or misleading, usually spread by witches with the intent to make people feel angry and off-balance. 
The humans spread dysinformation to convince dogs that a treat broken in half was actually two treats, telling them not to believe their growling bellies.

ecomommy

(n.) the worldwide exchange of activity that inspires humans to do things for each other and spreads money like boogeyvirus. When the ecomommy is broken, humans get very irritable.
Money does no good sitting in the bank just like dog food is no good if you never open the can. Therefore, fancy wet food is essential for a healthy ecomommy.

empuffy

(n.) the quality of thinking about your life partner’s needs and not just your own. 
Dogs drooling when someone else eats something delicious is an example of empuffy.

End of the World

 (prop. n.) where the land ends abruptly and falls into the sea.
I liked living at the End of the World. It made me feel like a king to stand in the dog bathroom behind the Stuck House and watch the last mile of a whole continent fall into the ocean. 

exstinked

 (adj.) no longer having a member of your species or tribe to leave their stink on the world.
Even if you find their pawprints, you’ll never smell a dinosaur’s stinky feet because they’re all exstinked.

Friend

(prop. n.) a friend who stands out from all of your other adoring fans because you have known them for long enough to know the special things about each other’s personalities and create memories together that you don’t share with anyone else.
Mom was too clumsy around people to make Friends without supervision. That’s why I was hired. 

furryner

(n.) stranger who talks funny and doesn’t follow all the rules, but in a cute, harmless way.
I could tell that he was a furryner by the way he made his words like his mouth was full of tennis balls.

grey

(n., adj.) a color besides black or white. Synonyms include, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, indigo, puce, magenta, periwinkle, mauve, etc.
High on the mountain, the white dirt glowed like frosting, but here at the bottom there was nothing but brick-grey mud and cacti.

Grey Bridge

(n.) the other bridge in the City — not the famous bridge, the other one that goes to Oakland. The one where the traffic is from people who live here, not tourists. 
The car-nanny protected our windows and the change in the cup holder from thieves while Mom and I ran around the City, watching the sunrise behind the Grey Bridge and Alcatraz. 

greynbow

 (n.) a trick of the human eye that makes them believe that there are more colors in the world than black, white, and grey. 
Mom told me not to drink from puddles with greynbows in it. Dogs are colorblind, so I don’t believe in greynbows.

homelesskimo

(n.) a culture who lives in summer igloos full time. Their natural habitat is under the freeway overpasses of large cities, but they occasionally live in wilder-ness areas, too.
The homelesskimos built colonies of igloos on the empty sidewalks and landscaped their yards with cardboard.

I’mbarkadero

 (n.) a fancy word for a crowded sidewalk with cars passing on one side and boats on the other. It gets its name from a handsome and mysterious dog whose real name no one knew, who used to run around the waterfront, barking at tourists, and scooters, and snakeboarders, and other dogs.
She tried for the gazillionth time to hang her muzzle on her nose in preparation for the crowds as we ran onto the I’mbarkadero.

juice box

(n.) a contraption that feeds machines like witches and wagons.
As Mom stuck the straw into the Wagon’s mouth, the cowboy at the next juice box called from behind his truck, “California, huh? What are you doing all the way out here?”

killmometer

(n.) an imaginary version of a mile that only comes out on special occasions, like a race. Unlike miles, killmometers don’t measure a consistent distance, but grow and shrink depending on how hard the race is and how you’re feeling at the time.
So if you agreed to run twenny-five killmometers, and we’ve run twenny-five killmometers, I guess we’re all done.

laundrymat

(n.) a luxurious amomodation for not-dogs with indoor benches, outlets for charging your laptop, and occasionally wifi.
I sat outside the laundrymat, watching Mom through the window as she tended to everyone’s needs but mine.

Law

(prop. n.) humans who roam the streets waking up sleeping dogs to ask nosy questions in the middle of the night. The Law may also hunt by daylight. Unlike a Simon, the Law wear special matching outfits, drive matching cars with killer-whale-like markings, and have a more sophisticated communication network.
As we walked, Mom looked from side to side, waiting for the Law to jump out of someone’s driveway and demand to see our papers.

lawgic

(n.) following the rules very closely to detect when they don’t really apply to you.
According to Mom’s lawgic, you can tell a lot about what’s allowed by what’s not allowed and studying the space between the allowed and the not. 

liberry

(n.) a building filled with nothing but lousy old books that only allows service dogs inside, as if any normal dog worth his fur would be caught dead in the place. They don’t even let you bark!
The service dog thought he was so special just because he was allowed in supermarkets and liberries.

mailman

(n.) a sneaky, murderous beast who wanders neighborhoods (often while the humans are away) hunting for dogs who are home alone so he can eat them for lunch. 
It was like when someone shouts “MAILMAN” in a crowded living room and you run screaming to the window only to find that it’s a false alarm.

mapp

(n.) a Witch’s warped representation of how the world should be, paying no mind to reality. 
We were so new to traveling that we didn’t know about AllTrails or saving mapps for when the Witch wasn’t talking to us.

marathong

(n.) from the Greek root –thong for “something that isn’t too uncomfortable as long as you don’t think about it too much,” a marathong is a run that you know is going to be uncomfortable but you do it anyway.
“It’s like those marathongs I trained you for. Every week we ran farther than ever before.”

math

(n.) a bad medicine that some people take for a thrill and others take to deal with unbearable emotions. Math uses numbers that dogs don’t know. See below for a list of not-imaginary numbers.
In Breaking Bad, Walt and Jesse cook math. Mom likes to count things because math makes her feel like she can predict the future. 

mominous

(adj.) having a dangerous quality that only Mom can sense. Possessing the type of danger that only exists in Mom’s head.  
“Among other things…” she said mominously. 

nyoink

(v.) to snatch something quickly in a playful way, usually without permission.
He nyoinked the frisbee up in his teeth and ran back to his village with it. 

packpack

(n.) a bag for carrying water, snacks, and other supplies on a human’s back. Packpacks tend to be the same size or smaller than a full-grown raccoon, while larger packs up to the size of an adult sow are called backpacks.
She dropped the packpack to the ground and pulled out all of the empty bottles, lining them up in the sand. 

people

(pl. n.) a being whose thoughts, feelings, and experiences contribute to the collective game of Simon says that creates civilization. Colloquially, people refers to humans, but is also correct when referring to wise and friendly dogs, especially if they are very handsome.

Dogs are people too.

poop juice

(n.) a warm, milky drink with a pungent smell that humans take in the morning to prevent themselves from turning into zombies and to help them… you know (hint: It’s in the name.).
The poop juice cooled in Mom’s cup as she kept both paws clamped to the driving wheel to prevent the Wagon from being blown off course.

potato beast

(n.) the handsomest breed of dog with a muscular body that is the same shape and hardness as an uncooked potato.
Potato beasts are the best breed of dog, and Oscar is the best of them all. 

quarunseen

(v.) to stay away from people because your presence could kill someone.
We spent the rest of the evening quarunseening in the Wagon and waiting for Utah and Mom’s hair to dry.

reasonable amomodation

(n.) a business dog who accompanies his life partner to work to make sure she overcomes her separation anxiety and behaves as expected to in a business setting.  
I was what they call a reasonable amomodation, which means a dog who trains a reactive human to behave around other people.

Simon

(prop. n.) a nosy person who takes it upon themselves to inform you of rules that don’t need enforcing, as in a game of Simon says.
Simons print their rules on signs to recruit people to play with them and post them on the internet so witches will tell far-away Simons all about their accomplishments.

snow

(n.) the sparkly bits that flake off of clouds and turn everything underneath fluffy with white dirt.
I watched the rain trying to turn to snow as the slush under our wheels got chunkier and grew a white crust. 

’splain

 (v.) to establish dominance by explaining something to someone who probably already knows it. 
She wound up her mouth like she does when she’s preparing to ’splain something that doesn’t make sense.

stuck house

(n.) a house without wheels that is in the same place all the time. Spending too much time inside of one tends to lead to a yearning for adventure. See also:

Stuck House

(prop. n.) the stuck house that Oscar lives in.
I tried to tell her about all the fears I’d feared alone in this enormous Stuck House, but I was too overjoyed that none of them were true, so it came out like, “EEEEEEE!” 

suffercate

(v.) the stifling, uncomfortable feeling that you can’t breathe.
Mom still closed the vents behind her nose and mouth as the group of strangers approached. She hoped she wouldn’t suffercate waiting for them all to pass.

summer igloo

(n.) a portable shelter made from fabric or skins when it is too warm for ice, used for sleeping in the wilder-ness or under bridges.
The villagers stood up from their folding chairs clutching mugs of poop juice and climbed out of summer igloos with pillow-shaped hair. 

tabottom

(n.) A sled that is also your butt.
“I was sledding,” his hapless sidekick replied. She stood up and brushed the white dirt victoriously from her tabottom.
“That wasn’t as painless as I thought. There were some sharp rocks under there.”

trigomometry

(n.) a magic spell that cuts distances in half. 
If we’d stayed on the roads the Witch told us to follow, it would have been five miles in each direction, but Mom used trigomometry to make the walk shorter. 

tsumommy

(n.) a very, very large wave, usually sent to annoy landlubber dogs and soak his companion’s socks. 
When Nature tried to bring its savagery to the human world with something like a sandslide or a tsumommy, I thought people just went somewhere else until they could tame Nature's wildness again. 

turtle

 (n.) a species of stray hikers found in any backwoods large enough to lose your Subaru in. They have a terrible sense of direction and it’s not uncommon for them to wander for tens or hunerds of miles in the wilder-ness before they remember where they parked. They walk foolishly into danger, carrying their homes on their backs.
Turtles are suspiciously happy and relaxed for someone living such a desperate life.

wagon

(n.) a car that is also a house so you can carry your life with you as you search for adventure. See also:

Wagon

(prop. n.) Oscar’s wagon. Short for the Covered Wagon because it is old, round and white.
The Wagon screeched back onto the road like the Scooby Mobile running from a ghost.

white dirt

(n.) rare dirt with magical properties that regular dirt doesn’t have, including smelling like freezer burn and zambonis, preserving perfect buttprints when you roll in it, cooling you down on mountain hikes, and tasting delicious. White dirt occurs when snow stays on the ground after falling.
You’d have to be a real fuddyduddy to dislike white dirt. Mom can’t stand the stuff.

wilder-ness

 (n.) what’s left over outside of civilization, where no one gets to make the rules and anything can happen. Wilder-ness is both a place and a state of being.
To hear most humans talk about it, the wilder-ness is a dark and frightening place. If there were no civilization at all, wildness would just be a fact of life, but the wild feels wilder right after you’ve broken the spell. 

witch

(n.) a small device that follows humans wherever they go, pretending to be helpful but actually spreading rumors, lies, and passive-aggressive criticism. See also:

Witch

(prop. n.) the Witch that Lives in Mom’s Phone. An especially devious specimen of the species.
That Witch is full of nothing but snark and pictures of me sitting on rocks.