The Dyson V8 Animal Learned to Hate Us
The Dyson V8 Animal arrived on a Tuesday in a box so heavy I thought BW had ordered a small engine. She hadn't. She'd ordered hope. Specifically, hope that our golden retriever's hair would stop appearing on every surface we own, including places I didn't know hair could travel. The back of the toilet tank. Inside the refrigerator somehow. The child's ear.
I charged it fully. Read the manual while BW watched from the kitchen like I was defusing something. The V8 Animal has a motorized brush bar designed specifically for pet hair. This is what the box said. This is what made BW believe we had finally solved a problem that, in retrospect, was not a problem. It was a condition. Permanent. Like weather.
The first time I used it, the V8 Animal screamed. Not metaphorically. The brush bar hit something—a toy soldier, maybe, or a piece of the child's birthday cake from three weeks ago that she'd hidden under the couch—and the machine made a sound like a dentist's drill played in reverse. I turned it off. Checked the brush bar. Found the thing. Started again.
By week two, the V8 Animal had developed opinions. It would clog randomly. Not with dog hair. With nothing. Just the idea that it had somewhere better to be. I'd empty the bin—which requires a specific flick of the wrist that I could never quite execute without coating my jeans in fine dust—and it would work for exactly four minutes before deciding again that it was finished.
The child discovered it in the garage. Not to use it. To ride it. Like a scooter. She was on the kitchen tile, both feet on the dustbin, the machine screaming to life, when BW walked in. BW did not yell. BW simply appeared, took the V8 Animal by its handle, and removed the child from the equation. No words. Just the efficient removal of a problem. (This is why I married her.)
Now the V8 Animal sits in the hallway charging, fully resentful. It works fine when I use it. Better than fine. It actually pulls up hair that the Roomba had given up on years ago. But I can feel it judging the couch when I walk past. The V8 Animal knows we're not going to solve this. It knows the dog will shed tomorrow. And the day after that. And that one of us will hide a toy under there, and it will scream again, and the child will find it, and we'll all end up exactly where we started.
The dog is sleeping on the back of the couch right now, shedding directly onto a throw pillow that BW bought specifically because it doesn't show hair.
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