Day 3: Wheaton, IL

Image of the day: Hudson relaxing in his own special bed.

Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 miles
Gas: None bought today

John Steinbeck wouldn't travel the country without Charley, his poodle. Although I won't be bringing any dogs with me on my trip, I've found my canine muse: Hudson.

Hudson is my cousins' soft coated Wheaten terrier here in Wheaton, a suburb of Chicago. He's two years old, but my cousins have only had him for a few months. Despite his mature age, he still has a puppy's face and a puppy's attitude. Hudson does what my cousins call "zooming," in which his caramel-colored 35-pound body runs laps through three rooms and two hallways in less than 10 seconds. He might not be the smartest dogÑ-my cousin Lindsaey referred to him several times in the first half-hour of my visit as "inbred". But I believe that enthusiasm matters more than intellect, so Hudson is my kind of dog.

After sleeping in until 9:30, I took Hudson for a walk. As soon as we left my cousins' house, we ran into the mailman. We happened to go along the same route as the mailman, and after several houses, he offered Hudson a dog treat. I wonder if he buys treats on his own to keep them in his pocket, or if the U.S. Postal Service gives mailmen a stipend specifically for that purpose.

Hudson didn't seem to get along with the other dogs. He met several of them on our walk, and I think he bothered them all in some way or another. In each situation, they would start barking at him, and he would slink away without a sound, not knowing what he had done wrong to offend his fellow dog.

As we walked down the street, I was startled by the contrast among houses in the neighborhood. In my experience, all the houses on a block usually look similar and are worth similar amounts of money. But here it was different; I saw huge recently-constructed million-dollar homes next to houses that had been there for decades and were worth a third as much money. I thought back to 2004, when I worked as a door-to-door fundraiser for the Democratic party. At half of the houses I was walking by today, I would have asked for $50, while at the other half, I would have asked for $250. That dichotomy is something I've rarely seen. Of course, Wheaton is a largely Evangelical Christian town in which, during my childhood, the Republican governor would always walk in the Fourth of July parade, so if I were campaigning here for the Democrats, most of the people would have slammed their doors in my face before I asked for a penny.

Hudson and I returned home, and I began to think about how Americans treat our dogs. I just came back from living in Moldova, a small Eastern European country. My host family had three dogs, one of which almost was never allowed off of her chain. The dogs were never allowed inside the house, no matter how bad the weather was outside, and they were never petted by anything more than my foot. Compare that to America, in which we feed our pets specially formulated food, let the dogs sleep in bed with us, buy them toys, take them on walks, send them to groomers, pay for a kennel or "doggie day care" when we're too busy to deal with them, and finally lay them to rest in pet cemeteries. Something about being American creates a strong connection to our pets, even though it might be so strong at times that it's ridiculous.

But if Steinbeck needs a dog, then I suppose we all do.