Alex and Ernest, with a side of Tobasco

The grass blades flicked up and stuck upon the heel of Alex Stiebling’s right shoe. His left was perfectly clean, as that was hitting hard cement with ever other step. He must have looked a bit odd: running down the exact seam of park grass and sidewalk, one side recently wet, the other a designated place for the exact activity he was engaging in. However, Ernest did not care about what the people in the park thought of Alex’s running style. In fact, Ernest did not care about much at all, except for running. Oh, how he had wanted to run like this for several days now. He longed for the crisp autumn air and the feel of the wind against his face as he chased after nothing in particular. At least, one would reasonably assume Ernest was longing for these things. No one could know for sure because Ernest is a dog, and when he learns to communicate with humans, there will be bigger questions to ask than, “What do you think about when you run?”

Ernest might seem like a strange name for a dog, but Alex had a perfectly good reasoning for naming him such. Alex Stiebling is a writer by trade, and studying other writers is a passion of his. When his girlfriend brought a salt and pepper colored shepherd to his apartment three years ago as a birthday gift, Alex was at a loss for words for perhaps the first time in his life. He was amazed at the generosity of Emma (they had only been dating for two months prior to his twenty-fourth birthday) as well as the simple fact of a dog in his two –bedroom apartment. When Emma demanded a name in a cute huff of a voice, Alex fumbled over his decision before laying eyes on a copy of The Sun Also Rises, which was resting carelessly amongst papers and notes around his typewriter across the room. He jolted out “Ernest!”, which of course came from the famous novelist Ernest Hemingway, and Emma took to it right away.

Given his choice, Alex would have named the dog Tobasco, and called it “Toby” for short. However, he shouted out “Ernest!” and that was that. For the first few months of their time together, Alex called the dog “Toby” under his breath, but it never really seemed right. Perhaps it was the salt and pepper hair that gave him a distinguished look which demanded far more than “Toby”. Perhaps it was the fact that Alex knew if you put the dog on his haunches and up in a chair in front of a typewriter, he was a dead Hemingway look-a-like. Whatever the reason, the dog’s name was Ernest, and there was no going back on that.