Nine seconds. That's how long the cowboy hat lasted, and six of those seconds were me fumbling with the chin strap.
On Saturday afternoon I lined up four Halloween costumes on the gray sofa, propped my phone against the bookshelf with the stopwatch running and tried each one on Hank. The rule: the timer stops the moment he clearly wants it off, not the moment he actually gets it off. A 68-pound golden mutt can be very polite about being miserable, so I watched for the small stuff: lip licking, yawning, ears pinned back, the half-moon of white in his eyes, freezing in place. Any of those and the costume came off and the timer stopped.
Here they are, from shortest to longest.
The two that came off fast
Felt cowboy hat: 9 seconds. Clearance bin at Target, $8. It sat between his ears for exactly as long as it took him to understand there was an object on his head. Then he shook like he'd just climbed out of the Rum River, and the hat flew under the coffee table. He looked at me, looked at the hat and lay down with his back to both of us. Fair.
Lion mane: 47 seconds. $12. This was the one I had my heart set on, because a golden dog in a lion mane is funny every single time. It fastens with velcro under the chin, and the fluffy mane sits right over his ears, which turned out to be the problem. He held very still, which I mistook for tolerance for about thirty seconds, until I noticed he'd licked his lips three times and his ears were flattened under the fluff. Off it came. He shook, went straight to the water bowl and drank like he'd been through something. I got one photo, and he looks like a lion who is filing a complaint.
The two he could live with
Hot dog bun: 4 minutes, 12 seconds. $18, the most expensive of the bunch. The bun wraps around his middle with a buckle under the belly, and there's a felt hot dog with a stripe of mustard on top. To my surprise he stood in it, walked in it and lay down in it. What he couldn't do was lie flat on his side, which is how he naps, so after about four minutes he did the long sigh and looked at Caleb, who said "yeah, buddy" and unbuckled him. I'd call that one tolerated for photos and nothing more.
Plain orange bandana: we stopped timing at an hour. He's had this bandana since last fall. It cost $6, it ties loosely over his collar, it covers nothing he cares about, and he wore it the rest of the afternoon and halfway through supper, until I took it off so it wouldn't end up in his bowl. It's the only costume I'd buy again. It's also the one he looks happiest in, and in the photos, that's what you actually notice.
What I'd do differently
I bought three costumes before trying a single one, which was $38 of guessing about a dog I've lived with for four years. Next year it's one thing at a time, and the bandana is the baseline to beat. The lion mane and the hot dog bun are going in the donate bag. The cowboy hat is apparently staying under the coffee table.
A few house rules hold no matter what he's wearing: nothing that covers his eyes, ears or mouth, nothing so snug I can't slide two fingers under it, and nothing he wears when we're not in the room with him. On Halloween night it'll be the bandana and nothing else.
The candy bowl lives on top of the fridge until the doorbell rings, and wrappers go straight into the lidded trash can. The first workday after Halloween at the clinic is reliably full of chocolate calls, and I'd rather not be one of them. If a dog does get into the candy, a call to the vet or a pet poison line will tell you how worried to be.
Mabel was not offered a costume. Mabel's verdict on the whole afternoon, delivered from the top of the bookshelves: abstained.
