There are some things you just have to have in this life, and for me, it’s a dog. I’m a dog person. My husband, however, is a sanity-person. So naturally, our two personas are at odds with one another. Also, he feels he has done his time – we had a dog for thirteen years, so he knows what is involved. That dog, Brandy, I think of as the dog of my life – adopted from a shelter, she had an air of gratefulness and loyalty that I had never even imagined coming from a pet. As she got older, and much wearier, she would still follow me from room to room, even though it cost her much pain to do so. Her last walk out of our house was not on her own feet; my husband had to gently carry her to the car, and she put her gray nose into the breeze one last time and then shut her eyes as we drove slowly, hardly able to see through tears, to the vet.
Two years passed, and I decided it was time to dive in again. You know what? Adopting a pet has somehow become harder than adopting a person in our culture. I walked into the animal shelter with a leash and a water bowl and said, “I’d like to see your puppies, please," and was promptly seated at a desk while I was fingerprinted, run through a CSI computer, and distant relatives and references were detained at their worksites and questioned as to my overall fitness. I looked down at my old sweatpants and tee-shirt doubtfully – I should have dressed up a little more. Also, when was the last time I had had my highlights done? And Lord knows I could have managed to do my nails. I didn’t deserve a dog, darn it! As I got up to slink out of there, a little fella in a cage caught my eye. As had happened with Brandy, something clicked between animal and human through the bars of a cage, and I confirmed to the shelter employees that, although absolutely unfit, I was interested in this puppy. “We’ll need to call your husband to make sure that he is “on board" with this decision," an employee said, checking something off on her clipboard. On board? I wouldn’t really call it that, so much as “off board," or “overboard, swimming desperately to shore." I got him on the phone. “Sound excited, I’m at the shelter," I hissed, smiling at the shelter people and hitching up my sweatpants. I gave them a thumbs-up as my husband said, “I am going to every Red Sox game next season, and golfing every Saturday, and even after that you owe me." “Allrighty then," I said loudly into the phone, “they want to hear this enthusiasm for themselves, honey. I’ll put them on the line." And so, “Copper" found a home.
Things have changed a little since I had a dog, I quickly found out. Apparently I should be going to “puppy playgroup" at least once a week. Huh? Also, there are clothes for dogs now. I can’t keep human clothes clean, so Copper has zero chance of a wardrobe of any type. Also, Copper is a mutt and a hound (as in the hound dog at the beginning of “The Beverly Hillbillies") so he would feel kind of silly in a sweater, anyway. “Crate-training" is also big now, although this may be another invention to keep us from feeling guilty about never being home, yet wanting to have it all, right down to a family dog. Supposedly, crates feed their “nesting instinct." It just feels kind of funny looking at a dog and saying, “Free at last! We rescued you from your cage at the shelter! Now, go on, get in your crate."
Also, poor Copper is constantly being compared to Brandy, as we adjust to the memories that have re-surfaced by having a dog in the house again. “No, no, you’re doing that wrong!’ my six-year-old will say as Copper bounds onto the couch. “Brandy knew how to sneak onto the couch! We’d turn around and she would just be there! You’re not very good at this, are you?" Copper responds to criticism by chewing up…anything. Actually, he responds to hunger, boredom, happiness, sleepiness and anything else by chewing. Brandy never did that.
So, we welcome a new puppy to our house. And it’s funny – at the beginning, Copper had a fear of our front steps, so we had to carry him into the house for the first time, the same way we carried Brandy out for the last time. That first night, I stood on the porch alone in the dark for a minute, as I heard everyone laughing and excitedly greeting the new puppy. The sky was clear and bright and so vast over my porch roof that it was startling, like I had forgotten how big and deep the world is – fraught with meaning expressed in the most seemingly insignificant things. “You’re still the dog of my life," I whispered, and went in. |
