On Her Own Terms ….
It’s not that I needed a third dog. It’s that I wasn’t really part of the
decision process. The decision had been
made by Herself, and my role was simply to comply. I often remind her when she gets testy with
me that I know her like no one else does:
I caught her the day she was born.
And in her eyes there is always a
bit of laughter – as if to say that every moment I get closer to understanding
her. She is leading me. I am a slow study in this regard.
I tried to change her, don’t get me wrong. But I am ever so aware that it is a losing
battle. At eight weeks old if you got
near her when she was eating she’d give a little growl. But that was not the first time. The first time should have been on film. She was only a couple of weeks old at
most. She was approximately eight inches
long. I was taking turns picking up each
of the five little cocker spaniel puppies and getting them used to being held,
talked to by people. I held the little
Queen in the palm of my hand, gently holding her on her back. It was then that I heard it – a decisive
little grumble coming from her belly.
She was not hungry. She was
growling!
I looked into her little chocolate face and asked her, “What
are you anyway? An ewok?” I swear to you a little spark shot out of her
eye. I knew that in this little dog was
a Force that would shape the sort of human I was becoming…. Sappy.
It’s not that no one else wanted her. My plan was to sell all five of the little
dogs into good homes. She was mapped-out
to head through Western New York into Pennsylvania. As my mother would say, “Oh, we have
relatives in Erie” - relatives that I
haven’t seen since I was, oh, about eight years old. It’s not like they would know this woman who
wanted Madeline Grace. I am told she had
the puppy’s picture on her kitchen table.
Well, now I have the puppy’s picture on my desk at work. My eyes flood up sometimes when I look at
her. One of her nick names it “Little
Bear.” She looks like a kodiak bear
sometimes – and other times she ACTS like it…. And that is why the mapped-out
plan got changed.
She was the last puppy to leave my household from that first
litter. I was home sick that day and the
people were going to drive out about three hours to my house to pick her
up. While I was busy feeling ill on the
couch, she was busy chasing dust bunnies under the coffee table. And probably peeing on my floor. But I was so torn-up inside about her leaving. I did not “need” another dog. But I looked at her in her bear-ish sort of
disposition and began to worry in a way that I have not worried before, or
since, about anything: would she grow up
to be nasty? Would she be disciplined
the correct way when she got bossy and out of line? Would they call me in three weeks or three months
and say they couldn’t deal with her anymore?
I was, in short, a mess about it.
And then I made the phone call. I apologized profusely to the woman who was
going to drive her mother out all this way – I told her the truth: I just couldn’t let this dog go. I truly don’t feel it was a selfish thing –
all along I planned to sell her and other litters after her, to new homes. I was happy to be a midpoint in the journey
of love all these little dogs were going to take. But Madeline Grace had played a card I didn’t
understand. She showed me a bit of her
Alpha Dog personality and it made me wonder what I was really dealing
with. If I, who has had a handful of
dogs; taken very expensive obedience lessons with a merciless trainer in order
to correct a shelter dog that was a train wreck; and was fairly well read on
dog psychology – if I couldn’t understand this little ball of fur & fire,
how could anyone else?! I
apologized. I was in tears.
The woman was very gracious to me. She simply said, “We get it. We are dog people and we get it.” I promised her a discount off the pick of the
next litter. I hung up the phone. I wish I could say I felt relief
instantly. I did not. But whatever I felt, it felt better than the
“not knowing” I was imagining about this little dog’s future. I knew the one thing that I needed to
know: The Queen had made her choice from
the moment of that first growl and that spark of fire in her eye. It just took me a few weeks to bend to her
way of thinking.
I don’t think I need to detail that she is now the favorite
that I’m not supposed to have because I have two other dogs that need to be
equals. She is the one to run to me if
she hears me crying after a sad movie, a bad phone call, or a nightmare. And when I go to sleep at night, my hand is
on her little back just to make sure she is still in my world.
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