The Dance of Joy

12-22-2016 The Dance of Joy

I had a ring side seat, so to speak, to an amazing dance performance the other night.  In fact, no one else was invited:  just me.  I stood there in my back yard and watched my Momma Dog Madeline Grace teach her oldest son, the firstborn of the litter, how to enjoy snow. 

I named him Valor at his birth because he was the first born – and to be the first at anything requires bravery (valor).  He is a strong, stocky little pup and particularly is fond of my footwear at this point.  His little puppy teeth are sharp and his cocker spaniel jaws are powerful.  But his “attack” at my feet is all done in the spirit of love and play.  I believe the French call it “joie de vivre.”  He’s got so much of it, his picture is probably next to the definition of it in the French dictionary.

The challenge with having a winter litter of puppies is they are born in the warmth of a house but by the time you need them to be going out doors to use the bathroom, it is bitter cold in the Northeast.  My backyard has winds that blow off the pastures that make it so cold!  Even during the summer I cannot sustain the average backyard gazebo because of these Nuisance Winds. 

Last Saturday I took two puppies out – my sturdy boys – and put little homemade crochet capes on them (Martha Stewart, eat your heart out) to help them be insulated a bit.  Oreo Cookie took to the snow with the curiosity of a puppy learning to smell new things.  Valor, on the other hand, hunkered down and cried.  He looked like a little guinea pig.  I scooped him up and thought, “we’ll try again another time.” 

A day later, he did better.  I think.  I think it means you are doing better when I put him out and he circled and dropped a big-boy sized poo on the frozen ground.  Perhaps our outside time graduated to two and a half minutes.

But then a couple of days later the temperature moved upwards to 32 and the winds were not as bitter.  Valor was standing at the door when I let Madeline out, and he just followed her.  For this, I thank Heavens.  That is how it is supposed to work.  He walked over to a small cache of autumn leaves and proceeded to paw and crunch at them a little bit.  I lifted him up and around to the frozen lawn.  And then the dance began.

Madeline approached him nose to nose with a nudge.  Then she backed up a foot.  He moved forward at her.  She nosed him again and moved back more quickly.  I could hear tango music that wasn’t there.  He charged at her.  She nosed once more and swirled a bit to the side, he took the bait and pushed forward.  Then, in an act that completely defied gravity, she being six times his weight ran in a circle around him and somehow flipped up in the air OVER HIM and swirled back down with great joy.  Who does this?  WHO gets to see stuff like this?  You couldn’t command it as a performance and yet here I was watching the fantastic interchange of instinct – and, I believe, canine love – give the little dog his first lesson in outdoor activities.

Then, as if the music stopped, he realized he was eight feet away from the door and his feet told his little brain:  “oh, we are so cold, very cold.”  And he whimpered.  That is my cue to enter the dance.  I scooped him up into my fleece jacket and into my face and into my embrace … and we went inside.  The curtain came down.  The performance had finished.  We re-entered the room of his squealing siblings.  And I think I got something in my eye.

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12.22.2016cma.