Dog Day Morning
It’s only 9:30am and I’m already worn out. Youngest son Thomas arrived last night at midnight with Candice, our retired schoolteacher friend, and Hank, his “Dorky” Dachshund/Yorkie mix one-year-old pup with the Yoda ears. After five hours in the car the order of the evening was; 1. Bathroom (Candice rest stop), , 2. Let Hank run around, 3. Bathroom (Abe the Havanese, peeing on the dining room rug in anxiety of Hank’s arrival), 4. Hugs, 5.Bathroom (this time Hank pooping on the dining room rug where Abe peed), 6. Trying to watch the end of the Chris Pratt’s new movie The Tomorrow War (too prophetic for words once Betty wakes up and Roger arrives in the morning with Pudding, the mini-dachshund), and finally off to bed with barks and yelps coming from every corner of the house.
We have been apprehensive about the interaction of the four dogs that now inhabit the family. An old lady, an old man, a thirty-something young woman and a rambunctious and friskier boy. In a perfect world like you might find in a doggy day care, you would just let the four of them sort out their own pecking order and way of coping with one another, but three of the four are new enough to their owners that they feel inclined to characterize their ways as worthy of attentiveness and acceptance. This one lived on the streets and was very protective of her situation. That one was a breeder who was not exposed to other dogs or people for their entire life. And of course, there’s the ever-present “he’s still a puppy” rationalization that lasts longer than any natural puppy instincts.
These four dogs are obviously too pampered in their own ways. This may have been impacted by COVID and the increased pet/owner co-location situation, but some is just a function of the owner psyche as it relates to pets. My oldest son, Roger, has never been a dog lover. One might go so far as to suggest that he was significantly troubled by dogs. His wife, Valene comes from a family where her mother runs a doggy day care center and therefore has dogs very much at the center of her life. Valene has harbored that love of dogs and has desperately wanted a dog for some time. Roger has conceded the issue and they are now the proud owners of a four-year-old mini-dachshund. Due to family work circumstances, Roger is with little Pudding as much or more than Valene and has become her primary protector. He holds her like a baby on his shoulder and is constantly making excuses as to why she likes this, dislikes that, prefers this and shouldn’t be exposed to that. Whether that was her inclination or just now a learned behavior, is hard to determine. If she is not being held she wants to be held. Maybe this is due to all the other dog commotion at floor level or maybe she is just a bit pampered. I do not mean to single out Pudding, since each of these dogs shows some version of being pampered by their owners. Add to that the added attention these four pups are getting from all the sixteen people gathered who want to like each others’ dogs and therefore are treating them with extra kindness.
We have now gone through the initial meet and greet on a multi-lateral basis and it has been determined that Pudding is docile, Hank is crazy dog that will eat sticks and pebbles if so inclined and run and jump randomly to show he can, Abe is an expert grifter who knows how to beg for food from various people convincingly and repeatedly. He seems a bit nervous about Hank’s energy, but having been a young fireball himself in days gone by, he has to learn that payback is a bitch. And then there is Betty, Betty, Betty. Betty isn’t having any of it. She has done her time in group shelters and wants no part of the dog mele. She is most happy with her calm and quiet lifestyle that affords her eighteen or so hours of intermittent sleep. The idea of playing or even sniffing butts holds absolutely no interest to her. She has a great big “Leave me alone!” sign around her neck. It’s funny, Roger is wearing his “Don’t Hassle Me I’m Local” t-shirt (a shirt worn by Bill Murray in What About Bob?) when it would be the perfect shirt for Betty.
The theme of the weekend has been about seeing and being with family and close friends, but the undercurrent has been about managing the four dogs so that they don’t kill one another. Betty is the most aggressive, but probably the most physically vulnerable based on her age and her combination of slow motion and fragile physique. Hank looks invulnerable and able to take a licken’ and keep on thicken’ in the best of Timex tradition. Pudding is sweet and demure and yet being as low to the ground as her stubby-legged breeding has made her, she looks like she could duck any punch and rush behind someone’s feet for protection. Abe may be the most at risk because like many small male dogs, he may not know what he can and cannot handle until it is too late. I watched a You-tube video yesterday of a pack of dogs duking it out with a medium-sized caiman (small alligator). It was the smallest dog that was mixing it up with the reptile the most…and not having the sense to not come back for more after each tussle. That strikes me as Abe’s nature.
Dogs as mammals are not so different from human beings. I’m not sure I’ve ever been a buyer of the notion that dogs and their owners look like one another over time, but I do feel that dogs are not so different from people in that they have distinct personalities that are generally a function of some combination of their inbred nature and the life they have lived. Who among us is any different than that? I see it in my own children. One is a worry wart, one is a risk taker and the other is gentle soul that likes to chill. One is always early, one is always late and one doesn’t understand why it matters one way or another. Children all grow up differently and while some parents are inclined to suggest that they all come out of the womb the way they are, the truth is that, like dogs, their personalities are a combined function of nature and nurture. Even if all three kids had been sired by the same parents (not the case with my three children where two were with my first wife and one with my second wife), they each grew up with significantly different experiences since the households were different by virtue of circumstances or even the passage of time. My sisters and I are a mere eighteen months apart, so three of us spanning three years and I can honestly say that we each have a slightly different temporal experience of our youth. That says to me that it is such a complex equation for people or dogs that we probably shouldn’t try so hard to analyze one another and just move towards acceptance instead.
This is now my second dog day morning and I have already evolved to accepting that the gate between kitchen and dining room and the awareness of who is leashed or roaming free is just something we have to do this weekend.