Power of the Dog

 "Happiness is a warm puppy." -- Charles M. Schultz

 

Last December we got a puppy. 

 

And apologies to all Snoopy fans, Charles M. Schultz was completely wrong. Happiness is not a warm puppy. Happiness is a sleeping puppy, and only a sleeping puppy. Because an awake puppy, at any temperature, is a tornado, a cyclone, and a hurricane … a tor-clone-cane!

 

She’s a labradoodle named Maggie. She looks like a black wookie and has a face that reminds me of Wilford Brimley. She has more hair than sheep have wool. We don’t get her groomed, we get her sheered. Her fur is as soft as Egyptian cotton and her greetings are like being attacked by a 50-pound velvet couch wrapped in a cashmere sweater.
 

Wilford Brimley

 And I love her.

 

But it was touch and go there for a while. On many occasions I was ready to put her up for adoption on usedpuppies.com. I’ve never had to raise anything, human or animal. So, I was unprepared for the furry fury that was unleashed upon our once tranquil home. Suddenly life was upended, routines were changed. The world revolved around puppy containment. We have a play pen in our den and a crate in the bedroom. There’s a portable fence stretching across the back patio. Each interior door was always closed. Every shoe was secured in out-of-reach spots. She was continually underfoot, or jumping on me, or gnawing on my fingers, hands, and arms.

 

I had so much to learn about puppies. Lesson 1 was about teeth. Puppies are like walking piranhas. Maggie’s mouth was filled with 28 Ginsu knives. Playing with her required more body armor than Barry Bonds at the plate. But then, thankfully, about six months in, her teeth started dropping like a second grader’s. Next, I had no idea how quickly she would grow. She went from 12 to 50 pounds faster than the price of gas hit six bucks a gallon. She gained two pounds every week. One day she was strolling under an end table, the next she’d bonk it with her head. 

 

Then there was the constant training. I didn’t know when I married her, but Beautiful Karla was hiding an inner Caesar Millan. She has piles of puppy patience. She reads books, watches videos, and scours websites. She was determined to have the most well-behaved dog in the west. Maggie’s not perfect, but had I been the lead trainer, she’d forever be in detention. 

 

And then suddenly, after months of ripped clothing, punctured skin, and $200 vet visits, a miracle occurred. 

 

We got a dog.

 

Technically, she’s still a puppy, but she’s now a dog by all measures. Which means her number of resting hours greatly surpasses her tor-clone-cane hours. Household serenity has been restored.

 

It’s fascinating to watch her learn or discover something new. We have a sliding glass door that we rarely use. The first time I opened it threw her for a loop. You could almost read her mind. “Whoa, you just moved that giant clear wall.” And then she wouldn’t walk through it. I had to demonstrate that it was possible before she’d cross over that magic threshold. 

 

True to her species, Maggie learns through her nose. She has a supersonic sniffer. On walks, she takes after the tortoise, not the hare because she must sniff everything. Even if she sniffed that very same flower (lawn, tree, pole, blade of grass, rock, woodchip) yesterday, she’ll have to smell it again. 

 

It’s no secret that dogs have extremely acute smelling skills. It’s somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger than humans. This difference is best explained by using analogies that compare smelling to seeing or tasting. What a person could see clearly a third of a mile away, a dog could see it at 3,000 miles away. Furthermore, in her book Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition researcher at Barnard College, writes that “while we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in a million gallons of water, or two Olympic-sized pools worth.”

 

When her nose is in action, she reminds me of school children learning to read or memorize their math facts. Maggie is doing the same. She is chronicling, categorizing, and cataloging into memory her surroundings, environment, and world. And she’s content to take as long as she wants to learn as much as she can.

She’s still got a lot to learn, starting with discovering her purpose. My favorite canine movie is, “A Dog’s Purpose”. The premise is that every dog has a specific purpose here on Earth and a dog may go through numerous lives before realizing it. In the movie and the book by W. Bruce Cameron on which it’s based, one such dog lives four different lives. He can remember events, sights, smells, locations, and people from each previous life. Told from the dog’s perspective, both the book and the movie humorously use the lessons that the dog learns to weave a wonderful story that comes full circle in a thoughtful, believable manner.

It makes me wonder about Maggie. What life number is she on? Will she remember me in her next life? How can I help her discover her purpose? And if she learns her purpose while under our care, will she get to stay with us forever? 

Right now, as I type this out, the house is empty and she’s sleeping at my feet. 

Here nose is at rest. She’s warm and is no longer a puppy.

 

I couldn’t be more thrilled. 

 

Maggie in December.

Maggie in May