December 31, 2012

• The Perfect Dog

  When the Unwee was a short, grumpy, persistently bald being she spoke a language of her own, UnWeeity. UnWeeity was utterly indecipherable to adults, but, being a mere 3.5 years her senior, I lived on a level much closer to hers and was, therefore, exposed more directly to her mutterings.

  The UnWee had a pink blanket that went everywhere she went. I should know what sort of material from which this blanket was made, but all I really know is that it was a baby blanket, it was pink, and it was fuzzy. When the fuzz wore off, as the fuzz on constant companions is apt to do, it was clearly woven. And into the pattern on the blanket, which faded until it was nearly unrecognizable over the course of its lifespan, were darker threads which composed images of elephants. The name if the blanket exists only in UnWeeity, which, sadly, none of us remember. It was one of those cute baby-talk words which leaked out of my memory one day when I was cramming too much information about something else onto my internal hard-drive. All I can remember now is that it was her word for elephant.

  Wherever we went she carried it in one arm, often firm affixed in the hand with the suckable thumb, and in the crook of her other elbow she carried her favorite stuffed bear. Like the blanket, the bear gradually lost most of his fluff, but more significantly--because he was always carried in the crook of her arm--the stuffing in his midsection migrated to the farther realms until his butt was as hard as a rock and his head was firmly, firmly stuffed, but he automatically folded in half where his structural integrity had migrated away. The bear had a plastic face, a hard butt, and some sort of internal noise mechanism that growled whenever we bumped him.

  In UnWeeity, the word for 'bump' was 'boop'.

  So the bear's name was Boopsie Growler.

  Like the Velveteen Rabbit and all other toys, Boopsie Growler was gradually abandoned and his curmudgeonly soul was set free to wander in the ether until gradually it came to pass that somewhere in Indiana, not all that far from Indianapolis, a puppy of dubious background was born. Much of this puppy's outlook on life was formed by a small group of loving children, toddlers unquestionably, who pulled his ears, crawled over his body and probably took naps crammed up tight against his belly: but they lost him, and then he was lost altogether and he wandered and wandered, looking for his children, until he was taken in by a family that loved him, but could not keep him in the apartment where he lived and so they gave him to an animal rescue group who advertised his likeness on Pet Finders.

  As it happened, Nancy and I had recently become dogless after Murphy moved on with her woman, and no one greeted us in the hall when we came home. It's a small thing, but one you notice, once it's gone. And so we trolled the Internet, looking for The Perfect Dog.  

  Nancy wanted a Golden Retriever.

  I wanted a dog small enough that I could easily handle it.

  So we were searching far and wide for a thirty pound Golden Retriever.

  They are harder to find than you might think.

  But we found an ad on Pet Finders for a thirty pound dog allegedly a mix perhaps of yellow lap and Golden Retriever, and since this wonderdog was only about a four hour drive from our house, we filed our application and set up and appointment to go see him.

  He immediately ran up to me and emptied the entire contents of his bladder on my right knee.

  He was a little bigger than advertised, but not unreasonably so. (He weighs 50 pounds, now.) He looks a lot like a very small Gold Retriever which, two or three months ago, had been inexplicably shaved.

  We paid his adoption fee and  brought him home.

  We took him to obedience class, which the three of us together flunked.

  We suffered the joys of a 2.5 year old lab mix contained inside a house with a small back yard.

  And then we discovered the dog park.

  The first time I took him he disappeared in three acres and ran like the wind for 45 minutes. He was so tired when I brought him home that he slept the entire ride home, we took him outside and he slept in the grass between us, and when one of us would call him to be petted, he would thrash his tail, wave his feet, whine and fall asleep again.

  So I took him back to the park. He met other dogs. He ran with other dogs. He played with other dogs.

  And every time another dog bumped him, he growled.

  Still does.

  So every time I take him to the park, I wander down to where the other dog-owning people are gathered, and I wait until the dogs start running and I heard that familiar growl, and I say, loudly enough for all to hear, "When I was a kid, my sister had a stuffed bear that growled every time we bumped it--he's just an old Boopsie Growler."

  I half-expect a pink blanket with gray elephants walking across it to show up on my doorstep.   

  • 10:49 am
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