Six Years of Puppy!
“You are bound by something finer and stronger than blood. There is trust and love.”
— from ‘Dashenka or, The Life of a Puppy’, Karel Čapek
I still remember what it was like to be led into SPCA’s puppy area exactly six years ago to this day, when my husband and I decided to adopt a puppy from the shelter. It was spacious, with a puppy in each of the five large newspaper-lined cages arranged along the walls. They were all mongrel street puppies, all littermates, all named after something to do with golf as they had been found with their mother on a golf course in Kuala Lumpur. Two puppies were already spoken for. This was the height of the pandemic, after all.
In what felt like the opening scenes of all the pet simulator games of my childhood, I considered the three remaining puppies: two brown, one black. The only male, Wood, was already very large for his age, and would probably grow too large for someone of my size to handle safely. (You must consider such practicalities when adding a dog to your household, especially if it’s your first.) I was right; the kennel manager told me their father was likely a Labrador, something that would become apparent from their webbed paws, soft mouths, and thick neck scruff. The runt, Michelle, met my eyes with a bright, determined intensity, but I was wary of her demanding bark and the already destroyed bars of her cage, and worried about how I, who had never raised a puppy before, might keep her and the house safe.
The last puppy, black with a white patch on her chest and the only one with large upright ears, didn’t make a sound or any sort of appeal to me, but she flopped over onto her belly and wriggled close to me when I touched her. Her name was Freeway, a possible misspelling of fairway. I remember being stupidly enthralled by the incredible velvet softness of her muzzle, and at the same time calculating that her short, single coat and upright ears would make for easy maintenance. (Again, the practical considerations of dog ownership.) She was quiet, responsive, and seemingly affectionate, and so I decided she would be our Puppy.
Puppy then, on her first day home.
In hindsight, we should have known that her floppiness was really a hallmark of submissive behaviour, the first hints of the fearfulness and wariness that mark her personality to this day. Ironically, given my reservations about the other puppies, Puppy’s anxious disposition presented challenges that were likely more difficult to deal with than those of her siblings. She was more than three months old when we got her, and had spent nearly a month in the shelter. There was already a scar on her left front paw, the remnant from a wound bad enough that the hair never grew back over it. Who knows what she had lived through on the street?
But for all the difficulties—the many nights of shivering at fireworks, trying to hide under the bed from storms, her resistance to being picked up for weight checks and showers, her (still) distrust of being loaded into a car and being taken to daycare or the vet—and my own stumbling mistakes as a first-time dog owner, she has grown into a gracious and sophisticated companion.
Puppy now.
Like any dog, Puppy is a wonderful mix of charm, idiosyncrasies, and contradictions. She’s extremely intelligent, of course. She is as food-motivated, trainable, and eager to please as a Labrador, but the traumatic start to her life has given her a suspicion of new experiences and fear triggers like loud noises and howling storms. At the same time, her semi-feral street dog blood makes her resourceful and adaptable when she needs to be. (Her first instinct when confronted with any difficulty no matter how trivial is to turn to me for help.) She is clingy but with a healthy respect for personal space; she is a true shadow of a dog who loves to be a part of any business and is happiest when the family is together, yet she is utterly aloof, almost avoidant, with other humans. She wants to shield me from any harm, except those inflicted by her own gregarious paws during playtime.
Most impressive of all is how she has developed her own ways to cope with her fears. To avoid being picked up for baths, she began to take herself into the shower when she correctly sensed it was shower time— Sunday afternoons, when we get back from lunch. By herself, she found that white noise masked the sounds of thunder and fireworks, and settled herself to sleep on the bed closest to the standing fan. (We now have a 10-hour brown noise video that we play on YouTube whenever storms start, and her only request is that I sit on the bed with her.) It has been wonderful to watch that timid little shelter puppy grow into a radiant, gleaming adult dog with clear likes and dislikes, a strong love for routine, and a penchant for fine, soft things.
❦
Owning a dog is a childhood dream come true, but even those wishful dreams couldn’t have prepared me for what it really is like— a dog that is entirely yours, one that you raised from puppyhood. The wealth of dog media doesn’t really capture it.
It feels like something lies between my heart and hers, connecting us without words or explanation. I know her and she knows me. Whether this is the result of 50,000 years of deliberate natural selection and evolution, or the much smaller timescale of our own six years together; her blood, or the way I raised her, I’ll never know. But it’s there, and I could never have predicted it.
Neither could I have predicted all the ways in which Puppy would change my life as we each grew into living with each other.
So, in honour of her six years with us, here is a small list of some of the ways Puppy helps me:
She makes me get out of bed in the morning
She gives me a routine to stick to, from waking up and going to bed, regular meal times (very strict about this!), taking breaks for walks
Her routine and needs nudge me out of inertia and forces the transition from one task to another
Touching her is the most calming thing
She saves so much mental energy that would otherwise be spent waiting and listening out for food and other deliveries because she lets me know when they arrive
She tells me if anything is amiss in the house: a pot left boiling, water left running, a leak in the toilet, groceries left out, anything out of place, an intruding bird/rat/squirrel pest, etc
The actions I take to care for her are also good for me, things I may never have done if I wasn’t doing them for her — and I have somehow managed to keep doing them even on the hardest days of my life
Our encounters with other neighbours and dog owners in the neighbourhood during walks are a constant source of social contact, and is sometimes all it takes to set the day off on the right foot
I have to try to regulate my emotions around her because she is so affected by how I feel
Not a day has passed in her presence without her making me laugh
Happy anniversary, Puppy! You will always be a defining jewel of my life.