More Than We Can Chew

They all headed out and left me to the quiet apartment, on a mission that might take several hours. This gift of time to myself, on a weekend morning is something to cherish. Not that I need to make such a distinction between weekday and weekend, except the buzz – outside in the world and inside on-line – has a different meter on a Saturday or Sunday than during the week. I closed the door behind them, wishing them well, and then, time_on_my_armthe choice: do I go to the computer and write (or fuss about on-line)? Do I climb back into bed with a good book? Do I attend to one of those projects not important enough to displace work during the week, but too hard to complete with my family underfoot?

I’m one of those people who likes to make things neat before I sit down to work. Not 90-degree order, but a modest tidiness in my immediate environment. Open drawers and cupboards annoy me. I don’t like to leave dirty dishes in the sink. I am capable of walking by the couch without adjusting the throw pillows, but if they’re askew, why not fix them? I like a bit of order before I create. Today I knew it was essential to do a bit of household organizing, picking up around the apartment. When De-facto and the girls returned, they wouldn’t be alone.

I did a sweep of the apartment. Shoes left in the hall were tucked away on shelves and in closets. School bags and leather purses perched on benches, tables and desks. Any stray little plastic toys, Pet Shop creatures or Fisher Price people – yes, they still occasionally play with these – were stowed out of sight. Once I thought I’d made a thorough survey of the apartment, I sat down to use the rest of the time for more creative pursuits. But I was ready. Or as ready as possible.

I heard the family out in the street. Buddy-roo has a distinctively sharp and opinionated voice, and with my balcony doors open – Indian Summer luxury in Barcelona – I could hear her loud and clear. They’d gone out without keys, requiring use of the interphone. The sound of the buzzer instantly followed by the fervent barking of a dog. And so it begins.

~ ~ ~

The day before, we’d hiked up to the dog pound at the base of Tibidabo mountain on the outskirts of the city. De-facto and Buddy-roo had been up there several times during the last month, meeting the animals and talking with the volunteers and even helping to walk some of the dogs to get a feelchoose me for their temperament. After each visit they’d return with tales of barking hounds and puppy-dog eyes. Buddy-roo was remarkably patient about the process, seeming not to mind that after each trip they came home empty handed. Maybe it was too hard for her to choose from among all the dogs vying to be selected by her.

Because it was her choice. She’s the one who’s been yapping at us for years about getting a dog, and she succeeded at the get-a-dog-challenge, so we knew sometime around her birthday (coming up in two weeks) we’d be adding a pet to our family. A large portion of the responsibility of caring for this dog will fall on her, but it still has to be a team effort. Given how much of the day she’s at school, that means De-facto and I will need to do some dog walking. Will I regret this? The parental leash around our necks has eased considerably in the last year: the girls can get to and from school on their own, they’re okay to be home alone for a few hours, we can go out to dinner without having to bring in a babysitter. Life was just getting easier, and here we go complicating it with the addition of a family pet. It’s a lot of work and we lead busy lives. Have we bitten off more than we can chew?

The fact that I was accompanying them to the pound meant that a decision was imminent. A few of the dogs Buddy-roo had her eye on had already been adopted by other families. Or else they had even the tiniest bit of Rottweiler in them, requiring extra paperwork and registration with the city hall, a step of administration we hoped to avoid. We strolled along the long row of cages, cueing a chorus of barking and bickering with every set of dogs we passed, peering in each cage with the hope of discovering the one who’d be our dog. We narrowed it down to the three favorites who were summoneddoggies_waiting for us and put on leashes. We’d get to walk them, with a trained volunteer, all at once. As we passed the main office, the vet came out and explained we were welcome to walk the three dogs, but two of them were already reserved. It was by that process of elimination that Buddy-roo made her choice. The mid-sized rusty-colored mostly cocker spaniel was ours, if we wanted him. We could reserve him and take 48-hours to decide for sure.

The focus of the discussion around the dinner table that night: what would we name our new dog? It didn’t surprise me that De-facto was suggesting the same names he floated back when we choosing names for our children. It’s a good thing we ended up with two daughters because we could never agree on even one boy’s name. He wanted Linus, a name I like well enough but it would have been butchered in France. I’d counter with a clever but ridiculous name, Buster. We’d volley back and forth with our favorite names, always ending at an impasse. But now, both Linus and Buster were in the running again, though both seemed more workable as canine options. Jordi, the ubiquitous Catalan name, also made the short list, as did Winston, a name the girls know of because of a song by a band called Bound Stems that gets a lot of play on our long car trips. Nothing was decided, except to wait and see how it felt when we had him on our own leash – then we’d know the right name.

~ ~ ~

The dog charged into the apartment, putting his nose to the floor and and sniffing along the baseboards to every corner and cranny, his long toenails percussive on our wooden floor.

“They said he’ll want to smell everything, at first, to get oriented,” said Buddy-roo, giggling as the dog darted wildly around the apartment. “Good boy, Winston!”

She had, apparently, decided on his name.

I knew he’d want to sniff around and scope out the territory. That’s why I’d straightened things up earlier, so he could do his scent-tour without the distraction of any stray items to chew on. The dog is 3-years old, which means we shouldn’t have a lot of puppy issues, but I also know that dogs like to chew things, usually the precious things you don’t want them to chew. And that when you take on a rescued dog, you don’t always know what you’re getting, in terms of training or behavior. I eyed the two fauteuils thatcuddling_winston had been my mother’s and my grandmother’s before her, and wondered what was to become of them with our new resident. Plus Winston was stinky, after living in a cage with three other dogs. We let him do his sniff around, and then we put him in the bathtub so we could stand to smell him.

After his bath, he was still a bit frantic, understandably. A new home, new smells, new people, a tub of hot water and soap – it’s a lot of novelty to take in after a month in a cage. Winston’s nose kept pulling him around the apartment, he had to check out every room, again. Despite my preparations, I hadn’t noticed a small pair of panties that had slipped under the bed, far enough to be out of my view, but just in the line of sight of a medium-sized, curious dog. And not just any pair of panties, a delicate pair with lace and ribbons and elegant stitching, the kind that costs no small amount of cash.

“Winston!” Buddy-roo let out a peel of laughter when she saw him trotting around with a strip of orange silk ribbon hanging out of his mouth. How fitting that the first chewing casualty from our new dog would be my favorite pair of underwear.

“Winston!” De-facto scolded, as we huddled around the dog. His teeth were clamped together, there was no pulling those panties out. He wouldn’t open his mouth, and I watched his drool drip from the dainty little bow held tight between his gums. We tried a number of strategies to get him to open his jaw, to no avail. We certainly didn’t want to reward him for this behavior, but it seemed the only way to get him to open his mouth was to offer him some food. The vet had given us a few doggie treats for the way home. Buddy-roo held one up, in front of the dog, and the moment he opened his mouth De-facto grabbed his jaw open and pulled out the panties, without getting bitten himself, and more remarkably, without tearing the lace or silk. No surprise that De-facto is expert at getting his hands on my panties.

~ ~ ~

The dog has been in our home for a week now, and I can report that he is, in the broad sense, a good and easy dog. He’s affectionate (and especially good at receiving affection). He’s calm, most of the time. We still have to manage his excitement around comings and goings, but we’ve made some progress since his arrival. He does have a fierce bark, but at least he only barks on two occasions: when it’s time to go out for a walk, or when the buzzer or the doorbell rings. We have some training to do on this front, but I have to say I appreciate his instinct.

Despite the underwear incident, it turns out he’s not much of a chewer. Our shoes remain untouched wherever we take them off. De-facto and the girls are always leaving their clothes on the floor, but Winston seems uninterested in chewing on them. He pays no attention to the family heirloom armchairs, and doesn’t jump on the table to try for our food. His thing is paper. So we’ve had to monitor the bathroom bins and toilet paper rolls, or else we find a trail of used cotton rounds and paper squares throughout the house. We are in the process of teaching him to stay out of the bathrooms and the kitchen, and to walk with us rather than to pull us along like a sled-dog. On that front, we probably need as much training as he does. So once we get our Internet connected – we are still waiting for the technician, who’s bound to cause some barking – we’ll be watching a full compliment of the Dog Whisperer videos, I’m sure.
winston_in_my_office
Okay, there’s been an occasional fracas: De-facto got bit by Winston and another dog when their sniffing turned to growling and then to fighting. We’re all getting used to each other and ritualizing our routines. Overall, Winston’s assimilation into the family has been relatively easy. He’s happy to walk up the mountain with us or go for a run, but equally content to laze around on the couch while the girls toil at their homework and we slog away at our computers. I hope he’s happy here. I hope he grows to feel like part of our family. He’s growing on me, a little more each day. As I write this, Winston is curled up beside my desk, taking an afternoon nap. I can see some rapid eye movement behind his eyelids, and his legs kick occasionally in his sleep. Maybe it’s a doggie-dream of running wild in a field, heading towards a bottomless bowl of kibbles, unencumbered by the leash and our commands to heel or sit at the crosswalk. Or maybe he’s kicking his way towards through a sea of soft, silk lingerie, sniffing around for the perfect pair of fancy lace panties, without anybody there to chew him out for it.