D is for Dogs—Love, Loss, and All the Pawprints Between

 

Dogs, Dad, Don or dyslexia. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. What should I write about for the letter D in the April A to Z Blog Challenge? Since my theme this month is “The humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world,” I could cheat and pick all four—Dad for the humans (the best person I’ve ever known), Don for habits (he chain‑smoked three packs a day and I’ve got stories), dogs for the joys, and dyslexia for the heartaches that followed me far beyond school. But if I start cheating this early, by the time I get to K the Challenge Police might kick me off the spreadsheet that tracks how often we comment on other bloggers. As I understand it, that’s half the point of this yearly event—discovering new blogging voices. So welcome if you’re new here, and if you’re a long‑time reader, thank you for sticking around.

I’m choosing Dogs for my D topic because most of you don’t know that back when blogging was at its height, I kept a blog in a large dog‑blog community—large as in roughly 700 dog lovers. Most of us wrote in our dog’s voice. I loved it. My dogs could say things I couldn’t, or add a humorous twist to the antics all dog parents recognize.

Here’s something Levi “wrote” in The Levi and Cooper Chronicles when he was a puppy: “Wednesday me found Moomie’s boobie hammock hanging in the bathroom. Levi is smart. Me figured out how to get it off the hook and mes turned it into pull‑toy for my stuffie, Mr. Goose. He was having so much fun riding through the living room and Daady was having fun watching us until Moomie came along. End of fun. End of Daddy, Mr. Goose and Levi being happy.”

Six years later, Levi had learned proper pronouns but not how to soften a blow: “Something happened I want to share with the world because it hurts so much. My daady died! My human daady died and I’m so worried because he went to the Rainbow Bridge without his wheelchair. He needs that chair and Moomie just took it to a place called Goodwill. If they really have good will they’d bring it back and bawl my moomie out for leaving it there.”

In this blog alone I’ve written seven posts dedicated to the dogs in my life, and there are countless others where they wander in and out of the narrative. They’ve been shaping me since the beginning—from Blackie, the puppy who shared my playpen and grew into my babysitter and protector, to Levi, my last dog, who died just before I moved into Independent Living nearly five years ago. They’ve been confidants, companions and stand‑ins for the babies I never had. They’ve made me laugh, cry, brag and shamelessly use them for blog fodder. I worried over them, cleaned up after them, and I was, admittedly, a helicopter pet parent.

Don, my husband, spoiled them in the classic good‑cop way, while I was the bad cop in charge of training them to be good citizens and housemates. I loved him all the more for the way he treated my poodles. Before we were married, I gave him a document proclaiming him to be 49¾% owner of Cooper, and you’d have thought I’d handed him the keys to a mansion. On his birthdays and Father’s Days, “Cooper” would tape a quarter inside a greeting card and deliver the cards mouth to hand. When I was cleaning out my husband’s stuff during a move I discovered that he’d kept all those cards and quarters. They were the same quarters Don had dropped into Cooper’s piggy bank every time I let him take the dog along while he plowed snow. They were crazy about each other.

John Steinbeck once wrote, “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” Most dog parents know that look. They judge us, and sometimes we come up short. But we also know their look of pure devotion, and the one they use when they’re trying to sweet‑talk us into shelling out a treat.

I miss having that co‑dependent relationship in my life. Truth be told, I probably needed my dogs more than they ever needed me.

And that’s my wrap for the letter D. ©

Photo at the top: Levi, the only Schnauzer I ever had. The rest of the dogs in my adult life were poodles (3). In childhood we had collie and two Belgium Shepherds and one dog of questionable breeding.