Montpelier
There’s a pretty good-sized steel cage sitting on the floor in the front hall between the two coat closets. I’ve draped a bath towel over it to create the illusion inside of a cave, a safe place. A little sandy-haired terrier lives in there, expressing, variously, contentment, unhappiness or eager anticipation — no half-measures of any of them. Whenever, at moments like this one, I’m busy at my desk or in the kitchen, or doing crosswords in the living room, I silently bless the woman in Texas who trained Kiki to a crate.
Occasionally, as I pass the crate — always to wakeful, expectant eyes peering at me — I pause and deliver the mantra with which we used, decades ago, to attempt to inspire “adjudicated youth” who came to our Outward Bound courses: “Freedom is the right to discipline yourself to avoid being disciplined by others.” Then I pass on about my business, satisfied that I have struck a blow for civilization and order. Fat chance!
We’ve been living together, Kiki and I, for over four weeks now, and we’re still scoping each other out. It’s a two-way street. Reminds me of the story about the biologist who put a monkey into a closed room with a bunch of bananas hanging high and a wooden box in the corner. Peering through the keyhole to see if the monkey had figured it out yet, he saw instead a brown eye looking back at him through the keyhole.
Our last dog, a slightly timid and very bright Sheltie mix whose only ambitions were to be a member of our pack and to please us in any way she could, left me almost utterly unprepared for this energetic, curious and fast-moving blur with little apparent desire to do as I want her to. The woman at the adoption agency warned me, but like Kiki, I didn’t listen very well, either.
Although, at about seven months, she has almost no reliable impulse control, I find it helps to remember how much of it I had as a kid. I discovered very early in our relationship that she can’t be out of my sight inside the house for more than five seconds. Literally everything is attractive to her sharp little teeth — squeaky toys, fleece blankets, pillows, the ottoman, the wicker basket where I keep spent newspapers — and she can scatter the shredded results everywhere.
As a result, the house resembles a maximum-security prison, with the rooms closed off to each other. She was accustomed to being a bed snuggler as an infant, and still is; but when I’m asleep, she’s free to pillage and plunder. For some reason, she’s fixed on one of the neoprene wading shoes in my closet, and drags it out, with one eye on me to see if I’ve changed my mind. I haven’t, and close the closet door. Next I saw her eyeing the attractive tail of toilet paper hanging down from the roll; bathroom door closed.
With temptation thus at a minimum, she usually gets through a six-hour night without any disturbance. About 5 in the morning — this may change as the nights lengthen in the fall — one of us, I can’t tell who, begins moving, and a moment later I get a faceful of whiskers. At first, I dreaded this moment: Gotta get up and let her out. But after only two days on the leash outside, I dared try her without it. What a sweetheart! She comes right back to the door and sits, waiting to be let back in, before I even splash my face. That’s worth a lot.
The park is where she really shines. Again, after two uncomfortable days on a leash — her first caregiver was right on when she wrote that “she sorta walks on a leash” — I put her on probation and let her go. My pace is roughly two miles an hour, and hers at least 20, so she covers 10 times as much ground as I do. Watching her run is a tremendous pleasure: long, powerful hind legs, like a muscle car, and pure joy of her speed, her ears flapping as she flies; and then back past me like a meteor just to check in. She’s learned to walk or pass on my left — the cane in my right hand helped with that — and to check every 10 seconds or so to see if I’m where she expects me to be, and headed in the right direction. Now and then she takes the wrong fork in a trail, but I know that within half a minute I’ll hear her pounding little feet coming up behind me and zooming past. On a leash, she hated crossing water, had practically to be dragged; off it, she pounces in with all four feet as if she were chasing minnows, and laps up the cold brook water.
She’s really sharp. She watches my moves and knows where I keep everything. We’re developing little dance routines around regular rituals like meals. I read somewhere that the dominant dog eats first. I’m not sure that’s me, but if I eat first every time, she may come to think so. So I do, and then let her out of her cage. She dances on her hind feet as I go through the preparation — she’s slowly learning not to claw at my trousers — and ends with an ecstatic little entrechat just as the bowls hit the floor in their alcove beside the kitchen door. I heat a cup of coffee while she eats, and then sit on the back porch to watch her patrol the perimeter out back. After a few minutes, some of them out of sight, she seems suddenly to think that going indoors might be a great idea, and comes thundering up the ramp to be let in, given a treat, and sadly, put back into her cage.
Just before bedtime we take one last trip into the back yard with a flashlight; I want to be sure she’ll make it till dawn. But she uses the light to hunt beetles, which she pounces on like a fox.
I’m delighted that she’s getting me back on the trail again after a few months’ break, but she wouldn’t get it if I told her. So I make a point of saying, as we settle down, “Kiki, you’re really sweet, and you make me very happy. Good night.” She crunches her squeaky hedgehog.
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
