You’d think a man of my advanced years and experience would be spending his time thinking weighty thoughts, or writing an autobiography, or studying philosophy. Instead, I find myself studying a dog’s ears. They betray, in their various positions, an amazing amount of information about their owner’s feelings and intentions. They’re also easy to read from a distance.
Some of you may recall that during the first week of May I adopted Kiki, a lithe little “rescue” terrier puppy from central Texas shipped north with some kennel mates to an adoption agency in Montpelier. With Mother away in a nursing home for the time being, at least, I’d been rattling around in the house reflecting on the morbid effect of a largely solo life. Our old dog had been gone for several years, buried in an arc of tamarack trees like a shrine at the foot of the yard, and replacing her was both impossible and too painful to think about.
Then I happened to shoot a television episode with Tom Ryan, the best-selling author whose life probably had been saved by his companionship with Atticus Finch, a miniature schnauzer and the star of Tom’s book, Following Atticus. Tom has a new dog now; and when I mentioned that I didn’t think I could handle a replacement myself, he said, “You can’t replace a dog. It’s been a part of you for too many years. You get another one, who won’t be anything like the last one, and let it be whoever it wants to be.”
So I let the family know I was looking.
In the middle of a script one evening, I got a Facebook photo from our younger daughter, of an irresistible rough-coated, ginger-colored puppy looking up through a fringe of hair at the camera and obviously in arrested motion. I applied for her that night as soon as I typed “– 30 –” at the end of the script, and a couple of weeks later, after she’d traveled to New England and been vetted, spayed and inoculated against canine diseases, went to pick her up at the adoption center.
I’d been warned by the agency that a terrier might be a bit of a handful for an octogenarian. I could believe that in regard to a border collie, perhaps, or a Siberian husky, but was pretty confident I could handle a less than 15-pound puppy, especially if she was intelligent.
It didn’t occur to me we’d be matching wits, or experiencing a challenging relationship in other ways than physical. But we are. In many respects — especially in the matter of testing the limits of behavior — it’s like raising a child. We love each other, but watch each other very carefully.
Her rough coat is a particular delight. First of all, it doesn’t shed. It also points off in different directions at any time, like the hair of a just-roused sleeper. A seam down the middle of her back, like a watershed, urges it left and right. Her chest is deep and narrow, and her back legs are longer than her front, so she’s pitched forward like a 1970s muscle car.
It’s impossible to look at her face without smiling or melting. This is probably why — positive reinforcement — she’s an incorrigible extrovert, all over everybody we meet on the trail. I can’t help remember, at those meetings, Browning’s Last Duchess, who also flirted with everybody. Not everybody we meet appreciates that. But we’re working on it.
All of us have sometimes seen fellow creatures doing things purely for fun. I’ve watched barn swallows in the middle of violent sunshowers; and ravens, impossibly high up, letting themselves be tossed around by the wind and seeming to love it. Some dogs would rather chase and catch a Frisbee than do anything else. We’re working on that, too.
So far Kiki has only chewed a chunk out of the edge of hers while I wasn’t looking. But as her puppy enthusiasm joins with her growing strength (holding her when she doesn’t want to be held is like trying to secure a salmon), she loves more than anything else to run. I did, too, once; so she’s my surrogate runner.
Where the trail passes beneath a steep cut bank, she bounds to the top with no apparent regard for the law of gravity, peeks over the top for prey, and then leaps back down the same way, like an extreme skier on the Grand Teton. I think of those tiny bones in her legs — no thicker than turkey bones — and wonder how she can survive it. But she loves it so, I wouldn’t curb her for the world.
I mentioned earlier that living with her was a lot like raising a child. It is: You have to encourage growth wherever you discern it, and discourage mistakes that can injure or set her back. I have to remember that time passes about seven times faster for her than for a child; so at the moment she’s about five or six in human years and beginning to push the limits.
Somebody brought her home the other day — very scary; she was in the road — so new restrictions apply.
She suffers from a problem best described in an acronym like ADHD or PTSD. It’s EPIC — Extremely Poor Impulse Control. It’s a tricky job for me to be loving, so that she returns the affection; and also to be the schoolmaster, sparing the rod and rewarding good behavior with treats, but perfecting the art of the furrowed brow and intonation of negative reinforcement.
Which is why I’m working on interpreting her ears. Our old dog, a herder, was a snap to read: ears up or down.
Kiki has floppy terrier ears, one straight up and the other, folded over about a third of the way up, at least one often inside out. That’s the default mode: generally happy, or when I’m getting her meal ready. Both ears straight up means great interest or enthusiasm, or, coupled with a fierce growl, expresses comic outrage at intruders real or imagined.
When I frown or holler, “GET out of that mud hole!” (she loves mud) the ears go down briefly, flat against her head. Her tail, normally waving in a perfect arc, drops 90 degrees and develops two strange joints. So I know she’s heard me, is penitent, and is now waiting for me to look away for a few seconds.
Willem Lange’s column appears here every Wednesday. He can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
