Dog people

I’ve never wanted a dog.

Both my and my husband’s families of origin are devoted to them, which is an other-side-of-the-coin way of calling out their aversion to cats. Mittens is mercurial, see, while Hank is honorable. In the customer service world, cats are the Department of Motor Vehicles, dogs are Trader Joe’s.

So, it’s a little surprising that I’ve successfully avoided ever having a committed relationship with man’s best friend. There have been five felines across 30 years and not a single pooch. I don’t dislike them. I’ve just never been in the right frame of mind.

First off, I’m sleep deprived and have been since my children were born more than a quarter century ago. It’s not their fault. I didn’t nap when they napped. I took the gods of nod for granted, they put a pox on my pillow, and it was all down the toilet from there.  Dogs require regular excursions to the bathroom, and I hear mornings are a popular time. You’re out there picking up what they’re putting down, rain or shine. Cats, on the other hand, are self-service. They go while I stay in bed. It’s not personal, it’s practical.

Also, I don’t have enough spine for a dog. When the ball needs winging, or the stuffed cow needs tugging for the zillionth time, I can’t say no. It’s those damn eyes. All that slobbery honorability at my feet just slays me. I should have been Catholic; I’m a sucker for a guilty conscience.

Which brings me to Basil.

It’s complicated, and temporary, but I’ll be doggoned if this fellow hasn’t scooched himself right into the unacknowledged, pup-shaped part of my heart with little more than his don’t-worry-be-happy attitude.

It goes like this: Basil and his Australian human family have been living in the United States for about a year. As a full-time nanny, our daughter’s first priority is their precious, precocious toddler, April, but it seems she’s fallen in love with the lot of them. When it came to pass, sooner than expected, that the family needed to return to the land down under, Rachel made the bold decision to join them. It’s complicated, and temporary as far as we know, but a few days ago she shoe-horned her 25-year-old American life into a handful of suitcases, bid farewell to her touchpoints, muzzled her insistent doubts and yapping insecurities, and flew off to live an awfully big adventure.

Basil wasn’t allowed to go, yet.

As one of only a few countries in the world that remains rabies-free, Australia requires the dog to meet extensive vaccination and testing protocols before he’s allowed back in Oz. Rather than having him spend a quarter of a year or more at a canine camp, we agreed to step in as his people.

Basil, bless him, is learning to navigate living with humans he barely knows, in a house with two shifty cats. His gentle, amber eyes reflect three parts trust, one part confusion. There are squeaky toys strewn about. There’s a dog bed in my bedroom. A shaft of morning sunlight trisects the air in my home, and I see strands of Basil’s fine fur spinning in it like a swarm of baby dragonflies. I think, if the winds blew just right, they could make it all the way to the other side of the world.

~Elizabeth