Tiny Mary is at that puppy stage where everything is an adventure.
She had kind of a rough puppyhood that we won’t get into, and she’ll always bear some of the scars. She’s still learning which big dogs tolerate her, which don’t, and which can be her buddies. She is learning the majesty of the cat, and the terror of the goose. She has grasped the concept, if not the timing, of house training. In other words, she’s a puppy, a polyglot of blue tick, Catahoula, Walker, Plott and whatever other hound treed a coon or barked a squirrel on her family tree.
I was deeply enmeshed in something the other day – it was unpleasant, as so much has been of late – when Little Mary decided my toes looked tasty. She just learned about two weeks ago what teeth are designed to do, and she is perfecting her technique with a vengeance.
I could hardly fuss at her, so instead of punishing her I swooped her up and held her wriggling in my lap. It was later in the evening, and despite the ancestor memories of a thousand coon hounds before her, she is still a puppy, so sleep came fairly quickly. I envied her, really. As I sat there holding her, getting a stink-eye from a 75-pound hound who had just been refused a lap, things got better. Maybe not all right, but … better.
Dogs do that.
We are almost out of the puppy business, thankfully, but sometimes things happen. Mary is one of those things, and she’s a happy thing.
There is always joy in a happy puppy, especially when that puppy has a child. I wish there were more pictures of me and my first really good dog, Dudley, a Golden-Lab mix whose patience and protective instincts were limitless. We grew up together during our first summer, I guess you could say. I didn’t go to the same school as the other kids in my neighborhood, there were very few boys in the children’s choir (and girls were icky) and our Scout troop only met once or twice in the summer. Ergo, we grew up together, and didn’t need anyone else.
He was an odd dog for a retriever, in that he didn’t care for water, but he would sit on the bank and watch while I paddled around the big pool in the creek. In later years he did the same thing when we boys cooled off in a big pond we called the Blue Hole. He ran hundreds, if not thousands of miles beside whatever old bicycle I happened to be riding. He later rode in the passenger seat of my ’55 Chevy and the first of a series of ragged pickup trucks. He was, as an old friend said a while back, a really cool dog.
Every once in a while, we have puppies at the same time someone needs one; we’re careful of the adopters, since we are not fans of dogs being stuck outside. They’re supposed to be family, pack animals. A few of our puppies have gone to the exact right homes, where they had a little kid with whom to learn about creeks and woods and snakes and cats and birds and life. A young man we call Little Preacher is almost grown now, but when he drops his books and before he grabs his bagpipes or whatever accessories the afternoon demands, his first attention is to a pit bull mix who was rescued from a trailer park as a malnourished baby.
There’s another kid I absolutely envy, since his dog runs beside him when he goes to baseball practice, the pool or the woods, much like my Dudley did years ago. That dog sleeps beside his boy’s feet, too; I do not think he goes to church, as mine did, but it wouldn’t surprise me that much. His folks are fine parents.
I know some families simply cannot have a dog, but I cannot conceive of a little kid growing up without a puppy.
They teach responsibility, friendship, true goodness, and love. When a kid is lonely – or a grownup is having a tough time, for that matter – a dog won’t ask questions or second guess. A dog will just be content to sit there with you, happy in the presence of their human.
A good dog will fight another boy’s dog while you are fighting the boy. That actually happened to me once.
In fairness, I think the other dog was jumping in because he wanted to protect his owner (low-life scoundrel that he was) but Dudley jumped in to protect me. Neither Dudley nor myself had any use for foul-mouthed bullies. My mother, Miss Lois, treated both of our wounds with the same medicine, as I recall. She understood.
I have no idea whether Tiny Mary will end up with her own kid. Right now she’s content to gnaw toes, snore between us on the bed, and hide between my feet under my desk at home, where several of the larger dogs who frighten her once slept. Unlike her oversized mother, who was baying coons at Mary’s age, this little girl hasn’t shown any inclination to hunt. Half her lineage is almost royalty, but the other side is from the wrong side of the tracks, so I doubt even my pleasure-dog coon hunting friends will be interested, and she’s too small for a bear-and-hog gladiator. Her legs will be too short to run deer, so I suspect she’ll just end up being a yard dog, which is perfectly fine.
I’m looking forward to seeing her grow and chase cicadas. She doesn’t understand playing tug-of-war yet, but she can destroy a ball or a sock in record time. She has already learned that toads have no sense of humor. She sometimes gets excited and has to be punished for going after the goose, but the goose usually handles disciplinary issues on her own, thus sending Mary yiping and crying back to her safe place between my feet.
What kind of dog will she grow up to be? I cannot say. I will always stand by the philosophy that there is not a bad dog on the planet, although there are many who made bad by humans. I know we do our dangdest to ensure we raise good ones.
It’s entirely possibly that someone will come along with the right little kid, and Mary will toddle over to make friends, and have an instant bond. Perfect puppy moments are not as rare as we think, but they are becoming moreso in today’s society, since grownups often want to hurry the process; I feel it should be up to the kid and the dog. If the right kid comes along, we’ll call it a victory. If not? Well, Mary will stay part of our pack.
There a couple big adoption events going on in our area in the next few weeks, put on by shelters and societies and such. I humbly beg you, if you’re looking for a puppy, go there first. They cost less money, and no dog or puppy should have to spend their life chained to a tree, or stuck in a kennel waiting for a family.
Every puppy deserve a little kid, or at least some grownup toes to gnaw on.
