I Am So Popular: It's a Dog's Life

Rebound, my late-in-life surprise puppy, is named in honor of the role she was assigned when I adopted her. I was in the midst of a highly traumatizing divorce. In my experience, dogs are about the best healers around, and their specialty is working with the traumatized. Their ready smiles, unconditional love, and excellent role modeling regarding the power of naps cannot be overstated.

I already knew this, as by the time Rebound arrived, she was the fourth member of my motley pack, rescues who’d come to me via Town Lake, the streets, and a goat farm out in Drippin’. Common wisdom held that taking in yet another pup would surely be too much. I begged to differ, and three years later, Rebound has daily proved my decision right.

I got an email from Nancy late in April 2007. Nancy and her partner Tony run the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, which Kinky co-founded. I’d been out to the ranch the year before, amazed at the love they pour into all-comers. Nancy and Tony are, like me, particularly fond of Boston terriers, and at the time of my visit I they were living with seven or eight of them. Though I realized my odds were slim-to-none, I told them if they ever had an extra Boston in need of a home, they should let me know. In the email that came that fateful spring morning, Nancy told me I was in luck. A litter of six Bostons had been dumped at a local vet’s, with instructions from the breeder to put them down.

The story went like this: the dogs had parvo and the breeder didn’t think them worth saving. The vet took one look at the lot of them, wept, and worked feverishly to keep them alive. It’s possible some myth informs this story. One look at Rebound and you can see it’s likely some unplanned pregnancy had a hand in her arrival. Purebred? Doubtful. Maybe that’s the real reason the breeder dumped her and her siblings.

She was a speck of a thing when I drove her home, nestled in the tiny pink princess bed I acquired for the purpose. Too little (or perhaps too dumb) to initially grasp the concept of “going for a walk,” she responded to the leash the way a snake might react to being handed a pair of tiny running shoes. And so I bought her a baby sling and, for a spell, carried her around like an infant. (Yes, this startled some people who approached me to get a look at my “baby.”)

She did figure out how to walk with the pack after awhile, though she still exhibits some questionable motor skills and spatial relations issues. I have watched her, more than once, eye the futon frame and consider it, deciding the best way to hop up on this couch is not to simply walk around to the front of it and jump. Oh no. Instead, she looks to the arm of the frame, sizes it up, and then, despite her ability to do three foot vertical leaps (which I have seen her do, attempting to take out every squirrel in the backyard), she will underestimate and, thunk, run right into the thing.

A neighbor recently suggested that perhaps this limitation is not of the IQ variety, but rather a matter of poor vision. And it’s true, Rebound’s eyes are situated in her head in a manner that offers far better peripheral skills than the ability to see that which is right in front of her. I suppose I could get her glasses or contact lenses. But then I would lose a major source of entertainment.

For the record, I do not simply keep Rebound around to watch her run into things. Dogs, like children, each have their own unique personalities. My pack is down to three now— sadly we lost Satch, aka Grumpy Old Man, a year ago— and they could not be more different from one another. There’s Bubbles, alpha bitch, as whip smart as they come. And Tatum, the gentle blue heeler mix, whom we refer to as The Nurse for her compassionate and concerned ways. For Rebound’s part, she nicely fits the role of worshiper, content to sit on the couch and give me shrimp jobs for hours on end while I happily knit beside her.

Most days, we take a good long walk around Mueller. If not for the pack, I might not be so disciplined in pursuing this daily activity which keeps me sane at least as much as it keeps them happy. For this, they have still more of my gratitude. The walks, too, have plenty of entertainment value. Bubbles and Tatum spend much of their time nose-reading pee-mail, pulling me over to one patch of grass or another to whiff deeply and interpret urine messages left for them by other dogs who’ve walked before us. Then Tatum will pee on top of the older pee. Then Bubbles will pee on top of Tatum’s pee. I daresay humans might have a better time of it if we, too, adopted a similar technique of establishing pack order.

For her part, Rebound has no interest in what other dogs have to “say” with their urine. She only wishes to pull, full-throttle, for the entire hour we’re out. So skilled has she become at seeing squirrels and cats and other prey where, apparently there are none, she can actually manage this routine on just her two hind legs for much of the jaunt. Which is to say, yes, she has gone from being unable to walk much at all as a puppy, to being able to walk upright much of the time.

Nights might just be the best. I announce, “Pack time,” and this cry signals to the dogs our shared favorite ritual. They come bounding into my bed, and we engage in our collective process of settling in, turning, turning, until we’re in our correct sleeping positions. Usually the Bostons will encase me, like furry parentheses, pinning me into position. Tatum gets fed up after awhile, and retreats to her bed on the floor.

With all due respect to Warren, it’s actually easier for me to sleep with three dogs than one human man. Actually, that’s fine with him. As it happens, Warren keeps odd hours, often spending much of the night awake, sifting through wimp.com, filling my inbox as I sleep with highlights he finds there. Nights he stays here, Bubbles eyes him with disdain, knowing that Warren is not one-who-sleeps-with-dogs, and so she will be relegated to her other bed which--Oh, poor Bubbles!--is a very nice, firm, full-sized human model from Ikea.

There, she waits impatiently for her turn. She knows Warren will eventually wake up and remove the baby gate, so that the dogs and I can take up our favored sleeping arrangement.

Lots of you know just what I’m talking about. Some of you have yet to know the beauty of Life Lived Among the Dogs. I hope these stories will inspire you to consider adopting a dog in need and, in turn, reaping the endless rewards of puppy love. For those of you unready yet to commit, perhaps you will at least, for now, make a donation to the Utopia Ranch or another worthy rescue operation.

Spike Gillespie cannot imagine life without dogs. She blogs for JetAustin, KnitBuzz, and her own damn self at spikeg.com where, this week, she takes on The Case of the Terrible Infant.