A Dog's LIfe

This is Tanner, a 13-year-old big yellow dog (shepherd-lab cross) who came unexpectedly into our friends Brian and Tracy's lives a few weeks ago. He has moved right into their hearts, in a quiet, solid, and thorough way. Good dogs have a way of doing that.


Mostly when I write about animals (domestic), it's about the cats with whom we live. I am rather fond of them. But there have been dogs in my life too, and until we got our first cat 23 years ago, I wouldn't have thought that I'd have anything other than dogs.

Our first dog was a white boxer named Butch. I don't remember him, but by all accounts he was a patient dog, letting me ride him, pull his ears, and, most notably, feed him toast soldiers only to change my mind seconds later, shove my grubby little hand down his throat and retrieve said soldiers for my own breakfast.

There are no pictures of me with Butch, but here he is with my brother John, the year I was born and about 3 years before the toast incident. But you can tell by his expression --Butch's, I mean-- that he knows something's coming his way. He's resting up.


And here he is with John again, and our sister Elizabeth.


Honestly, if this were the dog you were teethed on, wouldn't you trust every canine in sight? Apparently, I did. My mother lost me in the grocery store once, only to find me several rows over, my arms wrapped around Kim, the neighbour's German Shepherd. (Clearly, hygiene standards were lower in those days.) My favorite uncle was a Labrador named Skip. And as a child, long after Butch was gone (too early) from our lives, I would tell my mother the various things I used to do "when I was a dog." She once mentioned that my father would "have a kitten" when he walked into the house after work and saw the mess we had made, causing me to wail that I wanted a puppy instead.

I believe the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was the pig in our basement. I knew there was a pig in our basement; what I did not comprehend was that it was a former pig enroute to the butcher down the road. I danced downstairs to meet it. Shrill screams as I saw my brother Brian carrying it upstairs and then, quietly from the kitchen, "Jack, we are getting that girl a dog."

Which they did. My dog, Toby.


He wasn't the best-trained dog in the world, but he was mine, and we were pretty much inseparable for 13 years. When I went away to university, he sat outside my closed bedroom door and waited to be let in, day after day. As for me, I still miss him.


So it was a truly awful event in my life when, while walking home from school in grade 6, I was attacked by a maltreated neighbourhood dog. He spent his miserable life at the end of a chain but this day got loose. He charged and knocked me down, then ripped at my legs, shoulder, and back. I guess instinct made me roll over to protect my stomach and face. A neighour saw, and got the dog off me. My physical injuries healed quite quickly, and that poor dog never had an opportunity to hurt anyone else. I don't know what happened to his owner. But I lost my trust in dogs other than my own -- an absolute trust that I now know was foolish but that was, nonetheless, a genuine part of who I was.

Years later, my sister rescued a young Doberman Pinscher. I was terrified of her. No need; she turned out to be the sweetest, gentlest of beasts. I spent hours with her wandering rocky beaches (I'd throw a golfball-sized rock into the water, she'd return with one the size of a Nerf football) and grassy hills.


We also took frequent naps.

Turns out Dobes are, left to their own devices, sweet and gentle dogs. Last week at a conference, one of the presenters said that Lutherans are sometimes accused of being the Doberman Pinschers of the theological kennel. He seemed quite proud of this. Ha! Big old Lutheran lap dogs!

I will always be grateful to Tara, the dog who healed me. Who reminded me that it's okay to let a big handsome lug like this come and rest his head in your lap.


Who made sure that I wouldn't worry about all those dogs who've come into my life since: spaniels, border collies, beagles, shepherds, Pyrs, schnauzers, shih tzus, wheaten terriers and all kinds of mixes. Even Boston terriers who are determined to vanquish the enemy in a game of keep-away.





What a good dog.