Say hello, Nacho.
I like buying dark, gothy art for our bedroom. One of my favorite pieces is a print from a pencil drawing of a large, muscular hound wrestling with a skeletal image of death. I like it because dogs have repeatedly fought off the death of my heart when I was not strong enough to fight it myself. I have always loved dogs. Don’t get me wrong, cats are alright, but on the whole I much prefer dogs. That is because every time people have shit on me, a dog has been there to pick me up and dust me off.
For instance, one of the signs that my first marriage was failing was when I brought home a rescued dachshund; my ex-wife wrinkled her nose at the sound of the little dog tapping her way across the floor and said that she sounded like a cockroach. Right then, I knew. Later, when my marriage finally dissolved and I was filled with rage and anger, my dachshund would snuggle me and steal snortfuls of my Guinness. No one else spoke to me, most of my friends left me, but I knew my dog loved me. The last time I cried was when I had to turn her in to be put down - her back had failed her, I couldn’t afford reparative surgery, and she was just sitting in her own shit. No one who had done as much work as Maya had on tethering my humanity to my body as Maya deserved to suffer, so she went on to the next plane of existence.
Then of course there was Gotz, who came into my life for free, bringing only his 90 pounds of fur, teeth, and untrained, unfixed, unfocused enthusiasm. He & I spent a ton of time and discipline on each other - me teaching him city manners, to sit at crosswalks, to fetch and speak; and him teaching me patience and how to grow old gracefully. When it was just him and me against the world, he was patient enough not to soil the house when I worked 56 1/2 hours a week with an hour commute on either end of the shift, and well-disciplined enough not to wander off in my semi-unfenced yard when I fell asleep on the outside bench in the evenings. I did my best to reward him with his favorite things - blueberries, tennis balls, car rides, and long, moonlit forest runs together. His decline and death were difficult, both emotionally and logistically. 90 pounds of fragile hips are not easy to cajole in and out of a car.
I spent a long time after his death ranging the plains of my emotions, securing their borders and settling down my expectations, but trusting that karmic timing would lessen the distance between me and my next bestie. And it did.
Nacho (née Berlin at the pound) is quite possibly the most relaxed Australian Shepherd I have ever met - most of them, as my neighbor noted, are what we in the countryside call ‘wide open’, meaning that there is no off-duty cycle or even a cycling down. But Nacho has acclimated peacefully and politely to our lives, even when my wife’s adorably rage-filled chihuahuas want to fuckin’ lock in and throw down. Nacho just walks away.
Nacho is also whip smart - he adjusted to a name change in early afternoon, and by late afternoon had at least grasped the concept of fetching. It hasn’t been perfect - Nacho likes to greet with jumping, and shows affection by twining around legs. These are not the most desirable traits when you are caring for a fragile elderly person. But everyone in the house (save, perhaps, the aforementioned rage-filled chihuahuas) is in love with each other, and so far (and foreseeably) Nacho has only served as a magnifying glass for that love. So far as I can tell, there was nothing wrong with my heart that Nacho needs to fix - but cementing over the cracked patches is a task which he has undertaken with gusto.
My love for dogs is not perfect and serene - I have a deep mistrust of pit bulls, having been attacked by them in Baltimore. But even that mistrust is not based of less love, proving that once again dogs show you the best side of yourself. And so once again, I gather myself to undertake living by that side-grin prayer;
Give me the strength to be the person my dog thinks I am.
Poetic coda;
love is not polite in my chest. it wrecks the furniture. it spills the wine. it leaves bruises in places no doctor can reach. but my god, it makes the whole house feel like home. - christhecocreator