History, Part One

We weren't in the market for a dog when my girlfriend Jen called in early 2005 to say that she had seen a poster up at the local feed store advertising a litter of yellow lab puppies.  She was finally starting to think of getting a new dog a few years after her big fluffy girl had passed away and would I want to go with her to look at the litter?  Really,  I was just going to go along as a supportive friend. Who wouldn't love to snuggle puppies, given the opportunity?

I called Jim and told him where we were headed and he responded seriously, "So, we're getting a puppy?"
"No, god, no.  I'm just going along with Jen."
"Uh-huh.  Right.  Don't you think this is something we should talk about before you go see them?  Because once you see them, we're getting a puppy."
"No.  I know The Deal."

The Deal was an agreement that neither of us (well, more specifically I) would ever surprise the other by bringing a new pet home. There would be a conversation about what a dog would mean for our family, our budget, our house. There would be advanced consent.  Jim and I both had mothers who had a history of acquiring dogs (or in my case, raccoons, pidgins, squirrels, cats, sheep) without first talking it over with their significant other and we both found the idea pretty disrespectful and not a little inappropriate. Plus, in 2005, I was still out on the road three weeks out of five and had just released a new record that looked to have long legs.  Serious changes would have to be made in order to accomodate a dog and I wasn't sure I would ever want to make them.

When Jen and I turned onto the dirt road to the house, we were met by a lean, very pretty labrador.  Sasha was a bundle of energy, barking at the car and then dropping her ball at our feet as we walked to the house.  We met Laura, who, with her husband and two daughters, whelped the puppies in the house, and she introduced us to the kids.  Holy. Moly.

I admit now, babies don't do much for me.  Yeah, your kid is cute.  Puppies, on the other hand, touch a deep place of overwhelming love in my body.  You know that scene in a horror movie where the monster is shown kindness for the first time and the cold, black heart that has hitherto sat like a dead stone in his chest suddenly and unexpectedly beats for the first time, spreading color and life? That's what seeing, touching, sniffing those puppies was like for me and as I sat with Sasha's litter I was reminded, once again, that Jim often knows me better than I know myself.

They were about four weeks old, so small and fat and doughlike, all making that high pitched squeaking sound puppies make before they develop their bark.  They desperately wanted to get at Sasha, who evaded their little squirming bodies while continuing to drop the tennis ball on my head from above.  One of the boys peed on me while another, a girl, chewed through my sweater.  Another made little, tiny teeth punctures in the skin of my hands. We talked with Laura, who really took the time to get to know us, to see if we would be good people for her little ones.  I insisted that I was just there to support Jen, but I am sure abject desire was written all over my face.

Sasha and her puppies in the whelping box

I returned to see the puppies twice more, once with Jim and then once alone.  Laura was amazing, teaching them "outside" and housebreaking them at an impossibly young age.  They followed her around like she was their pied piper and they were happy, playful dervishes.  It was a strange sensation to suddenly not care if I ever traveled again, if I ever got another standing ovation or even made another record.  I wanted to bring one of these little balls of soft yellow fur into our home and I knew, deep in my bones, that she would make us a family.  I wasn't the kid in college who had a dog, the first in your group of friends to try out that responsibility (as someone who, at 18, sometimes struggled just to get fully dressed and fed, those people amazed me).  This was very, very new.  Maybe that's what it feels like to discover you want to have a baby, be a mother, raise a person, step out of your own, narcissistic role as the sun and dedicate yourself to another living being.  Maybe it's just that the objects of my maternal drive have four legs instead of two and you can crate them when they behave badly.  I hear CPS looks down on that with regular kids, but what do I know?

In the end, Jen didn't end up taking one of the puppies, but Jim and I did.  Our puppy was the last to leave her family because I was still madly working my way through a long planned midwest tour when she turned eight weeks.  She cried on my lap the entire ten minute drive home and then cried non-stop in her crate that first night, shocked by being away from the only family she had ever known, desperately lonely without her mommy and sister Sunny (who remained with Laura).  I cried most of that first morning out of sheer exhaustion.  We were quite the pair.

Jim and I chose the little yellow girl with the cowlick ridge down her nose and chest, the one with the outrageously expressive eyebrows and no trouble with eye contact. We named her Stella, looking forward to opening the back door and, a l a Marlon Brando, screaming, "Stella!" (we're dorks, whatever) And just as I thought, her presence brought Jim and me closer, turned a newly purchased house into our home, and made us the family that I always quietly hoped, but never dared imagine, I would have.

Stella's first day at home with us