While My Two Dogs Gently Sleep

I stand in the laundry room of a complete stranger, newspaper layered across the floor. A squirming heap of gray softness undulates near the dryer. The woman pulls one of the puppies from the pile and sets it down a foot or so away. She gently picks up another, then another until all nine little bodies are crawling around trying to reorganize into their warm sleeping mass.

My wife and I gaze down at the three-week old puppies. They’re all almost identical in color and markings; gray fur with black spots, white belly and paws. The woman who owns the puppies shares her history as a breeder and gives us relevant facts about the lineage of the puppies. I don’t really care about the pedigree.  I’m not interested in showing the dog or getting into breeding. I just want a family pet.
 It has been a little over a year since our youngest child moved out to attend college and we’ve wanted to get a companion for our dog Geddy; another dog to keep her company during the day. We like big dogs and have been searching pet adoption websites for a Great Dane without any luck.  Finally turning to breeder websites, we found this litter only 30 minutes from our house and drove out to see them.

The woman continues telling us her history and philosophy around raising dogs. I can hear pride, knowledge and, above all, care for her dogs. I can tell that we are being judged as potential owners as much as we are judging her as a dog breeder.

As we stand in the cramped room, the mother of the puppies pushes in past us to get to her food bowl. Her head rubs my hip as she passes by. She is white with black spots. Her presence motivates the puppies to move in her direction and whimper louder, but she doesn’t lay down and they can’t reach her engorged teats. She leaves the laundry room and goes into the kitchen, dragging her nose along the top of the  kitchen counter, just checking it out. She is a big dog and I am excited to think that we could have a big dog like this. Great Danes are physically imposing, males getting as big as 180 pounds. But they are a calm and gentle spirited breed that love human contact. They are often called the world’s largest lap dogs.

My attention returns to the puppies. Since we already have a female dog at home the breeder recommends getting a male. I squat down to pick up the one nearest my feet and look at the underside. It’s a female. I pet her for a moment and put her back near her littermates and pick up another one nearby. This one is male and has distinctive markings on his left front leg. I stand up and hold him against my chest. He is only three weeks old but it already takes both hands to hold onto him. He nuzzles up against me and licks my hand.

I gently stroke the soft fur as my wife converses with the breeder, asking important questions about what kind of food she feeds them, the vet care they will receive, and health issues specific to Great Danes. I would never think to ask such questions and I am just a bit surprised to discover how knowledgeable my wife is about these dogs. I feel like a little kid when she looks at me and asks, “Is that the one?” 

“Sure,” I say. And with that one word I commit myself to the privilege and responsibility of raising a puppy that will get as big as an adult human.

Today, six weeks later, I sit on the tall oak chair at the kitchen island. Sunlight pours in through the large windows and bathes the floor. The glare of the late autumn sun hurts my eyes as I try to focus on my laptop screen and actually write something. Next to me on the hardwood floor our old dog Geddy, an Irish wolfhound mix, is splayed out like a large, black dust mop. She is seven years old and has been stressed by the addition of the new puppy. And yet in the two weeks since Thorin arrived, Geddy has started to show more patience with him and has even begun to wrestle with him in the back yard. Some of the lethargy we’ve seen in the past year is ebbing away as she keeps a vigilant eye on this sharp-toothed youngster who nips at her tail and chin.

Under the window, curled up on a dog bed, Thorin, snoozes away. I’ve been working at home as he gets accustomed to our home and as we housebreak him. The first few nights he was up every two hours, missing his littermates or needing to go outside. Now he is sleeping most of the way through the night but still had to go outside at 4:30 in the morning.  When he is awake he’s a bundle of non-stop energy, biting, chewing, tasting, scratching, sniffing, and tugging at everything all the time. And like an overly-tired toddler, those five to ten minutes before he crashes asleep he runs around  like’s drunk, barely able to stay on his feet.  Inside he runs to the corner of the room and tries to dig at the floor, he chews on chair legs, the rugs by the doors, and window sills. Outside he spastically runs around the yard going to the exact places we have kept him away from.  My wife refers to these moments as “doggy-demons.”

But now they are both asleep and I have an unknown length of time to focus on work or writing. The pressure is daunting. I need to get something done before one of them wakes and moves, causing the other to revive. I squint against the glare and think it would be a good idea to move but I’m afraid to stir the dogs. I don’t know why I am so cautious but it makes me think about the old adage, “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

My eyes begin to droop and I can feel the sweet stillness of a nap try to crawl through my body. I shake my head in an attempt to jar the cobwebs loose. I begin to type. Before I get to the end of the first sentence my thoughts drift away and I wonder if I should be writing about something else. “What is it that I really want to say?” I ask myself in what I have come to understand as a clear attempt at procrastinating. As I become aware of the thought path that leads away from what I am supposed to be doing I drag my mind back, this time with more luck.