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Read more of Karen Fishler's dog diary columns |
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 November 1, 1998 |a dog is born
An amazing thing happened last week. Our puppy was born, or, rather, the litter from which he will be chosen has come into the world. It was a very odd and delightful feeling, knowing that, on October 22, this puppy did not exist, and, on October 23, he did. As befits a two-computer couple, we received the news via email. Reports arrived in succession, like dispatches from the front: Gretchen has gone into labor; six puppies (three females, three males) have been born after many hours of labor; mother and pups are resting nicely following the birth. Once everyone involved had had some time to recover (including Teri, the breeder, who stayed up all night to help Gretchen), Teri took pictures and sent them to us over the net. We spent the usual hassle time figuring out how to decompress and translate the files. And then came the fun part: gazing adoringly at the puddle of dark brown puppies displayed on the screen. (They look, by the way, exactly like puppies of every other breed, and like mixed-breed puppies, too. All puppies look basically the same: they have blunt muzzles, charming roundish hanging-down ears, squinched-shut eyes, and pudgy bodies. It takes time for them to start looking like German Shepherds, or Grand Pyrenees, or Yorkshire Terriers. So these puppies have the dark-brown body coloring typical of Entlebucher Sennenhunds, with the classic white blaze, surrounded by rust patches, on face, chest, and stomach. But, in other respects, they look like… puppies.) We can't get attached to any individual puppy at this point, because we don't know which one we're getting. We've simply asked for a boy. And it's not like we can drop by to get to know the members of the litter; we're five hours from where Teri lives. Instead, she'll observe the puppies closely in the weeks to come, so as to be able to give us an idea of their differing temperaments. She'll send videos, too. We'll talk on the phone and email a lot. And she'll make a recommendation, which we'll probably take. Regardless of which puppy we wind up with, knowing that he is in the world has created quite an air of expectation here. For one thing, we're getting the house ready. A new fence goes in week after next, and the steep backyard is in the process of being torn up and redone, complete with terraced planting beds, paths, stairways, and so on. It's not that we're doing all this because of the dog; we're not. We're doing it because of the Neighborhood Disaster status the backyard was about to earn. But the fact that we had to do it all now, just as the dog is about to arrive, seems significant. Things are coming together — a key feature of the falling-into-place phenomenon I discussed in last month's column. And aspects of the job have changed because of the dog. In the front, where we expected to do nothing, we now will have a little circular seating area, carved into the lawn, on which will perch a bistro table and two chairs. There we will sit on hot days, on the cool side of the house, reading the paper and watching the dog putter and snuffle nearby. On the walkway just opposite, there will be a bench. We'll sit there and toss a ball for him the length of our elongated little patch of lawn. It never would have occurred to us to do these things if it weren't for the dog. As that's all happening, preparatory reading has come our way, like Jean Donaldson's The Culture Clash, which discusses the conflict between human culture and dog culture and gets high marks as a training manual. I've just begun reading it; as soon as I'm done, I'll be handing it off to Barry. Our hairdresser has told us about a catalog that sells pet products at wholesale prices, so we don't have to fork over money to chain-owned pet stores. And, although our holistic vet moved out of state, we've gotten recommendations for two more. That's the kind of thing that's suddenly happening a lot. Of course, no amount of preparation or expectation will really make us ready. Gail, our trainer, has warned us we'll likely feel overwhelmed for weeks. And the puppy will be arriving right around Christmas — traditionally a stressful time for bipeds even without new family members taking up residence. So with all the prior effort in the world, we may feel somewhat weary in the weeks following the puppy's arrival, just because he's going to be… a puppy. In the meantime, though, we'll be choosing a name to go on the puppy's official registration; remember, this dog is a purebred, so he has a pedigree. That's a weird feeling — to know that we'll have a dog that's pedigreed. Somehow I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would have a dog with "papers." Nevertheless, he does. So we'll be naming him, in two ways. There's an official name for his papers, and then there's what's known as his call name: the name we call him in ordinary life, when he's being our dog and not a remarkable example of canine genetic quality. We have absolutely no idea what his official name will be, except that apparently it must include the name of the place where he was bred. We have an idea what his call name will be (a character from a book, of course; what else would you expect from a couple of writers?), but we're waiting to make sure it fits the dog. Most of all, we want to make sure we fit the dog. And also that the dog fits us — because fitting is a two-way street, as Gail has pointed out to us. Finally, we're at the point where there's no way to find out except by actually having a dog here. There's something wonderful about the fact that he'll be arriving right around the winter solstice. Once he's here, the days will start lengthening and getting warmer. And by the summer solstice, he'll have been with us so long we'll have a family history. 
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