So I did a thing this summer. It’s a thing I swore up and down I would never, ever do again. A thing so shocking that when I announced my plan, my girls’ chins were on the ground and my friends checked my forehead for a blazing fever.
I got a puppy.
Not just any puppy. A spendy designer puppy with chocolate brown eyes and super soft, sweet, cotton ball fur. The kind of puppy Trey Kennedy mentions when he spoofs “Things White People Do.” I mean, this puppy is the most middle class American dog on the planet, born for his own Insta. Y’all, I brought home a golden doodle. Not just any golden doodle – a TEDDY BEAR golden doodle.
I am wholly, completely in love. I would DIE for this guy. I’m not sure I would die for anyone who walks upright, but by God I’d take a bullet for my puppy.
We named him Westley. As in, “The Princess Bride.” As in, “As you wish.” He is the only male animal we’ve ever had, and other than my daddy, he’s the only man who will ever love me unconditionally. He is PERFECT. In fact, I spend a lot of my time snuggling his soft creamy muzzle and asking him what it’s like to be so perfect. Is it hard work? Is it tough to be so handsome, so kind, so pure-hearted? So far, he hasn’t answered. He doesn’t have to. Perfection speaks for itself.
This puppy is freaking huge. Like, moose-sized. At five months old he weighs 25 pounds, most of it fur, and it’s so much fun to watch such a big baby lumbering around. He starts a walk, and considering how long his legs are, you’d think he could go for days. Nope. He’ll get three-quarters of a mile from home and just take a sploot (a sploot, if you don’t know, is when dogs just throw themselves straight down on their bellies, legs splayed to all four sides. See illustration.) He’ll sploot anywhere, anytime, and it’s so freaking adorable I could literally die from the cuteness. It’s not quite as cute when it happens in a neighbor’s yard when it’s 95 degrees with 80 percent humidity and I have a person-sized ball of fur to carry home, but whatever. He’s PERFECT. PERFECT, and I will carry him back from the depths of hell if he asks me to.
Carrying! OMG. West lets me carry him around like the toddler I’ll never have again – you know the carry I’m talking about. The kind where a little kid is super sleepy and just a comforting dead weight and she wraps her arms around your neck and her legs around your waist and you hold her right under her bottom and she rests her tired little head on your shoulder? That’s the kind of carry West lets me do. In my family’s current frenzy of cheer practice and dance class and fashion crises and boy angst and PSAT stress, I forgot how simple and sweet that carry is.
Every morning and evening we put West in a chair and discuss the day with him. Sometimes it’s one of the tall chairs for the island; others, it’s one of our patio chairs. He patiently pulls himself to his full height and cocks his head to the side, keeping eye contact as he listens faithfully to whatever one of us is telling him (mostly, for me, I’m telling him he’s PERFECT – I reckon I’d listen faithfully to that too.) He sits so patiently because, God love him, he doesn’t know he could just hop down by himself. We’ve always set him down ourselves, so he assumes that’s the drill. Sweet boy. It’s a good thing he’s so handsome, because I’m not sure how bright he really is.
West joined his big sisters Daisy, our cranky maltipoo alpha, and Tia, our vengefully incontinent one-eyed rescue cat. The three of them make my year every single day. The older I get, the more I prefer animals to people. Once upon a time I had this crazy idea that as people get older, we automatically gain wisdom, perspective, and kindness – essentially I expected we would act our age.
Unfortunately, much of the time WE DO NOT. Too often we behave selfishly and treat each other shabbily (me included). Other humans sometimes make me wonder why I don’t relocate to a cave, or maybe Hogwarts, and my furry best friends are sweet refuge in an otherwise often bewildering world. I’ve really needed that little piece of certainty in my life, and I cherish it more than I ever thought possible.
So here I’ll sit, on my back patio, chatting with a couple pups perched in chairs (Daisy’s brainpower is not in question – she stays in her chair only as long as she chooses.) I’ll tell them they’re PERFECT, and they’ll hang on my every word because they think I’m pretty perfect too. In the end, isn’t that all we want – someone who thinks we’re worth listening to and sits captivated while we share all the intimate things that make us who we are? I’m the luckiest girl in the world, because I have three of those someones. I need a stronger word than “perfect.” I really, really do.
Amy Clay 