Okay, so we know that our dogs (and cats) are proxy for our
children. That’s been established, here and elsewhere. We love them like our
children, spoil them even worse than our children, and wish for them a long
life of good, happy experiences. Heck, we even knit them little coats in our
favorite colors and cover them up with old baby blankets when sleeping. I could
go on—should I mention the towel we place near the door to dry her fur when she
comes in from the slushy weather? Okay, enough already!
But who told them they could begin to assert their own
personalities? Who said they could develop their own hang ups, independent of
what we believe is outside their scope of experience? Who allowed them this
luxury of separating from their parents? God, you say? How do you know? Who
really has the hang ups anyway?
Well, there is one thing I know for sure. I know that Singer
has an urgent need to dig and hide her bones. Not the ordinary rawhides, but
the expensive, tasty $5.99 bones that are flavored especially to entice dogs to
chew and eat them. They are shaped like a giant toothbrush, to appease my sense
of guilt for not brushing her teeth enough, but that’s another hang up that
belongs to me, not her.
So anyway, Singer took her delicious, precious bone and
trotted all around the house with it, looking for a special place to hide it.
We laugh: is this a hoarding hang up? This is her second bone; the first one
she ate right away, presumably finding it delicious, but who knows. Singer has
now been given this second bone, days later, and she is trying to get into my
closet to hide it, but I shut her down with that idea right away. She then
trots over to Jeff’s study, which is barricaded by a baby gate to keep all
animals out and looks longingly around. But she quickly understands she’s not
going to get in there. Then, we have to go to work, and I kiss her quickly on
the head and tell her to “go to your couch” and leave. I have no idea what she
does after that door closes.
Zoom ahead to several weeks later. I started wondering about
that bone, which we haven’t seen around anywhere. Singer’s “spoons” from
feeding the cat, the ones she fishes out of the sink after we leave in the
morning, lick clean and then leave around the house, we know about those. They
occupy our minds for awhile, and Jeff and I idly chat about how to get her to
stop leaving the spoons around the house. Then we decide that it’s kind of cute
and decide not to do anything about it. Yes, we know it’s really because we
can’t decide how to stop her, she is so sneaky about it and what harm does it
do, anyway? Again, parallels to parenting come up.
Just to tease her one night, I ask her to go get her bone.
She is curled up by my feet on the couch. She looks at me, then at her pile of
toys and bones, and back at me. I tell her several times to go get her bone,
and I get a feeling she knows exactly which bone I’m talking about. To make sure,
I tell her, “You know, the one that looks like a toothbrush, the one I gave you
several weeks ago?” She looks at me but doesn’t move. What is she thinking?
Several minutes pass. I return to reading my book. Singer
puts her head on her paws again. Then she gets up and puts her nose in the
corner of the couch and sniffs and starts digging. It’s a leather couch, so I
ask her to stop. She doesn’t. Finally, I command her to stop and she jumps
down. I see a little something in the corner: you guessed it, it’s her bone.
She buried it that day and now wanted it back.
Singer took the bone once again from my hands and
disappeared with it. Who knows where she buried it this time?
