Puppy Town
I’ve watched a lot of sunrises lately.
In the past, if I’ve seen a sunrise it’s been because I couldn’t manage to get to sleep, and I would frown and shake my fist as the sun clawed its way over the horizon. Or maybe I was talking with friends or working all night and the sunrise arrived unexpectedly, like the hiccups.
I have not become a “morning person,” whatever that is. These days, we’ve been hanging out with a fourteen-week-old puppy, Junebug, whose waking hours skew about four hours earlier than mine.
PRIME LEAF HUNTING HOURS ARE BEFORE DAWN, she reminds me daily. EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT, LADY. EVERYBODY. WHO EVEN TAUGHT YOU HOW TO HUNT LEAVES?
It’s not so bad, though, this morning thing. Every day Junebug and I stumble downstairs, have a nice little chat over coffee, maybe piddle on the rug, take a walk and stop to marvel at every car that passes, and then once a week I trim her nails while she helps me out by clawing all of the skin off my face and neck. If I leave her alone for too long while I get dressed, she keens like I have died and she’s the only creature left in this cold, harsh world.
By this point it’s about 8:00.
She eats a hearty breakfast of raw salmon and politely offers me a bite, which I appreciate but emphatically decline. Outside, she tears through the yard like a gremlin, stopping only to hunt for worms and eat scat from whatever mystery animal prowls through our garden at night. A feral cat? A mischievous groundhog? Who knows. But it would seem that its poop tastes delicious. She offers me some of that, too.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I say. “I just ate…um…a beetle. Right over there. You didn’t see it, because of…the poop. But yeah, I’m all set.”
You sure? she asks.
“Yup,” I say, clutching at her collar as she strains to get back behind the trees for seconds.
Okay, weirdo.
Junebug has more than doubled in size since we took her home. I’m no mathemateer, but if my calculations are correct, we will have a Clifford situation on our hands by Christmas. Sometimes Bill and I will shake our heads over the size of her paws and whisper, horrified, Think of all the salmon.
Most of the day she spends playing with our other dog (her mama), which means she jumps on top of her and gnaws her ears and jowls until Halo knocks her to the floor with one giant paw. Then they clash together and begin to sing like two seals, their mouths wide open, their teeth clacking eerily. It is truly a sight to behold. And a sound to behear. Especially when I'm working.
Sometimes I'll read a section aloud to them over the ruckus. "How does that sound, ladies?" I ask them.
But they just sing and sing. Without even a word as to whether the dialogue sounds contrived.
The dogs don’t call us Mom and Dad, instead referring to us as Monsieur and The Lady (their idea, not ours). Per their request, we in turn use the formal Sie whenever we speak to them in German.
They are very proper puppers.
Getting up early wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t also wear myself out emotionally by laying all these cripplingly high expectations on myself. For instance, all the dog training books and articles and podcasts suggest that as long as you never let the dog pee in the house, you will have a perfectly house trained puppy in no time! Of course, I took that to mean that if she had even a single accident, I was Doing Something Wrong.
“If the experts with decades of experience can do it in a week,” I said, “then surely I, a first-time puppy owner, can do it just as fast! After all, I’ve read the books.”
Two hundred thirty-seven clean-ups later, I’m beginning to reconsider.
But each accident sets her back a week in training! I warbled weepily to no one. According to the literature! In my sleep-deprived state, I was convinced I’d be cleaning up after this dog ten times a day for the rest of my life or hers, whichever came first. Yet here we are — after a month and a half of belly rubs and puppy breath and head tilts and floppy ears and big yawns and clumsy limbs and almost unbearable sweetness — and somehow, everything has worked out fine. She still has the occasional accident, but at this point, for a pup her age, it’s Good Enough.
Good Enough is not an easy concept for perfectionists to grasp, but I think I understand the theory. It’s like when I cook: I start out making a certain recipe, and if we don’t have a couple ingredients I make some substitutions, and maybe I'm tired so I take a few shortcuts, and before you know it we end up with something that looks less like the original recipe and more like a bowl of rice and beans, maybe with a little cheese on top.
“Gooood enough!” I say, and I drench it in hot sauce and dig in while Bill thumbs wistfully through our many cookbooks.
It’s more difficult to apply this to creative projects. The book I’ve been working on for years now is done. I’ve spent almost a year editing, and I could go on editing it for decades longer, but after all these months of fiddling and tweaking and deleting and rearranging and messing with the font size, I think it’s time to stop. Tomorrow I am going…to let…another human…read it. Even though…it’s not…perfect. Even though it is only…Good Enough.
Oh, wow. I clenched my jaw so hard there I think I broke a tooth. Huh.
Maybe tomorrow Junie and I will wake up, stumble outside with our coffee, have a little chat, and then I’ll settle in to work on any one of the other twenty-six projects I’ve started, while she chomps sticks and the sun rises like an earnest promise over the trees.
Either that or I’ll just skim the book one more time, just real quick. Make sure, like, the voice is consistent or whatever. No big deal. It’s fine. I can stop any time I want!