Tag Archives: birthday

Open Letter to a Puppy: The Transformative Twos

My mayhems,

HAPPY JOINT SECOND BIRTHDAY!! What a joyous serendipity, to share the exact chronology of existence!

Oh, and Charlie: I’m pretty sure your birthdate is fraudulent. I don’t even know that you’re two yet.

See, your paperwork from the shelter lists your birthdate as 11/1/2020, but I suspect they figured out Jadie’s birthday and forged your documents to seal the adoption deal. I haven’t met a dog person yet who puts you north of 18 months.

But that’s the beauty of rescues: They fill whatever role they’re meant to play. And Chuck, yours is to be the 2-year-old; unpredictable, deliriously destructive and mouthy as hell. You still bark at the mail carrier every time, like you just saw Hitler in shorts. You eat my glasses. Hence and heretofore, your birthday is at midnight on Halloween, so we can still mark the occasion together while acknowledging the possibility of subterfuge.

And Jadie, of ruby lobes and Cali sunrise eyes, you are in full bloom. You have become the quiet(er), calm(er) sibling. You helped train Charlie on the dog door, taunting him with toys that you’d scamper inside. Now you both burst through the once-clear plastic flap like Starsky and Hutch on meth.

In fact, your first year together has been a bit like watching a 70’s cop show, where the patrol officers pretend to dislike each other. When we tool up for the park — leashes, music, water — you snap and snarl and growl at each other. You’ll grab each by the reins and drag the other to the door. ‘Why are you walking yourself? I’m not touching you. Does it bother you that you’re walking yourself? I’m not touching you.’

But then I open the hatchback, and you become synchronized swimmers, leaping and twisting and arcing leashward to the park, a place so sacred I have to say it in pig latin if it is spoken aloud. If I could rollerblade, we could Iditarod the 2-1/2 miles to the park, and we’d beat traffic (note to self: invent the rollerblade bobsled).

I’ll admit, I love the park, too, and not just for the fang and claw. The humans there, we’re all fractured in some way by a real world busted to bits. But we find grace in yours, where life is all windshield, no rearview mirror.

I try to imagine what that off-leash world is like. You lose your minds with unadulterated glee. Is it a Disneyland you vaguely recall, even though you were there just yesterday? A place where you know the rides by heart, but not what they do to yours?

Or do you remember everything, exactly, and it’s the memory that makes you that celebratory? I guess the answer doesn’t matter, but I wish you could see it.

Maybe you do. You both still have that verticality to your gallop, like you want to be airborne a moment longer, glimpse a moment extra, stretch a moment further. You both grin like hayseeds when you pant, so perhaps I’m anthropomorphizing a smile at the end of the day. But I could swear you dig Splash Mountain.

Anyway, happy second birthday! Who knows? To celebrate, we may go to the arkpay.

Open Letter to a Puppy, Chapter VI: Highway One


My Kodachrome,

I brought you home last night.

You have never been small, but you fit inside the oversized hoodie I wore to pick you up in Oxnard. As a guardian angel drove us home, we sat in the backseat, me whispering to you the whole ride back. I’d read somewhere about the importance of “imprinting” your presence on a new Earthling.

“It’s okay, baby,” I told you during the chilly trip down the 101. I had to keep the windows open and the mask on, but our bodies warmed each other.

“You’re going to a safe place. Good Jadie. Everything is going to be good and happy and warm there. This home is yours. Good Jadie.”

You were a pandemic puppy. The biggest, loudest and most nipple-insistent of a half dozen siblings. You were not thrilled to leave mom and whimpered softly the first leg of the trip.

But around Camarillo, you were chewing my hoodie. And my sandals. And my blanket. And my rose bushes. And my baseboards and my gazebo and mygoddidsomeonedareyoutoeattheworld?

As we neared Malibu Canyon, you were grudgingly accepting the notion of peeing outdoors.

Around Northridge, you had become a regular at the Victory Dog Park, where witnesses (one of them your dad) reported seeing you run with a discarded bucket on your head more than once.

By the time we turned onto Sherman Way, you were the size of a small Shetland pony. A shedding, shameless Shetland pony.

At bedtime, you wanted out of the cat crate I was supposed to leave in a separate room but brought to bed with me anyway. Another soft whimper, and I folded immediately: I opened the door and you tucked back to the belly that harbored you home, from the squall of the day.

I know I could have been a more resolute parent, but what can I say? I’m ten cents into the dime for you girl.

You fell asleep. I did not. But I had the most amazing dream.

I dreamt you told me that the vets are full of shit. That you don’t dig because you are nervous; you dig because I am. That you aren’t colorblind; you just can’t see what-ifs. That the reason you jump as much upward as forward when you run is not because you’re working new legs; it’s to see more of a new world.

And I wake up. And it is your birthday. And you are one. And those silly vets now consider you a dog, though we both know the truth: You will never stop being my puppy.

Whaddya know? I guess you were the one imprinting.

Happy birthday, Jadie. You really shouldn’t have, but thank you for the presence.