Category Archives: Open Letter

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 XIII: The New Dog Days of Summer

My scintillations,

This letter comes apropos of nothing, which may be the point.

Every time I write, it seems, it carries a certain sense of (melo?)drama: Jadie’s birthday, Charlie’s adoption, your first swim.

There is nothing dramatic here. Save, of course, for everything.

For here, under the historic Western Heat Dome, where dog days have baked September into the new August, you have somehow sidled into doghood.

How did that happen? When did that happen? And I want specific dates.

Make no mistake: You are not even teens in our years, and that is occasionally obvious. Say, when a Barkbox shows up. Or you see a leash. Or when I microwave popcorn; YOU AIN’T GETTING ANY — DEAL WITH IT.

But you have lowered your bark, slowed your gate, begun to see this as your home, one you’d die to defend if I were in it and in peril. Or at least so I’d like to think.

But what do you think of monotony? I imagine that for most days and nights, life may seem to churn, over and over. Boring, perhaps (and I’m looking at you girl). Maybe without point. Maybe without purpose. Beware that deception! Boredom means you are free of hunger and most likely pain.

More vitally, being is purpose. Never forget the reason you are here in the first place: Nothing short of being the conscious representative for your patch of the cosmos, and all the duties implied therein.

In other words, keep doing what you’re doing. Which appears to be enjoying our one go-round on the Great Carousel.

You know what? Move over, would ya?

Open Letter to a Puppy, Chapter XIV: Dog Dad Afternoon


My better halves,

I forget sometimes how new you are. We’ve learned each other’s’ rhythms so well that it feels like we’ve been together for years. But we’ve been a trio for only nine months, and this is our first summer.

So I didn’t think much of the invitation, Jadie, to try out your webbed paws (which all Labs have) at a friend’s pool. I had a pool at my previous house, and your ancestors, Teddy and Esme, LOVED it. We spent an entire summer at that flat chlorine altar, and your dad had quite the tan.

But this was the first time either of you had seen a pool deeper than six inches. And you turned THAT into a plastic rawhide. I still don’t know if that was a sign of love or repulsion.

Regardless, you were as curious as Yogi at a picnic basket when we arrived at the crystal blue wonder. You both sniffed the edges, peered your reflections, smelled Dodger’s ass. But you never went in.

As you surveyed, I ducked into the bathroom and stripped to a suit. Then I walked to the edge, asked Jaime if he was filming, and feigned falling into the water. That’s how Teddy learned to swim, and I’d seen footage of new mothers chucking their infants in pools to teach them aquatics. 

I promise you: I will never feign mishap again. What could be more terrifying for a youngling than to see their oldling in peril? At least the babies can think, ‘Oh well, guess mom didn’t want me. Was nicer back there, anyway.’

I will never know what you thought, but I will never forget how you responded. Jadie, I’ve watched that video like the Zapruder tape, and you were in within three Mississippis of splashdown.

And baby, I’ll be honest: You ain’t Michael Phelps. You swim as much vertically as horizontally, which has gotta be scary, especially when you can’t see the exit. But once you learned the terrain, you wouldn’t stay out, so maybe we’ll do that again.

And Charlie. Bud, you were heroism incarnate. When I “fell” and Jadie dove, you and Dodger sensed something was amiss. And while Dodger began what his dad would later call “rescue barks,” you began what I call rescue action.

You came to the edge of the pool where we submerged. When Jadie’s panicked paddling sent her to the other side of the pool, you and Dodger ran there. Then you dove headfirst into the deep end. And you don’t even like baths.

What were you thinking, I wonder. That you could save us both? That, ‘If dad and sis are going down, I’m going with them’? 

You took a literal leap of faith. I don’t know if I’ve ever jumped without knowing the depth. What is that? Innate courage? Instinctive love?

By the end of lunch, you were running through the place like an off-leash park, playing keepaway with mini float noodles and blatantly violating Mrs. Rovero’s no-poolside-running policy.

And I have to admit: I was a initially a little nervous for you both. I guess that’s to be expected: Somehow, it feels more important this time around.

What I didn’t expect was that you would be nervous for me. And then I realized what you were getting at: It matters every time around.

It’s about enough to keep a soul afloat.