Forever Love
I once lived in a house with 11 dogs. The sound of 44 paws rushing to greet you at the door is the sound of home to me.
Some people have been so bold as to tell me that I have too many dogs, even now, with just seven in the house. Some wonder how I can give that many dogs the attention they deserve. Or, in the words of a co-worker: “It’s just kind of crazy. Like, cat-lady crazy. It’s too many.”
A friend once advised me that no one should have more dogs than they have hands. In most cities, if you have more than three to six dogs, you are required to get a special license, your home is subject to inspection, and your neighbors are notified. Your situation is defined as a kennel, something like a horse stable, even though you have all the modern conveniences for humans. You are, in the minds of many, living with the animals. You might as well have sawdust on the floor.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t live in town or that we live in an age where people can watch videos of a Highland cow’s bedtime routine, complete with pajama time. It doesn’t matter that my video feed is full of little dogs getting facials in kitchen sinks or a lady sharing a pillow with a squeaky-clean pet pig. Why can’t the animals live in our world?
When people visit our house, which is rare, I always ask them not to take off their shoes. Even before I lived with so many dogs, I believed shoes were part of an outfit. I never understood the suburban custom of partially undressing at the front door. If there is a flood or fire, I do not want to be scrambling to find my shoes in a pile. This is just one example of my predisposition to living in a barn, even if I wasn’t raised in one.
My family is not a traditional “nuclear family” – defined as parents and children – with “nuclear” originating from the word meaning “kernel,” not “kennel.” I don’t mind when people refer to me as a “dog mom,” even if it conjures the image of a woman swooning over a spoiled, floofy dog. You love who you love and leave the caricatures for the carnival artists.
You can be a dog mom and have a house full of muddy hunting dogs drying out from a day in the rain and snoring from dog beds scattered around the house, waiting for their next adventure.
Long ago, when I brought home my first chocolate Lab, Jack, a duck-hunting friend asked me if I let Jack sleep in my bed. The thought filled me with a kind of housekeeping panic. If you had seen Jack, you would have seen him excavating rocks in the yard or rolling in salmon carcasses. He often had drool hanging from his mouth or wrapped around his face when he tried to shake it off.
That night, he wanted to get up on the bed. He put a paw next to my head. I removed it, as if it were a dirty napkin. He put the paw up again. “Jack, no,” I said. “You are filthy. Work with me on this.”
The next day, I put a blanket on the floor next to my bed. I thought about how my white down comforter didn’t fit in the washing machine, how I didn’t want any more Jack-shaped marks on the furniture. My beige couch was already ruined. But it wasn’t until the next fall, when I saw my same friend, that I realized how much I had changed. I had made my last purchase from Pottery Barn and my first purchase from Cadre Feed. I bought a Jack-colored secondhand leather couch. I had water-absorbing mats at the front door. Nothing that you would call “decorative” existed at any height Jack could reach on his hind legs.
“I slept with Jack,” I told him. He knew exactly what I meant.
From that day forward, my dog family grew. My defenses only weakened and are still weakening. I have no hard shell left. I am completely open now.
That means all the love I have felt sharing a view at the top of the mountains or sitting side by side watching the sunrise on the flats is right there with all the heartbreak. One thing human parents don’t experience as much as those who live with dogs – especially hunting dogs – is the shortened arc of shared adventure with its inevitable end.
One day, you are sitting cross-legged on the porch in July with a litter of fat, soft setter pups all around you – a warm day of puppy breath and the delight of little bodies exploring the outdoor world for the first time. Eleven years later, you are running a canine nursing home, still calling those same dogs your “puppies” as each one suffers from a different hardship of age and exhibits a rich history of life they cannot share in words.
You have feelings, a lot of feelings.
You wake up at 1:58 a.m. because you hear Purdey crying out. You get out of bed, run up the stairs, and find that she cannot move her back legs. She is panting, which is a sign of pain, but she also holds her breath and stares past you. She needs to see a vet, but the next day, Rigby has chemo in Anchorage.
So you sit with her through the night, watching the hours of the clock. You offer her water that she won’t drink and try to make her comfortable in blankets. In the morning, you load her and Rigby into the van – at this stage in your life, you have a vehicle dedicated to senior dog road trips. You are all going off on an adventure – not to the alpine you love, not to the flats to hunt ducks. This time, it is to see an internal medicine specialist, to consult with a vet oncologist, and to sit for most of the day in a waiting room where you meet other dog moms and dog dads who each share their story.
That evening, you are still there with a woman and her blind French Bulldog, and a couple with a black rescue dog named Aishiteimasu – adopted three times and now named after the Japanese word for “forever love.” When Rigby, who no one has yet met but who everyone has heard about, finally emerges from his appointment, the whole room cheers.
“He’s such a beautiful boy!” says the woman with the Frenchie. I wanted to hug her and tell her we would stay in touch. But I don’t know this woman. I doubt I will ever see her or her blind, sweet heart of an old dog again. Even though for hours we had all watched over this dog because she kept bonking into the corners of the coffee table.
If you are like me, and you’ve never had kids, and you aren’t going to have them, being part of a family of dogs doesn’t mean you don’t have a family, it means you have an unconventional one.
I recognize that it is not for everyone. I get that it might not work for people who like to have nice things, love solitude and sleep, or who do not want their unruly pack to disturb the peace and quiet of another town-dweller. Despite the acoustic cost of modern traffic, industry, and human density, a dog bark can pierce the night air like the Chernobyl alarm. I do get that.
I get that it is heartbreaking and expensive to care for old dogs. It can drain you in ways that might be similar to being a parent of an infant. You still have to go to work. Instead of spending money on hockey gear or dance lessons, you are spending money at the vet or for GPS tracking collars. Maybe you built a bridge over your driveway with a ramp into the fenced yard so that the old dogs could have easier access in and out of the house.
Maybe I am crazy. Maybe you are, too – in a different way. Or maybe the real insanity is believing love has a limit. That you can only love as many dogs as you can pet with two hands or that only a conventional family can give the joy you need to feel the most fulfilled and emptied by life, made whole by being opened up to the eternal light that can light the next candle when these go out, and is by no means limited to three to six in town.
