“Karen did WHAT?” I blurted into the phone.
“We’d gone into the pet store, just to look around,” said our daughter Karen’s husband, Rich. “She spotted a young Rat Terrier, liked him, and bought him on the spot. She named him Dave.”
“We’ll be coming to your house soon,” he continued. “So I thought you should know that Dave is, um, somewhat on the lively side.” The sounds of dog yips and Karen’s chiding voice rose in the background.
“Thanks for the warning, Rich,” I sighed. “See you soon.”
Karen, Rich, and Dave sat on our sofa, as we humans ate pieces of birthday cake. I glimpsed movement to my left, and an unsettling image began unfolding in slow motion. Dave was sailing through the air. And he was heading directly toward me.
Dave landed squarely in my cake plate. Using it as a launch pad, he hurdled the coffee table and streaked toward our patio door. Now airborne again, he crashed through the screen door, touched ground near the patio’s outer edge, and ran toward the far reaches of the yard.
A chastened Karen held Dave on her lap, incarcerating him in a bear hug, through the remainder of the visit. Rising to leave, she sat him on the couch as she gathered her belongings. Dave hoisted his leg, smiled up at Karen, and peed a small lake onto the cushion where she’d sat. “Dave, you little…” she roared.
“Dave did WHAT?” I asked Rich.
“He was standing on a table in our living room,” Rich replied. “Karen leaned over to tell him to jump down. So he raised his leg, aimed, and started peeing. Hit her smack between the eyes.”
“And while Karen did the laundry, Dave chewed through the clothes hamper, and starting pulling out clothes,” Rich continued. “Apparently he felt he hadn’t irritated her enough, though. Because then he started trying to eat the drywall in the laundry room.”
“Whew. Are you also having problems with Dave?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “Dave and I are great pals. He’s intelligent, and he’s loads of fun. But he seems to have made tormenting Karen his mission in life.”
As Karen and Rich prepared for the birth of their first child, Dave halted his antics. He seemed somehow aware that an important event was at hand. He commenced blocking outsiders–even persons he knew–from entering baby Julia’s future room.
He even began to display affection toward Karen. And he seemingly had acquired a need for her affection in return. Several hours before Karen’s water broke, Dave apparently sensed it, and became almost distraught with concern.
We’d fretted about how Dave might conduct himself with a young child in the house. We needn’t have. With Julia, and with second daughter Audrey, Dave was protective, loyal, fun, and well-behaved to a fault. Both girls adored him.
With Karen, though, Dave resumed his bedeviling of, seemingly, her every waking moment. On an ill-advised jaunt in her SUV, Karen let him ride, uncrated, in the passenger seat. At a traffic light, Dave leaped onto the dashboard and stood there, grinning up at Karen. She swatted him back into the seat.
He then swooped toward the driver’s seat, landing on the head-rest behind Karen. Yelling, she back-handed him downward once more. Then he vaulted onto her head.
“Dave, you little…” she hollered. The routine repeated itself several times, no doubt to the amusement of those motorists watching a dog flying to and fro inside an SUV.
Yet, as Karen described the fiasco, I sensed that her expressions of anger were feigned. And I’d have sworn she was suppressing a smile.
I began considering whether Karen’s and Dave’s relationship might be quite different than how it seemed. Could Dave’s tormenting of Karen, and her outrage back at him, instead be a game of sorts between a strong-willed, intelligent human and a strong-willed, intelligent dog? And might this game be the way by which this dog and this human chose to nurture their bond and enjoy each other’s company?
My suspicions grew over the years, despite Karen’s poo-pooing of them. Rather than a “hate” relationship, might this be “love-hate” instead? Or could it even be… Nah, I told myself. No way.
I watched one evening as an elderly Dave toddled outside to do his business. He glanced toward the house, to be certain Karen was watching. He squatted feebly on the patio, rather than in the grass… in precisely the spot most likely to maximize Karen’s unhappiness.
“Dave!” she shouted at him. “You little…” But this shout seemed considerably less fervid than those of earlier times. And I wondered if I heard in that shout a measure of anguish… anguish that this long game, and the relationship which had played out within that game, were drawing to a close.
On a chilly morning soon afterward, Dave deposited one last strategically-aimed poop pile onto the patio for Karen. Then, with family close at hand, he embarked on his final ride to the veterinary clinic. In the days which followed, a subdued Karen professed to be focused on helping her daughters handle their grief.
“I can’t believe this,” Karen told me several months later. Sentiment was growing in the family to replace Dave with another Rat Terrier.
“I’m sure you’re opposed to that,” I said, suppressing an inner smile. “You wouldn’t want another Dave, would you?”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” she replied, far less than convincingly. “But I might possibly be outvoted.” Yeah, sure, I thought to myself. And if you guys adopt another Rat Terrier, I’ll finally know the truth about you and Dave.
“Karen did WHAT?” I sputtered into the phone.
“You heard me right,” Rich said. “We now have TWO Rat Terrier puppies in our family. Karen will tell you it was the kids’ doing. But she was the ring-leader.”
“We’re all very happy with Simon and little Mabel,” he continued. “But Karen is absolutely beaming.”
I now had the confirmation I’d sought for so long. The Karen and Dave relationship, despite its surface of hostility-tinged mayhem, had operated atop a foundation of love.
We arrived for our visit at Karen’s and Rich’s house, and were greeted by Julia, Audrey, and an adorable Rat Terrier puppy. Karen sat at her work-from-home desk, preparing to close down her computer.
She bade us, with hand gestures and smiles, to come closer. Lying in Karen’s lap, fast asleep, was a tiny Dave look-alike.
And I’d have sworn I glimpsed, for just a microsecond, a vision of a contented Dave, off wherever it is that dogs go when their work on Earth is complete. Dave could consider his 17 years with this family–all four of its members, as a matter of fact–to have been the most rousing of successes.