Goose

 

 

A week ago, we brought this Australian Cattle Dog home with us. Goose has joined the Chicken/Tuna menagerie and he is certainly spicing things up. Wiggly and earthy-smelling and vibrating with energy in his stout little body, he has been buzzing and crashing and sniffing and flopping around since he’s arrived. What a ride.

 

While I don’t want to understate how enormous it is to bring home an actual baby, I think this puppy has been more work than a human baby. Maybe I’m in the throes of a crisis of confidence. Babies cry a lot but they don’t thrash about biting furniture and ankles, spilling the water bowl, barking at a ghost, and then pooping on the carpet. I love babies! And when you have a baby, no one expects you to feed the other children, enforce music practice, coordinate play dates, pick up the kids from school, and certainly not with some hairy, smelly, illegal being in your arms. I was holding Goose like a baby at the kids’ school, picking up Naomi early, and the secretary commented that I had a nice baby, wink wink nudge nudge.

 

And yet! Oh my goodness. I am the grinch whose heart has grown three sizes. It’s been so heartwarming to see people cheering for him, willing him on to become a good shop doggo.  

 

He is very cute, which is half of his problem (the other half is that he’s too smart for his own good). We have a little tag on his leash saying “In Training, Please Ignore” to try to give this little guy some space in this big and scary and bustling world. Mainly, we want him to be neutral and calm when customers come in, not dragging or pulling to say hi to everyone. He has to get used to the fact that people are part of the background music—so he can relax and hang out in the shop.

 

People, both in the shop and on the street, have been ignoring him, which has been terrific, or waiting for him to be calm and focused before saying hello quietly, which is also great, because he does also have to learn how to say hello to people without jumping on them or chewing their pants or untying their laces. We’re doing our best to train him to be a good shop dog, which seems like a task for Atlas, not me. Every once in a while Goose gets a little jumpy, and I’ve been working on my explanation to people that it’s one thing for a cute little goose to put his paws up, but another thing entirely for a full-sized dog to be leaping about.

 

How much fun it has been to introduce Goose to various people in our lives and various people at random. I had forgotten how a dog helps you make friends in life. We used to have a dog, Super, a chocolate lab, and I’d forgotten the smells and sounds and also the dog park conversations and other dog people in our lives peripherally.

 

I am an introvert by nature: having Goose at my feet in the shop or at the school parking lot brings people up to say hello, which has forced me out of my own existential bubble, and before I know it I’m hearing about other people’s dogs or dog dreams and chatting with another school parent about some tiny, quavering stationery shop on Clinton Street, where one day we hope a little goose will be trotting around (calmly).

 

 

Goose has changed so much in even just a week, I can hardly believe it. Do I love him more than I love my children? Absolutely not. Maybe.

 

He’s pretty cute.