Was There a Pet or a Person Who Helped You Love Life?

This week, my mother would have turned 95. She’s been gone a while, but I think of her often, and how she schemed and fought for what she believed was right.

She didn’t win all of her battles—it’s tough when the deck is stacked against you—but she won some key ones, like getting a dog later in life.

When my brothers and I were out of the house, and after our childhood dogs had died, my mother heard about someone giving away a bichon frise. There are a lot of reasons people have to give away their dog, and you probably should hear the story once. But my mother saw one picture and locked in.

Bichon frises, if you’re not familiar, are tiny lap dogs who want nothing more than to please. They were the choice of royalty going back a thousand years, and are quick to learn tricks if only to please their people. If you’ve ever seen a theatrical dog act, you’ve probably seen a bichon frise.

She made a bold move by bringing the dog home to see what would happen. Long time readers of the Picayune may recall my father was prone to anger, often quickly, and overall didn’t like dogs. It didn’t go well.

I think he was hoping to enjoy a dog-free retirement, so imagine his reaction when he came home to a tiny, poorly-groomed, dog who barked incessantly.

“Why is this dog here?” he asked.

“I want him. His name is Peaches.”

“I don’t want a dog,” he said.

“He’s just visiting.”

My father shook his head and went out to the garage. The first skirmish of the Battle of the Bichon Frise ended indecisively, and Peaches had survived the fight.

The next day, my mother invited my brother and me to the house. We brought our girlfriends at the time, and we were all impressed by Peaches, who barked incessantly and tried to bite us when we petted him. Throughout the evening, Peaches would get an astonishing case of the zoomies, sprinting around the house, jumping off furniture, and basically terrorizing all of us.

That dog was crazy.

Still, our mother persisted. “I just want a dog,” she’d say. “The house is too quiet with you boys gone.”

I’m sure it occurred to everyone hearing this that, if the house is too quiet, you can put on some background music, or tune the television to QVC, to cover the silence. You don’t need a high-energy terror machine with razor-sharp teeth that barks at every movement and runs around your house like an arctic fox on meth chasing a rabbit for dinner.

We still don’t know why, but my father conceded the point. Maybe he was tired of all the fighting, or maybe he respected Peaches’s fearless attack of creatures ten times its own weight, but the dog stayed.

My brother suggested that Mr. Peabody would be a better name, and we bought him a bow-tie name tag, and that was it.

Peaches was no more. Long live Mr. Peabody.

The dog eventually calmed down and, slowly, my parents figured out how to deal with a high-maintenance pet. Proper grooming was a challenge, and Peabody blew out a knee during one of his zoomie sessions.

Ironically, after knee surgery, Peabody was faster than before. But at least his barking eased into a more normal, pedestrian type annoyance.

Strangest of all was that, once my father retired, he and Peabody ran errands together, stopping at McDonalds for coffee (for my dad) and McSausage sandwiches (for Peabody). They bonded, and became almost inseparable.

Our father, who purposely kept his distance from the dogs of our childhood, became emotionally attached to Mr. Peabody.

The thing about dogs is that they have shorter lifespans than us. When Mr. Peabody’s time was up, it was a terrible loss for all of us. I had the honor of being with Mr. Peabody when he took his final breath; it chokes me up even now.

At that time, our father had been dealing with medical problems, and our mother was showing signs of memory loss. Saying goodbye to Peabody was the first in a series of battles we were going to face as a family.

Our mother’s insistence on getting the dog was serving her instinctual need to love something in her life. The empty nest needed more life so she could offer more of her love. We didn’t know it at the time, but she always served as a counter-point in our family to our father’s quickness to anger. She showed us there was another way to be.

By winning that battle with my father to keep the dog, our mother effectively gave something extra to love to our father. He didn’t want something extra to love, but he needed it.

As do we all.

Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…

I have a bunch of revisions to make to the recently completed novel, and then read it to myself aloud. It’s a weird thing to do, but goes surprisingly quick. Like, it’ll take me a couple of weeks to read a novel—I chip away a chapter a day, typically. But for the read-aloud exercise, I clear a weekend and recite every word of the novel, listening for awkward phrases and clumsy paragraphs (like this one!).