Why I would Do Anything For him
I love how at the end of a long day at school, and many, many horrible things happening to me, that I can crawl in to bed at night and he’s right there. He can’t sleep up with me anymore, I’m tired of the dirt and the hair, but he’s right there on the left side of my bed. And when it’s still and quiet in the witching hour, I can listen and hear the deep rhythm of his breathing. Faye snores in her corner, but Beau is always truly, deeply at rest. Like he had a hard day too. Like he understands exactly what I went through and knows that misery loves company. He’s the steady in my life, the constant shadow I watch out for when I step out of bed, the little nudge with a cold nose in the morning, the bright brown eyes that make my heart melt everytime I look in to them.
So much changes around me, everything is always getting worse or getting betters, and Beau, he’s always the same. A little more excited or a little more sleepy, but his needs and wants are constant and enough for me to handle.
I read in a book that the reason people have dogs is because its like the perfect marriage. You can give as much, or as little, as you like, and it’s always returned in excess. Dogs don’t nag and they don’t care what you look like or that you haven’t showered since yesterday. They are happy to do what you want to do, just as they are happy to share their interests with you (we’re always very excited about poop and squirrels at my house). They are content with silence, they are content with laughter and noise. My dogs sleep through everything. They don’t argue you with you about how you spend your money, how you dress, why you are miserable at your job all the time. They don’t trade you in for the newer model when you get old and they look just as bad but they want to think they are puppies again. The point is - they don’t care. They just want you - every little piece and smell and quirk of you - and they always give back. They are selfless and they are forgiving. It’s why we can love them so much and rarely find ourselves divorcing them.
I would give anything for Beau. He’s everything I have. I don’t care if we have to live in a box the rest of our lives, as long as I have him, everything is right in this world, no matter how much it spins so violently out of control. He’s only himself and I only have to be myself around him. All my hats and costumes get left at the door and nothing else matters.
He needs a TECA - total ear canal ablation. It will cost a fortune. At first, I was worried about the cost, the impact, the possible student loans that may result. But now, none of that matters. He’s the single most important thing to me in the whole world simply for the fact that unlike everyone else, he’s never once lost faith in me or found me unworthy. So he’ll get his TECA, he’ll live without any more infection in that ear, and I can at least pretend that I have slightly returned the favor for his constant unwavering friendship. Even if it means I will have to eat less and keep the A/C off for a month and delay getting any internet other than the dialup I have now… I just can’t bear the thought of him not having everything he needs.
Thanks, Beau, for being the best dog ever. Even if no one else understands you or wants you, you are everything to me, as always, and forever.
can't imagine life without them, obsession with dog | Comment (0)He must be fairly confused, fairly often
Beau has three names. Not like First Middle Last, but rather a Formal Informal Teasing. To the outside world, our friends at the dog park, strangers, etc., he’s Beau. No, that’s B-E-A-U and not B-O, although I am starting to reconsider this as he does tend to be on the stinky side (an incentive for boarding him because those free baths he gets make him smell sooo good). His original name was Frio, after the river and the country in Texas, but I thought that was a rather stupid thing to call a dog, so I changed it. He needed a southern gentleman name (because at first I thought I might call him Sawyer after my favorite character on LOST), and so he became Beau. And despite my mother’s best intentions, it’s not Beauregard or Bodacious. It’s just Beau. And like how we get called by our First Middle or First Middle Last when we are in trouble with our mothers, so Beau really only ever hears his true name when he’s being mischievous or bothersome. It’s always, “Beau, that boy dog does not want to be more than friends with you,” or “Beau, get off the bed!” or “Beau, pleeeeease stop stepping on my feet!”
His second name is Bubba. To my mother, this second name is BeauBeau, but these derivations serve the same purpose. It’s the affectionate name. Like Penny is called Pooky and Faye is called FayeFaye. Beau is my bubba, plain and simple. He’s my beer drinking cohort sans trucker hat and he helps me “keep it real.” He is the sanity in my insane life and that makes us close. Like buddies, or bubbas, since he reminds me of Forest Gump. When I am just talking to him he is Bubba, and he gets asked for many opinions. I think at this point he thinks Bubba really is his name, but I have a feeling he mostly just responds to my voice anyway. And I always think about Beau as “my Bubba,” because, well, he is. It’s hard to explain.
His third name is the teasing name. The informal little thing I call him usually only at the park or on walks. And right now it happens to be Booger Face. It used to be Super Star, and maybe before that it was Beaubers or Hot Shot or Dumb Hound. And oddly enough, this is the name he responds to the best. Beau he ignores. Bubba, he only picks up on when it’s time for snuggles or for play. But Booger Face turns him around pretty darn fast. He drops what he is doing and it there at my feet, like, “What??!”
Poor Beau, he must be awfully confused and confused with some frequency.
obsession with dog | Comment (0)It’s not home without dogs
Beau looks immensly peaceful, lying there on his bed, head raised on the corner of it and eyes blissfully closed. The look on his face says that this is the first good rest he’s had in a good long while and he fully expects to be dreaming about fountains overflowing with cookies and trips to the dog food factory where you get to sample anything and everything as much as you want. Occasionally his big black nose twitches as if in anticipation of some olfactory delight, and his lips part just slightly to let out a little “bwoof” noise as he dreams. Even Faye and her constant up and about behavior, her pacing and sniffing and investigating everything, can’t bother him now. He’s just content to doze, at last, at long last.
Outside my bedroom window, the cardinals are back, feeding from my new feeder, looking in the grass for freshly mowed-over bugs. Faye is watching them carefully, her hounding instincts in full swing. She’s definitely the hunter and tracker of my two moose (she’s calmed down a lot and is too goofy to be a squirrel any longer, plus it works better with the title of my blog since moose is plural) and every thing that darts or flies is under her careful watch and radar. She’s a different kind of soul than Beau – a busy soul, one that can’t rest and doesn’t want to, whereas he’s more than happy to just lay around and do nothing for the rest of his lazy hound dog life.
I missed them terribly while I was gone – admittedly Beau more than Faye, but I’ve got a longer history with him. I dropped them off on Thursday last week and just picked them up today (Monday) after they had their teeth cleaned. I was watching Lars and the Real Girl yesterday and whenever I watch a movie about awkward people and how they are, I can’t help but think of Beau and miss him like crazy (even when he’s right there). According to the amazing vet clinic I took them to for boarding and dentistry, Beau was quite a talker the whole time and he was more than happy to share everything with the staff – which made me glad to hear because my weird awkward moose of a dog can sometimes function on his own without me.
It was better this time at the lake without them. I learned to water ski, I saw the mysteries of young boys and their fascination with smashing dead fish on the shore with rocks and I got to relax and unwind with the aid of some powerful mai tais. I had two and half days at home without my dogs after that, in which I finished painting, cleaning and doing the four thousand things I needed to do this week without them being underfoot. And yet, I missed them being underfoot.
Nothing beats having them home with their fur and their drool and their need for love and attention. I missed their little noises and the daily rituals. Even though I got to finally sleep in until late in the morning, I missed being woken up at the crack of dawn for breakfast and going outside to bark. Tonight I am taking them to the park where I missed all my friends and I am sure they missed theirs. My two moose are such an integral part of my life at this point that without them I feel a little lost and like something is missing.
Beau still looks peaceful and I can smell the shampoo they washed him with from over here on the bed. Faye has finally curled up underneath the window, stretched out and sighing deeply. They probably didn’t sleep a wink in the last five days and are just as happy to be home as I am to have them here.
musings, obsession with dog | Comment (0)