a girl and her dog
by gloria good

I had assumed my baby would be precociously articulate, in the same mindless way I had assumed she would arrive two weeks early.

I had been two months early myself, which had seemed like a good idea at the time, but turned out to be unreasonable.  Her father was a month late, as is his way.  India turned out to be only a week late—but unfortunately, it seemed like three weeks late since I had thought she was going to be two weeks early.  This added an extra veneer of hysteria to the proceedings.

Of course, I had also assumed that I would be a cute, perky pregnant person, rather than a miserable and unkempt one. There was really no basis in reality for this assumption.  Anyone who knew me could’ve predicted that I wasn’t going to be dynamic and cheerful while waddling around in support hose in 90 degree weather. (Though to be fair to myself, I was magnificent with kidney stones.)

So India survived all sorts of potential infanthood calamities, and was developing right on schedule, according to the many ownership manuals that I scoured daily.  But once again, when you are expecting “early,” “on time” starts to seem a little late.  So I fretted about when she would talk, and what she was going to say. 

It did not occur to me to worry that her first attempts at communication would be dog noises.  My worries had been limited, rather unimaginatively, to human behavior. 
It was all Ted’s fault.  All the other animals in our house had no charisma whatsoever.  (And they were jinxed too, so our fun with them seemed to consist mostly of emergency surgery.)  Ted was the golden boy of the crew.  He emanated joy.  It was impossible not to like him.  He welcomed all alike—Mormons, bill collectors, and the guy who stole my husband’s tools from the garage—by wagging his tail so hard that he would sometimes fall over.  And India worshipped the ground he fell on.

Playing with the baby was a sort of moonlighting position for Ted.  His primary occupation was chasing cars.  He was hit by cars with a dull regularity. Cars just glanced off of him.  He must have been a genius when it came to the physics of angles, motion, and impact.  Or maybe he was made out of some sort of dense, indestructible material. 

If being hit by several cars a week was problematic for him, he didn’t show it—except by letting out what I grew to regard as an annoying little yip. The “Ted was just hit by a car” yip.  He then shook himself off, and went right back to it.  He had a super attitude.

Anyway, Ted was very pleasant company when he wasn’t a crazed daredevil courting death.  In fact, he was India’s only playmate for years—which, in retrospect, I consider to be very poor judgment.  I didn’t suspect what his formative impact was going to be on her until her cute babyish chuckle turned into a strange modified pant.  The baby books were totally mum on this type of activity.

And boy, oh boy, you’d think that people had never seen a six-month-old panting like a dog before.  Waitresses, gas station attendants, children at the store…they all had to comment.

“Mommy, what is that baby doing?” 

“I think she’s laughing.”

“It sounds like a dog.”

“I think that’s just the way she laughs.”

Then one day I heard growling in the living room.  I went in to reprimand Ted—but no, it was India growling at him.

The growl is actually a delightful, all-purpose sound, I soon discovered by observing my human daughter.  One can express pleasure with it, while fondly nuzzling a teething ring.  Or, one can use it to say—

“Back off, Mommy!  I’m not done with those Cheerios yet!”

It’s a paradox:  one noise, many meanings.  I assure you, it’s very Zen.  India experimented with the growl for a few months and then, with loving detachment, let it go.

The panting subsided, and I thought that we were home free.  But, sadly, when she was a toddler, India developed a taste for dog bones.  Well, a craving, or an obsession.

“India, no!  That’s not for you!”  I said, fishing icky, grainy stuff out of her mouth.

“Ted eats them,” she protested.

“Ted is a dog.  You are not a dog,” I said, thinking—damn!  I thought that we’d already established this!  “Dogs are different from us,” I told her.  “They eat things like dead squirrels, and poop.  We don’t eat dead squirrels and poop.”  I paused.  “Right?  You don’t, right?” 

“Back to the house!” she screamed at me, pointing towards the living room.  “You go back to the house!” 

It was then I understood that she was addicted.  Being somewhat of a visionary, I saw that this could lead us down a very ugly path.  Sure, now it was only unnaturally-red animal digest, bone meal, and compressed poultry by-product.  But someday this could lead to something worse, like the desire to date Republicans.  Yuck!

Like most junkies, she would do anything to score a bone:  steal one from Ted, roll over and play dead…whatever it took to get the wheat middlings and animal fat into her system.  I would find her huddled in a kitchen cabinet among the bowls, gnawing furtively.

 “No!  Back to the house!”

nally, I had just to stop buying them.  And let me tell you, we had a houseful of sulky, strung-out animals for a while there.  But it was worth it. 

My daughter seemed liberated from the desire for animal digest for several years.  I thought the nightmare was over.  That is because I never learn.  You see, when India was six, a friend of ours caught her eating kibble.  God knows how long she’d been on the stuff.  And talk about careless—I mean, we always just left that stuff laying around the house! 

“She scooped up a handful and crammed it in her mouth,” my friend told me, clearly revolted.  “And then she offered me some, with a big smile on her face, and said, ‘try some, it’s good!’”

Speaking with her mouth full, and pushing dog food….Really, I never expected any of this.  Do other parents have to trot out the “you are not a dog” lecture year after dragging year?

So India is almost twelve now, and I have to brag on her a little bit:  she truly exhibits stellar humanoid behavior.  For instance, she is incredibly bipedal.  Language, the use of tools, plotting and stewing, the senseless acquisition of totally useless objects…if it’s a characteristic that distinguishes us from the lower mammals, she does it.  That’s my girl!  She puts the sapiens back in Homo sapiens.  I am so proud. 

It’s been years since we’ve had to experience the dark side of addiction.  Ok, I came down on her hard, after the kibble-eating incident.  Maybe too hard.  But frankly I think I was right, due to the impending “mad cow disease” crisis.

There are those who say I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise.  They know who they are.  And perhaps my detractors will be proven correct, and I will live to regret my naïve optimism.  But I truly believe, with all of my heart, that my daughter’s yearning for cereal-like, animal by-products (fortified with choline chloride and menadione sodium bisulfite complex) is over. 

Her teen years are almost upon us.  I know she could soon be discovering all sorts of illicit pleasures.  Like beef jerky.  Or those fried things made out of the innards of pigs.  Whatever they are.  But why go looking for trouble, enumerating all the potential variables of disaster?  We can cross those bridges when we come to them.  Really, I can’t worry about every little thing.  

Well, I can.  But it’s exhausting.

Gloria Good lives in Oteen. [ ggood@buncombe.main.nc.us ]