(Wo)man's Best Friend

Finding the right words to adequately describe the chaos that goes by the name of Ripley is not an easy task. Moving past the what-happened-to-you-training-the-dog-I-don't-know-anything-about-training-dogs conversation, we are the proud owners of a hyper, shoe-stealing, toilet paper-shredding, power-chewing, bundle of muscular energy. She can sniff out food on the counter in a single bound. She has pulled books off of bookshelves and literally digested them. Our backyard has been littered with chewed up parts of things not meant for consumption, like the rubber valves of baby bottles left out on the counter to dry after being washed and the tinfoil wrappers of a bag of mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that she ate one New Year's Eve that resulted in a call to the emergency vet and two doses of hydrogen peroxide which did absolutely nothing. The dog even nearly ate a semester exam I was grading once. (Do teachers get to use that excuse like students?) She quickly earned the nickname the yellow bandit after an incident in which my husband and I each thought the other had put away the Reuben sandwiches from supper the night before. It turns out the dog did it for us, and it was the first of many counter-top thefts. Notorious for being chewers, our Labrador retriever has earned her own hashtag on my Twitter feed: #thingsmydogate. Of all the things I have had to wrangle free from the clutches of her jaws, baby Jesus from our Christmas nativity scene has to be the weirdest item ever pried out from between her teeth.

In our house, baby toys and dog toys are interchangeable depending who is chewing on it.

Maybe I should have followed the advice of friends, colleagues, and professional therapists about getting rid of the dog in order to bring myself a little sanity. There was a moment once when the dog bolted after getting spooked by a medical helicopter flying low over our house, nearly losing her to a cornfield on the northeast end of town, that I honestly considered it, and I actually sent a text message asking a family friend if they would be willing to take her to train her. In my stubbornness, I have always argued that our daughter would be crushed to lose her best friend, but in reality, I felt we were in too deep to back out. Armed with an arsenal of books from the library, I was prepared to dig in my heels for doggy boot camp. Starting with the book Marley & Me was probably not the best place to begin, though. My husband told me he had never seen someone laugh so much while reading a book; I told him I could not help it because Ripley has to be long lost cousins with that dog.

Ripley gets into pretty much anything - my husband's slippers are her favorite.

But what makes for a good family dog? There is a meme on the Internet that states Pit Bulls were once used as nanny dogs because of their protective nature with children. Any attempt at researching the validity of this claim comes up with a plethora of blog posts arguing either for or against support of Pit Bulls. Debate over the safety of certain dog breeds typically used in fighting rings is not a modern argument, though. "The world in general... [has] some weird ideas about dogs. One of their pet theories is that any dog who has 'bull' in his name is savage, ugly, faithless brute fit only to associate with stable boys, corner loafers, prize fighters, and downright thugs" (Haynes). In The Bull Terrier, Haynes goes on to say,

"This is undoubtedly a memory of the days of bull baiting, that very barbarous sport once upon a time relished by our English fore fathers. It is quite true, and it can be proved, that in the veins of the English bulldog and the English bull terrier flows the blood of dogs who, three centuries ago, did bait bulls. It is equally true, and some go to considerable pains to prove it, that many of us are descendants of the gentlemen who enjoyed watching bull baiting. That is, of course, very shocking, but we console ourselves by thinking of the wonderful improvement made by the human race since those dark days. Why do we give the dogs no credit for improvement?" (Haynes).

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While certain breeds have a reputation today for being good with kids, types of dogs that were in favor with families at the beginning of the 20th century looked remarkably different with collies, Boston terriers, and German shepherds topping the list by the American Kennel Club of most popular dog in America. First recognized as its own breed in 1917, the Labrador retriever has held the number one spot on the list since 1991 (American Kennel Club). The American Kennel Club describes the breed standard as “one of a kindly, outgoing, tractable nature; eager to please and non-aggressive towards man or animal” (AKC). Historically used as a fisherman's aide off the coast of Newfoundland, many people who like to fish or hunt own Labrador retrievers because they make a good sporting dog and typically love water. For someone not accustomed to dogs, any novice pet owner would welcome a canine that is "easy to train, love[s] to have fun, and adores their human above all else" (Pavia).

Ripley's crazy personality fits in well with our quirky family.

A connoisseur in pets and butt rubs, our dog is the epitome of a people-loving Lab. She has patiently let our girls use her furry body to stabilize themselves as they first learned how to stand. She has tolerated having her ears, paws, and jowls investigated by tiny hands before my husband or I notice and swoop in to rescue her from the girls' clutches, but even then she sometimes has gone back to the kids like a glutton for punishment. Ripley joins in the chase when the girls start running around the house with too much pent up energy, and she seems to not care when the girls try to ride her like a horse, which happens more often than it should. In her eagerness to get a treat, Ripley easily gets careless at chomping food from my hands but gently nibbles at anything offered from our girls - and boy did our kids learn quickly once starting solid foods that our dog will eat pretty much anything. Of course, this has led to some bad table manners on the part of our dog, as was evident while I helplessly watched from across the kitchen as Ripley pulled an entire corn dog off the stick that my daughter was holding in the blink of an eye. Tears were involved in that yellow bandit incident.

When our younger daughter was in the bouncy seat, chances were Ripley would go in for a head cuddle.

In return, our girls do not let 60 pounds of brute strength push them around. Watching a three-year-old give a dog twice her size commands to sit is quite the amusing sight, and it seems remarkable that the dog has begun to adhere to a little girl's commands lacking in proper enunciation. Not to be outdone, our one-year-old has picked up on me telling the dog to be quiet when she starts barking at yet another squirrel taunting her from the backyard. It makes me laugh to watch such a tiny toddler shout commands with gusto. Giving the dog a treat to release one of the girls' toys from its clutches has almost become a ritualistic game in this household, a much more welcome game than tug-of-war with an infant as she gets gently pulled across the living room floor much to her giggling delight. As a result, my girls do not have a fear of dogs, and they are thankfully learning at a young age how to interact with other people's animals simply because we own a large dog breed.

A favorite pastime of these three peas in a pod is watching out the window.

What was at first an annoyance for me has actually become a blessing in disguise. The life of a stay-at-home mom is quite isolating, and circumstances have made it so that I can have stretches of multiple days in a row with no adult human interaction. In the struggle to find a new normal with postpartum depression and anxiety after baby number two, because that anxiety likes to creep back in at any given opportunity, Ripley became my escape out of the house for some exercise along with some peace and quiet during our nightly walks. I honestly think those walks were the best medicine as there is something quite soothing about walking in the moonlight. In our house, the dynamics of PTSD has made it more challenging to learn how to juggle two kids, with 2019 being probably the toughest year we have faced. Yet through all the ups and downs, Ripley has been dependent and stable (and maybe a little anxiety-ridden). She is my shadow around the house, following me everywhere. She whines when I try to get stuff done at night when she wants her cuddle time, and she is my reminder to sit down to recharge... dog in lap, of course. Once the bane of my existence, she continues to be my worst student and my most needy child, but she has morphed into my best companion that I never would have guessed I would absolutely need. For that, I am grateful.

My evening cuddle buddy gets quite whiny if you skip her nightly lap-time.

Sources:

American Kennel Club. American Kennel Club, Inc. www.akc.org. January 30, 2020.
Haynes, Williams. The Bull Terrier. Outing Publishing Company. New York, 1912.

Pavia, Audrey. The Labrador Retriever Handbook. Barron's Educational Series. New York, 2001.