#44 PUPPY—SCOOTER’S RETROSPECTIVE: 2021-2022
Let’s be fair. My darling flat-nosed infancy ended a good while ago. Even adolescence is behind me—what with adventures under the sofa and mattress, the deaths of Lambchops, those months during which my nose, body, and voice grew, and for the first time, things got clipped: my heavy coat, my toenails, and, well, my little boy balls. So goes growing up.
This, after the clipping of private parts, is what I wore rather than a cone.
That, at least, seemed quite kind of my humans.
Can you believe it? I have finished my second full year of life. I was eleven weeks old when I first appeared in my mom’s blog (#1 PUPPY November 15, 2019). Her morning routine of rising was refashioned from routine to resourceful, from stepping-out to climbing over, thanks to me.
First night “Home” with humans. I never cried. You should know that about me.
It’s all there in that blog, that first year. From pee-pads (these are toys, right?) to Pet stain & Odor Remover, to trouble with my tipping tail. It’s all there. In #11 PUPPY I lifted my leg for the first time. My mom thought that worth reporting. Now, however, at the beginning of 2022, at the mid-point in my third year, I am old enough to look back a bit. This is a Retrospective, my memories of 2021.
January: This was my mom’s and my Sock game beginning. This was the first time I heard her quote a French philosopher who said, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.” I had a variety of ideas of what to do with my mom’s socks, and with a balloon hung from a string for me to bump. This was the month I carefully examined, slowing sniffed, one single blade of wild grass. Have you ever bothered to wonder about grass?
Of course, you know my ability to catch the scent of things is thousands of times better than yours, but did you know my nose-print is as distinct as your fingerprints?
By the way, what is “an Insurrection”?
Studying One Single Blade of Grass
February: Snow. Lots of it! See Scooter Sublime bury his body in it, I say. Nothing but fun, this fabulous stuff; these bothersome bits and clumps that cling to my lower legs and chin like bad dreams cling to a morning. Learning, we all are, my family and I, what to do with gladness and grief when they intersect. Oh, by the way, I have a great breakfast bowl, but what is this “Super Bowl” thing?
Snow! I love it.
March: I know “Sit,” “Stop,” “Supine,” and “Shhhh,” but “Shipinsuez”? What am I supposed to do when I hear that?
One Sunday morning, I found a gift outside our front door. “Oh boy! A ball! A black ball built of two treaded tires intertwined. Oh! Look! A bell inside! I chased it. I listened to it. I ran and retrieved it again and again until, finally, I tired (yes, I tire). When I tire, I think. I thought about the bell trapped inside the ball I held between my front paws. I began to chew. I think things trapped should be released: Bells in balls, squeakers in stuffed toys, air in balloons, carrots at the bottom of a grocery bag. If something cries out but is trapped deep inside, it needs to be brought out, freed. About most things, my humans agree.
A bell being freed.
April: Not even a reminder that April holds the National Chocolate Mousse Day, diverted my mom’s ire. I was scolded. Soundly. She quoted an angel from Paradise Lost. Can you believe that?
“Think not, Revolted Spirit, thy shape the same as when thou stood’st in Heav’n upright and pure,” and on it went. Then she got personal.
“When thou did’st stand upright and pure—as a perfectly adorable pup—you were a people-pleaser. You took to training like a baby to the breast. However, when thou no more was good, when that goldendoodle glory departed thee, when thou resembl’st now a teenage boy with a deep voice you love exercising quite inappropriately, . . . Thou resembl’st a pain in the behind.”
She said that. In April 2021.
Okay, honest, I’m sorry.
May: Not much news was good, but you may appreciate that twice in this month, no-hitters were pitched. One of those against the Seattle Mariners. You may not, but you should appreciate this—the large stuffed Monkey I vigorously throw around has six squeakers in it. Six! By May 2021, at one year and nearly nine months, I was fully grown. I had twenty or so verbal and hand commands down pat, and the names of nearly every one of my toys. Then I was given Monkey. Count them. SIX squeakers!
“Could you have found a more perfect gift?” I asked, chewing against squeakers located in arms, legs, back, tummy, and nose. I created a symphony of sound. Then, one day, while I hadn’t removed any of them, the monkey squeakers were not speaking.
“What?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” my mom said, standing with a cake testing pin in her hand.
Minor Monkey Procedure Silences Squeakers
June: Puppy blog #37
It doesn’t matter that this month, two new distinct species of the woolly flying squirrel were discovered in the Himalayas. I know a squirrel, personally. No. Big. Deal. One day in June, I wasn’t in the finest of moods. It’s just that upon leaving our apartment for my first morning walk, I lifted my nose to the air and knew something was amiss. Not even the approach of my buddies, Rich or Clark, distracted my concern. Was it coyote I smelled? An eagle? Or that, that thing situated on the sidewalk that my dad calls ‘trash barrel’? That shouldn’t be there. I didn’t like any of it. Once home, I didn’t like seeing fresh flowers on the milking bench in the very place where my dad sits to hook up my harness.
“What are those doing where Dad sits to hook my harness? Something is very wrong.”
This is true, I can be worried by nearly anything I haven’t seen before:
Machinery – of any sort
A dog or person I don’t know
The voice that comes from the ceiling saying, “There is a fire in the building. This is only a test. There is a fire in the building.”
In June my people noticed that I am a worrier. I admit it, I even have a worry chair. Surely, we all need one on occasion, don’t we?
The reason for my Worry Chair choice
July: I have a powerful voice. You may have heard it on July 1, 2021, at 5:40am. I apologize. It’s just that a Squirrel (a real squirrel!) jumped into a tree just out of my reach from the balcony, but not out of reach of my impressive deep voice. No more do I voice a puny little puppy outpouring. I admit, I may be alone in admiring my new, splendiferous sounds.
“It’s a fault,” say my detractors, this compelling (occasional) need to bark.
“Bad!” said my mom with a look that communicated disapproval. Not even a reminder that during this month she might rather enjoy looking up to see the conjunction of the Moon, Venus, and Mars than staring down to my eyes.
Alright. So, I’m not perfect. This was the summer of disclosure.
Sure. I’ll admit it. I’m apt to jump up on people. Yeah, right. It’s a capital offense. Like being crazy happy, and wanting to be close, is a crime.
As I’ve said from the get-go, “Perspective is everything. Just say’n.”
“Not everything,” said she who types for us. “Just say’n.”
I am mostly wonderful
August: My birthday month! In last year’s blog I said, “This may prove to be a long story. Just deal with it.” I would never have said such a thing when I was younger. I would not have been curt or discourteous. But on August 24th, 2021, I turned two. A teenager teetering on the edge of thinking myself top dog.
Physically, I was full-grown, long-nosed, heavy-coated, and weighed nearly thirty pounds. Mentally? Very bright. I learn quickly. I can ignore what I’ve learned just as quickly. I had, by August, acquired selective hearing. Those traits could be troubling, were it not that emotionally, I am a pushover. I love people. I love adventure. I love visitors, toys, food, surprises. I even laugh hard when my mom and I play “Boo!”
I could easily have thought myself central to the world, had people not regularly noticed things other than me: Coronavirus, a NY governor resigning, gun violence, Hurricane Henri, chaos in Afghanistan, Tokyo Olympics, Myanmar, Taliban, drones, and driverless cars. And, oh! The Good News? In that very month of my birthday, scientist said that cheese is good for us. Well, good for people is what they said. But, you know, I’m sort of people.
Happy Second Birthday, Me
September: Get this. Get this! Not one single blog posting featured me in the month of September 2021. Realizing that, I did this: I snuggled up to my mom and said, “I forgive you. No one’s perfect.”
Cuddle works
October: #42 PUPPY. Here’s a test for you—in what year was the October order placed for a U.S. Naval fleet to be built? See? You don’t know everything.
Just last October, Tom Brady made history, my dad had a birthday, NASA launched LUCY to fly by some asteroids, and Facebook became Meta. I can’t stop laughing. If the word “Meta” is used adjectivally, it suggests an explicit self-awareness, cleverly self-referential, one greater thing within a gathering of similar things. I’m thinking of trying out “Meta-doodle.” It feels right.
Just last October, a bold Douglas Squirrel and I began a nearly daily faceoff. I LOVE chasing after that squirrel. This, by the way, is why my squeaker-less stuffed Squirrel had to be renamed Chipmunk. The word, Squirrel, has simply become too wonderful. I have a Pavlovian response to “Scooter, Squirrel!” I fly to the balcony door begging to be let out.
The answer about the fleet? In 1775, the Continental Congress ordered two vessels to be armed against British merchantmen. The Navy was born.
My new “Chipmunk”
“Open, please!”
November: I remember it. Covid. Masks. A Florida condo collapsed, Covid, and poor Aaron Rodgers, and Covid, and a Russian diplomat fell to his death from an upper floor of his country’s embassy in Berlin. That wasn’t Covid. There was an International Climate Change Conference. Nothing’s changed. Covid. Adele is a big deal this month, but I don’t know much about that. There was a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and my mom’s birthday. Neither of those things were cancelled.
I sneaked into the November blog on my mom’s Word Study Series. She explored “Panache,” and, well . . .
I said, “You talking about me again?”
She said, “Not you, silly dog.”
“Really? Sounds like me.”
She said that Cyrano de Bergerac (the very embodiment of panache) said, “My elegance is interior.”
“See,” said my mom. “Panache, at its finest, requires elegance. Panache, done right is a beautiful thing.”
“Spell it,” I said.
December 2021
Right. Covid, and a slew of celebrations—including (get this), “Eat a Red Apple Day,” December 1. All I know about red apples is that I like them. I don’t know why a day to “Eat One” is in December since red apples are usually harvested from mid-summer to early fall. If you want a very good December apple, try a Pink Lady, or even a Braeburn. Who chooses these December days? Some make sense, some don’t. There’s Pearl Harbor Day, National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, Chanukah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Eve among the many. It’s worth mentioning, my friends, Ron and Lee, sent me a postcard! I got mail! Of course, I forgive her for eating a duck. No more than Goldendoodles can humans always do what they should.
But I’m distracted. I remember December 2021 because on the 16th day of that month, I vomited. On my parents’ white bedspread. And their comforter. For the first time (and only time, so far), I was sick.
Fortunately, our veterinarian neighbor, Randy, said it’s likely I ate something unsuitable, and that I would survive. So other than me being unusually subdued, and they having to clean up a bed, it was no big thing. Not surprisingly, my mom wrote about it. Quoting her is a good way to close my memory of one year and to open the next with a valuable practice. After I was sick, she wrote:
“I know not to compare love of a dog with the love for one’s spouse, child, sibling, parent, or best friend. A least, not out loud. When my brain engages, I know better. I will say that the sudden awareness that our love for Scooter Sublime is susceptible to hurt (#1 in her Word Series), to loss (because love is always susceptible to hurt and loss), is the reminder to me to love well while I can, those things worthy of love.”
Yours truly and lovingly,
Scooter Sublime of Heron’s Key
Sick, I was.
I watch my world.
