Day 696: Proud Like I Birthed Them

Oh, it's started. I am so proud if my two little girl dogs, it's almost embarrassing. On Saturday, we ate a chicken. An actual chicken, roasted in the most nose-tantalising way, left out to stand (sending beautiful chickeny wafts throughout the house). We served it up. There was another dog in attendance, who lay right by the table. And those little hungry, scaredy girls lay snibbling on the sofa, wrapped in each other, as if there might never have existed such a thing as a stinkydelicious chicken in the whole of the world. They didn't whine or beg, they didn't even wag. They just lay there. Bless them SO hard.

Teasel (aka Weasel aka Maureen)

And when I fed them later, they were freakishly quiet and calm (that's not the way, normally - they're frantically anxious and wolfish in their eating). To give the other dog, Rhubarb, credit, she was comatose on the floor having bits of chicken dropped on her head and didn't bother to wake up, so not begging either. 

Last night, they managed to walk on the lead Quite Well for Quite A Long Time. It's the tiny steps! Today too, and although shaking with fear and dragging their little bodies as close to the ground as possible when they first got into the pet shop for a car harness fitting, they calmed and breathed and by the end were wagging and going up to people, all not bothered in their new harnesses. 

The little black one, Mosca/Moshka/Martha* maybe... she gets all the pretty colours because she's got black fur and bright colours look brilliant on her. Fluffbucket Teasel (nee Lija, then Crumpet, possibly Maureen) gets mostly black, because it stands out against her dark-lighted blondness and many of the other colours are a bit unpleasing. Not that they give a shit, obviously. They're dogs. All for my own viewing pleasure, the colours. 

Mosca/Moshka/Martha/Bintface/Janet

Yes, of course they're child substitutes, but with the bonus of being able to leave them and feed them nothing but biscuits, and not do nappies, and although there's no escaping excrement, at least it's usually fairly firm and manageable, unlike the poonamis and poomageddons that babies aim at you. No school either, but bugger me, the training is exhausting. I'm not saying I wouldn't still love a child - it's not a binary choice - and possibly not an entirely influenceable choice at all, on the baby front... and this dogness is good. 

It's amazing how easy it is to love these creatures. They don't need anything except what they need. They are not dissimilators. They can't do pretending very well, or if they try, they do it with such obvious clunk that it's funny to watch. When they machinate, they show it with the very wag of their machiavellian tails. The human equivalent would be a person self-narrating 'I'm lying to you.. .ha haaaa. heeee! Look at me lie! Oh, going to do a lie REALLY WELL now.. .just you watch!'.

Also mosca... fly/sky raisin

I particularly like Teasel's paws - she has big, sandy feet with spaces between her toes that a yogi would have un-yogi-like attachment to. She has the softest eyes and short, very gingery-blond eyelashes. She is pretty, and she has a glorious, curly howl on her. She sounds like the Stranger Danger cat, Charlie, from the Actual 1970s.

And Mosca, with her tiny head and her wriggly body. She licks like a ninja - take your attention off her for a second and she'll have her tongue in your mouth. She is flirtatious and writhey, more apt to throw herself into a stranger's arms if that stranger smells good. She has the most pleasing legpits, if that's what they can be called - the stretchy skin in the armpits of her back legs. And a very fine, lean little belly.

And twattish ears on both of them. Hooray!

Also teasel

They're all official now, these two. They have tags, car harnesses (harni, Catherine?), a vet. They're becoming who they are. Training tantrums have stopped for the moment. They were barking at night and now they're not, because I put some curtains up. Must have been shit going down outside! 

And in other flavours of the world, I'm grateful for beautiful sunlight, wise friends, gentleness and candour. I'm humbled by the luxury of my life and touched, even in less easy moments, by the love in it. 

* Mosca/Moshka, not Moksha, which is of course liberation from Samsara. Noble, but not entirely fitting. I'm not sure Mosca is liberated from Samsara so much as simply to engaged in licking and hoarding and elbowing in. Maybe she IS Moksha after all.