Unconditional Love

Recently, I adopted a dog. Or did he adopt me? Let’s just say it was a mutual attraction. You know, like the song’s words: “Across a crowded room.” Only this room, at SpokAnimal C.A.R.E., was crowded only with dogs, each in a big, bare cage.

The executive director, Gail Mackie, had first suggested a smallish black dog for me. One with a “very sweet disposition.” Well I took this sweet dog for a short walk. Nope. No chemistry.

So then I walked through a room full of dog cages. The cages are above the floor so that people can look at the dogs eye-to-eye, so to speak.

The second dog I looked at, his big, brown, beautiful eyes imploringly asking to be taken home, was it. I was almost sure. I put my fingers through the wires of the cage - a bit tentatively - and he, also a bit tentatively, licked them. And that was that. He was mine.

We changed his name because we didn’t like the one his original owner had given him. He’s now called “Duff” or “Duffy” or several silly variations of his name. I hate to think of all we asked of him at first. Because we expected him to obey, when even his name was new and strange to him. We expected him not to do things he had learned to do and to do things he had never done before. So it’s easy to see why he was a little wild the first few days he was in our home.

For about two weeks, the minute I got in bed, he immediately and enthusiastically jumped up on the bed. Then he learned not to do this. But once he forgot, and in a spurt of love and good will, he jumped up and his 81 pounds hit me hard - right on my nose.

That was the only time I’ve really yelled at him. I’d never felt such intense pain before. But dogs forgive easily, and I thought I should do the same.

He’s a big and awkward but absolutely beautiful lab retriever. His eyes are huge, melting, yearning, and under each eye is a smudge of what looks like charcoal-colored eye shadow. His fur is shiny and beautifully shaded, and when we have given him a bath in the tub - where he stands obediently but a little apprehensively - his fur is as beautiful as any dog’s fur I’ve ever seen.

Duffy is frustratingly, annoyingly and eternally hungry. And it’s not much fun eating when he is sitting there, begrudging my every bite. I tell him he had his turn. I tell him, “Mine.” I try to look and sound stern. I say things like: “This is pineapple, Duffy, you wouldn’t eat this for anything.” It’s easy to see he doesn’t believe me. “Here,” I say “I’ll prove it to you.” I give him a bite. In less than a fourth of a second, it’s down his gullet and he wants more … and more and more.

I’ve found only two or three foods he doesn’t like (he’s even thrilled to be given an ice cube). I’ve tried raw carrots several times. He always accepts a chunk, rolls it around in his mouth, and then spits it out. I’m almost embarrassed when he gets that kind of contemptuous expression, as if he’s muttering: “Give me a break. When are you going to realize you can’t con me?”

His two favorite things, next to food, are going for rides and going on walks. He is deliriously happy doing either. On rides, he has his head out one of the windows, making the car cold but what does that matter? Other drivers grin at him, because, I think, he looks so happy. I grin at him, too.

He is so anxious to please that, somehow, it hurts. I talk to him all day - knowing I am being idiotic and wondering if HE thinks so, too. And I have to keep reminding myself of the words from a New York Times article about pets: “Don’t think your pet is a person in a fur coat.”

Mackie says SpokAnimal is a “nokill shelter.” That is to say, no dog is put to death if not adopted in a certain length of time. One big and good-looking Old English sheepdog mix lived there since his birth last April. A cage was the only home he ever knew until he was recently adopted.

If you want to give a dog from the shelter as a gift to someone, Mackie suggests giving a gift certificate. (The only money I paid for Duffy was $9.50. Nine dollars for his license and 50 cents for the spay/neuter fund. And, as we left, Duffy was given a new collar and leash.) A gift certificate is a good idea because it’s absolutely true that we’re drawn to some animals and not at all to others.

Owning dogs is satisfying and comforting, and if they’re like Duffy, they give a wonderful sense of security, of being protected. But, like all additions to one’s family, dogs make work, are responsibilities, tie you down, and, at the end of their lives, break your heart.

Still, where else will you find that unconditional love, that unswerving - and too often undeserved - loyalty? I’ve always known my dogs have given me far more than I’ve given them. And I know already that Duffy will be no exception.

MEMO: Jane Lavagetto is a Spokane free-lance writer.