Puppy Love

I hate it when people write about small, fuzzy, loveable things. It is almost as bad as "Have a nice day" said insincerely, or happy faces pasted on the wall (Mr. Yuck was better, some days).



I haven’t really had a love affair with most of the dogs that have owned me and to whom I have been enslaved to feed, walk, train, and clean up after. But I cannot yet say who was the dog love of my life–Bryan the noble and smart Irish setter; Danny the hypo-alergenic and extremely smart bichon frisé; or Byron (kin to the breed of Keats, Cavalier King Charles). Bryan, Danny, and Byron have all been super dogs to me, dogs I might have gone out drinking with, had I been much of a drinking man, and dogs I certainly have told my troubles to, as one should, with a dog one loves. We do need these animals who live with us. Two of my super dogs are still alive, and one is a nine-month-old puppy already worthy of deep and abiding love.



Danny lives with my ex-wife exclusively, by cruel decree, but he still nuzzles me and sticks his nose in my neck on those rare occasions when I see him. He even makes an exception in my case and gives me a little lick when he greets me. We are still that close.

Bryan the Irish setter of the late Sixties and early Seventies was grandson of a champion at Westminster, but, like some over-bred dogs, he was an epileptic, and I would sometimes find him stiff on the ground or on the floor of a room, for about ten minutes, then he would wake up, looking embarrassed. When I was a runner in training for marathons, he ran circles around me, even on a ten-mile run, and he was a champion groundhog hunter on my farm, piling the corpses with personal pride in the front yard. But he was also sweet and sympathetic, and a dog whose noble head you could put your head together with. At least one girl I dated during that single time visited Bryan after we broke up.



Danny came home in the early Nineties a tiny white cotton ball with sharp teeth, nine years ago, and he worried hell out of an old golden retriever, on her last legs, but he brought out the mother in her, and he brought out the mother in the rest of the family as well. On chilly nights, he slept under the covers with me, his little body curled into mine for warmth and love.




Should I say that these were proper, manly relationships, and that these dogs I am talking about are not gay dogs, even though two of the three were, sad to say for them, altered. The nice thing about dogs and men is that a man can love a dog unashamedly, despite its sex, and the dog and the man can bond without fear of labels.

Bonding Rituals



I wouldn’t get in the face of most Doberman Pinschers or Pit Bulls, and I have heard of mean and bitchy Bichons, but going nose to nose with a dog is one part of bonding. Some people don’t mind being kissed on the mouth by dogs, but you don’t know where that tongue’s been. It is a bizarre enough sensation to wake up with a puppy licking one of your ears.



I like hugging the dogs I love, I know they like their ears scratched, and some of them like you to stick the tip of a finger between their toes, an area that can be deliciously ticklish on some cats and some dogs. Some dogs, at least, seem to laugh. Some of them dearly love their bellies rubbed, but watch that practice with puppies or oversexed males.



A friend who is a dog-lover told me last week, "You’ve really bonded with that puppy," which means that she noticed that Byron plays with me, cuddles me, and even sometimes obeys me. Puppy love is sometimes tough love, when the command is "Stop that!" or "You come back here!" Especially smart dogs even seem to realize that "You come back here" means "Don’t run out into the road or you will get killed and I won’t be able to stand that." So, bonding has something to do with obedience, and a great deal to do with sleeping under your master’s face, in his arms, sometimes nose to nose.



The Criteria for Super Dogs


Sympathy, a sense of humor, and intelligence. Probably mutts from the pound are more apt to have all those qualities than pure-bred dogs, and mutts are apt to have more personality, which should be the fourth quality. Sense of humor is hard to prove, because some people don’t have a sense of humor, but some dogs and a very few cats do have a detectable sense of humor, and those animals enjoy life more than dull, overly serious pets who might mirror the dour aspect of their owners. I don’t think I am talking about the cat who plays with the mouse before killing it, or even the playful dog who is learning how to bite better. It was Thomas Hobbes who said that laughter is sudden glory. There may always be a sinister side to laughter and joy, but every now and then you run into a dog or cat who can really have a good time, and even laugh at himself or herself. That kind of animal may be a party animal, or just enjoy a joke with a human friend. Some cats are sadistic friends who will let you pet them twice, then bite and claw you on the third pet; that again is the murderous kind of playing.

Our pets, even in as highly-evolved a society as Beaufort’s, are emotionally necessary to our human well-being. Of course we are enslaved to them, and there is unnatural co-dependency between us, but we are good to them, usually, and they are good for us.

Frank

He was a very quiet institution in Beaufort, the Rector of St. Helena’s Episcopal Church, a deeply spiritual man–not obviously a civic leader, but a spiritual leader nevertheless and the consummate administrator of his church. He is the main reason I came back to the Episcopal Church and the reason I usually go to church (well, it is across the street, as well) on Sundays. He is a sweet man, a decent man, and a tolerant man, despite having conservative and sometimes unpopular views within the church. He is aware of how much humankind suffers from sin of a very private kind: privacy is very important to him, and he understands the sins of others through the sins he knows. He jokingly expresses anger at his lovely, tolerant wife and then makes fun of himself in sermons for expressing such anger. His sermons are a delight, often very funny, though he never forgets Original Sin or the miracle of the Resurrection.

He has been divorced, in the distant past, and he remembers that pain. He is not afraid of admitting that he was an atheist before receiving the call to come into the church. He twits the notorious worldliness of the group often called "Whiskeypalians" in the South, while he embodies its sophistication about clothes, golf, tailgating at Clemson football games, or making the right choice among bourbons or wines. He has been known to say "I like your stuff" to a well-dressed parishioner. He is a spiritual man without a trace of self-righteousness, even in the midst of firmly held beliefs that are not always popular. He does not like to hear Jesus, or even St. Paul, accused of self-righteousness. If either can be rightfully accused, Frank’s religion might be full of holes. Without a touch of self-consciousness, Frank signs his letters with a phrase from the General Confession, "Miserable Offender."


Frank seems so hard on himself that he can forgive other sinners, like me, with apparent ease. He leads a good, thoughtful, tolerant life, even though his church and his diocese have been accused of intolerant perspectives toward gay bishops or gay marriages, among other hot topics in recent church history. I wrote one column mischievously titled "A Queer Eye for a Straight Bishop," but then I squelched it for publication, out of respect for Frank. I am sure he would read it with tolerance and see the humor in the situation.

My favorite photograph of Frank, one I wish I had taken, is of him bopping. The picture is in the social events section of images from the St. Helena’s directory, and the occasion was a dance sponsored by the church. Frank is a runner (he runs at ungodly, godly hours such as 4am), and he is a graceful man, capable of winning an egg-in-a-spoon race for the sake of charity. In the picture he is bopping at a jaunty angle, with the complete assurance that his dancing is, well, cool. You can tell why the ladies have always loved Frank and why he kisses them with godly innocence as they pass through the reception line on Sunday.

When I heard that Frank was retiring in order to take a deanship in a large church in Birmingham–from Frank’s mouth at the eight o’clock service–my eyes filled with uncontrolled tears. The woman sitting next to me must have thought I was a sentimental idiot. Selfishly, I was already missing this man who had been a living link to my mentor, the dear Rev. Churchill Gibson, who had confirmed me in Richmond, Virginia, and had tutored Frank at Virginia Seminary. Both men had been my examples of how and why a Christian should live his life, from day to day, in sickness and in health, in sympathy and in anger, with love and with tolerance.

I was thinking last night, while walking meditatively at bedtime, that I would have followed Frank into battle willingly, if he were my commanding officer, but then I thought of how ridiculous an idea that might be, except in an age of onward Christian soldiers.

Frank goes to be Dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, a position of great fanfare and esteem, and the church has, I am told, 3400 parishioners, and a huge administrative staff to administer. Frank moves up in authority, and he would not go if he did not believe that the large responsibility is part of his calling.

When I last saw Frank, after the 6pm service on the day he announced his departure, he was talking freely to the few informal parishioners who attend that service with the guitars and the singing of spirituals: he was there among some of the heaviest previous sinners–those who took the liberties of the Sixties seriously–and he said to one of them, "Someone asked if I was happy, this morning. Of course I am not happy, with leaving." He was dabbing his eyes as he said it. I shook his hand, twice in succession I think, and I said I would be seeing him privately, I hoped, before he went his separate way to Alabama. It was comforting somehow that he was crying the way I had cried that morning.