Did you ever wonder what your puppy was thinking?
Or what your cat, hamster, fish was thinking? Maybe your teenager? Ha ha. Just kidding about the teenagers. Everyone knows you can’t know what a teenager thinks. That comes later, when they are grown up and have teenagers of their own. A puppy is much easier to understand.
Our dog, Fezzik, is a labradoodle who seems a little more poodle-y than lab. He’s three years old now, and he has developed a pretty good set of communication tools. By which I mean he has us trained.
For instance, Fezzik knows when it is time for dinner. And, by golly, his body clock is linked to the atomic clock or something, because he knows when it is 6:31 PM and you are LATE with his 6:30 dinner. At that point he sits in front of you and stares. Maybe he was sleeping in front of the fireplace at 6:29. But at 6:31 he gets up and sits, still as a statue, and stares at the Person Most Likely To Feed him. Which, if he is home, is my husband. So the dog stares at my husband and nothing–I mean NOTHING–will turn his attention away. Not treats, not toys, nothing. I can wave my hand in front of Fezzik’s face and he doesn’t break lock with my husband’s countenance.
Also, since he’s a good dog, Fezzik has learned a lot of useful words and phrases.
Up-up, which means to get in the car. With me, which means not to pull and to walk alongside. Plus the usual doggie commands: sit, high five, down, wait, stay, come. Also go for a ride, go to the park, bedtime, treat, cheese, pee-poo, and oops.
Pee-poo? is what you ask when you want to know if he wants to go out. If he ignores you, the answer is no. If he cocks his ears and tilts his head at you, get the leash.
Oops is what you say when food from the dinner table–where we never ever ever ever and I mean it not ever–feed the dog, suddenly flies through the air and magically lands near him.
When he was a puppy, he was crated when we weren’t home with him, and also at night. But he was miserable in the crate at night and the rest of us wanted to sleep (and we didn’t want the kids sleeping on the floor next to the crate because they felt bad for Fezzik) so he graduated to sleeping in our master bathroom on the tile.
Then we wanted to graduate him to being in the house without the crate. He was about six months old. So we put a baby gate across the doorway between our mudroom and the kitchen. This was great. I could keep him in the kitchen when bringing in groceries, and we could put him in the mudroom, uncrated, when we left the house.
He’ll love the mudroom, we reasoned. There’s a set of small cubbies, and he can sit on top of those and look out the window. Plus, even though our mudroom is pretty small, it’s not like being in his crate, and he likes to sleep all stretched out. We put his crate in the mudroom anyway, in case he wanted to go in it, for comfort. Like dogs are apparently supposed to want to do.
Well. OK. Some of that went well.
For instance, he liked looking out the window. But he dragged his mat out of the crate to sleep on, or maybe just to chew. Because: still a puppy, likes to chew.
And then it occurred to him that, perhaps, he could escape. Chewing was his superpower, after all. He tried chewing on the gate. Smart dog, he tried near the latch and near the hinges. In response, we tried those things that are supposed to keep a dog from chewing — sprays that taste bitter, etc.
He didn’t care. Maybe he can’t taste bitter.
Or maybe he was just stubborn. We resigned ourselves to having to fix the chewed spots eventually, and hoped for the best. But the day we came home to find he’d tried to chew through the windowsill above the cubbies, and through more of the baseboards, we gave up. My husband went to the store for a larger crate (one Fezzik could stretch out in, the way he likes to sleep) and we got a contractor to come fix all the chewed places, replacing wood and drywall and then repainting.
After Fezzik turned two, we started again on training outside the crate and now he stays in the house while we’re gone, with no restraints except for the doors to bedrooms and the office being closed. We think he was too young the first time we tried, with too much inherent desire to chew on things, and that it frustrated him to look out the window and not be able to get out.
But that’s all speculation, because we really don’t know. It’s not in his communication repertoire to explain that to us. Instead, we make do with supposition, such as this week’s poem, which is my interpretation of his thoughts at the time.
Why the Puppy Tried to Chew Through the Window Frame
Why you put me in such a small space,
you never explain.
Nor why it is so dark all night,
nor why the beasts of locomotion sometimes
sweetly carry me past field and street
and so many beautiful strangers
all walking somewhere I long to play.
You don’t answer my meager prayers
but there is always enough food
(I would eat more if you gave more)
and I’m willing to beg
at hand or table or wait by your feet
until you finish whatever you do
that keeps you from me.
I’m happy to stretch out by night
nearby but not close enough to touch.
Yes, to all that. But I cry
at the door to the world.
Why won’t you let me run?
I was made for out there.
Yes, mud. And the windows
like the door only frustrate.
A robin sings and knows
I’ll never reach her, and she hops
closer, still singing. Yes, I am warm.
Warm and clean and fed.
But am I free? Am I free?
I love you, but why can’t I be free?
If you enjoyed Why the Puppy Tried to Chew Through the Window Frame
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.