…with my dog! I think she is the cutest thing around. I even ordered a Sophie a Shark costume for Halloween. She is sooo not ferocious, the shark get up will be ironic perfection! Now, mind you, I DO realize that dressing Sophie, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel as a shark does, indeed, qualify me as a weird, little old lady. I mean, what is next, cooking her meals on the stove? Well, I wouldn’t put it past me, Folks.
It all started about 2 1/2 years ago. You see, I was facing an empty nest. Our younger child was going off to college, leaving me with no one at home upon whom I could shower motherly affection. Rather impulsively one day, I decided I needed to get a dog. More importantly, it had to be a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I discovered the breed in a book and had to have one. Well, I found the object of my affections in Kentucky….right across the border from Cincinnati, right? WRONG! I thought Paducah was just around the corner….say maybe 50 miles. NO, it’s a hop skip and a jump from St. Louis and is 5 hours away.
Of course, I had told Llana, the breeder, I’d be there later that day, never looking at a map! I needed to get a crate and doggie bed and other accoutrements. Well, I finally took off at Noon, arrived in Paducah at 5 pm and was on my way back with the Sophster by 6….which still meant I wouldn’t get home until 11 pm. Phew, long day.
But a very good day, it turns out. Sophie is a love. She and I bonded that day, on the trip back. She stared at me the whole time from in her crate on the shotgun seat. And I would look over at her and meet her gaze with total adoration. In fact, she not only bonded with me (I don’t think she’d ever been away from her pack, and I became her Alpha dog), she IMPRINTED on me. Honestly, she follows me around like a little duck with its mother. I go upstairs, Sophie goes upstairs. I go into downstairs to do the laundry, she comes along. She is my constant companion. And when I sleep, she snuggles up against me most of the night.
I revel in this unconditional love like piggy wallows in mud. Sophie lavishes me with unmitigated admiration. I am the best “dog mom” I could be in her eyes — even when things are going to hell in a hand-basket otherwise. And that is one of the reasons we choose dogs, isn’t it…say, over cats? We are there to serve cats, but we are adored by our canine companions who fall all over themselves to get to us when we walk back in the door when we have been out.
I’m totally infatuated with this little 16 pound creature who loves me so. She is my constant companion and keeps the world’s cares at bay. It’s hard to worry about health care or the war in Afghanistan with a wiggling bundle of love at your feet…wiggling because she is being wagged by a long plume of a tail.
My only regret is that we are separated 8 hours a day while I work. I think we should all be able to take our dogs to work with us! Of course, that could present a problem, if the dogs didn’t get along, but that is the subject of another essay.
In the meantime, I’ll revel in the smooth relationship I have with Sophie. And I bet we’ll have fun at the Halloween Party at Red Dog dog park, even if Sophie hates her costume! I’ll post a picture when I have one. In the meantime, here is a picture of Sophie in her birthday suit!
The Object of My Affection
As always, I’ll leave you with a poem
Dogs
Dogs, uncomplicated creatures
So eager to please.
Not cats running hot and cold on feline whims.
Labs, soft mouths ready for duty.
The Cavalier King Charles, in Widow West’s lap.
.
The setter sensing seizures before they strike,
an Alsacian negotiating the rubble of 9/11.
And my Corgi who surely cogitates
thoughts deeper than her 6 o’clock meal.
A herder, who counts our family members,
pouting when one has gone astray,
whose sad look betrays her when suitcases appear,
foretelling days of waiting, listless, furtive
for the herd’s reunion.
And with relief upon our return,
she counts us one by one.
The herd united, she naps, content.
Uncomplicated creatures, dogs.
