Do You Have a Favorite Dog?
By Leslie Garrett
It’s a cliché, of course, that love arrives when we’re not looking. But within clichés is a generous helping of truth. Or at least, that was the case with Gunther. And Polar.
In both cases, I wasn’t looking for a dog. Indeed, in Gunther’s case, I was actively lobbying against bringing a dog into our lives. My then-boyfriend and I were enjoying the freedom that comes with a growing income and zero dependents. I knew the work a dog entailed. I understood the responsibility.
My boyfriend, having nursed desire for a dog into full-blown obsession, dismissed my pleas and returned home with Gunther, a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy that rendered inadequate any and all definitions of cute.
I was a goner.
A year later, when my boyfriend’s and my relationship was at a crossroads and I turned to walk away, I turned back to see Gunther. I turned around and worked it out. I simply couldn’t break up with Gunther.
Almost a decade later, after losing Gunther too young to prostate cancer and resigning myself to having lost the canine love of my life, I found myself online, just “looking” I told myself.
A few clicks later, I was looking into eyes that melted my hardened heart. And three weeks later, I brought home Polar, whose own battle with cancer threatens to take him from me too soon.
Gunther and Polar are two of many other dogs I’ve had…and have still. And though I squirm at the notion of citing those two as somehow apart from the others, there’s no denying that, for many of us serial dog owners, a certain dog stands apart as “the one.”
Those who’ve had dogs that they consider “the one” (though there may be a few “ones” over a lifetime of dog ownership) generally note that the connection is instantaneous – love at first sight. These dogs seem to “get” us on a deeper level. They know us, it seems, better than we know ourselves, undoubtedly because they rely not on conversation – and therefore our interpretation of ourselves, but observation. And then, they accept us completely. Dare I say, they are the perfect partner.
When Angie Richter inherited a German Spitz named Sunny, her existing dog became jealous and it was suggested to Richter that she give Sunny up. Inconceivable, thought Richter who says she was, by that point, “totally in love.” And then, as if to drive the point home, she adds, “I wanted to meet his parents. I bet they were such characters.”
It was Daddy, for Cesar Millan who often describes the instant connection between him and Daddy. Their deep bond played out on the world stage culminating in a global grieving when Daddy passed away.
Argos, the latest member of Cesar’s “pack” prompted a similar instant connection, “There was something that attracted me to him,” says Cesar. “I need him…there is something that I’m going to learn from him. To help me grow.”
Cesar decided on the spot to adopt Argos, though he’d had no plans to take on another dog.
For journalist and author (“The Dog and I”) Roy MacGregor, it was Bumps. The “borderline” collie, as MacGregor calls her, “was as much a parent to my kids as my wife and I… She was their friend and their comfort.” For MacGregor himself, she was an almost constant companion and source of profound joy. And though there have been other “borderlines” (and though he expresses great discomfort in dismissing the others as not “the one – “it feels like a horrible insult,” he says), Bumps stands apart.
Mary Anne Audette, a confirmed big-dog lover, fell hard for a six-pound Pomeranian. In 1998, Audette stumbled across Gremlin at a shelter in Vermont where she frequently volunteered on her way to and from homes in Massachusetts and Quebec, Canada. Gremlin was physically and emotionally “a mess,” she says. “I picked up this poor soul…and decided on the spot” to give him a home.
Like me, Audette was drawn in by her dog’s eyes, which she insists, “can see inside your soul.” She recently lost Gremlin but came across another “one” in Gizzee. Again, she says, it was his eye—Gizzee is missing one—that reminded her of Gremlin. While all dogs bring us gifts, certain ones open our hearts a bit deeper. They inspire us into better versions of ourselves, perhaps making us more deserving of being their “one”.
