If happiness is a warm puppy, there should be a lot of happiness in the McNaughton household after Santa brought little Ricky a 10-week-old Labrador Retriever. You would not know it, though, from talking with Suzanne McNaughton, who was never a "dog person." "It’s like all the worst parts of having an infant," she says, "only more destructive."
"Destructive" is the puppy’s dominant personality trait. So far this adorable new member of the family has destroyed numerous toys, bit through the phone cord, broken a lamp, put holes in numerous socks, mittens and fingers, reduced the foam base of her dog bed to confetti, chewed up the corner of an oriental rug, emptied a pillow of its feathers, shredded two days’ worth of mail and dumped the contents of her water dish across an album of photographs. And of course she’s soiled the carpeting so many times that the piles of baking soda Suzanne put down to absorb odor look like a string of snow-covered islands.
"You should have bought a crate," said her friend Bev Santoni, surveying the damage during a recent visit. "Then you could just stick the puppy in, close the door, and leave. Frankly, I always thought they should make them for children, too."
"I’m hoping the worst is over," said Suzanne, but her words were drowned out by a crash from another room.
Ricky, however, adores his new puppy. The first day, he wouldn’t put her down; the second day he played with her for at least an hour. Since then he’s hardly looked at her, but when Suzanne wearily suggested that maybe they really weren’t ready for a puppy, he set up the sort of wailing usually reserved for the loss of at least one parent. So the puppy will stay. Suzanne will play with it and feed it and walk it and train it, so that Ricky can have a dog of his very own.
All this gave Suzanne the notion she was entitled to a say in the naming of the dog. She suggested they choose something literary that would impress her friends: "Desdemona," or maybe "Guinevere."
Ricky opted for "George."
His older brother, Evan, let him down gently. "‘George’ is a boy’s name, moron. This is a girl dog. Get it, mushbrain?"
"That’s all right," said Suzanne. "Lots of names that were once thought of as masculine are now used for girls. Perhaps Ricky thinks it’s important to make a social statement. Anyway, we can tell people she’s named for George Eliot, the great female novelist."
"She is not!" said Ricky. "It’s for George of the Jungle."
Little George is oblivious to the debate over her name. In fact, she seems to be oblivious to her name, too, and to other important words, like "no." Suzanne is convinced this is a sign not of stupidity, but of intelligence, and perhaps a sense of humor that, while crude, shows potential. Meanwhile, she’s decided that the best way to deal with the puppy is to spend most of the time outdoors. She’s logged about four miles a day since Christmas, most of it in circles around their small back yard.
And then her friend Heidi took Suzanne to a dog park in Arlington. A dog park is like a regular park, but without the need to make up an excuse for why your dog is running loose and jumping on people in white pants. Running loose is the whole point of a dog park, and the owners not only avoid white pants, but are usually to be seen there only in clothes they would not want anyone to see them in.
When Suzanne and Heidi arrived, the park was full of dogs, all of which appeared huge, and all of which came running over, eager to beat up George and thereby make her feel welcome. Horrified, Suzanne snatched up the puppy and held her out of reach of the huge dog heads with their huge dog mouths full of huge dog teeth. "And you think this is a good idea?" she demanded.
"They love it," Heidi assured her. "And there’s never any problem, because people with dogs that fight don’t bring them. Which is not to say we don’t occasionally have some issues," she added, as two of the dogs suddenly went at each other in what might have appeared to be a fight if Heidi hadn’t just ruled out that possibility.
"I don’t think we’re ready for issues," said Suzanne, hugging little George protectively. But George was ready for anything. She squirmed until Suzanne put her down; then she pounced on a nearby spaniel. In a moment the two were chasing each other around the park at top speed. Suzanne watched nervously and made little worried-mother-hen noises every time George turned a somersault trying to make a tight turn.
"This makes you one of us now," said Heidi, putting her arm around her friend. "Face it, Suzanne, you’re now a dog person."