Bartleby

So, that’s Bartleby, our new 8-week-old mutt. We broke down and got a new dog.  We had visions of immediately hitting the water and the woods, but alas.  Bartleby is a puppy and I had forgotten how much work and attention puppies require.  Also, he’s scared of everything and I mean everything: plastic bags, a rubber ball, a magazine and once his own tail.  He’s slowly getting confidence and exploring his world, but it’s going to be a long time before that dog is riding around with us in our canoe.

We wanted a short-haired male dog this time because Millie was a long-haired female. We wanted the opposite of Millie so that the new dog wouldn’t invite comparisons.  Bartleby is definitely the opposite of Millie, Millie was part chow and she had this calmness, even as a puppy, that Bartleby does not.  Millie would have these brief bursts of playfulness, but a lot of the time seemed to be watching the world with a gimlet eye.

We’ve only had him a couple of weeks, but his personality is there. Bartleby is just a goofy dog.  He’s a beagle and whatever mutt and had been moved about every two weeks before we got him.  He still hates riding in the car, I’d guess because ever car ride has meant a new home, new weird smells and new people to get to know.  He also hates walks, they freak him right out.  We live in the city so a walk means cars and people and lots and lots of smells.  For now, a walk means that I carry him to the end of the block and put him down and we race back to the house.  We’ve taken him to the park a couple of times and he’s slowly, slowly getting to see its appeal.  But even these short little excursions wipe him out; we come back from our walks and he crashes hard for hours, the house is becoming the safe space where he can process the kaleidoscope of data that the city street presents.

The ultimate goal, of course is to make Bartleby a fishy dog. One who will come along on the canoe or on hikes in the mountains to fish for brookies; a dog who will chase a stick into the pond at out cabin and then flop down on the porch while we sip bourbon and watch the sun go down.  All that’s a pretty long way off right now.  Like I said, I had forgotten how much work puppies are and I had forgotten how much work we put in to Millie.  We trained her 20 minutes every day on the basics: come here, sit down, drop it, and how to walk on a leash.  And the peeing, I forgot about all the peeing in the house, never mind that Bartleby soiled a Persian rug not two inches from a stain Millie had made at the end of the last century when I went through this last.  Right now, it’s pretty hard to imagine Bartleby doing much fishing any time soon.

I realized that I was going to have revise my expectations for Bartleby’s evolution into a Dawg the day I came home from the store with a squeaky ball for him to play with. I called him over and dropped the ball on the floor in front of him which is when he let out a whimper and went to hide under the sofa.  Okay, so maybe we should hold off on any hikes in the mountains until Bartleby is a little more confidant around a rubber ball.

But I still remember the first time I caught a fish in front of Millie. She was sitting up on the bank with D and I pulled a bass out of the water.  She had that look that dogs get that says, “I’m impressed.”  I can’t wait for Bartleby to see his first fish, I just hope it doesn’t send him yelping for the shelter of the underside of the nearest sofa.