Lessons from the Visitor Dog

VISITOR DOG IS MASSIVE.

On the street, people ask how much he weighs, and I don't know for sure, maybe 130, but I'd like to be able to tell them how tall he is in hands.

Visitor Dog is a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, which some people have never heard of, but if you imagine a Bernese Mountain Dog with a gleaming short coat instead of floof, you're pretty much there. He is mostly black with brown and white accents.

His long, strong tail might tell you how happy he is (very! happy!) by thwacking a full glass of water on the coffee table and soaking the Costco magazine.

Uh-oh! But also ... Good Dog! Because, after all, he was just telling us he was happy. And how could he have known? His tail was way back there, far, far away.

Visitor Dog visits when our friends, his parents, travel. Well, it started with his dad's hip surgery, and then we found out that Visitor and our dog, Daisy, could occupy the same house with few issues, and also that Daisy could be Visitor Dog at their house when we were on vacation, so here we are in February — my husband, me, Daisy and Visitor — living with routines tweaked ever so slightly to accommodate a sweet, lurpy boy who I am just going to say stands nine or ten hands high and has muscles for days.

For the humans in this house, the biggest difference of Visitor Dog life is simply the boy's tendency to present his own personal largeness to us on pretty much a constant basis, hoping for reassurance that we love him and find him handsome. Occasionally his massive head shows up on a Teams call at work, which is, I confess, one of my favorite things.

But for Visitor Dog himself, life is different in almost every way: his sleeping and eating routines have been upended, his walking route is odd, the smells are foreign, the muttered words of affection are unfamiliar, and then there's the presence of another dog, who happens to have set down some rules of conduct and does some sort of canine ninja thing to force compliance.

Most importantly, of course, from the perspective of Visitor Dog is the absence of his very own parents. Where are his parents?

That's a big one.

***

THE LAST FEW WEEKS have been funny, am I right? When I say "funny," I mean that here in the bleacher seats at the Colosseum, the chaos and plunder look freakish, hair-raising, alarming. Like a bloody cineplex action spectacle I would never choose to see.

I'm wondering whether the following phenomenon is a girl thing or just a Karen thing: Sometimes, when I am reading certain news stories emanating from our nation's capital, I have a strong sense of being personally, physically violated. To me, what is going on in Washington feels like being assaulted by a small gang of men who are in a position to take exactly what they want from me and you and the world, and there is not a kottdamm thing we can do about it. Then I imagine their internet troll bros hissing just lay back and enjoy it.

Sorry to go so dark on you there.

The actual language I typically have been using as I watch the Great Unfolding is something far more understated. I tell myself simply, Well. This is not ideal.

"This is not ideal" is often just what I need to turn my attention back to the tiny world around me: nice little house, coffee on demand, honorable work, books, art supplies. A call from a friend. A funny text message. Fat squirrel at my window begging for peanuts.

From many friends and family I hear more or less the same story now every day: They ping- pong between feelings of rage-making helplessness and trips to the grocery store, outrageous headlines to calls from their kids, hijacked Social Security numbers and Pilates class.

Remember during the pandemic when the phrase "the new normal" was bandied about ad nauseam? Yes, well, for the time being, for the many of us who have not yet been directly affected by the mayhem administration, we must adjust, because this is truly our new normal.

And we might well be required to adjust again, as we watch others become more and more directly affected and as we ourselves become so.

Of course we should take any actions, small or large, that can make the world better. Weave them into what's left of our more familiar lives.

This is not ideal. It just is.

***

VISITOR DOG SITS on the couch next to me as I write. At his own house, he is not allowed on the couch. The best reason for this is not so much about keeping furniture dog-hair-free, but to preserve real estate. At 130 pounds and 177 hands high, he is almost couch sized all by himself.

I watch him breathe, watch him survey the room. He looks reasonably content. But my dog sense tells me that couch privileges or no couch privileges, he would prefer to be back in his home, with its familiar spaces and smells. Back on his old walking routines. Back with his people.

We make our home as accommodating as possible for Visitor Dog, with his huge breakfasts and the silly sounds he makes when he yawns — like a 102-year-old man groaning from yonder hospital bed. I shower him with kisses and tell him what a good boy he is, but I am not his real mother. I am not his dad.

This is not ideal.

I wish I could make him understand that before long, he will be home again with all his favorite things. That his old normal will return.

I borrow from him what he has in spades: a beautiful, neutral, doggish acceptance — with neither patience nor impatience — of a world turned upside down.

“Visitor Dog” Hondo receives ear scritches while his front half rests on me and his back half stands on the floor. Good boy.

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