To say that I don’t know how I got a Saint Bernard puppy is as ludicrous as saying that I don’t know how I ended up mother to seven children.
But that’s absolutely true.
I didn’t long for seven children. I didn’t long for a dog the size of a Volkswagen.
When I had four children, I thought I had a “big” family. When I had one dog, it was one enough.
A strange thing happened on the night of my birthday: It was one of those birthdays for which card stores sell tombstones and cards that read “Over The Hill…” so I wasn’t particularly perky.
And then, an email arrived. It was an email from a nice lady I didn’t know, with pictures of her litter of eleven Saint Bernard puppies. I didn’t know then, and still don’t, who told her I was interested in a Saint Bernard puppy. Our life, while chronically active, was as stable as it would ever be.
And yet, by nightfall, my husband had brought home a nine-week-old puppy that weighed 25 pounds, and now, a month later, weighs 40.
The consensus among our children, all of whom love huge things they don’t have to care for – despite fervent promises to the contrary – was that Odin was the cutest living thing they’d ever seen. And he is, with his mournful, understanding, human-like eyes and good-natured shambling gait.
My friend, mystery writer Karin Slaughter, who wrote to wish me a happy birthday, said, “So, the sixteen kids, husband, two horses and a dog wasn’t enough. You wanted to shake things up a little?”
But I didn’t.
I don’t know why Odin is here right now, tormenting Hobbes, our perfectly-mannered, tolerant and sedate six-year-old mutt (who now is only barely speaking to me as a result of this extra-mammal affair). I don’t know what fate sent him to me. Our son Marty had always wanted a Saint Bernard, but now is in college most of the year and asleep or reveling when he is not, so he remains beyond suspicion.
In recent months, I’d begun having some emotional issues about home safety, and more than one expert had suggested that a big bark was superior to a big gun or even an alarm system – since, after all, an alarm system is useful only if someone’s already in.
Although Odin is no guard dog (his version of springing to his feet mimics a heavyset 80-year-old man’s) his sheer bulk and deep “voice” would deter me from any kind of mayhem. Maybe we needed him and so we got him.
Maybe we’ve just created a new set of problems – not to mention stains.
And yet dogs have this undeniable allure that even humans don’t. They judge you not. They forgive you all. They thrill to everything. They give you not just the illusion of being beloved, but the experience of it.
We named Odin after the Norse god of all wisdom – chiefly because our four-year-old son had dubbed him “Otis,” a name that recalled the most dissolute and odious of my brother’s friends, a guy who made the John Belushi character in ‘Animal House’ look prissy as a British Sunday school teacher.
Since he came, my husband has blamed him for our two-year-old son’s tantrums, my bad temper and predicted financial ruin. And yet, when morning comes, no one is giving Odin back to the nice lady.
For me, Odin represents our last slide from some sort of pretense of decorum into complete abandon. There’s no way to organize the Legos by size if you have a Saint Bernard puppy who would eat them by Kibble. All the small motor stuff goes out the window. It’s kind of freeing….