I’ve never not wanted a dog

One of my favourite stories from my childhood is the several years-long journey of convincing my mom to get us a dog.

You see I never really had a chance when it came to dogs, because from a really young age I was surrounded by the bestest and cutest examples. My first love was a black lab I met at the home where I went to daycare. He tolerated all our annoying kid antics with patience and humour, so I quickly learned that dogs were warm, licky, teddy bears that love you back. To seal the deal, one winter when I was visiting my grandmother we went together to pick up her new husky puppy, all full of blue-eyed, pointy-eared, fluffy adorableness. I  remember riding home in the backseat with him stumbling around, still trying to figure out exactly how to coordinate all four paws. Even in the dead of winter (which in northern Finland really is nearly deadly) I would go out in my puffy snow-suit and run around with him. I would keep faking him out with sudden turns, which he loved and always led into a frenzy of excited barking. Even when he got really old he still wanted to play.

Needless to say, by the time I was five I was begging to have my own dog. My mom wasn’t really prepared for having a dog but also tired of listening to me whine on and on, so smart lady that she is, told me that we could get a dog when I was 10 years old. She believed, not so smartly, that by then I would have long forgotten the dog and moved onto other obsessions that would be far less work for her. Oh boy, did I show her.

I spent the next five years obsessing over dogs.  I spent my allowance on dog magazines. I clipped the cutest pictures to stick to my walls. I read all about the different breeds and which ones I might want. I even picked the dog food* we should feed our future dog. I think a couple of years into this my mom knew she had no choice: she would have to get me a dog.

When I was just about 10, she gave me a book about spaniels from which to choose a breed. I’m not entirely sure why spaniels exactly, except we had to get a small dog and spaniels do mostly fit that description so there you go. I studied that little orange paperback religiously. I remember I really wanted a breed that liked to swim so I made sure to look for this. I finally chose a breed that is relatively common in Finland but rare to see in North America, the Tibetan spaniel.

We picked him up just before my birthday and I named him Tiko. Although he was slightly moody, missing an eye due to an unfortunate accident when young, and never swam unless his life depended on it,** we loved him dearly until he died at the age of 12. In his too-short life, the little guy moved across continents, was my best friend in a new country when I had no others, and loved me just as much when I was off busy with new ones. He saw me off to elementary school, high school, and university. Along the way he conquered many a kissa (means cat in Finnish and is what we called his toys cause we’re evil like that), climbed an awful lot of mountains all over BC, ate one papier-mache bird beak from a due-tomorrow art project, and was always there to play or lick up my tears as needed (there was a copious amount following the beak-chewing incident). Dogs really are fantastic. I’m glad that, unlike with most things, I took a really short time to figure that one out.

I was so happy to get a dog I pulled out the party socks AND the party hair! Gotta love the 80's

 

*My predictably lame choice was Pedigree, which our dog never actually ate. Luckily I am no longer quite as enraptured by bright, pretty ads. Well, you know, except for things that I really, truly need.

**I went back to read that spaniel book a few years later and with my sharpened reading skills, I realized I had been tricked by a double negative and a poorly placed picture of a dog swimming. Turns out Tibetan spaniels are among the only spaniels that don’t like to swim. How exactly I got A’s in school is not clear. Furthermore, I’ve since learned that apparently Tibetan spaniels are not actually spaniels at all, but since the breed was in the spaniel book I think this part can be overlooked.

I’ll take my gratification delayed, please

January is restless. Waiting for spring, waiting for a break, waiting for something new. With the cozy celebrations of Christmas gone, the grip of winter now feels tight and unrelenting. I wake up and fall asleep to the same tink-tink-tonk of rain hitting the gutters. January is when the ever-grey Vancouver sky begins to permeate right into me.

But if I’m totally honest, this January might be different. I’ve realized that for possibly the first time in my life I’m not going to sleep anticipating the next big thing.

John and I met young and spent a long time being patient. Studying, growing up, saving money, laying the groundwork for our own lives, and possibly for our life together (we were never ones to jinx a good thing with assumptions).

In the last couple of years we finally stopped preparing and started running. We started careers, bought our own place, got married, and got a dog. Children are not in our near future, nor do we anticipate any major career changes or moves, so we are now officially what you’d call settled.

I spent so long waiting and anticipating that I got really comfortable there. I knew the chairs with the best view and where to find good coffee when I got a little ancy. I haven’t found that kind of comfortable familiarity in this new place yet. The parts of my brain previously devoted to anticipating are wandering around restless, not sure what to do with themselves here.

So perhaps I shouldn’t blame January. I am restless.

Thoughts on a lazy Friday

(Lazy really is the operative word in that title.)

• I never thought I’d say this, but there is such a thing as being too polite on public transit. Case in point: when a seat opens up on the train, which you’d think had an open bar judging by how many people are packed into it (hey there’s an idea, booze in transit! Of course leave it to the Finns to already do this), someone should sit in that seat. Yes, I agree it is unclear who has dibs on this seat since there are at least five people within inches of it and this makes for a complex social problem. But someone sit down already so we can each have an inch more personal space and I can take a full breath and maybe stand up by my own volition again.
• I slithered into the lunch room earlier today to make some tea, hoping as usual to avoid the awkward small talk that becomes compulsory if anyone else is there. Out of luck. Small talk ensued regarding the recently passed holidays. I reported mine were wonderful and politely inquired about his. The older gentleman I was speaking with said that while it was relaxing, he was glad to be back at work. Something about the stoop of his back and the droop of his face told me it was not because he was an eager go-getter who just couldn’t wait to get back to his engaging tasks. I was caught off guard, but tried to give him the benefit of the doubt by throwing in an “oh yeah, sometimes by the end of the holidays you just crave being back in a routine.” But he didn’t grab onto this somewhat socially acceptable reason to want to go back to work. No, he just said something about how he doesn’t ski. I imagine he is aware of other possible ways to spend time – e.g. walking, reading, or (back to the basics) eating, drinking and watching crappy television – so I just nodded sympathetically and made my escape.
• Although I usually prefer cute little coffee shops, this week Starbucks tea lattes are half price in the afternoon so of course I would be an idiot* not to get in on that. I learned their Earl Grey tea lattes are delicious! They will be highly missed next week when they go back to being ridiculously priced tea with hot milk.

*Definition of idiot varies, if your definition includes ‘being a total consumer whore who thinks they are saving money by buying something on sale that they weren’t going to buy in the first place’ then I might actually be an idiot.