This Dog’s Life

These were my two dogs, Genji (left) and Saki (right), in 2004.  Genji was five years old, and Saki was two months old.  It wasn’t the best time in my life for a new puppy.  Although I was in my 30s, I had an 18-month-old baby and was remodeling our kitchen and bathroom.

For three years pre-baby, Genji was my only “child.”  He sounded the alarm against baseball hats and people who wore them.  Like a canine Ewok, he grew as fierce as a ninja when he spotted a fly or a spider that he could catch and eat.  Genji had always been lively, smart, and more affectionate than most Shiba Inus.  He was an ideal companion while I studied and wrote at home during graduate school — except that for his first two years he was like a destructive energizer bunny, wrecking carpets, shoes, and the occasional pair of underwear.  So it was just another symptom of being a chaos junkie that I thought it was time for another dog.

Since dogs are pack animals, I thought that it would be a mitzvah to give Genji a playmate and companion of his own species.  Our new puppy happened to be his niece, so that seemed like a blessed thing too.  It’s true that part of my plan was for Genji to be less of a needy boy who followed me from room to room while I changed diapers, tried to get a toddler to nap, and made some haphazard attempts at writing my book.  But I really did imagine that he’d be happier with another dog around.

Life rarely turns out the way it’s planned.  Saki was impossible to housebreak while the construction was going on in our house.  For three months, we ate out for every meal.  So I left both dogs in crates while my daughter and I did the daily urban forage to the corner deli.  I walked the dogs on two leashes twice a day and tried to keep my daughter from bolting.  Sometimes I still crammed her into the baby carrier, even though she was so large that it was almost a form of child abuse.  That seemed interminable.

When Saki turned two years old, she transformed into the alpha bitch she was born to be and began attacking Genji.  Suddenly there truly was chaos in our house, but not the kind I secretly enjoyed.  Now we had a new baby, a toddler, a young but mellow alpha boy dog, and an even younger über-bitch.  I mean “bitch” in all senses of the word.  She was a good dog if you were her human but not trustworthy if you were a fellow dog.  We weren’t even sure she was safe with our kids.  After a lot of hand-wringing, we did our version of a dog intervention: we doubled down on our dog training efforts (hiring our local dog whisperer to help) and separated them whenever possible (lots of fun in a small home with no yard).  We decided that if the training didn’t work, we would find her a new home.

The story was not all tea and crumpets after that.  She did become more reliable, but Genji was never really secure.  Just when we would relax, Saki would decide that he had sinned and would send him shrieking (mostly shaken up rather than injured), usually into a sleeping child’s room.  And then, when we were all used to the way our odd, overly-pet-centric family worked, Saki grew sick and eventually died.  That story is here, in an earlier post.

In the year since her death, we’ve made the questionable (some would say idiotic) decisions to adopt a bird and hamsters.  There are long stories involving bribery, guilt, and serendipity behind each pet, but I’ll save those for another time.

It’s probably a symptom of my grief over Saki that I expected that this year I would see Genji’s decline.  Twelve to 15 years has been the gloomy mantra that I repeat to remind myself to give him extra love even though my human children act needier.

On Wednesday Genji, my “firstborn,” will be 13 years old.  Rather than feeling like he’s slipping away from me, I appreciate him more than I’ve had time to in many years.  He spends much of his day sleeping in the sun and snores like an old man.  He doesn’t see or hear as well as he used to, and he has a mysterious ear ailment that veterinarians can’t detect but will charge $100 or more to misdiagnose.  But he still takes long walks, and now he finds his way into my kids’ rooms at night and sleeps at their feet.  And I’m grateful that he’s still in good health and able to summon his inner dog ninja when I toss him some chicken or a piece of popcorn.

Happy birthday, Hikaru Genji Katsu Satoru!