Canine Home Makeover

This evening, we played "dogs". [The roles and scenarios came entirely from the Next Generation...] "The Ian Dog" was a fox terrier, whereas "The Daniel Dog" was merely a terrier; for whatever reason, "The Madeleine Dog", despite her tiny-ness, was pronounced a Dalmation.

The first step in playing dogs involves "buying" them from the "pet shop," which turned out to be one of the downstairs closets. I expressed a strong enthusiasm for the opportunity to buy such wonderful dogs, and I was no less pleased when I found out that today, they happened to be free. [You know those Petco sales where the puppies are occasionally "on the house"...]

The Ian dog was by far the most structured in his activities and talents. He taught me to take a "stick" - some platic piece of track or something - and wave it around close to the ground, and he would follow after it, or throw it (the farther the better as far as he was concerned, it turned out) and he would fetch it.

The Madeleine dog eagerly played along, and the Daniel dog found all kinds of little roles for himself. When I actually took a break to take out the permanent dog, Nikkei, they all followed me to the porch, and Daniel headed out onto the lawn, still in "dog" character.

The biggest setback of the evening was when I was told that the Ian dog, most likely for wont of attention on my part, ended up getting eaten by a bear. When I expressed horror at that prospect, the Ian dog's fate was downgraded to something like "he got lost and ended up in China." [We haven't done much with geography so far...] In any case, the Ian dog needed to be replaced, but luckily another Ian dog stepped in to take his place.

One of the best parts of playing dogs was the breed designations. Whereas Ian kept talking about what was going on between the "terrier" and the "fox terrier," Daniel's parallel running commentary focused around the "material" and the "fox material". Needless to say, Ian attempted to impose the more conventional naming convention for terriers, but I don't think it really made a dent in Daniel's vocabulary.

It's worth noting that we often have four dogs, rather than one, in our house. And one of the beautiful things about it is that they're always inclusive; if Ian decides he's a dog, he'll generously start talking about the Daniel dog and Madeleine dog as well. They play the role of dog very well, and it obviously stems from the fact that the line between canine and anthropoid in our house has always been a bit blurred. We've always been "dog people", if not "dog-people"....

(October 8, 2009)