Doggy Love Conquers All - Eventually

The Boston Herald

And I thought he didn't love her. He never said this, but it's how he acts sometimes. "She's a dog. She'll be OK," is as close as he ever gets to affection, when I moan about having to leave her again, or if it suddenly rains and she's outside.

My husband never wanted a dog. He said dogs are too much work. That a dog on our street didn't stand a chance. That if we got a dog we'd have to get a fence. That a dog would dig up the garden and scratch the floor and gnaw on the legs of the furniture and bark whenever anyone came to the door and have to be walked and bathed and taken to the vet.

And he was right about all of the above.

She was six weeks old when my daughters and I brought her home. We gushed and fawned. He looked as us and said, "Wait."

The rungs on the kitchen chairs were the first to go. Then the bottom of a bookcase. Then the back steps. We bought a runner, but she didn't like it. So we bought a fence. One day, there was a windstorm and part of the fence blew down and Molly made a beeline to the street. She was in a cast for weeks, her hip pinned, her leg shattered, a forlorn looking creature, hiding under the kitchen table, only half-heartedly chewing on the chairs.

When the cast came off, my husband took her to obedience school because by then she needed it. She didn't come when she was called and she wouldn't sit or stay. She jumped on anyone who came to the door.

Obedience school would be a bonding experience. Man and beast would come to know and respect one another. Molly would learn to behave and my husband would learn that the worst of it was over.

Molly flunked obedience school. "Come here," weren't words that compelled her to stop digging or chewing. "Molly? Want a bagel?" always did the trick, but the instructor said this didn't count.

I wish I could report a sudden turnaround, that one day Molly morphed into the perfect dog. Instead she has been everything my husband predicted and more. She's had more surgery than Michael Jackson. Unless you bribe her with food, she still will not come when she is called. She hides if you go to brush her. She barks at the broom, the vacuum cleaner, the hose and at our neighbor Mr. Merlin, every time he walks down his driveway. She has dug her way through much of my garden and destroyed an entire flagstone patio.

No, she did not morph. She is what she has always been, a loveable pain in the neck. It's my husband who's suddenly changed, who comes down the stairs in the morning and instead of stepping over her, bends and rubs her head and says: "Good morning porcupine. How's your ear?"

He's the one who noticed her scratching it and shaking her head. And he's the one who looked in her ear called the vet and took her there last week.

"Poor thing," he said when he came home. "She has a punctured ear drum."

It takes two of us to cajole her from under the table where she hides when it's time for her eardrops. "Come here," he says, but she doesn't move. I get a rice cake and she's putty in our hands.

He holds, she chews and I squirt. And then Molly shakes and my husband doesn't say: "Hey! If you get that all over my pants I'm gonna kill you." He says, "It's OK, Molly. I know you don't like this, but your ear's looking better."

And all this time, I thought he didn't love her.