When I was about the boys’ age I took a nasty spill on my bike. While I scraped myself up pretty badly, I had hurt my pride more than anything else. After limping home for medical attention, I attributed the accident to a neighbor’s scary dog that jumped out in front of my bike. To this day, I don’t know if there was actually a dog or if I just conjured one out my imagination. Regardless, at a young age I was not trending towards being a “dog” person.
Fast forward to today—to a time when Jenni and I have made significant strides in age-appropriate suburbanite activities. House? check. Children? check. check. Minivan? Just acquired. Amidst our blissful life of mowing the lawn, saving box tops for education, and carpooling to Little League, something was missing. Well, something was missing according to my wife and that something was a dog. Jenni had been campaigning for a dog for quite some time and the boys quickly rallied to her cause. So shortly after Christmas, I reluctantly agreed to allow a four-legged creature into our house.
Maui (the dog, not the island) joined the Matsumoto family in January. On an overcast afternoon, we shuttled down to Helen Woodward Animal Shelter to check out two puppies we had seen online. Thirty minutes later we were carrying Maui out to our Honda Odyssey. (Jenni would want you to know that I insisted on carrying him myself. )Yes, it’s true—I was smitten right away. How could I not be? As I looked down at the tan and white ball of fur I was cradling on the on the way home, he was perfect.
So has the Matsumoto dog experiment been a success? Most definitely. I submit to you, as evidence, a paragraph Ryan recently wrote for an assignment:
I am going to tell you about my puppy, Maui. I think he is so cute and he always plays with my family. Maui is so cute because he has brown spots on his eyes, back, and tail. He shows love when he kisses my brother Chase and me. Maui was me up every morning. One time he had peanut butter breath and when he licked me on my cheek, it smelled like peanut butter because my mom put peanut butter in his kong toy. When we were taking him home from the adoption center, Mom thought we was going to throw up or pee, but he didn’t. Then, I knew Maui would be the perfect dog. I love Maui because he is another brother to me.
-Ryan Matsumoto
In addition to learning about paragraph structure, Ryan has perfectly summarized the affection we collectively feel for our new pet. Not only is Maui obviously super cute, he has the best personality. Perhaps “personality” is the wrong word; shouldn’t it be called “dogality”? Which leads me to another point, it’s in our DNA to attribute human motivation and character to non-humans. We find humanity everywhere: we see faces in electrical outlets, rivers and seas can be “angry,” computers plot against us. But what about dogs? What about Maui? Isn’t it possible his “preferences” and “desires” are merely his instinct to have his basic needs met?
It turns out it doesn’t matter. We can create any meaning we want to. Maui sits up and wags his tail when we get home because he loves us, not because he wants out of his crate. Maui has learned to “stay” because he’s the smartest dog in the County, not because there’s hamburger for him if he can refrain from jumping on the dinner table. And Maui dashes up the stairs every morning when I say “Go get the boys!” because he’s a member of this family and he knows waking up Ryan and Chase is his job.
When I tell friends about our experience, they often remark that seven or eight years is the perfect age to get a dog. It turns out forty-five isn’t a bad age either.
