Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-09-21 - 11:31 a.m.

If you came over because TSandM recommended "Back and Forth", that is now here.

Reminders

Max bit someone.

Max the Holy Terrier, Max the clown, Maximilian, the boon companion, the MaxMan, bit a teenager over the weekend.

So then he was not Max - he was The Dog. The Dog bit somebody. This was a bad thing; The Dog was a Bad Dog.

They weren't messing with him or provoking, at least not in way that a human could understand. There were many people around, and lots of noise and party, and these teenagers were turning cartwheels and shrieking, and something in The Dog's doggie brain said this was very bad and that he should bite one of them. So he did.

It wasn't a nip. He really bit.

If you don't have dogs or love dogs you must wonder why I am bothering to write about this. If you do, then you know how it felt to hear this news, and to see the look on Max's owner's face as he told me.

Max is not mine. Max is my sometimes charge; I am only a dog nanny. I have helped raise him, but I am not his family. I am not even the Mary Poppins of the dog nanny set - only someone who knows The Dog, who has played with him and laughed at him and stroked his silky puppy ears while he slept on my lap.

But his owner is family. His owner is hurt by this. It's a betrayal. Because Max was not The Dog before, he was just Max. Family. Short, hairy family, but we overlooked his differences. Even when he was a disobedient puppy, when he pulled cameras off the counter and ate sports coats, he was always Max who gave hugs, and slept in the bed.

But when a dog bites, it is clear in that instant that he answers a call we cannot hear. That he's part of the evolution of canines, back to the very beginning. He can never be completely us, or we him. We are different.

I know this will heal, in time. The Dog is Max again most of the time, and he will be more and more, and it will be glossed over, if not forgotten. He is not a Bad Dog. He has just told us in clear terms that large loud gatherings are not a Good Place for him, so he will not attend them any more. He has shown no other tendency to aggression.

The child he bit is fine. She did not need stitches; she will still do cartwheels. She was old enough that this will not create a terror of dogs for her. She will forget.

But somehow, at some level, we will now remember that Max our boon companion ran wild an age before, and howled, and would not come near the cave.

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