Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [27]
In the dog choice, I dithered and delayed; I procrastinated and postponed. Instead of some systematic assessment of appropriate dog choices—considering their behavior around children, acclimatization to an urban environment, reaction to daytime isolation—I chose another path. I told people we were thinking of getting a dog.
This led to Billy.
Billy came into our life in a manner that has helped me develop a new personal rule: Never conduct business at a funeral.
An elderly relative had passed away, and as often is the case, the funeral service and reception were an opportunity to reacquaint myself with relations with whom I had lost touch. One, a cousin who lived five hours away, said she had heard of our quest for a new dog, was working at a shelter, and had a wonderful dog for us. Had I been more organized, more ordered in my thinking, I would have asked appropriate questions (see above). Instead, all I could think of was, “How much?”
“She’s free.”
In hindsight, this should have occasioned an amendment to my rule, or perhaps a new rule altogether: Beware of free beagles.
Emails were exchanged. A picture of Billy in repose was our first clue of any problem. “She seems sad,” commented my wife.
“And fat,” I added. “She’s not the best-looking dog I’ve ever seen.”
We decided that physical attractiveness, especially in dogs, wasn’t really relevant, and that her sadness, if real, would be dissipated by becoming the newest member of our loving family. One five-hour drive later and we had our new dog.
It would be difficult, in a few short words, to describe the adventures and misadventures of Billy and the Gunns (sounds like a country band), but let me just say that I have learned the following lessons from our time together:
1. The consistency of a dog’s stool is a good indication of its health.
2. If a dog vomits or has diarrhea outside the house repeatedly, it will almost certainly vomit or have diarrhea inside the house.
3. Beagles will eat anything, and I mean anything, including things they have already eaten and passed (if that is too disgusting to contemplate, consider it in conjunction with No. 2).
4. Beagles, regardless of their state of health, will run into the woods and engage in No. 3—you just won’t know what it is they have eaten until the beagle returns (see No. 2).
5. Doses of dog medication are not to be missed—the results of such neglect will be immediate (see No. 2).
6. Make assessments about how much you are prepared to spend in health-care costs for your beagle before your young children come to love it more than they love you.
7. Once your vet bills pass $5,000, your vet will treat you very much like a part of his family (without giving you a family discount).
8. Never mock pet health insurance.
All that said, Billy has been, on the whole, a great dog. She is patient with the children and loyal to the family. Indeed, she outranks me by several notches on the family popularity scale. Her popularity notwithstanding, she has been a learning experience.
Maybe being more organized about getting a dog might not have changed the result. I’ll never know for sure because I went about our canine acquisition like I do everything else: stumbling blindly about until something happens, for better or worse.
I have no Order. I am the anti-Descartes. I don’t think, but nonetheless I am.
So I was excited and anxious about Order. Temperance and Silence had a whiff of abstraction about them, a sense of the idealistic. Order, though, is pragmatic and practical—a meaty virtue with a chance, in my case, for real-world success.
If only I had better prepared.
Let There Be Order
My initial excitement for Order had