What Kudo Knows

This morning Kudo and I did our walk around my ten acres, checking everything out. The sun wasn't up yet, everything bluish and distinct, the kind of light that gets a little orange on top if there are clouds to catch it. She paused in the upper field to take a dump. She did, and I praised her for it, positively reinforcing a healthy dump like the proud parent I apparently am.

My voice startled a fawn neither of us had seen, tucked in the privet hedge twenty feet away. It bolted deeper into the hedge. Its mother made herself known fast, moving along the hedge line, and Kudo took off after her.

"Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait."

I said it maybe a dozen times, firm the first half dozen, quieter after that. Kudo gave up the chase almost immediately. I didn't move until the doe stopped and looked at the two of us. Kudo turned when I turned, and we walked back through the wet grass, heavy with dew, to go do my laundry.

The fawn stayed put the whole time, a tiny silhouette in the middle of the hedge row. I looked back at it once or twice on the way in.

Kudo knows a lot, more than I've let on so far. She likes to stop and listen for several minutes in my woods and the woods around mine, sniffing everything like a hound. She's a pit bull and hound mix with some bird dog in there too. I figure it from her bite.

When we're fighting over cloth toys, she grips them with her teeth, but it's often easy to pull one right out of her mouth because she doesn't grip hard enough. That's not the same as gentle, though. Play full force with her and she's bitten me several times over the years, always soft, always accidental. She has never once broken my skin.

When she was younger she was spastic in the way she'd behave. She'd get up on the sofa with you and roll over on her back, wiggling around with her mouth wide open, biting the air. She loved for you to let her "bite" your hand, the soft bite that meant she really just wanted to touch your hand with her teeth.

Avery and I would put our whole hand down in the dog's mouth and leave it there. She'd put her teeth on it over and over, delighted with life.

Now she and I are on the same schedule. Up at 5:30 to be fed and poop. Before 7 we're out on our first walk around the property, in the bluish light, which is when we saw the fawn. Kudo likes to stay outside a little longer after that, patrolling around the house.

Then there's a 9 a.m. walk, usually for a second poop. Daylight by then, but the heat of the summer day hasn't started yet. The dew has been heavy this year. Not always the case. Some years August turns dry and the grass starts dying. There's no dew at all.

She knows the routine without being told. She'll be lying wherever, not moving, and then she'll hear me get up and go to the bathroom, or just hear me putting on my socks, and down she comes, ready to go. Nobody calls her. She just knows.

And she knows how to bite. And she knows how to be sweet. And she knows to stop when I say "wait," rapid-fire, over and over. She knows the expression of my face and the tone of my voice.

She does not know what she teaches me. She does not intend to teach me anything. She intends to please and to take delight in my praising her and petting her.

Kudo knows.

Kudo has taught me two things this year, neither of which she is aware she is teaching.

The first is that a dog does not know it is wagging its tail. It isn't a performance for my benefit, not even a small one. The wag is happiness with nowhere else to go, spilling out the back end of her because there's no other exit for it. (I actually already knew this from past dogs, of course, but Kudo brought it to my attention.) 

Tail wagging is a symptom of a happy dog. It can be a dog at play or an old dog lying on its side, thumping the floor when it sees you.

The second thing is harder, and it took Kudo to show it to me.

I am anxious by nature. It gets away from me sometimes, and when it does, it frustrates me almost as much as whatever set it off. But I do not let it near her. Not the tone, not the posture, not the quick hands.

Whatever is happening in me stays in me when we're out on the trail or she's chasing a tennis ball or pawing at me for attention, wanting to be loved on. She is the sweetest dog I have ever had, and I want her to feel nothing but complete safety around me. No negative vibes.

It is not automatic. It is a decision I make, over and over, on ordinary days. A cultivation practice. Nobody sees it. Kudo gets the result. And so do I. She never sees the deciding though.

It doesn't touch the anxiety itself. Not one bit less of it exists in me because I kept it off her during a walk. That was never the deal. What I get instead is a place to find out, again, whether I can hold the line between what I feel and how I act.

Some days I do. Some days I don't quite.

And it escapes me. I've noticed it in how I am with Jennifer, with Avery, on days when I'd have every excuse to let the frustration out on the nearest person instead of the dog who can't talk back. I'm working on that.

On the days I do. I can exhale, feel myself becoming lighter. You would think that would be reward enough for an anxious person.  And it is. But the anxiety never goes away, relaxation is temporary.

Kudo will never know any of this. She'll just keep wagging, anticipating the next phase of each day, total happiness with nowhere else to go.