A couple of years ago, I became a boat owner.
You don't really reach my age without having a pretty good idea of who you are and what you can and cannot expect of yourself. You know whether or not you are the kind of person who should expect to say "yes" if someone suggests Indian food or to show up at a social function wearing a seer sucker suit. So when you go out a lunch one day and return having purchased a kayak when you as a rule had never thought of yourself as a boat owner, it can be a pretty nasty knock to your self-image. It makes you realize that at there are unplumbed depths to your personality that even you weren't aware of. Having a wife who suddenly informs you that we are buying the boats we are looking at may or may not have had something to do with the situation.
The boat owner thing doesn't even compare to what we did this week.
So for background, you have to understand that probably 15 years ago or more we met Otto. We were in the mountains of NC staying with some friends at their cabin and one of the neighbors (or relative... to be honest the details of that are fuzzy) came to visit and brought with them two dogs. Now, for context, you have to understand that I was born and raised a cat person. I am probably a quarter cat on my mother's side in the same way that people claim to be a quarter Cherokee or whatever - I just know and understand cats. So the fact that a dog came around should have been like me mentioning that there was a shrub in the area - of no real interest or relevance to me. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
The dogs were a breed known as Bernese Mountain dogs. Berners are big dogs, not mastiff size or anything but not some little tea cup yippy little thing either. I have very strong feelings about dogs in this respect - I like big dogs and I cannot lie (c'mon we were all thinking it). Berners have a lovely dark coat with brown and white markings. These two were both well behaved and there was something all most cat like about their general stand offishness which I appreciated. I don't remember the name of the female, but the male was named Otto and he made an impression. He was big and impressive and stoic and allowed me to pet his head and such but generally treated me like a cat does - he didn't really care one way or the other about me.
But then - and this is the important part - Otto did something I will never forget. We were sitting on the front porch of the cabin and Otto was sitting beside me while I petted him and he ever so subtly leaned into me. It wasn't a big thing and it wasn't like he flopped onto me or anything, but it was a very subtle moment of acceptance. This big stoic cat-like dog very subtly had shown me that he was cool with me. You know that scene in The Fugitive where Richard Kimball has been in the hospital and because he is a doctor he sees that the staff has misdiagnosed a kid and he puts himself out there and saves the kid even though he endangers himself in the process? There is a scene after that where big tough Tommy Lee Jones is questioning the doctor in charge about this and just before she walks away he says "how is the boy?" and she reports that Kimball saved his life. That scene has always been important to me because it shows that Sam Gerard, the U.S. marshall, while a hard case nearly the entire movie does actually care. Otto's lean was the same thing for me. From that moment forward, I was a fan of this breed of dogs and Renee and I for years have talked of getting one of these.
But like with so many things in our lives, it has mostly been talk, because we make decisions at a slightly slower pace than tectonic plates shift. We don't rush into anything and so for years it has all been talk. Then a few weeks back, a video came across my feed showing a corgi who fetches tissues to its owner when he sneezes. Renee sneezes often and so I thought this might be a time saving to her. What I didn't realize was this video was going to be the catalyst of a major life change. Within a half hour of showing her the video, Renee had found that there was a Berner breeder within an hour and half's drive from home and that they had puppies and had sent them an email for us to come and meet the puppies and more importantly the dogs. The breeder graciously allowed us to come by and see them and to say that the puppies were charming would be an understatement.
All these puppies were taken, but they expected that one of their females was expecting and should be giving birth the first of February. So we checked last week and the puppies had been born the day before and after a flurry of puppy pictures and some discussion on our part, we became dog owners. I became a dog owner.
See... the boat thing was nothing.
So we are on a new journey and I am going to be use the blog to document the journey of a dyed in the wool cat person becoming a dog owner.