Some R&R: a 10 year old who thinks Remy is adorbs!
The globalized, interconnected world is a weird and wonderful place. Yesterday R., Tuck and I visited with my friend Joanna, her two boys (M. and X., ages 15 and 13 respectively) and their 16 week-old Barbet puppy Remy. I met Joanna last fall in my french class that I take twice a week in Aix-en-Provence. So at lunch in France we had 2 Canadian humans, 1 Canadian-born dog of French origin imported to France with us this year, 3 Aussies who now live in Scotland, and their Barbet who was born in the UK and now also lives in Scotland.
Joanna first met Tuck on Monday October 15 at 9h. My, how time flies! Due to a series of first-world logistical problems that day I ended up asking my french teacher if Tuck could come to class with me that particular Monday. She kindly agreed and the rest is history.
On Monday October 15th, I arrived at french and Tuck (a.k.a. Mr. Charming) did the dog version of the bisous (double kissing someone when you greet them). Lots of dogs are very good at currying the favours of humans, the Barbets are best-in-show in this regard. When Tuck was a puppy we brought him home on December 12. We often have a Christmas Eve afternoon open house and were a bit worried about how that might go with a new puppy at home. Our fears were put to rest when puppy-Tuck marched into our living room full of people and promptly plopped himself down in the middle of the room and took a nap. Tuck is happiest in a room full of people and at french class he decided to make himself at home by picking Joanna’s feet to warm when he laid down.
Before class had ended Joanna’s dog-questions began and by the end of the week I had introduced Joanna to Paula (the breeder from whom we got Tuck and a person who holds a very special place in our family). Paula then helped Joanna find breeders on this side of the pond. In January R. and I took Tuck over to meet Joanna’s husband and two boys. Not long after Joanna had found a breeder and began the process of hoping to get a puppy all while packing up their France house to move to Aberdeen, Scotland.
Their puppy was born in March and they brought him home in early May [editors note: there are many advantages to being the kind of person who neglects to delete emails, in this case I have an email trail to help recreate this entire history!]. I’m a complete sucker for Barbet puppies with their sticky-up warthog tails and rolly-polly bellies. When R. and I arrived yesterday to meet him we were reduced to two babbling fools about how soft and cute he is!
It is SUPER hard to photograph black dogs.
It was wonderful to see Joanna, her boys, meet their puppy and it was especially nice that R. got to join me. Normally she should have been at school but her teacher was away sick, there was no sub available, and so she got to spend the day with me. Having R. with me for this visit was particularly fun because she’s the one whom we credit with our getting Tuck.
My first dog’s name was Shadow. She was a pound-dog, a mix of lab, shepherd and given her propensity for eating everything, part goat -I had that dog’s stomach pumped 3 times! I got Shadow as an adult dog when I was single and living in Kingston. It’s a long story but the short version is that she pretty much picked me to be her person. And while I was terribly allergic to a dog that seemed to shed her undercoat almost weekly, Shadow was a vital and much loved member of our family. Everyone in my family has a ‘Shadow stole my food’ story, she was an amazing canoe trip companion, and she was a good sport flying back and forth from Vancouver for a year when I did my post-doc out there.
Four years ago February Shadow died in her sleep in our house at the ripe old age of 15 having had a perfectly ordinary day. We should all be so lucky! At the time R. was about to turn 7 and H was 3. Because I am allergic to dogs, after Shadow died, I really wanted to wait a year before considering whether we’d get a new dog. I wanted a chance to see how much better I’d feel without a dog at home. All of this wait-and-see thinking was all very good and well but it didn’t take into account something that proved to be quite important.
At the time, I really had no idea how much having a dog in our family meant to R. It took us about a week to figure out that R. was a child with dogs in her heart. For her entire life we’d had Shadow and with Shadow gone R. was a bit lost. About 6 weeks after Shadow died, on a Thursday evening, I gave R. my Eyewitness dog breed book and told her she should start learning about dogs, their sizes and their personalities so that if, 11 months later, we were going to get a new one, she could help participate in our decision-making process.
Shadow was terrific but when she joined me, I was at a different point in my life with plenty of time and energy to roll with the many challenges she came with. By the time she died, we were a family with two young children living in 14′ wide house in urban Toronto. My allergies to dogs hadn’t changed much and the appeal of a less-allergic dog was large for me. Welcoming a dog into a home with children is an entirely different prospect than bringing home an adult dog when you are a single woman. So we began to consider getting a puppy and this time from a breeder.
About 20 minutes later R. comes back, page open to the Barbet and says “I think we should get THIS dog”. I thought I knew that book inside out and backwards from a time in my mid-20s when I learned a lot about dogs and quickly. But when I saw the Barbet it was a breed that I’d never heard of and I had certainly never met or seen one. 30 minutes later we’re googling the breed and by bedtime that night I’d sent an inquiry off to Paula asking if “someday” we might be able to come visit to meet her dogs and learn more about the breed.
Someday turned out to be 3 days later when we drove one rainy April morning to Kitchener to meet Paula, her family and her dogs. We were especially taken by Bonnie, Paula’s gentle “giant” of a Barbet – we loved her calm and warm personality. By 3pm that Sunday we’d written back to Paula to ask her if she might consider us for one of Bonnie’s puppies in a year’s time. But that spring of 2009 I’m sure we visited Paula 3 or 4 times just to hang out. At that point we were on the list to get a puppy in the spring of 2010.
Then, one evening in the summer of 2009 I got a message from Paula addressed to all of the families who wanted one of Bonnie’s puppies. Her message basically said “Bonnie went into heat much sooner than expected, how are you collectively feeling about a puppy 6 months earlier than planned? No pressure. We can wait but if we are going to move sooner rather than later the window is small”. Thus began a series of SMS between me and Chris who was out having a beer with friends. By bedtime we’d decided “ok, let’s go for it now”. And in December 2009 we brought Tuck home.
During our entire process of deciding about if, when and which kind of dog to get, we’d had our minds turned to the sabbatical we’re just about to finish. By spring 2009, I had just been tenured and Chris was submitting his package that fall. We had long conversations about whether to wait until after sabbatical to get a dog because we knew that if we were going away for a year we’d want our dog to join us. So we thought long and hard about the appeal (or not) of countries with strict quarantine rules. By that point we were pretty sure we’d like to go to France so we did some early reading and learned that if we had a dog, with time, money, paperwork, and a willing landlord, our dog could come along with us.
Barbets big and small.
So now, in 2013, in Provence, R. and I had a puppy playdate with friends and their new dog. R. had an amazing time with the two dogs and because Joanna is such a gracious host, we all had a wonderful visit together. Tuck has been such an important part of our adventures here and at home and Joanna’s family is clearly smitten with Remy. And all, in the end, because a 6 year old girl deeply missed her first dog. Merci bien R!
Nous allons en France 
