by H. Carson

It was a strange question. "Mommy, can we get a pet?"

I shook my head in confusion. We already had a pet. In fact the dog sat next to me, observing the conversation with her usual intelligence. Probably as puzzled as I was.

"But honey, you have a pet. Maya’s a pet."

The logic of this escaped them entirely. They shook their heads as if to shrug off the last answer, which was not useful to them.

"All the kids at school at have pets. Zack even has a tarantula!" Oh, heaven forfend. "I promise I would take care of him and feed him and give him water and ..."

"Kiddo!" I interrupted, perplexed. "Look at her! Maya’s a dog. Dogs are pets. Don’t you see that?" I scratched Maya’s ears as she grinned sardonically up at me. I frowned down at her, suddenly suspicious. She had an insufferable look about her, like she knew what was going on but wasn’t going to share.

My two boys looked around the room in exasperation, as if searching for an answer that made sense to them. It felt like we had two different realities, and our words were passing each other like gentle breezes, making no impression.

We first saw her at the local animal shelter: a gaunt black and white dog of medium size, with matted hair and indeterminate gender. My husband and I, newly married, were there to heroically rescue a dog from the pound. Or so we thought.

She looked up at us calmly, too old to be a puppy, not quite an adult, an unrepentant juvenile delinquent on death row.

"Siberian Husky?!" said my husband in disbelief, squinting at the veterinarian report.

We looked at her again. She returned stare for stare with a kind of worldly, tired dignity, assessing our worthiness just as we were assessing hers. With a kind of a shrug and, I swear, a bit of a sardonic eye roll, she stood up against the bars, and asked us to get her the heck out of that place. So we did.

Our newest member of the family dropped her tragic ‘Princess Anastasia’ act the moment we got home: racing madly around the house, leaping furniture impressively, shedding hair like a dandelion puff. We decided to name her Maya, possibly in honor of Maya Angelou the poet, though I confess without Ms. Angelou’s prior consent.

Maya decided it was her job to challenge my position as alpha female. No command of mine was left unchallenged, no Christmas tree left standing. "What’s the matter?" my husband would ask, fondly rubbing her stomach. "Maya’s a great dog!" Belly up, she would look at me sideways from that furry face, blue-white husky eyes looking devilish, grinning wolfishly, "You’re not the boss of me!"

All that would change the day we brought our frstborn home in baby blankets. "Oh, you’re a mother!" she seemed to say, with much tail-wagging, ear-pinned, puppy-body language. I suppose it was an improvement from her previous attitude, but every time she tried to haul her hairy 75 pounds on my lap, it was a bit alarming.

"Honey," I peered at the book in my hand entitled ‘How to Introduce Dog and Child.’ "This book says to be careful; some dogs might be jealous and actually harm a child."

We looked down at our son, now a toddler and sharing Maya’s view of the world from the floor. He was approaching Maya’s bowl on hands and knees. Unfortunately, she was currently wolfing down her dinner, pretending to be unaware of him.

I moved very close, imagining a horrific headcrunching newsworthy byline in tomorrow’s paper. We tensed as my little boy put his hand between her jaws: those same jaws had hunted, killed and devoured geese, raccoons, possums, and squirrels. Hovering intently over the dog bowl, his little head seemed tender and vulnerable, like an overlarge kibble.

Maya loomed over him, wolf ears perked forward, eyeing the little thief for a moment. But some part of me trusted her, as two females sharing a commonness that transcended species. Then, as I knew she would, she backed away, giving the boy room, fondness for puppies of all types clearly told in her bearing and soft ears.

We sighed. This dog, this sometime destroyer of old sneakers and Oriental rugs, this onetime adversary for pack leadership, well, that day she earned forever her place in this family and my heart. My husband and I hugged each other. Maya was to be Protector, Companion, and Gentle Playmate, and our Life with the Dog was to be wonderful and easy.

As we held our fond embrace, we ignored the sounds of our baby munching happily on Crunchy Nuggets. Oops. Oh well, that was a different battle.

The toddler attended nursery school and we brought another baby into the house. As the kids grew older, we began to hear that odd question. "Come on, Mom, Jimmy down the street has a cat. Why can’t we have a pet?" The question just didn’t make sense. How could they miss a 75-pound carnivore sprawled illegally on the sofa?

One evening at dinner I think I stumbled on the secret.

As we sat down at the table, Maya laid down at her food dish. I took a gulp of my milk, my eldest leaned into his mashed potatoes. My husband and younger son dug into the peas. Maya started in on her kibbles.

I stopped eating to watch her for a moment. This time it was my turn to cock my head. Eyebrows puckered, I got a funny notion. Then my eyes grew wide. Holy cow, the kids were right, I realized.

When my kids looked at Maya, they saw someone who had always been in their lives, a fixture of the household like their parents and the refrigerator; someone who ate when they ate, slept when they slept. She watched television with them on the family room floor.

She had always towered hugely over them, bigger and older and perhaps, if truth be told, a little scary. My boys had never been, nor ever would be, ‘The Boss of Her’.

Maya was not a pet. She was a member of the family. In fact, Maya was just a very hairy big sister.

"Now I understand!" I crowed to my husband, but he refused to see it. He looked down at our dog, happily chewing her Crunchy Nuggets. He saw four legs, two ears, wet black nose, blue husky eyes.

"Dog", he proclaimed. "We don’t need another one."

Ah well, these things are subtle sometimes. So we didn’t get a dog. That is, we didn’t get another dog.

Years passed, toddlers became grade schoolers. There came a time when Maya seemed to slow down. "Mommy, I think Maya has a tummy ache," said my youngest, the empathic member of the family. Maya seemed to have no appetite, no thirst, and had difficulty walking. The kids were briefly subdued when they realized she was sick, but they shrugged, trusting us grownups to solve the problem.

Maya was eventually diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a treatable but expensive malady that she battled all her remaining life, requiring recurring medications that cost more than piano lessons and soccer camp combined.

"Why do you keep her?" our well-intentioned neighbors would ask. We looked at them in puzzlement. Do you euthanize a family member just because they get sick? Because they cost money? Because they chew the moccasins?

However, the disease was hard on Maya, and one Sunday we found her, looking for all the world like she had taken a peaceable nap in the hydrangeas. As we lowered her into a grave beneath the oaks in our backyard, bathed in the golden light of that cool spring afternoon, I remarked how beautiful she was, even then, black and white ears still somehow alert for the pesky varmints invading her kingdom. Come in, varmints, the yard is yours again.

My boys took it badly, and even as I write this tears trickle down onto the keyboard. "If we get another dog, he will never be as good as Maya!" wailed my eight year old. My five-year-old clung to us, seeking an impervious bond to life and parents and the world as it had been that morning, when everyone you knew was alive and death did not have to be stared at with a fixed eye.

At my kids’ prompting, we got a puppy, a black and brindle Collie/Labrador mix with a sweet temperament and an overwhelming need to please. I believe it is a step towards healing for the family.

But this time, things are different. The new puppy is, for now, smaller than the boys, and he willingly accepts the low rung in the family hierarchy.

The kids show him the cool places to go, like the woods, the basement, or daddy’s Lazy Boy chair. Their favorite phrase is "Pepper, COME!" using that come-hither hand motion their dad taught them. Sometimes the dog actually obeys.

It would appear that, in everyone’s eyes, Pepper is just that joyful and reasonable thing, a dog.

One sunny afternoon, we non-dogs lazed on the porch watching the new puppy’s antics.

"Look at the size of his feet; he’s going to be even bigger than Maya!" my husband said proudly. Like that was a good thing.

My 5-year-old crawled onto my lap. I knew that my youngest was still processing his grief, his sadness resurfacing at odd times.

"I wish we had gotten a puppy while Maya was alive. Maya could have played with him!"

"Yeah!" my husband piped up. "She’s probably looking down right now, saying ‘You decided now to get a puppy!?!"

I could just see her doing it too, resentful maybe, but with that same sardonic eye roll and a smile about the face and ears. I laughed, partly with sadness, fighting tears again. But I also began to recall that the world, too, is made for joy and bright memories, and it was like taking small sips of life’s Cabernet, not too fast, a slow relearning how to love and live again.

And as I watched the puppy stumble over too large feet in the grass, stalking some oblivious insect, I reflected that Maya would indeed have loved having a little buddy. Someone to play with, to enliven the day, to whom she could pass on her elder doggie wisdom perhaps. To reinsert vigor into the world.

But I wouldn’t have been surprised if, occasionally, she would have flung him roughly onto his back. Perhaps the puppy had gotten too full of himself or, worse, showed some disrespect. As he looked up, fully cowed and with big eyes, she would have stood imperious over him, and declared once again.

"You’re not the boss of me!"