Enter Harpo

He's my first online guy.  Blond, muscular, handsome features,  a little bad boy in him but mostly sweet, 4 and a half.  (or 32, in people years).  His name is Harpo.

It's been over a year since Wiley died.  The (human) boys have been begging for a dog for months.  We put it off.  Winter.  Tucker.  Australia.  Jordy and I wanted one too, but were we up to another critter to care for?  We had to admit, our pet-less year had provided certain freedoms in our otherwise constrained lives of present.  But Jordy was back from Australia and our excuses had run out.

I looked at shelter websites all over the New York area but found Harpo just down the hill at the Sean Casey Animal Rescue Center.  He was my top pick, based on looks and profile.  I'm a sucker for that tilted-head, goofy look on a guy.  He was old enough to be past puppy issues; young enough to be unlikely to die in the next 3-5 years.

I resolved to meet him on my own before introducing the rest of my guys, not wanting to encourage premature attachments.  My entrance to the dog unit set off a cacophony -- frantic dogs barking, wildly leaping from side to side in their cages.  In the far corner one dog lay quietly, not a whimper or a wiggle.  He just looked up, tilted-head, goofy but also sad get-me-outta-here eyes.

The next day all five of us took him for a walk.  Tucker howled with frustration when we wouldn't let him hold the leash by himself.  (He wasn't receptive to the he-weighs-60-pounds, you-weigh-28 argument.)  Everyone but Reeve wanted him instantly.  What do you think, Reeve?  "His eyes are too worried, like Wiley's."  But finally Reeve came around, concluding after much thought that dogs must just have worried eyes, and maybe he wouldn't be so worried if he came to live with us.

***

Harpo is uncannily Wiley-like in many ways, just dipped in yellow.  His build, the flop of the ears when he trots.  When it comes to dogs, I guess I have a type.  So he surprises me when he's not Wiley, for better -- no interest in trash, not even candy! -- or worse --biting through the no-pull harness, pacing at 5:45am needing to relieve himself, then howling with excitement when you reach for the leash (three boys untimely ripped from slumber = not pretty), enjoying 45, 50, 60 minute walks with no action, then pooping in the living room as soon as we're home, etc.

We thought Wiley was a handful, but we never really taught him to poop on walks -- he just did it.  What do we do now?  We didn't teach him not to eat through his harness -- he just didn't.   But lest we forget, the first 18 months of Wiley's residence with us was no walk in the park.  He bit an old man.  He ate every sweater I had.  He whizzed all over the house the first day.  He'd bolt when we needed to leave the house.  We had to partition the house to resolve the cat/dog turf war, turning the bedroom into a restricted West Bank for our depressed cats.  Somehow by the time Duncan arrived, it all worked out.  No whizzing, no chewing, no partitions.

So who is this guy?  What now?  What will our story be?

Our neighbors are none too excited about Harpo's arrival; he is suffering the unfair burden of a disputed history over appropriate uses of a back yard.   Even the best-intentioned friends say, "Just what you needed!  As if you didn't have your hands full enough with three little boys."

But when I doubt the sanity of taking an animal into our home, I watch Tucker curl up next to Harpo, stroking his head and saying his name again and again like an incantation of love... "Hahpo! Hahpo! Hahpo! Hahpo!" and (all 27 inches of) Tucker carrying Harpo's dog dish ever so carefully to give him dinner.  I remember how Duncan begs for Harpo to escort him to the bus and how he looks for Harpo from the bus in the afternoon.  I love the scratch of his nails on the wood floor, the sigh when he settles onto Wiley's old dog bed for the night (and he's a great sleeper), and the fact that I have someone to give the tasty chicken drippings to again on Shabbat while Wiley looks down from heaven, dripping envious drool.

The first night Harpo was here, he wanted nothing more than to be in the middle of the sleeping action (yes, even sleep is an action in this household), trying to get into every boy's bed.  Every night we sing "I love you..." to the tune of Happy Birthday to each boy; that night we also sang to Harpo whereupon Reeve, enthusiastic but still guarded in response to Harpo, burst into tears.  "I miss Wiley so much!" he sobbed.  Duncan burst instantly into tears as well, "Me too!" and Tucker too, just to make sure he wasn't left out of whatever it was we were crying about.  They asked the unanswerable questions about life and death and dogs, finally agreeing that loving and losing is definitely better than not loving at all.

They assured Harpo they were ready to love him too, and off four boys drifted to sleep.