You can always tell when there’s a puppy in the house.
All the shoes are off the floor. The older dogs are hanging out in shady parts of the garden, looking resigned. The floor is littered with a miscellany of well-chewed items: an old toothbrush, a young coconut, a rawhide bone, a carrot, a cob of corn, an empty shampoo bottle, the knuckle of a deceased pig and a rope tied to the railing. The puppy looks perky and well rested. The owner looks exhausted. And there are puddles.
I’d never had a tiny, straight-from-the-mother pup before. Of the six dogs that graced me with their presence in the past 3 years, five were headstrong Bali dogs and the other a willful dachshund princess. I intended that this puppy would grow up to be a big, scary, well-adjusted, obedient guard dog. Before he arrived I sat up nights studying manuals on puppy care. Crating, feeding, house breaking, bathing, discipline, obedience training; it all seemed very complicated. I tried to think like a dog, not a person. I practiced being Alpha Dog with Kalypso, who rolled her eyes and took off for the bamboo grove.
I visited the litter when it was 3 weeks old, picked up two likely pups and held one against each cheek. “I’m the one,” murmured the puppy on the left, exploring my ear with his damp nose. His eyes were exactly the colour of imperial topaz, a rich golden brown. I visited him once or twice a week after that, bringing treats and carrying him into a nearby garden to play away from the rest of the litter. Topaz was already a fearless little fellow. His manners were good; he would politely amble off to piddle on his feet every two or three minutes and then return for another round of tug.
I brought him home the day he was 8 weeks old and too small to get up the stairs by himself. The only time I ever heard him cry was when he couldn’t see me; for the first week I was not allowed out of his sight. It’s very tiring to be adored, especially when you are sitting on the loo in the middle of the night.
Kalypso, who is fed up to the back teeth with my insistence on bringing new dogs into her house, tolerated his bumptiousness for about half an hour. When he went to explore her dinner dish, she bit him on the face and he ran to me screaming, dripping blood all over the floor. I cradled his trembling little body, staunched the blood and felt as indignant as any mother. Late that night in heavy rain when out for a late pee, he became disoriented and wandered into the pond. I went straight in after him, through the rose bushes, and we emerged soaked, scratched, shivering with cold and hung about with duck weed. He was fine, but I felt rather shaky.
The first week was intense. He screamed hysterically if I moved out of sight, wouldn’t eat unless I sat with him and had to get up three times during the night to go outside. I had many opportunities to study my garden by moonlight as Topaz sleepily watered his toes. I’d resisted the idea of a crate as a method of housetraining, but after the first night (known thereafter as The Long Night of the Puddles) I asked Nyoman to make a portable wire cage for the pup. Dogs are den animals by nature and Topaz immediately loved his crate. He retires there to nap and keeps his favourite toys in it. Sometimes he’ll break into the house during the day just to doze in his crate, and sleeps in it in my bedroom at night.
Just as I was about to expire of sleep deprivation, he doubled in size overnight and grew out of it all. Suddenly he was sleeping through the night, wandering around the garden all by himself and wolfing down his meals of minced chicken heads and hearts mixed with tofu, bean sprouts, beets and carrots. Best of all, he regards me more as a manager than a goddess, watching me carefully and trying to figure out what I want him to do. Then he tries hard to do it.
I chose Topaz to be a fearsome guard dog, so it’s ironic that the only collar I could find in Ubud that fits his young neck is pink leather with rhinestones. “It will help him get in touch with his feminine side,” say my female friends. “Poofter,” mutter my male friends. He’s oblivious to all this. He knows he’s a mighty warrior doglet with the kind of genes I prefer not to meet on a dark night. At least he will be on my side.
Within a week he learned to sit, lie down, pee outside most of the time and break into the house three different ways. The week after that he taught me throw a bone across the patio while calling, “Go get it! Bring it back! Drop it! Good dog!” until I was hoarse. We are pretty pleased with one another’s progress. He has the makings of a fine dog, and I’m learning a thing or two myself.
