My Favorite Curse

As a child, I heard it called “The Jewish Mother’s Curse.” As an adult, I learned it was common in most households, regardless of background.

“When you grow up, I hope you have a child who is just like you!”

I had the perfect response to it: “I’m smarter than you are, and I’m not having kids!”

I should have beaten the curse. I did not have children. Easy, right?

Or so I thought.

Until Sprite came into my life.

Sprite was never supposed to be my dog. In fact, I’m not sure she ever was. I was her person. Do not confuse these states.

When I first met her, she was sick. I didn’t know it at the time. I knew only that, as an eight-month-old puppy, she was calm, and quiet, and sad. And that, as a keeshond, a breed known for being “food motivated,” she was not eating.

I had driven from my home in northern Virginia to the mountains of North Carolina to pick up a male pup, also eight months old. He was supposed to be a show dog, but he didn’t love the ring. His breeder, Linda, decided he was meant to be mine, and live a life of luxury as a pampered pooch, replacing Lily, my sixteen-year-old kees who had died exactly 366 days earlier.

Stuffin overwhelmed me at first. After elderly dogs, a puppy behaving like, well, a puppy was a lot. I had… concerns… about whether the bundle of energy should be mine.

At the same time, I fell in love with Sprite. I shouldn’t take her; I couldn’t, emotionally, handle having two dogs so close to the same age. My thoughts wandered to the future, to two beloved dogs dying at the same time. I had barely survived the previous year, losing Lily and Mickey, my fourteen-year-old German shepherd dog mix, four months apart. I would not set myself up for that again. I knew better.

The heart wants what the heart wants. And my heart wanted, needed, Sprite. I couldn’t explain it. I still can’t, a decade later. But I needed her in my life.

As I carried her, crated, to my car, I told Linda I was “just” taking her to find out what was going on with her. I told myself, if she were sick, she would live with my mother, and if she were healthy, she’d go back to Linda, and it made sense for me to handle it—despite my city having the most expensive veterinary care of the three of us—because I lived in the middle.

Totally logical, right?

Right.

The first three days at my house were… challenging. Two double-coated puppies, with different energy levels, in a house which wasn’t as puppy-proof as I thought, in the middle of a storm that took out the power for twenty-four hours, in the heat and humidity of a northern Virginia summer, was not what I had in mind. Trying to learn how either alerted to having to go out wasn’t an option in the pitch black. And cleaning up the proof I had missed the sign didn’t go particularly well, either.

But that was easy compared to finding out Sprite had Addison’s disease, an illness no one I knew in our breed community had seen before, and that is unusual in puppies of any breed. Because my vet had experience with Addison’s disease, my mother and I decided Sprite would stay with me while we worked to stabilize her, figure out her medicines, and spay her. Stuffin went to stay with my mother in New Jersey, where he had her dogs to entertain him.

As her health improved, Sprite’s attitude changed. A lot. She became a puppy. With strong opinions, a healthy appetite, and confidence that would have made her excel in the show ring if the Addison’s hadn’t ended her career before it started.

Once she was healthy, Sprite went to live with my mother, and Stuffin came back to me, as we planned. That lasted two months. Sprite was not happy with the arrangement and made her displeasure known. She chewed multiple pieces of furniture, ate a carpet, and used the couch as her preferred place to relieve herself. When I visited for Thanksgiving, the behavior stopped completely. She moved in with me and Stuffin permanently the following week and never intentionally damaged another item at either house.

But once she was healthy and so very confident, we had a new issue to contend with. Namely, that she was incredibly smart and had her own idea of how everything should be done.

Don’t want to go for a walk? Tangle herself up completely in the leash so she can’t move. Ready for bed? Go upstairs to the bedroom, and jump on and off the bed, repeatedly, landing with a loud “thud” directly over where I sit in the living room. Prefer to be seen, not touched? Curl up inches from the human on the bed or the couch, and grumble at anyone who moved a muscle into her personal space.

Sprite.

Had.

Opinions.

I had to reason with her, to explain, and, sometimes, to out-think.

The walking thing was handled by taking her home after she tangled herself up in the leash (twice in five feet) and leaving her alone while I walked Stuffin. I could hear her screaming from blocks away. But I only had to do it twice.

The bed thing was handled by, well, caving and going to bed earlier. But honestly, I’m sure it is better to go to bed at a reasonable and consistent hour every night.

And I learned to respect her space on the bed, and she allowed me to pet her on the couch.

We learned to compromise.

But sometimes, well, sometimes we had to have the battle of wills.

Once in a while, I even won.

Picture it: Spring, 2013. Or maybe 2014. And it could have been fall. But you get the idea. One of the rare months in northern Virginia with absolutely perfect weather. The sun was shining and it wasn’t too hot for the pups or too cold for me. I had a few free hours and decided to take the pups into Old Town Alexandria, a popular neighborhood for tourists and locals alike, to do some socializing.

I drove an old Pathfinder, which I would back into our townhouse’s assigned parking spot when Stuffin and Sprite came with me. This way, they entered the car from the sidewalk and never touched the asphalt of the parking lot. I had a few neighbors who would pull out of their spots without looking, and this felt safer.

I opened the door, gave the command “Car,” and Sprite and Stuffin ran down to the car, dragging their leashes behind them. Stuffin jumped the three inches from the curb into the back of the vehicle and turned to look at me, waiting for his praise.

Sprite stood with her front two paws in the car, her back two paws on the sidewalk three inches lower, and looked at me over her shoulder as if to say, “I can’t do this. Pick me up.”

And so, the battle of wills began. And the curse, that ugly, ugly curse from so many years ago, came true.

I remembered the argument with my grandfather about wearing shoes to a carnival. He, the podiatrist, said yes. I, the three-year-old, said no. In a moment no one in the family has ever been able to explain, Papadoc agreed and we started towards the carnival, me proudly barefoot. We walked one block before I scraped all the skin off my big toe, and he carried me back to his office to clean it.

As my mother stood in the exam’s doorway room watching, she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know where she gets it from.”

“Don’t you?” he asked her. “Don’t worry,” he added when she didn’t continue. “Jodi will have one just like her, too. And then you’ll get to laugh.” And he laughed.

I didn’t understand at age three. I understood by my teenage years when all my mother had to do was suggest I wear appropriate clothing to my cousin’s wedding or wake up for school and I could come unhinged.

And I absolutely understood that day, waiting for Sprite to get into the car.

“Car.”

Sprite continued to stare at me and bat her eyelashes.

Look, I know. Dogs don’t bat their eyelashes.

I promise you, she did.

I walked down the steps and stood next to her, repeating the command—something dog trainers say never to do. “Car.”

She didn’t move.

I gave her a choice. (I apologize to any dog trainers who are reading this. I know. Bad. But truly, keeshonden are different.)

“Get in the car or go back in the house.” I couldn’t leave her. I remembered the noises she made when I took Stuffin for a twenty-minute walk without her. We all remembered the noises. I couldn’t go out and leave her that way for hours.

She knew it too. She removed her feet from the car and took a step toward the house.

I matched her.

We did this, one step at a time, until we reached the top of the stairs. I opened the door, bent down, and took off her leash. “In.”

Sprite looked at me, looked in the house, and looked at Stuffin. Who was still standing in the same spot in the car, waiting for us. The next move was on her.

She ran down the steps, jumped in the car, turned, and stood next to her brother, as if she had been there all along. She didn’t lose the battle. Really.

I locked the house, walked down the stairs, and expected her to jump back out of the car to start all over. To my surprise, she did not. She stood there. I put her leash back on her, praised them both, and we went to Old Town.

In the years after, she never pulled that trick again. She found new ways to challenge me instead.

As she mellowed with age, Sprite learned puppy dog eyes were more effective than going head-to-head. Most of the time. She didn’t complain about walks, and she even learned to allow me to invade her personal space.

Sometimes.

I remain grateful I didn’t have children, and that Sprite’s teenage “years” only lasted about six months.

More than that, I am grateful she chose me to be her human. She was the bestest bear ever.