The Chronicles of Riff Raff

Shortly after Paul and I moved in together, we decided we needed a dog. My mom's allergies meant I never was allowed one as a child. My love of animals found other outlets; I cherished visits to my neighbor’s pond to feed their rainbow-speckled koi, as well as caring for Hermie, my beloved hermit crab. I had many roommates over the years who had dogs and I had many cat companions but never my own puppy. Plus, I wanted my kids, Kevin and Jackie, to have a dog.

We planned and we plotted. Even then, Paul knew my tendency to jump before looking very well. He hammered in that we had to be smart and responsible about it, based on our schedules and our lifestyle. Over the course of a week (because once I made a decision, it had to happen five minutes ago), we decided we would adopt a medium-sized breed that didn’t need a ton of physical activity, who was female, and was not a puppy. Our next day off together we were going to the shelter. I was beside myself with excitement. Paul cautioned that we may not find our forever puppy at the first shelter we went to. He warned me to be prepared for that.

But, I didn’t care. PUPPY!

My excitement as I stepped into the shelter was palpable. My voice rose like a child’s when I told the front desk person that we were there to look at the dogs up for adoption.

We stepped into the hall of cages. It was a cacophony of barks and whines and yelps. It broke my heart. If I could have taken all of them at that moment, I would have. The first cage to the left held two boxer brothers, nine months old. They were grown to their full height but still sort of scrawny.I side-eyed Paul but he just shook his head. It was not what we had agreed on and I knew he was right. As we approached the second cage to the left, there sat the cutest black dog. It had the most adorable mottled paws and white markings on its snout. As all the other dogs in the hall were barking and whining and pacing, it was sitting on its little PVC pipe mesh cot with nary a sound but a tail that was wagging a hundred miles an hour. My heart melted but Paul and I had agreed on terms of adopting and I couldn’t react the way I had to the boxer brothers. I read the card posted at the top of its cage.

Age: between 2-4 years

Weight: 40 lbs

Sex: female

All boxes checked. Then her name: RIFF RAFF. As a lover of words, for the dog we adopted from the shelter to have a name that meant “undesirable”, I mean...

This was our dog; I knew it in my heart.

After meandering around a bit to check out the other dogs, we came back to Riff Raff and in short order, we were taken to a visitation room so we could interact with her without a cage or a leash. As I sat on the floor, she gently nuzzled her snout and head beneath my neck before flopping onto her back for belly rubs.

She had sealed the deal. It was the first of many sweet hugs Riff Raff and I would share over the course of a decade.

One of us visited her every day for walks, play time and snuggles after we filled out the paperwork and while we waited for her to be spayed. We think those visits were the turning point for our approval as there were almost a dozen people who had applied for the honor of being her parent before us. My heart was nearly bursting when she leapt into our Blazer with her tongue lolling and a smile painted across her mottled face.

Adopting a dog is sort of like having a kid and I don’t mean that in the way you may think.

It’s in the over-preparing and purchasing of superfluous, expensive and unnecessary bullsh*t sort of way. Once we got the call that she was ours, we went to the pet store and bought what the shelter suggested we get and then some. We bought a crate that was a little bigger than suggested because she needed room. We got the fluffiest dog bed we could find. We got a pretty collar and leash, shampoo, a dog brush, a food and water bowl, poop bags, a heart tag with her name and our phone numbers engraved on it. We bought squeaky toys and tennis balls and a Kong and treats and dry food and loaded up on peanut butter. We bought vitamins and the “dental” treats and a knotted rope to play tug of war.

If it looked like she might like it, we bought it.

Just like when you’re preparing for a first child, you buy for you and, man, do the pet stores and baby stores cater to that desire.

When we got all the stuff home, we placed the crate in the corner, facing out. I couldn’t imagine that plastic floor being comfortable so we put the dog bed in it. Fluffy! We had gotten a bigger size so we could fit her water bowl in it; so that was tucked in the corner, nudged against the cage with the dog bed. We filled the Kong with food and treats and coated the ends with peanut butter. We. Were. Ready.

But, as with kids, dogs never do what you expect them to.

She hated the crate, even with the pristine and fluffy dog bed. She wouldn’t drink the water. In fact, she wouldn’t drink any water unless we were both home. She wouldn’t eat, either. She was resource guarding. She did the thing all dogs do when avoiding a crate. She looked down and away and would sometimes flop on her back in submission. We were steadfast though. The crate is what the shelter said and the crate is what we would do.

Riff Raff was never a loud dog; I can count on one hand the amount of times she barked in the nine and a half years we had her...but her sighs and huffs when she was disgruntled spoke volumes, in hindsight. She hated the Kong, dental treats were a no, tug of war was only a sometimes thing and even then, done gently. She was submissive to the bone. The only wins with all of our purchases were the peanut butter and the squeaky toys. She tore at those until the squeaker was out. She also loved to play with the balls but there was no fetch. It was “throw the ball human and then I will fall on it and rub it all over my back and then we will fall asleep together.”

Eventually, Paul and I both had to work a shift together. We had half-heartedly attempted crating her when one or both of us were home for a few days but we didn’t have the heart to put her in a cage when she had been in the shelter...in a cage. Despite our trepidation, the time had come. We tried to make her as comfortable as possible. Water and food were both in the crate. Her bed (which she had spent zero time in) was there. We nudged her in and soothed her with coos and pets through the bars before we left. While there was no whining, she looked depressed, with her head on her paws and her eyes gazing up dejectedly at us.

It was so long ago, I don’t really remember how we felt being away from her. What I do remember is coming home to a corner of absolute chaos. . There was a large wet spot on the carpet where the water bowl had been upended. The kibbles were strewn at least a foot in circumference around the crate. And the dog bed? The fluffy bed we opted to put inside the crate for her comfort? It had exploded. Bits of stuffing strained the confines of every inch of the crate. It looked like a cloud that someone had contained with metal rods. In the midst of this fluff cloud, we could barely make out a snout expressing its dismay with a disgruntled huff as we heard the clang of her wagging tail against the metal. We came home to a black nose nestled in a huge cloud of white poof. She had made her irritation known.

The next day, we went for a quick jaunt to the store and we left her out of the crate, as a test. She jumped on the couch and went to sleep. Nothing was destroyed when we came back and we dismantled the crate and never put her in it again.

Our intention when we first adopted Riff Raff was to give Kevin and Jackie a dog of their own. Custody situations being what they were, she was a ‘part time’ dog for them both; at least until Jackie was 16 and moved back in with us again. Brigid however...

I’m fairly certain Riff Raff was the first one to know I was pregnant with Brigid. I only say this in hindsight; but she was clingy for a while around the end of the holidays that year. It makes sense only in that I was a terrible pregnant woman, hormonal and irritable and I remember being very short with her (and everyone else in my immediate vicinity) around the holidays. Everything she did pissed me off. I’d learn just after New Years that it was because I was expecting.

Her nail clicks, her poop dance, her panting, the sound of her eating and drinking her water, the sound of her grooming herself all grated on my nerves. The rage was all consuming. With the hormonal changes a pregnant woman experiences, its a wonder any of us make it out alive.

She never left my side for the entirety of my pregnancy. It was overwhelming to have a dog AND a baby pressing against my bladder or paws that were awkwardly placed on my stretched and itching abdomen as well as the constant licks on every aspect of my being during the fleeting moments I was able to sit still. As I approached my due date, there was some concern of how she would react when we brought Brigid home. When I was induced, Paul brought a hospital blanket home covered in baby and our smells. We crossed our fingers that it would be ok.

The first car ride home after the birth of a child is intense. Every emotion you could possibly feel in your entire life is encapsulated in those minutes. It is complex and weird and scary. It is poetic and funereal and beautiful. I felt an adrenaline rush with each of my three kids. On top of all that, there was an anxiety of how Riff Raff would handle Brigid.

We shouldn’t have worried.

Both new and experienced parents are always so careful with a newborn. For new parents, there is a lot of anxiety around doing the right thing; for experienced parents it’s just the overwhelming awe of new life. They’re so itty bitty and fragile. When we brought Brigid through the door of our house, Riff Raff was bounding with excitement. She was zooming from one end of the room to the other. Her excitement was palpable. Until...

We held Brigid in our arms for her to sniff. She sniffed wildly and then huffed but calmed down almost immediately. She nudged Brigid’s feet and legs with her nose and then started licking away...mostly at her diaper. We learned that a lot of animals lick the voiding off their newborns to keep predators at bay.

Brigid was a difficult pregnancy. She sat low, she was active at the most inopportune times (goodbye sleep), she was a big baby, my body was not really in shape...things distended and were incredibly painful for a good many months. It was pretty terrible. We opted to induce and when she was born, her umbilical cord was very short and she didn’t pink up, straight away. When we took her home, her sleep schedule was opposite of ours, despite our efforts to recalibrate her waking hours with cool baths.. Riff Raff would constantly jump up to see her bathe and incessantly lick her. We, in our misguided human logic, stopped her.

As Brigid got older, we started to worry. She wasn’t talking and she avoided eye contact. She was delayed in rolling over and crawling. We feared the worst. We got her tested for spectrum disorder. And yet...

She LOVED the dog. She talked to Riff Raff in her infant gibberish. She would open her mouth and Riff Raff would invade her with French kisses while Brigid giggled hysterically. Brigid was afraid of the stairs in our building until she learned that braving them was the only way we could take Riff Raff out.. Then, it became a danger that was necessary for her puppy.

Brigid’s relationship with Riff Raff changed her life. Their relationship changed OUR lives.

Brigid is reading on a 6th grade level in the 3rd grade. She’s struggling in math, but that’s ok. She’s not super social but her teacher thinks that’s just because she’s quiet and gets overlooked by the other children. Eight years ago, we thought she may have been on the autism spectrum. We are in awe of the special bond the two shared and how Brigid’s and Riff Raff’s lives would have been dramatically different without each other.

A dog and her girl. Or some such thing.

Bringing a dog into our lives changes us. We can do absolutely everything wrong and they still love us; they will still protect us. They become the litmus of our purest selves and perhaps this is why the pain of making a decision to let them go is so absolutely crippling.

As much as adopting a dog changes us, losing a dog changes us more.

I miss her annoying nail clicks on the wood floors. It was such an innocuous sound that imbedded itself into our consciousness, asleep or awake. The absence of that is positively deafening. I initially wrote the Chronicles of Riff Raff as a personal therapeutic dirge; a song of grief to honor our puppy that had such an effect on all of our lives. It was difficult for us to say goodbye to her but Brigid had the worst time, by far…

Because the Rainbow Bridge and the North Pole are clearly neighbors (as all magical places are), Brigid received a wonderful note from Riff Raff via Santa Claus as well as a plushie from when she was in the shelter for Christmas. She was verklempt when she read the note and the plushie has not left her side in the year and a half since. Plushie Riff Raff wears her real life counterpart’s collar and her tag rests atop her urn which is decorated with a hand drawn picture claiming “Riff Raff is my dog”.

We lost Riff Raff September 24, 2019. Six months earlier, Brigid’s Grandpa passed away from complications arising from a heart attack. Six months later; COVID-19 blanketed the planet in an isolation not many of us have ever known. We have all been affected, especially the children.

Just like when she was alive, Riff Raff has been the best friend and companion Brigid and the entire family has needed. When frustrations mount with quarantine and Zoom school, Riff Raff is there. As Brigid struggles with multiplication arrays and remote aptitude tests, her puppy is carefully placed on the desk, peeking over the back side of the laptop as her cheerleader. Riff Raff joins us in so many places that it’s hard to remember any time she hasn’t been with us, as a warm snuggle puppy or in spirit as her plushie twin.

Adopting Riff Raff changed all of our lives in the immeasurable ways pets always seem to do. She made us love larger, live braver, snuggle harder and dance more boldly. We will never forget our snuggle puppy.

Riff Raff, the ‘undesirable’ dog that was anything but. Our second cage to the left.