Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
“Oh, my,” said our friend Barb Smalley, who arrived that night to witness the homecom-
ing. She watched as nine-week-old Solo leaped on Megan, bit her ears, and tried to hump
her. “He's quite something, isn't he?” David and I were exhausted. Solo wasn't. Megan was
drooling and panting in distress. I already looked like a junkie from my efforts to intervene:
My arms had black-and-blue puncture marks where Solo had swung back on me in a frenzy.
He spent his first night with us whining and growling, methodically chewing through an
inadequate and expensive fabric show crate. Solo wanted to continue his evening. I cried in
David's arms. I wanted our whimsical, gentle Zev back. His worst sin had been to take a bar
of soap from the shower and place it carefully on the bathroom floor with one faint canine
tooth mark.
“I don't like him,” I wailed above Solo's whines. I saw a grim future, a German shepherd
roaring through our house and marriage, leaving shards of pottery and anger.
David firmly and kindly said exactly the wrong thing: “We'll just return him.” My sobs
redoubled. He later claimed he said it only to kick-start me out of my depression.
In the morning, I woke up and armed myself, grimly strapping on a belly pack loaded
with greasy liver treats. I picked up a plastic-and-metal clicker that would make a metallic
“tock” to mark the exact behavior I wanted. The little bastard—I would shape and mold him
with clicks and patience and treats until he was dog putty. Or at least until he stopped trying
to hump Megan. I had already given up on the dog-who-would-sleep-in-my-study-while-I-
wrote fantasy.
David and I both fell hard for him. I fell harder because I always yo-yo further than David.
By midday, I was laughing and infatuated. Solo was a maniacal clown, a Harpo Marx. Funny
and charming. At least around David and me. He thought we were the cat's pajamas. He told
us all about it: mewling, growling, barking, yowling, whimpering. He was operatic in range
and expression. I'd never heard that kind of variety except on
National Geographic
specials
about the wild dogs of Africa. Solo would stare at us, make a wolflike “rooo” sound, then
try a gymnastic move to see our reaction. He found toys and leaped on them and brought
them to us and dropped them and backed up. He started to learn their names. He played and
played and played. With us. Not with Megan. He tried to bite us and then collapsed in our
laps and fell asleep, twitching. When he woke, he fixed a gimlet eye on us. Game on. If he
wasn't sleeping, he was watching us, waiting for the Next Big Thing.
On night two, I didn't sob. Partly because I was exhausted, partly because I was realizing
that we had something peculiar and exceptional on our hands. Solo was diverting me from
despair. David, who valued intelligence above almost everything, was smug but tried to sup-
press it. We had, he realized, the smartest dog he had ever known.
Smart didn't mean peaceable. Megan remained in shock. She stared at us without seeing,
the whites showing at the edges of her large brown eyes. To handicap Solo a bit more, I
