Dogs Only Want One Thing And That's To Lick The Baby

The three of us have been living with baby Rocco for a little over six weeks now and it’s been pretty terrific. He lives with great gusto. His jowls are developing rapidly. They give him an air of injured dignity, which I like very much.

He’s not yet old enough to really register the dogs’ existence, but they have already remolded their lives around him. They are like Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, if his object were licking feet instead of resuming his engagement to Anne Elliot:

“For you alone I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?”

From morning to night, they think about licking the baby. Their highest, fondest wish is to lick his feet, I think because there are two of them and it’s easier to share that way. Also his feet are usually closer to the ground. But they will very happily lick his head or hands, if that’s all they can get. I don’t know if they want to lick him because they think we won’t keep him clean otherwise, or because he always smells faintly of milk, or because they’re trying to welcome him to the family by transferring their smells to him. All I know is that they consider it their solemn duty, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their ends.

I consider myself a reasonable man. I thought it well within my remit as a guardian of a newborn baby to insist on his not being licked. Let him rest, was my thinking on first bringing him home from the hospital, he’s just been through a hell of an ordeal. There will be plenty of opportunities for him to get licked by dogs, if he wishes it, when he’s a little older.

The dogs have nevertheless found my position untenable, unjust, tyrannical, arbitrary, capricious, cruel, et cetera. If I hold him in a chair, too high off the ground to be licked, they will stand on their hind legs like a pair of little Rory Calhouns and try to get at him that way.

They stare at him longingly, and at me reproachfully, as if to say, This manner of living cannot go on. You need to block us every time in order to succeed — but we only need to succeed once.

It does no good to offer alternatives. In vain do I say to them, My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Of all the other trees in the garden you may freely eat. I will gladly permit you to smell the baby, to sit next to the baby. I will even permit you to lick my shins, briefly, while I hold the baby, even though I hate being licked on the shins. But this won’t wash. They want to lick the baby, or nothing. Theirs is an all-licking policy, with no room for compromise.

I can’t condemn them for their interest. He’s a really terrific baby. But I find their demands unreasonable and their methods without scruple. I love the dogs with all my heart. In some ways I admire their commitment to achieving their end. But this will not stop me from blocking them.

Sometimes they get past me, of course. But never for long.

I am taller than they are. I easily outweigh them, even if you combined their weights together. I have the means and the motivation. I welcome the challenge.

Their lives up til this point have been like Buck’s with the Judge in California in the first chapter of The Call of the Wild: soft, indolent, soul-killing. Now they have a goal, an aim, a lodestar, something to sharpen their cunning against.

And of course, in about six months’ time, he will become a rich source of dropped food, which will hopefully distract them further. I am determined to prevail on this point. I will not be defeated by anything that weighs five pounds.