I remember the day I brought him home clearly. We still had the Chrysler van. It was the start of December (oddly sad, it's not impossible that he lived in my house for exactly fifteen years) and it was cold outside. I was nine years old, about three months shy of the age my mum had promised me I could have a dog. I'd already met him, my neighbour had adopted his sister, and I was in love with him. He was originally meant to go to someone else, but I seem to remember the lady had an accident, broke her leg and couldn't take him in the end. And so I got Trotski. The name was proposed by my dad (I was the one to bastardise the spelling) and I loved the idea of naming the dog after the man who had organised the Red Guards (I don't really know what the name meant to me back then, I knew Trotsky had been a communist, I knew he'd been exiled and erased from the record by Stalin, I knew he'd been murdered). I remember that the day I went to pick him up, I had a huge fight with my parents. I can't remember what about, I just remember it was very serious. I remember sitting down on the living room coffee table, the one that sits in the basement now, while my dad was telling me off, but I can't imagine that to be true (doesn't quite seem right that I'd sit on the coffee table). During the argument I remember being scared that they wouldn't let me have my dog. He was already "my" dog by then (saying that a dog is yours is rather... strange. It's like saying that a parent is yours, or that a sibling is yours. It's more a relationship status than an ownership. You can't own a dog. They're each a world of their own. You just get to play with them and feed them and take care of them and enjoy their company. They're family.). Somehow we got through it, and even though everyone was still a bit angry, we got in the van and went to get Trotski. It was already dark, and I seem to remember it being cold outside. I'd brought a blanket for him, but his mum's owners also gave us some rags that had been kept where the mum and puppies slept, so he could be comforted by her smell.
A detail here: Trotski was given to me. He was a pure Spanish Water Dog, but he didn't he didn't have pedigree papers, I didn't buy him. At the time, I wanted a dog and taking him felt right. Now, I'm not sure I could take a puppy from its mum. An argument for it would be that otherwise the puppy might not have a home, that it's adopting in the same way that taking a dog from a shelter is adopting, because chances are if the puppies in the litter don't get adopted they'll end up being abandoned. The arguments against it are many: by taking a dog from someone who had the mum and decided to get her to have puppies, you really are promoting backyard breeding (pretty much), which inevitably ends up with more dogs in the world, which means more abandoned dogs. Adopting from a shelter takes a dog that's "already there" and does not promote backyard breeding, because backyard breeders don't get any benefit from it (unless having to leave a litter of puppies in a shelter is a "benefit"). In addition, adopting from a shelter usually means that the dog is already neutered, reducing the chances of a female getting pregnant by accident or a male siring a few puppies on an escapade, which might happen if the owner (like I did when I adopted Trotski) feels that maybe their dog could have puppies one day. A more sentimental argument against adopting puppies directly from their mum is, precisely, that you're taking them from their mum. They should be able to grow up with their mum, play with their siblings. By picking them up and taking them away, for a while at least, you're putting them in a hostile environment that is scary and you're taking them away from their mother. I don't know. I'm glad I did it at the time, because I've been with a fantastic dog for the best part of 15 years. Not sure I could do it again though.
In any case, I picked up the tiny puppy (and tiny he was, sometimes I wonder how we didn't lose him in the house) and I cuddled him all the way back into the car, through the stop at a pet shop to buy him some more food and all the way home. One of the things I remember vividly (but I can't confirm if it happened when he got home or a few days later) was putting him on the floor of the living room, which in those days was some sort of smooth, shiny, tile. He was standing up when I put him down (he'd stretched his legs out to "land"), but the second I let him go he looked at me, and slowly, started slipping. He ended up on all fours just looking up at me, not really understanding. The truth is, he got to know the properties of the floor very well, he used them when he was older to leap and then slide on it when he was older.
He was an amazing puppy. He was housetrained very soon and he was smart. He was cuddly. He loved cuddles. He could not get enough of being petted and hugged and scratched behind his ears. In fact, he would bark if you stopped. He didn't beg for food (he was a very fussy eater, he liked oranges and apples, but not banana or lettuce, he liked meat generally, and legumes, but didn't like tomatoes...), and sometimes he didn't eat enough, but he was healthy for the most part, even though his health was a bit delicate: he had some liver problems as a puppy and we had to take care of his diet. He was smart. I taught him (to the consternation of everyone in the house) how to open the trash can and if we left the kitchen open, he would feast on leftovers.
He grew up, and I couldn't have asked for a more loving dog. He adored me (and I him). He was always there when I needed a cuddle (and even when I didn't need one), or when I wanted to play or when I wanted to take him swimming to the river even though he got dirty and I knew my mum would disapprove. He liked being in the car, window open. He liked walks, and didn't pull on the leash too much. Considering the fact that he was trained by a nine/ten year old who didn't know much about dogs other than what she'd read in the tens of dog books she'd bought through the years, he was well behaved. He liked sitting in my mum's balcony in the mornings, watching the comings and goings of the neighbourhood.
I left for uni, first in Salamanca and then in the UK, and I left him. I've always felt a little bit guilty about that. But he loved me anyway. Whenever I came back it was like I'd never left, he would go crazy when he saw me, wagging his little stump of a tail.
I can't imagine what it'll be like to go back this Christmas and not have him around. I'm dreading it.
