Helen Humphreys - And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life

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For my dog pack

I started Early Took my Dog

Emily Dickinson

Into my writers isolation will come a dog, to sit beside my chair or to lie on the couch while I work, to force me outside for a walk, and suddenly, although still lonely, this writer will have a companion.

Im ten years older than when I brought home my last dog, Charlotte, and I hope I have it in me to be there for one more vizsla.

Like my grandmother and my father, I have become attached to one specific breed and cannot imagine living with a different type of dog. I have spent twenty-two consecutive years with vizslas. This will be my third one. I love their joyful, exuberant energy and the close attachment they seek with their humans.

I have forgotten much about living with a puppy, but I do have a dim recollection that it is all-consuming, and that a quiet, contemplative writing life is almost impossible to balance with the chaotic energy of a young dog. So, I am thinking that while my life is upended by the puppy, it might be a good opportunity to write about that experienceto think about my writing life in relation to the dogs I have lived with, and to explore other writers relationships with their dogs. What does a dog bring to the writing life? My writing life has mostly included dogs, but I have never spent time thinking about what this has meant to my creative journey.

While working on a novel would be difficult with a young dog around, because it requires so much time and attention, surely I should be able to keep a journal with some hastily scratched entries, written in the moments when the puppy is napping or playing?

When I purchased a puppy before, I usually knew which one I was getting, as the breeder picked the puppy out for me based on my temperament and the temperament of the baby doga kind of matchmaking. Each puppy in these previous litters was wearing a little nylon cord collar in a particular colour so they could be easily identified. Hazel was the yellow puppy. Charlotte was green. Violet was red.

But the new breeder doesnt like the collars, says they just get caught on things, so he hasnt marked the puppies. Also, he maintains that you cant really tell anything about the dogs when they are seven weeks old, and that they will all be fine, decent dogs, no matter which one I am given. I can see his point, and admire his confidence in his breeding program, but it does lend a certain randomness to what seems a significant decision, and I feel unsettled by his attitude. I worry that I might get the wrong dog.

I havent specified what sex of dog I want, but the litter is mostly female. The puppies were born on October 27, which also happens to be Sylvia Plaths birthday.

Just as picking a title for a book is either easyin that it occurs right away, sometimes before the book has even been startedor impossiblemeaning that no title seems right, everso it is for the naming of a dog. Hazel was decided before the puppy was brought home. The colour that is hazel is roughly the shade of a vizslas coat and eyes. Also, at the time it felt unique, not being a popular name for either human or canine. Those were the reasons we picked it for the puppy and it always seemed right, although children had trouble with it and Hazel was sometimes called Weasel by anyone under the age of ten.

Charlotte was one of dozens of names that I tried out on the new puppy in the weeks after she was living with me. Before she was Charlotte, she was Rosie, Wallis, Harris, and a dozen other names that I can no longer remember. I settled on Charlotte because it seemed a vaguely aristocratic name and the puppy had a rather imperious quality to her.

This time, I want a name that isnt a human name at all but is a piece of nature. I have tried and discarded various treesAsh, Maple, Rowan, Larch. For a while, I was thinking of Cricket, and then Clover, but both names are hard to yell, feel too much of a mouthful for the countless times I will be trying to call the dog away from rolling ecstatically in the guts of a dead fish, or eating fresh, steaming piles of horseshit, or swimming out into the middle of the lake after ducks.

In the end, Im not the one who thinks of the name. My stepdaughter, in a moment of clairvoyance, texts that she wants the dog to be born on her birthday (which it nearly was) and proclaims that it should be called Fig.

I like the name for its clarity and for how easy it is to say emphatically, and also for the possibility of using it in different waysFiggy, Figlet. (I amuse myself by making up lots of nicknames for my dogs. In the last year of her life, I hardly ever called Charlotte by her real name, but instead was calling her mostly Joe or Fred. I had tired of her original name, and it didnt really matter what I called her because she and I understood each other without words). So, Fig seems good, right. Also, the vizsla, with its dark red fur somewhat resembles the colour of a ripe Calimyrna fig.

Charlotte has been dead for five months and I miss her constantly. The months of being without a dog have been hard. The house has been so empty. Walking has felt pointless. So, I am anxious to fill my life, and my home, with a new dog.

A close friend and I drive north with a blanket and a small crate, in case the puppy is frantic at being separated from her family and needs to be contained for the ride home. Puppy Hazel was desperate to escape from the car when we first picked her up, and I dont want the new puppy to squirm out of my arms. I have memories of a family vacation when I was a child where one of our cats crawled under the accelerator pedal while my father was driving on a busy highway and he almost crashed the car.

I have bought a few new things for the puppya soft collar for her little puppy neck, a small coat for winterbut most of what she needs will be provided courtesy of Charlotte. The new dog will eat out of the bowls that my old dog ate from. She will play with the toys that Charlotte left behind. And she will wear Charlottes old leather collar when she is big enough, because there is still a lot of life left in that collar. Why buy something new when what is already here will work perfectly well? The puppy will be herself, but she will enter into a continuum of dog where much has already been tried and proven.

We left early, but when we arrive at the breeders, two other families are already here, picking up their puppies. There are six in the litter altogether, four females and two males. One of the females has already been flown out to British Columbia, and the two families that are here with us are taking the males, which leaves three little female puppies writhing in the puppy box on the kitchen floor.

Vizslas are not known for being calm dogs and I fear that Charlotte, in her divine calmness, was an anomaly, but I am ever hopeful. We choose the puppy that seems the quietest and is keen to make eye contact with us. The other two are busy wrestling, and the breeder has already referred to one of them as a firecracker, which is not appealing. Because the vizsla is a finely tuned hunting dog, they can be neurotic and the line between high-strung and flat-out nuts is quite thin. I am confident that I can provide a peaceful environment for a dog, but it helps if the puppy Im starting out with is not too hyperactive.