Suka and me
or not exactly. She’s still the calm and passive creature I fell in love with. But I begin to see her in new light. There’s the faintest thread of menace running through her, an undercurrent of cool self-interest. As it must, of course, in every dog – no matter how small, how cute, how apparently frivolous. It’s just that, in Suka, the wolf runs closer to the surface than I’d known.
Less than a month after her arrival, Suka falls deathly ill. It’s an acute uterine infection, of an urgency and seriousness equivalent to appendicitis in humans. One evening she seems a bit peaky; the next morning she can barely stand. We rush her into emergency surgery and, by the time she returns to us, days later, she is glassy-eyed and missing her womb. She has stitches in her belly.
For the first few nights after her return, I sleep with her on the kitchen floor. By the third or fourth, she sleeps with me on my mat, curled into the recess between my legs and belly, not quite touching me but close. I feel ill with relief. Sickeningly, painfully grateful. And more: it feels like something has shifted between us. She knows who I am to her now, if not who I was before. There is warmth, where before there was only tolerance. But, as she recovers, something else is changing too: a kind of reshuffling is under way, our positions in the social hierarchy are evolving. In Finland, I was her boss and
I treated her – and her kennel mates – accordingly. I ordered them to step back as I opened the door. I caught them quickly, even roughly. Harnessed them. Brooked no objections. There were strict boundaries and she respected them. They all did. Now, in our shared house, the balance has shifted. We are all adults here, cohabiting. Negotiating.
It no longer feels reasonable to force my will on her. She’s retired; I’m a self-employed writer. There is no hard schedule to adhere to. It seems important that our life together is based on mutual consent. If she’s hungry, I feed her. If she’s restless, I walk her. She doesn’t ask for much, I say to Rich. And it’s true. But the truth is, I would give anything to please her. Anything at all.
Her presence reveals certain weaknesses in my character I haven’t previously confronted. I find myself desperate for her approval, flushing with jealousy if she shows even the faintest preference for certain friends or neighbours. In the face of her nonchalance, I am needier than I have ever been in love. I clamour for her attentions, debase myself for her affection daily. When she’s fired up, I’ll get down on all fours to prance with her. When she howls to the sky, I will howl in answer. I have lost all self-consciousness in pursuit of her approval. What can I do to make her love me the way that I love her?
I pore over guides to canine behaviour, in search of a self-help philosophy. I read somewhere that for a dog to respect you, one should train them, have them do your bidding.
Suka knows how to sit and lie down on command, and she will – but when she obeys, I feel she does so with a sense of irony. I teach her to “stay”, and to offer her paw. She considers my requests sceptically, and more often declines. In exchange, I offer titbits, but she does not always take them. She is not, as they say, “food-motivated”. Nor is she stirred by praise. She would not be so basic. Suka is powered by some internal fire that burns untended by you or me.
In fact, food soon becomes our greatest source of anxiety. She never quite regains her appetite after her illness. She picks over her food, turns her nose up at the rest. She loses weight, becomes rangy and ragged. Panicked, I take up a new role as kitchen maid, cooking scrambled eggs at a few hours’ interval. I shred chicken breasts into bone broth. Grate parmesan over raw beef. I follow her from room to room offering dainty morsels served straight from my fingertips.
I am not unaware of my descent. Occasionally I voice faint misgivings to the vet: might we have passed from the pathological into preciousness? Am I creating a monster? The verdict is always the same: perhaps, yes. But they point to her freefalling weight, her erratic health. What’s more important? My pride, my dignity? Or keeping her alive?
I’m keeping her alive. God willing, she will turn 14 this year. In return, I accept my fallen status. With time, our roles have solidified. She has adopted the regal air of an ageing monarch whose body is slowly failing her. I am her devoted hand maiden, bowing and scraping. When she walks, we move down the street in stately, slow-moving cavalcade, stopping when she wants to stop – to read messages on a nearby lamp post, perhaps, or to greet her loyal subjects – and turning back when she tires of the whole production.
When she first arrived, I expected her to soften, to relax into the character of the panting lapdog. To prostrate herself on rugs, upturn her belly for rubs. And though it’s true that as she grows older, she deigns more often than ever to express her favour – leaning into me while I rub her neck, tucking her head under my arm, table scraps of understated affection just enough to keep me going – she has in many ways grown harder, more private, ever more imperial in response to my endless adulation.
Suka’s strength fluctuates, but the trend is downhill. We slalom with her. Such is the agony of dog ownership: the way our timers draw down in asynchrony. It’s hard to accept her sand might be running out. Despite her self-possession, Suka – born in a kennel to run in a team – doesn’t really like to be alone. I can’t bear to think of her taking that last walk through the dark without me.
When she is feeling ill, there is one fail-safe trick to lift her from her starvation diet. A little fresh blood, drunk straight from the bowl, or drizzled over rice, or frozen into cubes. When I pour it out,
I see awareness pass through her. Her nostrils will flare, her muzzle will lift. I see a tightening around the eyes, as the room comes into focus. A flicker of the wolf that lives inside her still.
Not yet. Each day we fend off death, one morsel at a time. It’s blood she wants. It’s blood she needs. But it is me who, now she is old and tired, walks down to the butcher and begs for it.