The Gentle Pitter Patter of Giant Hairy Paws

With my boyfriend coming home, him being unemployed, us with horrific loans to pay off (my car; his training) and living with my parents, we assumed the most sensible thing to do was buy a puppy.

It has been hard to convince everyone else of our incomprehensible logic. People gently encouraged us to wait a little, to consider our options, to take our time. My SP warned me of the stress and strain it would put on us as a couple, on our relationship. My parents encouraged us to look at the future, where we would be, what we would be doing.

We felt we had fulfilled all of these criteria a just week after he had returned (our discussions being escalated to their conclusions after spending a weekend with my boyfriend’s sister’s 9 week old retriever). In our defence, we had gone to great lengths in discussing the subject before his unexpected homecoming, and our evenings on his return had been consumed with reading, learning, discussing, dreaming.

We had lost out on our original Elkhound puppy when the breeder had just had 4 puppies in the litter. We reconsidered our options, considering we had approximately no money whatsoever between us, and began scouring for a cross, a mongrel of some sort, an accident that was young enough not to want to kill our three aging cats and was going at a reasonable price.

We searched papers, noticeboards, freeads, online. Again and again we turned up Collies and Retrievers and Labradors and German Shepherds. Nothing within our price range, nothing that wasn’t pedigree and nothing, more importantly, that we could both agree on.

So (don’t attempt to join the dots, I have tried over the last week and still can’t quite figure out how we got from A to B), a week ago today he disappeared into the depths of North Devon and returned with a 13 week old big ball of black fluff. A 13 week old 15kg big ball of Newfoundland black fluff to be precise. And she was the runt of the litter. And definitely not in our price range.

Our lives have been completely and utterly turned upside down. I am happier than I have been in a very, very long time. And totally head over heels in love.

I didn’t think it could happen like this. I didn’t think I could feel this strongly, could care this much, for an animal. I would be embarrassed to the degree that I adore her, if I was alone in my emotional dependence. But my boyfriend has become her playmate, her friend, her partner, her leader of the pack. I am merely an added extra, a two-for-the-price-of-one. I am often the bearer of food and other such efforts to buy into the degree of affection for which she expresses to him, but he has won her heart, her respect and her trust. She will come to me, if she likes. She will obey my commands, if she feels like it. She will play with me contentedly, excitedly, enthusiastically, until he appears and instantly I will become a distant memory, a forgotten playmate as she bounds over to him, legs flailing, ears flapping, tongue lolling.

I always said I didn’t want a slobbery dog. I said I didn’t want one that shed volumes of hair. I said I wanted a dog I could manage, I could control.

Fully grown, Newfys slobber consistently, shed all year around, weigh more than me and can pull a cart with four people in (I’ve seen the pictures).

Even now, after a week, she is the size of a small Labrador. But she is the very model of everything we had read about Newfys. She is gentle, affectionate, loving, desperate for companionship, reasonably obedient (although has curious selective hearing), and adores people and animals alike.

She has transformed our lives. I discovered a trail of black hairs in the computer tray yesterday. Our bathroom is like a Chinese laundry. Our floors are littered with donated copies of the Daily Mail (she likes peeing on the headlines). We have a series of hurdles to cross to get into any of the bedrooms. I have a vast amount of my wardrobe donated to the cause of Puppy Play. She is our last and first thought (especially when we are woken in the middle of the night by the overwhelming Eau d’Dogshit).

I asked my boyfriend yesterday whether he minded that, since we got her, I had merged rather a little too easily even for my liking, into the very essence of Cornish Girl, with wellies now a permanent feature and a selection of waterproofs always close to hand. He pointed out that that didn’t bother him particularly, but the rather unsightly stain of slobber and possibly some food remains that had adorned a large patch on the front of my hoodie for several days, unnoticed for me, perhaps wasn’t so pleasant.

We are permanently exhausted, and incredibly happy. We have our family unit. My boyfriend, me and our slobbery, hairy, big, black, baby girl.

Reunited

Two and a half weeks ago, on a Friday evening, my boyfriend called to say he was leaving his course and coming home. He had a flight booked and he was going to arrive into Heathrow on Monday morning at 5:50am. And he wasn’t ever going back.

He had threatened such action on several occasions since his time in New Zealand, with increasing intensity over the weeks leading up to his return. Some were merely flippant remarks, some were as serious they were accompanied by bag packing. On one occasion, I had even thought it was real, that he really was coming home.

I had begged him to stay before. I had endured sleepless nights, I had used every word of support, of comfort, of love. I had shouted at him, told him off, reasoned, bargained. It is an incredibly hard thing to beg the person you love more than anything on earth, your soul mate, to stay on the other side of the world and pursue a life and career without you for eighteen months, when all you are desperate to do is whisper the words you can never, ever utter. I never once asked him to come home. He had told me that if I ever did, he would. That’s why I never could. I couldn’t be the reason he was giving up on his dream, not me, because resentment eats away quietly, consistently, until love feels so porous that eventually something, something will crumble the structure, something will break those last bonds. It wasn’t going to happen to me, to us.

Even when I realised, when I knew there wasn’t any point in begging, in asking him to try again, in saying just give it one more day, week, hour, one more go, I didn’t say I wanted him home. I knew at any point, like with the times before, things could change, he could stay and there would be my words and hopes and heart wide open and exposed, that I had tried so hard to make so watertight, to protect, everything strung out in the open air, everything that I had worked so hard to make sure was concealed, that I wouldn’t consume me.

I was there to meet him at Heathrow. Nothing seemed real. He had texted me at Auckland, then at Singapore. He was really coming home. He came through departures and with all the emotions that had engulfed me over the last few days I met him not knowing how to begin to express what I felt. I didn’t even know what I felt. There he was, there was my soul mate, but he had left his dream, but it wasn’t his dream anymore.

We’d made a pact a long time ago, in the early days of our relationship. We’d written it down. We’d agreed, this is how it was going to be. We were both going to follow our dreams, whatever it took. They must be our plans, they must be how we feel, they must be how it should be, we’d had those dreams for so long. They weren’t impulsive, they were just how we’d always wanted our lives to be. He was going to be a pilot, I was going to be a writer. We’d achieve it together, with each other’s support. We’d get there.

One of the many strands of worry and emotion, but a larger, stronger thread than most, was that of being terrified that he’d given up on his dream, that I’d let him, through all my fighting, through all my words, maybe there was one other sentence I could have said, maybe there was another angle, maybe there was something I missed, I’d forgotten. I had felt so cruel, forcing him to try something, just something else, through hearing him so desperately unhappy, a man who sounded broken, and yet I was begging him to continue to endure it. I thought that there was a just around the corner, a down hill, an over the worst. I still wonder now, over two weeks later, whether there would have been a change if he had just stayed just a few days longer.

Over these past days I have seen him unfurl into the person that I fell in love with, I have seen him happier than I have done in a very long time. Since we moved to London, I told him. I have realised how inherently my happiness is connected to his. He is relaxed, he smiles, he giggles. He told me this last night, with me in London today, that he’d miss me today. He smiled at me. He is a person I am rediscovering, he is not riddled with stress, he is not preoccupied with a thousand problems and worries and thoughts that are not connected to me. I am not fighting anymore, against an organisation, against a dream that isn’t fulfilling its part of the bargain.

We are now living with my parents, and will be for the duration while we try to resolve our spectacularly catastrophic financial situation. The day we arrived home, at 10am in the morning, he began job hunting.

I’m not sure what the locals will make of a northerner in these south westerly climes.

He asked me the other day if it always rained in Cornwall, after water had been pouring from the sky frantically for what seemed like about a year. And even when I broke the rather difficult news that, yes, it did, he took the news as well as could be expected and saddled the burden of the Cornish weather with a reasonably cheery grin.

I knew how much I missed him at the time, I ached, I struggled and I really hurt. But I look back on those days without him, the months that we were apart, and I couldn’t ever do it again. Not now, not now he’s been in my life again.

I have my boy back.