There was a brief window in my adult life — maybe a couple of years — when I lived without dogs. My business had taken off, I was earning a good living, and my house reflected it. I’m talking actual white furniture. A cream-colored area rug that I vacuumed voluntarily. Friends would come over and compliment the place, and I’d do that thing where you wave your hand like it was nothing, when really I’d spent the whole morning making it look effortless.
It was a pristine, fur-free life.
Then I decided I just couldn’t live without a dog. And if one was good, two was better. And, just for the chaos of it, why not add a third…? Living with three dogs for the past 25 years has taught me many important lessons. Like white is no longer a color option. Light furniture and rugs were long ago replaced with something I can only describe as “dog-colored.” My vacuum cleaner doesn’t so much clean as redistribute the dog hair into new and creative arrangements.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped caring. And then I stopped apologizing.
When friends came over, I used to launch into my repertoire of disclaimers.”Sorry about the dog hair.” “Sorry, they’re muddy today.” “Sorry, I don’t know what that smell is, but I think it’s a wet dog toy.” At some point, I realized that if you’re coming to my house, you already know what you’re getting into, and if you don’t, the three sets of eyes monitoring your every move will bring you up to speed pretty quickly.
Which brings me to mud season.
If you don’t have dogs, mud season is just a vaguely unpleasant stretch of late winter/early spring. If you do have dogs, mud season is a full-contact sport. Every walk ends at the door with a mostly unsuccessful attempt to towel off their bellies and feet. I’ve given up on toweling them and just lay the towel on the floor between rooms so they have to “wipe” their own paws. And it is, in the grand tradition of all great human endeavors, completely futile and completely worth it in the measure of nonstop joy these beings bring to my life.
I was laughing about this recently with a friend who’s coming to visit for a few days. I was giving him the gentle heads-up — we’re deep in the middle of mud season here, so be prepared and don’t pack clothes you care about.
This was his response:
“It’s better to live with a little dirt in the corners of heaven than to live in a clean hell.”
Brilliant! I’m going to embroider that on a pillow. I’m going to put it on my tombstone. I’m gonna send it to Martha Stewart with a note that says no offense, but also, kind of.
Sharing my life with dogs has shown me that I’d rather have a full, chaotic, muddy, happy home than one that looks like it came out of a magazine spread.
The rug was never that great anyway.
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