THE NARRATIVE ARC

Getting a Dog Was the Best Decision I’ve Made in A While

Meet my best friend, Abby

Abby, the branch manager (author’s photo)

“Why is your dog growling at me?” asked a friend who had just arrived at our house.

“She’s a puppy. She doesn’t bite,” I responded, but I was surprised by the growling.

Turns out that’s what she does if someone comes to our house and doesn’t greet her. She waits (semi-patiently) until they’ve finished greeting me, but if she’s not next, she growls.

I’m not sure how she came up with that signal, but Abby has always had her own vocabulary. She rarely barks, but she has a whole series of other sounds to communicate. If she’s outside, wants in, and there’s no dog door, she makes a high-pitched yipping sound that’s more bird than dog.

I speak English, French, and Abby, so I can tell what she wants, however she asks for it.

We’d been dogless for years. Abby’s predecessor died in 2012, and it made no sense to replace her. We were both working full-time and traveling anytime we weren’t. That all changed last spring.

We’d retired a few years earlier, and with my husband’s newly diagnosed cancer and chemotherapy, it was obvious we wouldn’t be going anywhere. It occurred to me the timing might be right.

“What would you think about getting another Scottie?”

Jean-Claude thought it was a great idea and immediately began researching. I checked whether any used models were available, but none were. Scotties don’t typically end up in shelters.

Okay, a puppy it is! We decided on a breeder and made all the arrangements. On the day she turned 10 weeks old, we were given an appointment in Saint-Denis-de-Palin, a small town in the Loire Valley near Bourges.

By then, Jean-Claude was too sick to drive, but I drove us to Bourges, then to Chateauroux to introduce Abby to the rest of the family, then back to Paris.

There’s a reason most of my friends in the US (who live in houses) all have dogs, and few of my apartment-dwelling Parisian friends do.

Picture having to get up at the crack of dawn, pull on some clothes, and take your puppy down the elevator to pee outside.

Now, imagine that you’re Abby’s mom and she has her own agenda and has no interest in going back inside. Instead, she dawdles in every way possible to stall — only you haven’t had coffee yet.

When I downsized, I looked for something on the ground floor with an enclosed outdoor space.

It was easier than I expected. Apartments on the RDC (rez-de-chaussée), the ground floor, are not in demand. Parisians prefer to be above the third floor, where the light and views are better.

Ground-floor apartments tend to be colder and darker than those on the upper floors and were traditionally occupied by the building’s gardienne or concierge.

These less desirable apartments are becoming available as co-proprietaires downsize and reduce costs by not hiring a new gardienne when the former one retires.

Cooler and darker are advantages during this summer’s recent heat waves. More importantly, I can open the back door and let Abby outside while I linger over a third cup of coffee in my bathrobe, which is the perfect thing.

My husband died about six weeks after Abby came to live with us. I think he knew he was running out of time and was relieved that I’d have company after he was gone.

And she is. Abby wishes I were more fun, but she doesn’t mind if I go on long tangents about the state of our lives or what I’m planning to do.

“You know, you’re going to have fewer invitations if you insist on taking Abby everywhere with you,” my plainspoken friend Kathryn observed.

She’s probably right. Not everyone (Kathryn included) likes dogs. It’s a threshold requirement for new friends, but I’ve grandfathered in the existing ones.

For a while, I got sitters when it wasn’t possible to take her with me (for doctor’s appointments), but since she was used to going everywhere, she expected to go.

Training her to stay alone was harder than it might have otherwise been (for both of us). But I found someone to help with training, and we’ve figured it out.

All of Abby’s commands are in French. Fortunately, she’s bilingual, so she understands when I lapse into sentence-long explanations. But being a terrier, she only follows commands she thinks are reasonable.

It doesn’t really matter what language I speak to her in or whether it’s a proper one-word command or a longer proposal.

“Voulez-vous vous asseoir?” (Would you like to sit down?) the trainer said recently, mocking my insufficiently aggressive tone of voice. He prefers the drill sergeant approach.

We drive to the countryside near Villeneuve-le-Roi every Saturday for dog training and a little fresh air. For 300€/year, we can go every single weekend.

I’m curious to see what happens first — whether Abby learns proper French manners or I wear out!

For now, she’s my pal and constant companion. Caring for her structures my life and keeps me fit. We take about 7500 steps a day just doing our daily chores (and patrolling the neighborhood).

“(H)appy. C’est un nom parfait pour elle!” exclaim many of the people Abby stops to greet on the street, noting how her name fits her delighted-to-be-alive temperament.

The French don’t pronounce a hard ‘h’ sound, and they made assumptions. I started explaining that her name is Abby, as in Abigail (even though it isn’t).

Imagine you’re a dog, out checking to see who’s around and who's marked your territory in the neighborhood. Dogs don’t have cell phones, so they sniff to read messages from their pals.

It takes time to do a thorough reconnaissance, and Abby’s owner is (often) late, in a hurry, or just getting bored with how long it takes to walk down the street.

Remarkably, Abby has learned to pee on command and does so to please me whether she needs to or not.

I’m not sure how that even happened, but it’s reassuring if we’re going somewhere fancy that there is no risk of her having an accident. That happened once in Le Bon Marche (and a repeat performance is out of the question).

She’s allowed to go in almost everywhere, including restaurants, except for some (larger) grocery stores. Sometimes, smaller ones don’t care. You can guess which ones I patronize.

The differences in how dogs are regarded and treated in France versus the US are curious.

In the US, nearly everyone I know has a dog, but they’re often larger dogs, and they stay home. You may see one hanging its head out of a car window, but they’re rarely in restaurants.

In France, I know fewer people with dogs, but they’re everywhere on the street.

If I take Abby into a restaurant and the waiter hasn’t noticed her (because she is lying discreetly under the table), he apologizes for missing her and immediately brings her a bowl of water.

“Do you think Abby knows she’s a dog?” one of my friends asked recently.

Maybe not.

Does it matter?