Charlie is our year and a half old corgi puppy that burst into our lives unexpectedly the summer before last. I had no plans to get another dog. We had an eleven year old corgi named Harry who had cancer and required a lot of care, plus Hank. Three dogs seemed overwhelming and I didn’t know how much time Harry had left. Adding a puppy to our household in his last few months seemed unfair to him. But my daughters are very persuasive and when they saw these corgi puppies at a horse show they brought them to me, wriggling through their arms and licking their faces. “Aren’t they cuuute!” they wailed. “Smell them!” they demanded. I put my nose into their fur and smelled that new puppy smell, allowing myself to melt into that bliss for a moment. They had already picked out their favorite of the three, a girl. They begged and begged, but I told them their Dad would most certainly say no. He said we had a pet moratorium on the house. One pet had to die before we were allowed to get another. “But he already said yes!” they shouted. Those clever monkeys went to him first. I couldn’t believe he was such a sucker, but I underestimated Charlie’s power over him even then. My older daughter wisely added, “It will be good for Harry. He can train her and it might make him feel useful again.” I didn’t really have a good argument if their Dad had agreed, and they knew it. They were pretending to let me think about it. And that was that.
Charlie is a tri-color Pembroke corgi. She has a white blaze down the middle of her forehead that runs between her eyes and ends at her nose. She is black along her back, brown on her shoulders and flanks, and white on her legs and belly. Her face is brown with black lines fading back from around her eyes like Cleopatra’s eyeliner. Her muzzle has a white diamond-shaped patch on the top, and her nose is like a little black button. She is small for a corgi and still looks like a puppy, though she is full grown. Her mother is a working dog so she was not bred for show and whether it’s because of her bloodline, her personality, or both, she is probably the smartest dog I’ve ever had, and the most fun. Sorry Hank. She became part of our family during a period of heaviness and we all responded to her high spirits like flowers turning toward the sun. Even Harry couldn’t resist her charm. She used to plant herself in front of him, burrow under his chin until he licked her ears. Hank became her chew toy. She would bite the skin on the side of his neck and hang on, dangling there like an earring while he walked around hoping we’d rescue him. Even now she gnaws on his legs every morning after breakfast, trying to goad him into rough housing.
When she first met Sugar (the cat) and Cocoa (the rabbit), she couldn’t understand why Harry and Hank weren’t chasing them. She was confused because every molecule in her body was screaming CHASE! Our other dogs have been so domesticated by the plethora of pets in our house over the years that they don’t even raise an eyebrow anymore at what constitutes prey. Charlie still chases our cat and rabbit, but she’s accepted the Zero Sum Game rule. She was never any match for the cat anyway, who would sit under my chair and wait for Charlie to stick her nose in and then take a swipe at her. Cocoa flat out charges her when she finally annoys him enough. But Charlie isn’t just all high energy either. As I write this she is sleeping on my bed, flagrantly ignoring the No Dogs On The Bed rule. Her back legs are splayed out like she’s diving. She’s killing time before the kids get home from school. Every time a car goes by her head pops up and she listens to see if it’s them. Our bed is so high off the ground she had to use the bench at the end as a springboard to leap up, and she got at least a foot of air before landing. Then nonchalantly acting as if she hadn’t defied me, displaying perfect manners, she softly crept up and laid her head under my hand for some affection, her brown eyes limpid pools of love.
Where Hank is not particularly coordinated, Charlie is an athlete, despite her four inch legs. She runs, she hikes, she swims (kind of), she even likes to go on the trampoline. We got Hank because my husband had been pining for a lab for years. I’m quite sure pictured himself hiking through the Sawtooth Mountains with his beautiful and studly looking dog. But it’s Charlie who bounds in front of him through the wilderness, or sits on his lap with her paws on the window buttons as he drives, rolling down windows, locking and unlocking doors as her weight shifts. It’s Charlie who gets greeted first when he comes home from work. If she were any other dog, I’m sure I’d be jealous, but I love that he loves her, that he can laugh at the ridiculous picture he makes carrying her around like Paris Hilton and her handbag dog. She has charmed us all.
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