Jazzy, Jelly, and Joy.

Some post-Thanksgiving reflections on marriage, mayhem, and dog-breath.

It’s 3:30 a.m., and we assume the position, Jim and I.

My head snuzzles into the crook of his shoulder, his arm cradles me protectively, my leg twists around his like a snake around a pole, and all the body parts relax. I purr a little; he bestows forehead kisses. And with a deft leap, my lumbar pillow jumps up behind me, settling into the small of my back and emitting her own grumbly little purr.

Jazz is the only dog I know that purrs. Really purrs—low, grateful growls of joy, murmers which mean “Please keep the pets coming.” If my hand relaxes, she nudges it with her black nose. “Rumble, rumble.” She urges me to keep stroking any available body part and rewards me with extra support for my aging lower back.

Naming a puppy is always a feat of endurance and cooperation.

Jazz is the oldest of the three Labradors who own this house, the grandma of the bunch. She, like all the rest, was born in the laundry room, one of 11 puppies in Daisy’s first litter. Mama Daisy passed on her vigor while Papa Caine contributed his superior brains to all the little wiggleys. It was hard to choose which to keep as our next breeding female, but little Jazz charmed Jim by daily prancing up to him and sitting politely, waiting to be petted. She’s a little more insistent now in her old age.

Naming a puppy is always a feat of endurance and cooperation. Suddenly the three humans in our family emerge with equally strong wills and loud voices, campaigning hard for our name choices. We agree upon “Jazz” for this one, and from there we enter Round Two of the wrestling match, choosing the AKC name that will grace the pedigrees of dozens of puppies to follow.

Like racehorse names, the official kennel names are weird and important, and generally start with the name of the breeding kennel. I voted for “Blue Like Jazz”, a book I was reading at the time. But in this game, Jim’s vote is the only one that really matters, and while I fight stalwartly for the form of it, I always eventually succumb to the whims of the man who really operates this business, and her official name becomes “Gallagher’s Jumping Jazzmatazz.” And man, could she jump, leaping into the air for those balls we threw. Jazz wore the grass off the lawn chasing balls.

Now at 10 years old, Jazz’s caramel face has whitened and the black is fading on her nose, but her black Disney princess eyes are still rimmed in eyeliner.

“Black eyeliner, black nose—this is going to be a smart one,” the vet said when she was but a few weeks old. Smart, yes, and sweet as brown sugar. “Jasmine,” Gramps called her, only saying it like “Jazz Man”.

So Jasmine stuck, or Jazz, but mostly now we just call her Jazzy.

Jazz loves everyone but chose Molly as her person, and carefully broke the news to Jim and I that we were second string, though she was grateful for the treats. She slept on Molly’s bed every night, and the two drew strength from each other. When Molly moved to Australia, Jazz laid by her door every night, grieving the loss of her girl. Once she finally accepted the loss, Molly came home, and Jazz peed herself in delight. You’d pee yourself, too, if your favorite person rose from the dead.

Jazz is a feeler. It took me a few years to recognize that every time I cried, Jazz would suddenly materialize by my side, nuzzling me with her nose, leaning her head on me, doing her little grumbly purr and making magnetic eye contact.

“It’s okay, Mom. We’ve got this,” her body language says as she lends me her strength and leans her head on me.

In Jazz’s third litter we bred her to a gorgeous black Labrador with great bloodlines. Rumor has it Ryder was an Eddie Bauer model once upon a time, but I have yet to confirm it. He was serious, strong and studly, and for the first time ever, we had yellows and blacks curled up together in the whelping box. One of those blacks became our next breeding female.

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We fought over that name, too—even Grandpa, who lived with us at the time.

We all took bets on when the litter would be born, and foolishly declared that the winner would get to name the puppy we kept. Gramps won.

With his mischievous little laugh, Gramps declared her name “Samantha”, after his rotten little Pekanese, Sammy. So we called her “Samantha”, “Sam”, or “Sammy” for about 24 hours, trying to honor our word. But every time we said it, we pictured that snorting, snivelling little fur ball who, by Gramps’ own admission, thought he was a Pit Bull, and we just couldn’t stomach the name. So we shamelessly retracted our promise.

"Oakley”, we called her, after the oak forest we live in. It was a bonus that some sunglasses company put her name on all their shirts. And Oakley, AKC “Gallagher’s Annie Oakley Straight-Shooting Girl”, learned to outjump Jumpin’ Jazzmatazz.

I had the flu for what seemed like weeks when Oakley was just a couple of months old, and I slept feverishly and fitfully, cradling this little, sweet puppy on the bed or the sofa. That’s the moment when our house discipline began to erode and our joie de vivre began to soar. I’ve been wearing dog hair ever since, but I’m saving on therapy bills.

Oakley is the smartest dog I’ve ever met. She’s also bossy and thinks she’s in charge of us all. Currently she is working on learning to speak in English and train her humans to listen better. She makes these barely audible, throat-clearing noises to notify us that we have missed a social cue, such as letting her out to go potty. If we ignore the “Ahem…”, she trots a little closer, Ahems a little louder, her piercing black eyes locking intently onto our dim grey ones. Eventually the Ahems become moans, with several English vowel tones but no consonants. She hasn’t learned the consonants yet, but is working on it.

Soon she will be pointing at the door with her paw.

Oakley can also tell time. Every morning at 4:43 a.m. she clears her throat, alerting me that my alarm clock will go off in two minutes. Every evening at 7:53 p.m. she stands by the door and emits a soft little moan, asking to relieve herself one more time, after which she heads to my bed and waits for me to straighten the blankets before leaping up to take her rightful position as close to my head as I will allow.

This velvety black dog worked her way into leadership early in her youth. She was smart and wiley, and taught herself to win at the game of fetch by tripping her mother or grandmother. This one is quick, calculating, fiercely fast, and can leap effortlessly and catch anything in a twitch of an eyelash.

Oakley also has this magical invisibility cloak. As I mentioned, we live out in the forest on acreage away from the city lights, and much of the year our early morning or late evening potty breaks are in the dark. Have I mentioned she is black as midnight? Six feet away from me she becomes perfectly invisible. I’ve taken to wearing a light, as I can find her only by it’s greenish reflection in her black eyes.

It is apparently her job to make sure all the humans are in their place and remember their lines.

It must be hard being in charge. Oakley sleeps, but never quite relaxes, as it is apparently her job to make sure all the humans are in their place and remember their lines. She tries hard to send me telepathic messages by locking her black eyes on mine. She pretends to submit, but then quickly licks my nose with her snakey little tongue to let me know I’m not really in charge.

Oakley’s universe has been quietly altered by a third dog-presence in our home, her own progeny, Emmy. As she senses her authority is getting a little wobbley, a new trait is emerging in Oakley: Jealousy. She is no longer the fastest and strongest, and has had her clock cleaned a time or two by the new kid on the block. While her leadership is still intact, she senses it is tenuous, and compensates by being fiercely attentive whenever some other four-legged is getting facetime with the humans.

“Excuse me,” she murmurs quietly in the back of her throat. “How dare they!” she is thinking.

And if one of the others is getting pets or treats or ice cubes or snuggle time, Jelly (as I occasionally call the shiny, jealous one) makes sure her black nose is closer to you than their yellow ones.

But another star is rising.

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Emmy’s sweetness and intelligence made her a standout in Oakley’s litter, an easy choice for our next breeding female. She was devoted, affectionate, attentive, and wanted to please right from the start. She is, in fact, sweetness and light, and often carries the nickname Emmylicious. Or sometimes just Joy.

Her name. Oh, the saga of choosing her name.

She was Flora from the womb. You know we name our litters with successive letters of the alphabet, and she arrived as the F. But once they become a Gallagher dog, they need a forever name.

Per usual, we argued over exactly which forever name. I’ve blocked them all out now, but we tried on one name after another, never agreeing.

“This one,” we’d say, but after saying it for a day or two, Jim would say, “How about Esmerelda?” or some such thing, and I would roll my eyes and grumble, Oakley-like, under my breath.

After several false starts, I finally wrote all our ideas, his and mine, on the window in dry-erase pen. Was there not a single name in the universe we could agree on? How in the world did we ever marry? We circled “Emmy”, the only name on the list one of us didn’t abhor, and said, “Here, Emmy!” for a couple of days. I thought it was settled.

Then Jim said, “What about --- ?” (Some other name I’ve since blocked from my consciousness.)

I snapped. I refused. I went on strike. “We are not changing her name one more time!” I spat, and the foot came down.

So in a grumbly sort of moment, to save the marriage, she became Emmy.

She’s delicious, this Emmy. Emmylicious. Soft and fluffy. Joy with fur.

Emmy’s daddy, Indian Joe, brought a sweet, compliant nature and a downy undercoat into the family tree, and Emmy’s coat is as fluffy as latte foam. I know it’s her, even with my eyes closed, because that thick undercoat makes her a full two degrees cooler to the touch than the others.

(For the record, I voted for “Toasted Vanilla Latte” as her kennel name, but her official name is “Gallagher’s Emmy Lou, Small Town Girl”, after a country song Jim loves. The exhaustion of raising a litter of puppies can wreak havoc on a marriage, and compromise is necessary for survival.)

This one is sheer sweetness and light with a generous dose of snugglage thrown in. She has the sharpest nose of the three, stopping to sniff my tires every morning to diagnose where I may have been the previous day. Sniff sniff: “Salem.” Sniff: “Monmouth.” Sniff sniff sniff: “Home via the Monmouth cutoff”.

As all puppies do, Emmy first just chased the other two as we tossed balls for them on what we used to call the lawn. But gradually Emmy began to not only get the idea of retrieving, but outrun the other two, and now even the dominant Oakley gives up as Emmy bullets past her for the win. The two elders wander off to forage forest morsels, but the energizer bunny keeps bringing me balls, only stopping to trade up for theirs if they happen to chase one. Consternation then ensues:

“This one?” She grabs it. But then they might get…

“That one!” She grabs that.

“No this!” Grab.

“Mine. Mine, too. THEY’RE ALL MINE!”

And the elders wander off to chew grass, while Emmy could run forever.

Nose. Speed. Softness. Retrievability. But where Emmy excels the most is in Sweetness. Without being the least bit pushy, Emmy likes to sidle in, lay her soft cheek right in the crook of your shoulder--the very spot where I snuzzle into my Jim, and stay there batting her eyelashes. There she remains peacefully, a little smile ever-present on her black lips. She is the furry version of comfort and joy.

I’m nearly done with writing this post, and thinking loving thoughts about Jazzy, Jelly and Joy when I look up from my computer.

A slightly shredded container lies at my feet. Is that…? A Costco pie container?

“Who did it?” Jim texts when I send him a picture, asking if it had the pumpkin pie in it when he left for work. The answer was yes: four, large, Costco-sized pieces.

I sniff each dog, but nary a trace of pumpkin breath to be found. I suspect Oakley, who can stand on two legs, of sneaking it off the counter, Jazzy, who tiptoed humbly off to my bed, of being complicit, and Emmy, who regularly brings me dog bowls, of ratting them out by delivering the evidence to me.

“Let’s see who throws up first,” I tap back.

The three, Jazzy, Jelly, and Joy, are fast asleep with smiles on their fine, furry faces.

And I'm not sure I would change a thing.

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For more photos and stories of this bunch and the antics of seven other litters, waltz on over to our Facebook page, Puppymonium, or search this blog.