Every night after dinner, Poppyseed eats a handful of blueberries for dessert.
She waits patiently by the fridge, sitting with her disproportionately long tail tucked underneath her 20-pound body, her speckled nose in the air. I try not to cry because of how cute she is. She continues waiting patiently while I ask her how it’s possible her head is so small.
I feed her the blueberries one at a time so she can savor them, and savor she does. She’s missing a few teeth and she’s weirdly bad at eating, but she chomps away without breaking eye contact, like she, too, is enjoying the ritual.
Sometimes the blueberries are frozen (for texture and optimal nutrients, obviously), in which case she rolls them around on the floor before gobbling them up. (When I first adopted her when she was 8 months old, I used to cut them in half. I’m not sure whether I’m proud or embarrassed.)
We have dessert on the floor in the kitchen, where the tile is cool in the summer heat. We don’t listen to music, we don’t talk much (except about how small her head is and whether she thinks the blueberries are delicious and how she has so many speckles on her nose), we don’t look at anything or think about anything or do anything other than enjoy blueberries for dessert.
Having lived the first seven months of her life in a crate in a Georgia shelter, Poppyseed is determined to make the most of her freedom. (As she damn well should.)
She understands the magic of the simple things. Seasonal fruit. A cool breeze. A squeaky toy shaped like a hot dog. A squeaky toy shaped like a pig. Lying on the bath mat in the steam from the shower. Licking the dew off my shoes when we come inside in the morning. Rolling in the grass. Sleeping on her back with her feet sticking out the bottom of the duvet. Making a weird noise at the next-door neighbor every single time he tries to tend to his garden.
My summers used to be indistinguishable from every other season, save for the weather. Maybe I’d spend some time at the town pool, read a few more books than usual, stay up a little later. But that was me Before Poppyseed (BP).
After Poppyseed (AP), simple things have started revealing themselves to me. I no longer overlook the privilege of waking up before the sun, watching it rise through the window and throw warm, gold bars across my bedroom. I look for fresh fruit at the farmer’s market. I walk the same one-mile loop around my neighborhood at least three times a day, each time noticing how the shadows stretch differently across the street.
I sit on the floor in the kitchen. I put my phone away. I notice the cool tile beneath my bare legs. I count the speckles on Poppyseed’s nose. I learn what it means to be the mother of a Jack-Russell-something-or-other-if-we-had-to-guess.
As it turns out, Poppyseed and I are not the only gals spending our slow summers paying more attention to the little things. When we asked readers what their mutts have taught them, the we heard a lot of stories that felt extremely familiar.
“Three summers ago, I drove eight hours to pick up a mutt named Wanda. The rescue described her as a "lab mix." She is absolutely not a lab mix.
To this day, nobody has been able to identify what exactly she is. Every person who meets her offers a different theory. My favorite was a park ranger who confidently told me she was part coyote.
The drive home was supposed to be a quick turnaround. Instead, it took forever because Wanda had apparently decided that everything outside the car window deserved a closer look. I'd pull over, she'd hop out, and she'd just... take it all in. She wasn't looking for anything in particular. She simply seemed delighted to be somewhere she'd never been before.
I was annoyed because we were making terrible time, but now that’s the part I remember. I couldn't tell you what time we got home or even what route we took. But I remember sitting on the side of the road watching this strange dog inspect the world like she'd just been dropped onto a new planet.
Since then, every trip has become slower because of her. And every trip has been better because of it.”
– Maggie, Asheville
The girls who get it get it…and Maggie, Wanda, and Poppyseed definitely get it. There is a particular kind of joy in moving slowly enough to notice things (and not just because it’s too hot to move any faster).
Poppyseed has never in her life rushed past something interesting in the name of efficiency. She would actually like everyone to know that efficiency is overrated. And that we should all stop and smell the flowers. Literally. Repeatedly. Sometimes for a full ten minutes. While Mom frantically Googles what kind of flowers they are and whether they’re toxic to dogs.
I used to think a successful walk was when my fitness watch recognized I was exercising. Now, a successful walk is when it asks me if I’m still walking. Because I’m walking two miles per hour…and have been for 45 minutes…and I’m still only a mile from my house.
This is my first summer with Poppyseed, but I’ve already realized there are definitely worse ways to spend an afternoon than wandering around your own neighborhood at the speed of a very curious mutt with extremely short legs.
And sometimes, if we’re lucky, these small, slightly ridiculous moments become the things we remember most. That’s certainly been true for our readers.
"Last summer was the first summer without Lucy. She was a black-and-white mutt I found behind a gas station in 2010. Nobody ever claimed her.
For years, we went to the same lake every weekend. I always thought I loved going to the lake. It took losing Lucy to realize I mostly loved watching Lucy at the lake.
She'd launch herself off the dock without a second thought. She'd come back covered in mud. She'd shake lake water all over anyone unlucky enough to be standing nearby. To say she caused a scene would be an understatement. Now I'd give anything to wash one more muddy dog towel.
The funny thing is I still go to the lake, and the water looks the same, and the dock looks the same. But now I understand what I was actually looking at all those years."
– Leah, Milwaukee
This is what mutts do to us. They burrow into our hearts and our blankets, and they leave behind all sorts of little rituals and memories that somehow become the framework of our lives.
We think we’re remembering places or trips or entire seasons of our lives, and then we realize what we’re actually remembering is a dog in the middle of them.
When I took Poppyseed home from the shelter, I thought I was adopting a dog (or a weasel, or a baby skunk, or something that vaguely resembled a dog). In hindsight, I was also adopting a whole collection of rituals and details that would become important to me for reasons I still don’t completely understand (especially the urgent lap she does around the coffee table before she gets on the couch every night).
The blueberries, however, I understand as deeply as she does.
We’ve tried cantaloupe, but she can’t roll it around on the floor, even if it’s frozen. We’ve tried watermelon, and while I love watching the juices drip down her little chin, I hate watermelon and she seems to like the ritual better if we share. So I seek out fresh, juicy blueberries the same way we seek out sunny spots inside the house, new smells on familiar paths, the softest throw blankets we can find.
And I look forward to tonight, when she’ll sit by the fridge with her nose in the air and wait for dessert. I’ll ask her how her head got so small. She won’t answer. We’ll eat blueberries on the kitchen floor anyway.
Meet the Author
Alex is a writer, rescue dog mom, and lifelong lover of mutts, affectionately known in her family as “patchwork puppies.” She writes from the spot she shares with her adopted dog, Poppyseed, in The Big Chair in Front of the Window, where the two spend much of their time growling at the birds, watching the seasons change, trying not to knock the coffee mug off the end table, and kissing each other’s noses.
