I don’t really know my dog…

You know what I realised? I haven’t actually introduced Mango here yet.

Three posts into this blog and the most I’ve said is that she’s a little bit feral, often anxious, and doesn’t have the best health. Apart from that, you don’t really know much about her. 

Something else I realised: *I* don’t know that much more about her myself.

Sure, I know that her favourite food is cheese and her favourite toy is her hol-ee roller, and I could tell you that she got scared of a watermelon once but was surprisingly unphased by a monstrous home-grown Zucchini.

By that logic I ‘know’ any celebrity whose phobias or favourite foods you can look up online.

What I mean is, I don’t really know Mango in the sense that I don’t understand her. 

Ten months in and I still don’t have a clear picture of her personality; what makes her tick or what puts her off. I don’t yet fully appreciate all her wants or needs. I couldn’t confidently tell you what she really loves. 

Raising Mango is like slowly piecing together an intricate, shifting puzzle. 

The cute floppy ears <3

When she was a baby I picked up two pieces. The first is quite obvious; she was ridiculously cute, with her floppy ears, stubby frame and totty, drunk gait.

The second piece - that she was quite bitey - was a not entirely unanticipated, but still unpleasant, surprise. One week in I added another piece to the bitey part of the puzzle - sometimes she would flip her lid and have a jumpy snappy scratchy bitey outburst… at me…

My Mum uncovered another piece when I was telling her about one of our morning sniffy walks. 

When she was little, Mango used to jump and lunge at the dogs and people we’d pass on our walks. I thought she was trying to get to them, frustrated that she couldn't play. 

When I told Mum about the lunging she said ‘She’s a brave little soul, isn’t she?’ 

What I had misinterpreted as confidence was fear masked by bravado. 

It was only recently that we exhumed another piece about her anxiety.

For the longest time I blamed myself for how anxious she was. I knew I had tried my hardest to raise her without force or fear, with kindness and patience, and yet she was still an anxious dog who couldn’t cope with new situations.

One night as I lay in bed, trying but failing to fall asleep, I looked up at the ceiling and recalled what she was like when she was little.  

‘Maybe she’s always been anxious?’ I said to my partner, who by then was half asleep.

‘Of course she has,’ he said, his voice thick with slumber. He rolled over ‘Are you only just realising that now?’ 

I nodded. 

‘I took it for granted that you knew she’d always been anxious,’ he said.

It had always been clear to him, but this realisation was only just dawning on me. This was a quality of her personality which - while almost certainly inadvertently influenced by us - was obviously largely present since birth, and for the longest time I hadn’t understood that. 

We’ve had her 10 months now, but the more I think about it the more it’s apparent that I still understand so little about her. 

Not only that, but each time she’s sick she becomes a different dog, so much so that I forget what she’s usually like. When she’s in recovery her personality starts to re-emerge, and then it’s like meeting her for the first time all over again. 

For example, when she’s sick I forget how much she loves to play. The other day I asked Mango to perform ‘centro’ (a modified ‘middle’ cue). Lately she has really resisted that cue, but this time the reward I was offering wasn’t food, but the chance to pounce on her lobster toy.

She happily obliged, and I picked up another piece of the puzzle.

Mango is a mystery to me. So far our life together has been a whirlwind of management and emotion. I’ve barely taken pause to reflect on her personality or what drives her. I know so little about dog body language and behaviour in general, that I’m yet to begin transferring broad principles to the unique being that is her.

I don't really feel bad about this lack of understanding, because I know that it’s hard enough for me to fully understand myself, let alone another being. Especially when that being belongs to an entirely different species. Indeed, an entirely different twig on the mammal branch of the taxonomic tree.

If anything, I’m looking forward to seeing how our relationship blooms. We’ve gotten so far with the limited understanding we have and the only way to go from here is up.