~ My Very First…Beso? ~
Even though the scents of early Fall wafted across the yard, Hazel and I had enough of sunning ourselves in short order as the temperature on this day hadn’t gotten the seasonal memo.
Dad and Mom were cleaning out parts of the garden and probably weren’t heading into the house for a bit. My oldest pack sister suggested we opt to wait them out in the shade of the pine tree. Smart girl.
Off around the corner we could hear Pru and Keira getting instructions like, “Put that down. No Pru, get out of the dirt.” I looked over at Hazel and we both agreed, silently, that living the senior life wasn’t all that bad.
While I was savoring that thought and really soaking in the peaceful surroundings, Hazel broke into my moment with an odd question.
“Tuck? What do you reckon are the weirdest things that two-leggeds do?” As of late, Hazel has tried to fit the words reckon and durn (as in “durn your hide”) in any sentence she can. With mixed results.
The whole pack had a short rehearsal for their one act western play yesterday. Hazel has two short lines, which I have heard repeated so many times I told her to stop. She did. But we still have to hear “Durn this, durn that. Reckon that durn thing is past its durn reckoning.”
So having explained that, (my apologies), her vocabulary was not the odd part of the question. To me.
What struck me was that I had been around two-leggeds for so long a time, I took everything we see them do as normal. Well, mostly. I had to think way back in time, then work my way back to now.
My lengthy silence spurred Hazel’s sarcasm. “Suffering from mentalpause are we Tuck?”
I ignored her, then remembered my first, what-was-THAT-supposed-to-be moment when I was a puppy and found the rancher’s phone in the driveway. I knew it was important to him, and with my soft-mouth retriever skills, I picked it up and took it to the porch where his wife was peeling potatoes while my mom slept next to her.
When his wife saw what I had, she gently took it, wiped it off in her apron, then grabbed both sides of my face, put her face behind my right ear, pushed her lips onto my head, and made a smacking noise.
I pulled back as quick as I could, not sure if she was going to bite me next or not. I looked over at my mom, who was awake now.
“It’s called a kiss Tucker. Or beso in Spanish.”
The Rancher’s daughter was home from college and practiced her Spanish on my mom.
“It’s a sign of affection,” my mom continued. “Don’t flinch like that Tucker, a kiss from a hooman is a good thing.”
I didn’t believe any of that made much sense, and headed to the apple tree to have a good think.
A kiss. The word is even weird.
How does planting your face on my head and making that noise translate to affection? The correct or normal way is to come along side my muzzle or to the front, sniff each other’s mouth to determine last thing eaten, then a couple of quick licks. Then…maybe a bit of tongue-washing of the face, maybe flip open an ear and give it a good interior cleaning. Now that’s how you show affection.
Once I had assured myself with my puppy wisdom that I was right, I decided that, at the next opportunity for affection to be shown, I would display the proper four-legged way.
Wouldn’t you know it, the moment I made that decision, the Rancher came out of the backdoor with something in his hand.
As I watched him approach, even with my very limited experience of this kissing stuff, I somehow knew—all the way down to the marrow in my bones—he wasn’t coming over to kiss me. In fact, somehow, I was pretty sure he didn’t do a lot of kissing in his life.
“Thanks, boy, for finding my phone and not tearing it up.” He tossed something next to me.
I looked over at it and then to him.
“Go ahead boy. It’s yours, you earned it.”
I leapt up to find a good size chunk of meat.
“You sure are one whelp I’d like to keep, but our deck is full, son. I hope you’ll understand when it’s time.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but at that moment, I decided that this affection stuff and kissing from two-leggeds might be something I could, you know, maybe try to endure.
~ Tucker Oso ~
Epilogue:
“Earth to Tucker, Earth to Tucker. Have you thought of anything yet that you consider weird that hoomans do?”
“Other than puttin’ up with your durn hide, I reckon not Hazel.”
