nonesuch

This is Petunia.  

She is one of eight puppies recently born to my brother's two English Staffordshire Bull Terriers.  All but one other have gone on to live with new families.  Penny and Petunia remain as sole siblings to one another for now, until their ideal home(s) come along.

While their father is a mix of white and brown, their mother is mostly black with white spots.  All of the puppies took after their mother, as far as their coloring is concerned.  Not a single brown marking graced any part of of the babies, making them look like a perfect set of creatures.  Like little dotted puzzle pieces that were always meant to fit together.

Petunia always stood out to me, as a different animal.  For starters, she is almost completely all white, with one big black spot over her right eye.  As she ages, tiny black dots are peppering her ears and face, but she is still quite striking in her extreme design.  I was the one to name her at only a handful of weeks old.  Her brothers and sisters all had temporary handles like "Three Stripes" and "Muffin", but her name jumped out at me the moment I saw her.  I have a tendency to name things after flowers in the first place, but I also thought of little cartoon Petunia Pig in her skirts and braids and thought that the reference was fitting.

Now, when puppies are first born, the only behaviors that are immediately noticeable are those related to eating and sleeping, for the most part.  My brother spent a good deal of time and energy making sure that everyone was nursing enough and behaving According To Plan. Anyone who wasn't keeping up was assisted in the process.  (This is not how it would have gone down in nature, but is anything anymore?) They had a really nice, controlled area for the mama and babies to safely endure the first several weeks after the birth.  I visited when the puppies were only two weeks old, and they were mere tiny blobs of cuteness that you found yourself speaking to in terrible, icky baby voices.  This is something we all do, regardless of how intelligent or accomplished we may fancy ourselves to be.  I challenge any one of you to sit with a pile of puppies and speak like a grown person.  No chance.

I'd not seen the puppies since that last visit, until a few days ago.  As I said, it's just down to Penny and Petunia now.  To look at them side by side, they're twins.  Identical DNA that has playfully distributed decorative elements, but nothing else.  However, if you spend more than five minutes in their presence, two completely different personalities make themselves apparent.  Penny takes after their father.  She is sweet and mellow.  She wants to be held, fed and allowed to sleep for most of the day.  She seems to accept and even enjoy whatever is given to her in life.  Petunia: not so much.  That dog has another plan in mind, and it appears to closely resemble world domination.  She possesses the behavioral traits of neither of her parents.  She wants freedom, the top bunk and her own goddamned food bowl, thank you very much.  She investigates everything, and takes notes on her findings.  A new squeaky toy was brought home for the puppies yesterday.  Penny had it first, and gave it a few obligatory licks and chews before moving on to find a snack somewhere.  Petunia got ahold of the toy and wrote a song comprised of rhythmic squeaking that I'm pretty sure Timbaland needs to know about for his sample library.  She never tires.

My brother says that research tells us that the "high-strung" dogs are actually more teachable in the long run.  They have more potential with training, tricks, etc.  He followed that statement with, "But, you still have to deal with all of that energy".  With a dog like Penny, on the other hand, you have a nice laid-back pet right out of the gate.  You don't have to listen to pterodactyl sounds all night because your highly intelligent mini-monster is untying rope in the next room.  Nope.

As a non-dog owner, I have no good responses to any of the animals' behaviors.  I live with a wonderful, sixteen-year-old cat who can practically talk at this point.  I'm long past the training of anything in life, and don't anticipate going though it again any time soon.  When the puppies jump all over me and chew on my things, I try to reason with them, in English.  My brother finally had to scold me, reminding me that "these are not human beings".  Point taken.  But, I can identify so closely with what I see here.  Two siblings, raised in identical environments and circumstances... Yet, they are polar opposites.  What do we blame for these differences?  The humans who may or may not meet all of their worldly needs?  Their animal parents who know only their own feelings and instincts?  These creatures were born as exactly who they are.  Petunia doesn't know why she wants to climb over the baby gate that keeps her confined to the kitchen until further notice. She knows only that she must do it, and that she'll figure out what to do beyond that when she gets there.

Since these two puppies have been together longer than any of the others were, my brother is starting to feel a sense of guilt about separating them.  They sleep in a perfect little yin yang of comfort and familiarity.  You'd never guess that when awake, they are completely different in every way.  They do love one another.  Of course they do, it's all they know.  Would they forget these moments together if separately adopted?  No one really knows.  Penny will be easier to place in a home due to her likable disposition.  Petunia stands to either have her fierce spirit broken or encouraged in all of the wrong ways. Unstable people often have animals that go before them to project a strength or sense of fight that they wish they truly possessed themselves.  In a perfect world, she'd go to live somewhere like a yard I once knew, amid acres of fruit trees.  I like to think of her spending all of that creative energy in exactly the ways she's wired to: running, eating the fallen avocados and composing her musical masterpieces with whatever squeaky toy may lay in her path.  I wish I could take her home to the fort with me.  Alas, I have none of the above to offer her.
My life is spent sleeping on other people's floors and couches... And, when I do happen to be home, I enjoy the quiet time that I get to spend with my own vintage critter.

I'm going to kiss these puppies goodbye tomorrow, for perhaps the last time, and wish them good luck with their hopefully full and happy respective lives.  I hope that the perfect people come along to honor and celebrate exactly who these siblings individually are... Because, let's face it, not everyone will.

xoxo,
bu