We all wish we could be what we truly are, and we all want to be loved.
Where I was before, the former conflicted strongly with the latter. I could never be myself, for fear that I would be an embarrassment to those who loved me was often overpowering.
I didn’t like dogs that didn’t do the things I most wanted. I was lucky to have known a real working-type golden retriever as a boy, and a dog with an edge to her. She was a half golden retriever and half really fell German boxer. The golden retriever was so driven, so brilliant that she came across as annoying in her desire to retrieve and take direction. The half boxer was a cat and skunk-killing monster that would lift fawns on warm spring days, just as wolves might have done in another era.
These two dogs taught me much about the reality of this species. The two dogs haunt my psyche. I still have dreams about that 50-pound little red dog and that 75 pound black monster. Sometimes, they are together. Sometimes, they are running with me alone.
Two things have happened in the past year: I fell in love with someone who appreciates real dogs. And I have come to question the reality that I have known all my life.
I fully admit now that I really don’t like the majority of the golden retriever breed. It is too watered-down, too milquetoast, too soppy for my own tastes. This is an issue with which I’ve been struggling through the life and death of Miley, and only since I’ve come to know Anka that I realize there are alternatives.
I will always love the real golden retriever, but I now realize that’s not what most people want in that breed. Whereas hard-driven and fiercely loyal Anka is exactly what people want in her breed.
And I am at a crossroads:
Do I continue to fight against the current in the breed of my youth or do I go this other direction?
My nostalgia for what once was is being teased a bit by this high performance litter that we currently have on the ground. Several of these pups may very well be like the old dogs I once knew, but I’d be an idiot to say they are what the majority of people want when they buy a golden retriever.
I think of poor Marley, the working Labrador who became the object of exasperation and later deep affection, in John Grogan’s book. Those dogs certainly have their place, but with the preference for the Labrador as a working retriever over the golden, is there still going to be a place for that kind of golden retriever in 21st century America? The people who want the drive will buy the Labrador. The people who want the pet will go for the golden.
So I don’t what the answer is now.
I am still waiting for the whisper, but I hear the faint breaths on the air.
