Bringing Up Puppy (or puppy bringing up Brother Luke)
Written by Brother Luke, Prior
So
here we go again. Next week I will
welcome another little fur ball bundle of joy into my room as I embark on the
adventure of raising a German Shepherd puppy for our breeding program. Her name is Jawad, which in Arabic means “generous.”
Why that name? Well, we keep track of
our litters by means of an alpha-numeric numbering system, and little Jawad’s
litter number was J-20. So, we give the puppy a name that begins with the
letter J. I often search for Arabic names simply because I spent the first 24
years of my adult life in Middle East Studies. What that litter number means in
terms of our breeding program is that she is a member of our 504th litter of
puppies since we began keeping track of our puppy litters back in the mid-1960s.
That’s 26 letters of the alphabet, times 19, plus 10 (A-J of the 20th iteration),
or in other words, we’ve gone through the 26-letter alphabet 19+ times over the
past 40+ years!
My
first job before the puppy arrives in my room is to puppy-ize my room. I
rearrange the furniture so that no electric cords are within chewing range. I
do not leave shoes or other clothing items within detection of the puppy’s
inquisitive nose and mouth! Since I
already have a 5 year old male and an 8 ½ month old female puppy, I also need
to divide my room into two sections so that the puppy does not overly terrorize
the other two at first and get disciplined a little too much. However, they will play together for a while
each evening before the separation takes place.
In the beginning I use a small puppy crate for the puppy to sleep in
overnight. It is cushioned with
newspapers just in case there is an accident before the night is over. Later
she will be leashed to my bed and then, at long last, set free in my room, at
first with the dividers still in place.
But
all of this is not the amazing part for me.
What I can’t believe is that I am doing this at all! When I entered the
monastery in September 1995, I had never had a dog in my life. I was allergic
to dogs. I was somewhat afraid of German Shepherds. I had no idea how to act
around dogs. I did not know the most basic things about living with dogs. The
first morning after my arrival, I innocently walked outside the back door of
the residence to look around. In the center of the lawn were three “exercise
pens” constructed out of chain-link fencing and secured together, sitting on
top of a bed of gravel. Inside each pen were two German Shepherds. The minute
they saw me they began to jump up and down, bare their teeth, and bark
energetically. I swallowed hard and said to myself, “What have I gotten myself
into?”
Now,
almost 18 years later, I have cared for many dogs and raised so many puppies
that I no longer keep count, and I do not know what I would do without them in
my life. Who would have thought that my monastic journey would have transformed
my life in this particular way?
And
now, quite honestly, I can’t imagine living anywhere else!
