Puppies Growing Up Quotes

I wanted so much to step over and pick them up. Several times I tried to move my feet, but they seemed to be nailed to the floor. I knew the pups were mine, all mine, yet I couldn't move. My heart started aching like a drunk grasshopper. I tried to swallow and couldn't. My Adam's apple wouldn't work. One pup started my way. I held my breath. On he came until I felt a scratchy little foot on mine. The other pup followed. A warm puppy tongue caressed my sore foot. I heard the stationmaster say, 'They already know you.' I knelt down and gathered them in my arms. I buried my face between their wiggling bodies and cried.

I'm working hard to have a good life. You don't need fancy things to feel good. You can hug a puppy. You can buy a can of paint and surround yourself with color. You can plant a flower and watch it grow. You can decide to trust people, the right people. You can decide to start over and let other people start over, too.

What’s so beautiful about girls?” I would implore. And the secret society of adults would reply with a smirk and wink as if I was merely a boy who couldn’t possibly have the mental maturity to comprehend such grown-up concepts as love and bleeding vaginas; “You’ll understand someday, James.

There have been complaints?' said Miss Susan. 'Er, no ... er ... although Miss Smith has told me that the children coming up from your class are, er, restless. Their reading ability is, she says, rather unfortunately advanced ...' 'Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball,' said Miss Susan. 'My children have learned to expect a plot. No wonder they get impatient. We're reading Grim Fairy Tales at the moment.' 'That is rather rude of you, Susan.' 'No, madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith.' 'But that's a dreadf---' Madam Frout stopped, and began again. 'You should not be teaching them to read at all yet!' she snapped. [...] 'I mean,' the headmistress mumbled, 'childhood is a time for play and---' 'Learning,' said Miss Susan. 'Learning through play,' said Madam Frout, grateful to find familiar territory. 'After all, kittens and puppies---' '---grow up to be cats and dogs, which are even less interesting,' said Miss Susan, 'whereas children should grow up to be adults.'" [...] 'What precisely was it you wanted, madam?' she said. It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished.' 'Algebra?' said Madam Frout [...] 'But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!' 'Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out,' said Susan.

If your life is a blank page, that only means you have room to write your story. You have the power to tell that story the way you want to.

I thought of Sammy Glick rocking in his cradle of hate, malnutrition, prejudice, suspicions, amorality, the anarchy of the poor; I thought of him as a mangy puppy in a dog-eat-dog world. I was modulating my hate for Sammy Glick from the personal to the societal. I no longer even hated Rivington Street but the idea of Rivington Street, all Rivington Streets of all nationalities allowed to pile up in cities like gigantic dung heaps smelling up the world, ambitions growing out of filth and crawling away like worms. I saw Sammy Glick on a battlefield where every soldier was his own cause, his own army and his own flag, and I realized that I had singled him out not because he had been born into the world anymore selfish, ruthless and cruel than anybody else, even though he had become all three, but because in the midst of a war that was selfish, ruthless and cruel Sammy was proving himself the fittest and the fiercest and the fastest.

I suppose that is for some absurd jest,” said Charles Buford when he saw the spoon at breakfast. “I wish you would grow up, Matthew.” Matthew considered this, then stuck his tongue out at Charles. His puppy was not allowed in the breakfast parlor, because Charles Buford said Oscar was not hygienic. “If you would simply make an effort to be sensible,” said Charles. “I shan’t,” said Matthew. “I might sustain a strain from which I would never recover.

We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!

There have been complaints?' said Miss Susan. 'Er, no ... er ... although Miss Smith has told me that the children coming up from your class are, er, restless. Their reading ability is, she says, rather unfortunately advanced ...' 'Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball,' said Miss Susan. 'My children have learned to expect a plot. No wonder they get impatient. We're reading Grim Fairy Tales at the moment.' 'That is rather rude of you, Susan.' 'No, madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith.' 'But that's a dreadf-' Madam Frout stopped, and began again. 'You should not be teaching them to read at all yet!' she snapped. [...] 'I mean,' the headmistress mumbled, 'childhood is a time for play and-' 'Learning,' said Miss Susan. 'Learning through play,' said Madam Frout, grateful to find familiar territory. 'After all, kittens and puppies -' ' -grow up to be cats and dogs, which are even less interesting,' said Miss Susan, 'whereas children should grow up to be adults.' [...] 'What precisely was it you wanted, madam?' she said. It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished.' 'Algebra?' said Madam Frout [...] 'But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!' 'Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out,' said Susan.

Some suggest that this cocoon mentality is behind recent campus trends such as "trigger warnings" to alert students that a reading or lecture material might be disturbing and "safe spaces" where students can go if they are upset by a campus speaker's message. One safe space, for example, featured coloring books and videos of frolicking puppies, neatly connecting the idea of safe spaces with that of childhood.

And so I learned by observation, interaction, and experience - as well as active study and research - growing up and throughout my life how to understand dog-psychology, how to behave around dogs, and how to physically handle them (without fear or worry of being bitten) if/when necessary. I've had both good and bad experiences with countless dogs thus yielding many lessons learned as well as useful insights which will be shared with you throughout the course of this book.

There are these Precious Moments figurines, they’re like porcelain, little kids with giant eyes handing each other a heart that says LOVE on it, or rolling around with a puppy? Maria stumbles into a whole aisle of them. Tears start welling up in her eyes, again, which is totally not tough and totally not punk but which also you totally can’t lie about. Like, they’re depictions of this idealized childhood innocence, right? This idea that little kids have the potential for sadness in their giant eyes, but really they just know these pure emotions: love, happiness, whatever. It’s totally hokey and stupid and obviously a construction. Real little kids are as dirty, impure, and complicated as the adults they’re going to grow up and be. But this sort of thing gets her all melodramatic and choked up specifically because of how fucked up she was convinced she was when she was little. She didn’t know she was trans, she couldn’t put into words that she was a little girl, but she did know that something was horribly wrong and she blamed herself for it. Other kids could stomp around and punch eachother and sleep at night, but she was this self-conscious mess who liked books a lot because sometimes people in books seemed as bewildered by the world and themselves as she was. She was never a little kid who could get a puppy and be happy about it. If you’d given her a puppy, she would immediately have started worrying about what if she trained it wrong, what if it ran away. She would already be sad that it would die.

I didn’t figure you for a turtle lover, Mr. Harper. What’s next? Feeding ducks? Adopting puppies?” Her playful questions coaxed a wider smile from me. “Don’t hold your breath. I watched a lot of Franklin growing up.” Her face glowed with laughter. “Ah, that explains it. I was an Arthur girl myself.” I filed that away for future reference. There were no unimportant details when it came to Stella. “Aardvarks are underappreciated, but sadly, they’re not a pet cause for Richard Wyatt’s wife. No pun intended,” I added.

As a child I had grown up around individual dogs that belonged to various members of an extended family and friends, as well as around packs of dogs on family's and neighbors' ranches. Growing up in the United States, I had countless encounters with both familiar dogs and strange dogs. Through the many encounters and interactions with many dogs over the course of a lifetime of now 5+ decades, I have learned to read the behavior of dogs quite well, and eventually have come to understand much about dog-psychology, how to behave around them, how to handle them, and how to train them to acceptably behave – all in the most instinctive and natural way possible.

Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. The green smear of the woods we first made love in. The yellow city we thought was our future. The red highways not traveled, the green ones with their missed exits, the black side roads which took us where we had not meant to go. The high peaks, recorded by relatives, though we prefer certain unmarked elevations, the private alps no one knows we have climbed. The careful boundaries we draw and erase. And always, around the edges, the opaque wash of blue, concealing the drop-off they have stepped into before us, singly, mapless, not looking back. 2 The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it: tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off. Wheels turning but going nowhere. Paintings flat, with no vanishing point. The plots of all novels circular; page numbers reversing themselves past the middle. The mountaintop no longer a goal, merely the point between ascent and descent. All streets looping back on themselves; life as a beckoning road an absurd idea. Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods; the years refusing to drag themselves toward the new century. And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead, no longer a household animal. 3 Answers to questions, an endless supply. New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us. All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment solutions, like kisses or surgery. Rising inflections countered by level voices, words beginning with w hushed by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere of the period chasing after the hook, the doubter that walks on water and treads air and refuses to go away. 4 Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane which, at the last moment, we did not take. The involuntary turn of the head, which caused the bullet to miss us. The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight to the smell of gas. The moon's full blessing when we fell in love, its black mood when it was all over. Confirm us, we say to the world, with your weather, your gifts, your warnings, your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences. 5 Even now, the old things first things, which taught us language. Things of day and of night. Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon. Fire as revolution, grass as the heir to all revolutions. Snow as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered. The river as what we wish it to be. Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness. Summits. Chasms. Clearings. And stars, which gave us the word distance, so we could name our deepest sadness.

It's be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this in the contract when I signed up. Was this part of the deal? And then there will be the times when I see you laughing. Like the time you'll be playing with the neighbor's puppy, poking your hands through the chain-link fence separating our back yards, and you'll be laughing so hard you'll start hiccuping. The puppy will run inside the neighbor's house, and your laughter will gradually subside, letting you catch your breath. Then the puppy will come back to the fence to lick your fingers again, and you'll shriek and start laughing again. it will be the most wonderful sound I could ever imagine, a sound that makes me feel like a fountain, or a wellspring. Now if only I can remember that sound the next time your blithe disregard for self-preservation gives me a heart attack.

As Marlboro Man slid open the huge barn doors and flipped on the enormous lights mounted to the beams, my heart began beating quickly. I couldn’t wait to smell its puppy breath. “Happy wedding,” he said sweetly, leaning against the wall of the barn and motioning toward the center with his eyes. My eyes adjusted to the light…and slowly focused on what was before me. It wasn’t a pug. It wasn’t a diamond or a horse or a shiny gold bangle…or even a blender. It wasn’t a love seat. It wasn’t a lamp. Sitting before me, surrounded by scattered bunches of hay, was a bright green John Deere riding lawn mower--a very large, very green, very mechanical, and very diesel-fueled John Deere riding lawn mower. Literally and figuratively, crickets chirped in the background of the night. And for the hundredth time since our engagement, the reality of the future for which I’d signed up flashed in front of me. I felt a twinge of panic as I saw the tennis bracelet I thought I didn’t want go poof, disappearing completely into the ether. Would this be how presents on the ranch would always be? Does the world of agriculture have a different chart of wedding anniversary presents? Would the first anniversary be paper…or motor oil? Would the second be cotton or Weed Eater string? I would add this to the growing list of things I still needed to figure out.

The Sky is full to the brim with autumn as the season makes its way to across it. It is as if I had no worries at all. so I could count all the stars nestled in autumn. Yet i cannot quite finish counting all those stars that are settling in my heart one by one, because mornings have a way of coming swiftly, because tomorrow's night is still to come, and because the fire of my heart hasn't burn out yet. I see memories in one star and love in another and loneliness my longings and poetry in each and Mother in another, Mother. Mother, I am trying to call out a beautiful word for each star. Names of the kids I shared desk with in a grade school, such foreign girls names as Pae, Kyeong, Ok, and the girls who have become mothers already, my poor neighbors, the doves, puppies, rabbits, mules, roe deer, Francies Jammes and Rheiner Maria Rilke - I call such names of poets. They are all so far away from me. Just as the stars are ever distant. And mother, you are in North Gando which is so far away. Longing for something I couldn't name, I wrote my own name on this hill which is bright with all the starlight landing, but then I covered it up again with dirt. True, some insects chirp through the night because they lament their shameful names. Yet when spring comes around to my star after winter, even on this hill where my name is buried, shrubs will grow thick as if boasting like the green grass that sprouts on a grave.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through you leaving. I don’t know how I’m going to keep living my life without you in it,” Lottie sniffed. At thirteen, she was tall for her age and her limbs seemed to be growing faster than her body. “I’ll be back someday, I promise,” I answered. “No, you won’t,” she cried. “I know I’ll never see you again.” I remember how her heartbreak made her voice crack. How her chin trembled as she tried, but lost the battle to hold back her tears. “Listen, I’ll be back. You have my word on that,” I looked into her eyes. I knew for years that Lottie had a crush on me, but it wasn’t until that moment that I saw the depth of it. She’d always been my best friend’s little sister. The annoying one who tattled on us or tried to follow us around like a lost puppy dog. It wasn’t until I was ready to leave that I could see a glimmer of who she would grow up to become. “I’ll miss you,” she wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, trying to be brave. Lottie pulled the envelope from her back pants pocket and shoved it into my hands then marched away quickly.

I do not want to keep these things from you. I adore you, puppy. I am just afraid of losing Thomas.” It was nice hearing Boris say that, but it didn’t make Hans feel much better. He’d still behaved like a child throwing a tantrum. These two men were giving him everything—a job he liked doing, a great place to live, good food, fantastic sex, affection—and he’d blown up because they had a couple of things they liked to reserve for themselves. “I’m sorry. I do understand.” Boris reached out and took his hand. “I will start teaching you if you really want to learn. Thomas tells me it is a very hard language for English speakers. The vocabulary is strange.” “Really?” Hans asked, growing ridiculously excited, as if someone had just handed him the map to Blackbeard’s treasure. “It will take a very long time, puppy, before you can understand the things Thomas and I say to each other. But we have been rude. We should not speak so much in front of you.” “No!” Hans exclaimed. “Don’t do that. I want to start picking up phrases. You should talk in front of me more!” Boris laughed. “I had no idea this was so important to you. You really want to be close to us.” “I do!” Boris pulled him in for a long kiss, caressing his back and then sliding his hand partway under Hans’s ass. By the time the kiss ended, they both had raging hard-ons. “You want a pet name for me, puppy?” “Yes!

To carry your Lab puppy, with her facing sideways, scoop under her front legs from the side with one arm and over her rear with the other. Steady her hind end as you lift by holding up her legs while you grasp the front of her body slightly higher. Cradle her against your body so she feels secure and isn’t likely to wiggle free.

So are you,” we say, and we push the tape into place over his mouth and go back to work, winding up into well-earned bliss as the climax of our sharp symphony blares up out of the cheerful growing moonlight, and the music takes us higher and higher until finally, slowly, carefully, joyfully, it comes to its final triumphant chord and releases everything into the warm wet night: everything. All the anger, unhappiness and tension, all the cramped confusion and frustration of the everyday pointless life we are forced to trudge through just to make this happen, all the petty meaningless blather of trying to blend with bovine humanity—it is all gone, all of it shooting up and out and away into the welcoming darkness—and with it, trailing along like a battered and beaten puppy, all that might have been left inside the wicked, tattered husk of Steve Valentine. Bye-bye, Puffalump.

If you abuse a collie when it is a puppy, she may shy away from people when she grows up. If you abuse a German shepherd, she may bite people when she is an adult. A pit bull may kill people when she grows up. A shih tzu will probably still love people when she grows up (and maybe become a therapist).

Kids these days," Dragos said quietly. "They grow up so fast." "Supersonic fast," Pia said just as quietly.

I want to hold her. I want to sit her on my lap and read her Christopher Robin and Dr. Seuss. I want to brush her hair and teach her about toothpaste and put Band-Aids on her knees. I want to hug her in the sunset in a room full of puppies while the band plays “Happy Birthday,” and watch her grow up into wonderful beautiful cancer-curing symphony-writing adulthood, and to do that I cannot be who I have always been—and that is fine with me, because I realize one more important thing. I don’t want to be Dark Dexter anymore. The thought is not so much a shock as a completion. I have lived my life moving in one direction and now I am there. I don’t need to do those things anymore. No regrets, but no longer necessary. Now there is Lily Anne and she trumps all that other dancing in the dark. It is time to move on, time to evolve! Time to leave Old Devil Dexter behind in the dust. That part of me is complete, and now— Now

Preventing Separation Anxiety We wish our dogs could be with us all day, every day, but it’s not possible, and puppies do need to learn to spend time alone. A dog who can never be left home alone without destroying the house may be suffering from separation anxiety. Teach your Lab to feel safe and comfortable at home alone while she’s still a puppy, even if you’re home all day. Your life or job situation may change someday, and you’re heading off future trauma by teaching this lesson now, when she is young. Your puppy’s not yet mature enough to have the run of an entire house or yard, so confine her in her crate or pen when you’re gone. What you might think is separation anxiety might really be simple puppy mischief. When you’re not there to supervise, she’s free to indulge her curiosity and entertain herself in doggie ways. She knows she can’t dump the trash and eat the kitty litter in front of you, but when you’re gone, she makes her own rules. Teach your puppy not to rely on your constant attention every minute you’re at home. Set up her crate, pen, or wherever she can stay when you’re gone, and practice leaving her in it for short rests during the day. She’ll learn to feel safe there, chewing on her toy and listening to household noises. She’ll also realize that being in her pen doesn’t always mean she’s going to be left for long periods. Deafening quiet could unnerve your puppy, so when you leave, turn on the radio or television so the house still has signs of activities she’d hear when you’re home. Background noise also blocks out scary sounds from outdoors, so she won’t react to unknown terrors. HAPPY PUPPY Exercise your puppy before you leave her alone at home. Take her for a walk, practice obedience, or play a game. Then give her a chance to settle down and relax so she won’t still be excited when you put her in her pen. She’ll quickly learn that the rustle of keys followed by you picking up your briefcase or purse, getting your jacket out of the closet, or picking up your books all mean one awful thing: you’re going, and she’s staying. While you’re teaching her to spend time alone, occasionally go through your leaving routine without actually leaving. Pick everything up, fiddle with it so she can see you’re doing so, put it all back down, and go back to what you were doing. Don’t make a fuss over your puppy when you come and go. Put her in her pen and do something else for a few minutes before you leave. Then just leave. Big good-byes and lots of farewell petting just rev her up and upset her. When you come home, ignore her while you put down your things and get settled. Then greet her calmly and take her outside for a break.

You would like a large family, Louisa? You want lots of babies of me? They’ll grow up, you know, and turn into shrieking, banister-sliding, pony-grubbing little people, all of whom must have shoes and books and puppies. They’ll eat like a regiment and have no thought for their clothes—which they’ll grow out of before the maids can turn the first hem. They’ll skin their knees, break their collarbones, and lose their dolls. Do you know what a trauma ensues when a six-year-old female loses her doll? I have a spare version of Missus Whatever-Hampton Her Damned Name Is, but Amanda found her and said a spare would never do, because the perishing thing didn’t smell right—you find this amusing?” “I find you endearing.” His brows came down. “I will never understand the female mind.” “I

starting a community is like getting a puppy: it sounds like a good idea in the beginning, but you have to clean up after it and train it. Also, when it grows up, it may no longer be cute.

Growing up, I had three amazing dogs with distinct personalities. One of them was a randy mid-sized German spitz called Snoopy, father to countless puppies within a one- mile radius of our home in the cantonment. No lock could keep Snoopy in, no wall was too high. In the summer months, he slept besides his knell in the garden. His nocturnal rendezvous became the talk of town when he snuck into a fellow officer’s garden to sow his wild oats with Debbie the Doberman, who was twice his size. Snoopy was as unapologetic as my mother was embarrassed when the offi cer’s wife came home. She feared for Snoopy’s life, she told my mother diplomatically.

Nice one, Hero!” Noah was laughing so hard he could barely speak. “Hero’s just reminding us who’s in charge,” Jack said. “I keep telling Scout to respect his elders, but he’s not listening.” No one knew what kind of dog Scout was, but Ben could tell he was going to catch up to the large, muscular Hero one day—and then Hero would be in trouble. After Hero and Ben had saved baby Scout from a dogfighting ring, he’d gone to live with Jack at the beginning of the summer, after Jack’s old dog passed away. Since then, the little mutt had almost doubled in size from a tiny puppy to about the size of a full-grown beagle. He was finally growing into his gigantic paws—but he still had a long way to go. Because Scout and Hero wanted to play all the time, Jack and Ben had become really good friends, talking nonstop about their two favorite things: dogs and baseball. Ben played shortstop, and Jack was at first base. That meant Jack and Noah—Ben’s best friend since kindergarten, who was the team’s starting pitcher—also hung out a lot. Ben wasn’t always sure

The girl—Kiki was her name—had just turned six and would grow up to be a whore like the rest of them. But she was almost a niece to him, and he’d sent her a birthday card with the picture of a puppy on it.

Experience, in short, is the other factor that shapes dogs’ actions and their minds. This is obvious when you think about it: after all, no puppy or kitten or youngster from any other domesticated species is born tame. Tameness has to be learned by each individual in its own lifetime. The sweetest puppy will grow up to be a wild animal if it is not early in life introduced to people.

Look around and see what you can find,” he says, shedding his gear. “It’s probably very near to where we are standing.” A very dense thicket sprouts twenty feet ahead. Vines and brush block our way. We crawl and clip our way to it. Myrtle stalks no wider than a broom handle sprout everywhere. They are so dense that eight or more grow in a square foot. Ryan peers into the outcrop of myrtle stalks, the branches unified like a fortress. Two little milky eyes stare back at him, peering up. Two little erect ears wobble on a shaky head. Within the dense brambles, a mass of several puppies crawls around in a bowl depression. Their ears are erect and their eyes are open. The first pup has wandered away from the other three. “They’re mobile!” he calls to me. “Try to get around in here.” We have to get to them fast, before they scatter and can’t be found again. They are at least a week older than expected. I try to enter the copse from the side. Ryan crashes through the mass of twigs and stretches his arms out, grabbing at the pups before they go helter-skelter. One pup sees Ryan coming and yelps in fear while trying to out-crawl him. The other puppies, alarmed by their sibling’s alarm yelp, begin to squeal. Ryan presses two pups gently against the ground. They shriek. He pins the third with his other hand, but the fourth puppy scrambles away. I finally wiggle into the copse and nab it. I glance at Ryan, wondering what to do now that our hands are full of squirming red wolf puppies. “They’re a lot bigger than the last ones,” I say. “Yeah, they must be four weeks old. She must have dropped this litter early. Can you sit with your legs out to hold them?” Without a subterranean den, we had to coral them somehow. Inside the copse, there is barely room to move. I drop down to a sitting position with my legs splayed out, and the pups wiggle en masse against my thigh.

They’re a lot bigger than the last ones,” I say. “Yeah, they must be four weeks old. She must have dropped this litter early. Can you sit with your legs out to hold them?” Without a subterranean den, we had to coral them somehow. Inside the copse, there is barely room to move. I drop down to a sitting position with my legs splayed out, and the pups wiggle en masse against my thigh. Their noses press against my pant leg. They calm down and begin to nuzzle into each other. Dirt streaks their coats, which range from coal to warm gray. Their heads are covered in dense auburn fur, and all of them have now closed their milky-gray eyes. I stare at them in disbelief at the thought that, not so long ago, settlers threw dynamite into wolf puppy dens. Their muzzles appear foreshortened and out of proportion to the long and wide jaws they will grow into one day. Something compels one pup to move closer and closer to me until the little wolf wedges its nose firmly into my groin. The other pups trail behind it, tunneling between each other and pawing their way over one another until all four are piled together between my legs. I try not to think about the fact that suddenly I am a temporary nursemaid to some of the world’s rarest wolves while their mother likely paces a few dozen yards away. Adjusting the puppies is futile, as they seem hardwired to nuzzle their way into the warmest, tightest spot they can find. The brambles, while thick on the outside, form a natural opening in the middle that is just large enough for a wolf to circle around in. The mother had dug a very shallow earthen dish - only a few inches deep - to keep her babies in. “Doesn’t seem like much of a den,” I remark. “I thought we’d find another big hole in the ground.” “It varies,” Ryan says. “Sometimes we find them in these bowl depressions, usually where the woods are thicker and the ground is flatter, like here. But sometimes they’re in holes. When the ground is sloped, they’ll dig back into the slope. That’s the most typical kind of den. But we’ve found them in storm culverts, too. It’s all over the map.” Ryan sets to work pulling out rubber gloves, blood-sample supplies and ID chips. Chris snaps and cracks his way to us. He crawls through the copse and curses at the dense vegetation. Finally, he reaches the inner sanctum, where there is barely enough room to sit Indian style jammed up against Ryan’s legs and mine. Roomy for a wolf, maybe, but cramped for three human adults. “What a sorry little den,” Chris remarks. He glances at the scratched-out dirt bed and porous brush overhead. Rain drips through, wetting our heads. “Is she nearby?” “Somewhere over there.” Ryan gestures behind us. “She’s not going far, though, you can be sure of that. These guys squealed their guts out.

There are these Precious Moments figurines, they’re like porcelain, little kids with giant eyes handing each other a heart that says LOVE on it, or rolling around with a puppy? Maria stumbles into a whole aisle of them. Tears start welling up in her eyes, again, which is totally not tough and totally not punk but which also you totally can’t lie about. Like, they’re depictions of this idealized childhood innocence, right? This idea that little kids have the potential for sadness in their giant eyes, but really they just know these pure emotions: love, happiness, whatever. It’s totally hokey and stupid and obviously a construction. Real little kids are as dirty, impure, and complicated as the adults they’re going to grow up and be.

Evolution” is not a bad word for the version of nature that Aristotle brings to the philosophical table.14 It is a world in which all things, puppies, men, plants, and animals, are constantly altering and changing, a nature in which all of us emerge from something and grow into something else without losing our identities, either as individuals or as part of a class of individuals (so even if Rover grows up to look nothing like his earlier puppy self, he is still Rover).

You ready to see some wolves?” Ryan asks. He sounds like a proud parent. I nod. The only live red wolves I’d seen previously were display animals on exhibit at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina, and the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. I hope up and we stroll to a nearby pen, where two male red wolves pace nervously. It is hard to look at a leggy red wolf and not escape the thought that these animals are built to run. Their legs appear proportionally longer than those of a gray wolf. The brothers before me are about five feet long, if you include the tail. Burnt-umber red spreads out from their ears to their shoulders. Their muzzles look long and strong, their chest and waist are less heavyset than a gray wolf’s, and their tail is less bushy. “They look like they’re all legs,” I say. “They are a little more leggy than a coyote is, in comparison to their frame,” Ryan says. “Especially in summer, when their coat is shorter. It makes them look a lot longer and leaner.” Even though the brothers run along the fence in repetitive circles, they barely make a sound. I stand five feet away and yet can’t hear them pant. The sound of leaves stirring under their paws barely registers. Their movements are anxious, yet silent. We move on to the next pen, which holds a breeding pair and a three-month-old pup. We tiptoe around a corner to a break in the privacy screen. I peek through and see a male jammed against the back corner. He presses his body against the fence’s metal weave. The female paces furiously about ten feet in front of him. They stare at us. She paces back and forth, back and forth. Their pup spots us and then bolts along the far wall. He scrambles with his chest low to the ground, like a spooked house cat. He wriggles nose first between the fence and his dad, his ears pressed back. The little guy clasps his tail against his anus. “I can’t believe they’re so afraid of us,” I say. “Yeah, even the ones that grow up in captivity often do not ever lose their fear of people,” Ryan says. “It’s just some basic wild instinct that they maintain, that they haven’t lost.” Even though these animals are fed three times a week by human hands, they still get agitated when a person approaches. As I watch, the three-month-old puppy pushes deeper into his dad’s side. I feel guilty that our presence is causing such unease; then Ryan, along with the biting deer flies, prods us to move on.

Teach children how to greet a dog properly, by using the no touch, no talk, no eye contact rule until the dog signals that it wants to have more interaction. When the puppy first arrives, make sure the children limit their engagement with it for the first few days, and that they always interact in a calm, quiet manner. Educate your kids about leadership, and show them how to block a puppy’s excitement if he begins to play too rough. It may seem cute in a tiny puppy, but it could become dangerous as the dog grows up. Don’t ever let a child tease a puppy.

By contrast, a bulldog and a spaniel may look very different, but they are members of the same species, sharing the same DNA pool. They will happily mate and their puppies will grow up to pair off with other dogs and produce more puppies.

So, was that what it was like for you? When your dad left?” I hoped I wasn’t overstepping, but it felt easy to talk to him, out here in the quiet. “Definitely.” Jude looked down at his shiny coffee-colored shoes. “At first, I was still pretending everything would go back to normal. But then, at last year’s Winter Formal, of all places, it hit me. I realized that, no matter what you do or say, you can’t change other people. That no matter how much you love or care about them, in the end, they are who they are. And if they don’t want what you want, you can’t change that.” Jude sighed and then looked up at the ceiling. “It was such a brutally depressing thought for me at the time. The puppy was born.” As I studied Jude’s face, it softened and he turned his eyes to me. “Later, though, the same thought became kind of freeing. My dad made his choice and I could accept it or not. It helped me move on. I didn’t want things to go back to normal.” “You didn’t?” “My dad always wanted me to do the things he wanted to do.” “That . . . sucks.” “It did suck,” Jude said. “But it helped me realize I was better off without him.” “So, once you did that, the puppy disappeared?” Jude scrunched his mouth to the side. “I don’t think the puppy ever goes away. I think it just grows up. You know, you live with it for a while, and then you start training it and learning its ways, and eventually it doesn’t need you as much anymore. Maybe it becomes an outdoor dog. You still have to feed it and give it exercise and pet it sometimes, when it comes back. But if you do all that, it’ll let you live your life.