Kit Troyer Blog

I’ve lived with a number of dogs across the years. Until recently I’d never lived with one who made me feel like I was being outsmarted.

Or like I was somehow falling short.

I don’t know, maybe Mocha only has the appearance of intelligence.

People say she has human-looking eyes. To me they look like dog eyes, just unusually beautiful, honey-colored ones. They flit back and forth between me and my wife as if Mocha is following every word of our conversation. Maybe she’s simply watching for any abrupt changes in mood or tone. Or for me to stop talking and put on my jacket. That means Mocha and I are going for a walk.

What I take for intelligence could also be hypervigilance. She is a rescue dog after all. One never knows what the previous home was like, what the daily patterns were, whether there was trauma. Rescue dogs don’t come with a user manual.

This is the second time my wife and I have taken in someone else’s dog.

I shouldn’t say ‘rescue.’ It conjures a bunch of negative stories in people’s minds, and it presumes information which I don’t have. What do I know, really, about Mocha’s internal experience of her prior home?

Maybe the previous owners will read this essay one day and think, Rescued? What in the world is this jackass talking about?

Private, word-of-mouth adoption is a better description in any case. The previous owners believed they could no longer provide what Mocha needed, so my wife and I took over.

‘Owners.’ Another word that doesn’t quite work. We live with dogs, we co-exist with them. We don’t own them.

Yes, you can get sued as a dog ‘owner.’ Yes, you are allowed to make medical decisions for your dog. You pay for her food, give her a home, clean up after her. Depending on where you live, you may pay an annual fee for an animal permit. So yes, there are real-world ways in which people may feel entitled to say they ‘own’ a dog.

Saying I “own” Mocha seems absurd to me, especially given the power imbalance between us. It would almost be like seeing a Red-tailed hawk high above your backyard and shouting, ‘Hey! I own that!’

No, you don’t, you nincompoop. You’re in proximity to the thing, you’re witnessing it. You may have feelings about it or even a kind of relationship with it, for a moment. But we don’t own anything. We’re here on Earth for a hot minute. And then we take nothing with us when we leave, at least nothing material.

Who knows whether you will live another year, another day?

We humans really do fool ourselves into thinking we’ll live forever. With each person we talk to, we should probably try to remember, This could be the last time I ever talk to this person!

Which might be good news, depending on who you’re talking to. But still.

Hell, Mocha might outlive me.

I don’t know why the previous family named her Mocha. I should have asked. The color of her coat is wheat or oatmeal, not mocha. Maybe mocha refers to the eye color.

A friend suggested I could switch the name to moksha, the Sanskrit term for liberation. Which I thought was a clever and intriguing idea, but Mocha is already a labradoodle and I’m already a 55-year-old white guy, and then on top of that, to slap a Buddhist or Hindu name on her? I don’t know. I just pictured myself explaining the name to people. I saw myself from their point of view — I was annoying.

At the beginning of this essay I used the disfavored word ‘rescue.’ Because I can’t quite dismiss the idea of the previous owners one day reading this, let me be clear — Mocha is a calm, loving, lovable dog.

The prior family loved her very much, I’m guessing. But things were out of balance when I first met them. Both parents were working long hours. In their absence Mocha was barking loudly and a lot. A neighbor was filing noise complaints with the city. Citations were being issued.

The family considered going to Arizona to get surgery on Mocha’s vocal cords.

In my view, a surgery like that ought to be against the law. It pains me to think it was considered for Mocha. Whenever an ambulance or fire truck races past Mocha and me on our walks, she howls the most remarkable, mournful, otherworldly howl. It’s like she’s trying to harmonize with the sirens. Or sync up with a pack. Or mourn the accident victim waiting for the ambulance.

I had never heard a dog howl like that. Didn’t know they could. Kind of freaked me out the first time she did it.

Maybe elective vocal-cord surgery on a dog is illegal here in California. Maybe that’s why the family would’ve had to go to Arizona. Honestly you’d think I could’ve looked that up and told you one way or the other.

My last dog, Boomer, was my best friend, extremely warm, amenable, trusting. He was not a rocket scientist, nor much of a guard dog.

Mocha is not amenable. Things need to be a certain way. One of her favorite activities is looking you in the eyes while you pet her and while you list all the specific things you like about her.

You’re such a good guard dog!

You’re so brave and loyal!

You are stunningly beautiful.

You have gorgeous eyes. Everyone says so.

You’re strong!

You waited so patiently!

That last one is more of a forward-looking, aspirational compliment.

Not that Mocha barks or paws at you when she’s impatient. Instead she just gives a theatrical drawn-out sigh, then lies back down to wait — under protest — for the next walk, meal, cuddle, or comprehensive re-telling of all her best features.

Once in a while, after we’ve finished her second walk of the day — which can last an hour or more — and once I’ve fed her, then I sit down to read a book or look at my phone or, God forbid, eat a meal of my own.

Who pops up right beside me in the most alert, expectant, regal posture imaginable?

Homegirl!

I calmly tell her, Beat it, kid. It’s Kit Time, not Mocha Time.

I don’t think she understands the distinction.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and her face is about an inch from mine. No noise. Just staring. Wants to be let outside to pee. Or to get a drink. (She won’t drink water indoors.)

Waking up to the sight of two super alert, unblinking, non-human eyes staring at you from an inch away … it took some getting used to.

My wife is amused by how attached the dog is to me. She’ll say, ‘Admit it. You like being worshipped.’

I don’t!

Plus, I’m not sure it’s worship. Sometimes feels more like servitude, and I’m on the wrong end of it.

I almost called our couples therapist. She’s a genius, and a dog person in the bargain. I was thinking of calling and asking for help with the dog this time, not the wife.

But this therapist has already taught me so much about how to relate better to my wife and kids. I kind of know what she’d say about Mocha.

She’d say I need to: set firm boundaries; identify and clearly communicate my own needs. I need to tolerate the dog’s neediness or momentary discomfort without feeling the need to spring into action or pet her. But also she’d remind me that any relationship involves compromise. Sometimes I should go ahead and do something which may be inconvenient or tiresome for me, because I love this dog and want to make her happy. I value our relationship.

True, all of it. But Mocha is so smart! Even these strategies might not move the needle.

Coercion does not work with Mocha, like at all. You gotta be patient and firm, but mostly just patient. Sometimes during a walk I’ll give a sharp tug on the leash if she’s about to step on glass or investigate some human poop on a Koreatown sidewalk. But that’s about the extent of my coercion.

Maybe coercion actually would work. I just don’t want to be that guy. I hate seeing people yank at their dogs.

By contrast, I see some dog walkers who are simultaneously firm, composed, loving, alert to every move of the dog … it’s like watching a symphony conductor. I always think, I am not that. But I’d like to be!

I guess the closest I’ve come to outright coercion is when Mocha really would not keep walking, nor even agree to any of the four proposed directions for continuing the walk, and I absolutely had to get home.

I told her, Don’t MAKE me humiliate you by picking your ass up and carrying you home! And then I proceeded to do exactly that.

But really who was humiliating whom? She weighs 70 pounds. And I’m not in peak physical condition. There I was walking past car after car in standstill rush-hour traffic hauling a big old, stubborn labradoodle.

Mocha didn’t seem remotely humiliated by the way. Faintly amused, was more like it. And pleased to add Being Carried to her menu of ‘Things I Can Get Kit to Do for Me.’

Maybe I should get a custom bumpersticker — the one with a big paw print, but instead of WHO RESCUED WHO, it’ll say WHO HUMILIATED WHO.

Here are a few of my 10,000 nicknames for Mocha:

Mouse

Mousekin

Monkey

Monkey Dog

Moke-a-doke

Mochachina

Cheen

Cheen-Cheen

Cheeny D

Skumpleton

Skump

Skumptown Races

Princess

Squiggins

Squigman

Squiggy

Babygirl

Babygirldog

I don’t think she likes any of these nicknames. But she does like that I’m talking to her.

Mocha can be stubborn as hell and pouty. She likes being the center of attention. She also likes being in charge. If we go for a walk and there is a homeless encampment within a half-mile, she makes a beeline for that. She always wants to see what’s on offer, food scraps wise. Her nose is constantly working, making sense of the world.

If you leave Mocha alone in the house even for even 15 minutes, you are then greeted upon your return with the most absurd, over-the-top rejoicing. She lays it on pretty thick with all the jumping up and down and spinning around and crashing into you.

Usually when my wife and I go upstairs for bedtime, Mocha is close on our heels. But occasionally she stays downstairs, asleep, and only rejoins us later. When she does, she comes running into our bedroom, breathless, like an actress who missed her cue.

A couple months ago my wife and I went away for a week. It was the first time Mocha was home without us. I worried, of course, but gradually I was able to set aside my worries and guilt and enjoy the vacation. Then one night I dreamed Mocha was right beside me and staring me in the face. Waiting to be let outside.

I was so groggy, I started to get out of bed. Then I realized it was a dream. I wasn’t home, I was in a hotel 3,000 miles away.

The next day I heard from the housesitter that Mocha had pooped inside the house overnight. Which had never happened before.

“She felt embarrassed about it, but I told her accidents happen and it’s okay,” said this impossibly awesome housesitter (who will probably never sit for us again).

I couldn’t believe it. That’s how connected I am to this dog. I literally felt her staring at me in distress in the middle of the night from across the country.

It blew my puny little human mind.

I believe I actually dreamed about Mocha a few years before I met her. In the dream it was an extreme close-up of just one eye, and I thought it was a hawk’s eye, due to the shape and coloration. But when I met Mocha last year, I recognized the eye as the one from my dream.

I said earlier that her eyes were honey colored. It depends on the light. Sometimes they’re a deep amber around the edge and then a pale greenish yellow as you get closer to the black center. They have the silky luster of the gemstone Tiger’s eye. Today when Mocha was sitting in the sun trying to decide whether she wanted to walk or just be pet, her eyes reminded me of those weird mineral pools at Yellowstone National Park. Have you ever seen those up close? Pale-but-vibrant greens and blues and yellow. So odd and unexpected against the drab landscape, and mesmerizing.