A shit-eating grin spread across Greg’s face, he looked over conspiratorially in my direction, and, in that instant, I knew — knew! — I was about to hear another story about Ruckus. One in which Ruckus would be the hero. Like most parents, I have special bonds with all my sons, but in a six-month period between last June and December, Greg added a wife and a dog to his life, and he now has a new bond with me: proud doggy dad.
So there he was picking up Ruckus at school, he told me, on his way home from work one day last week. (Ruckus, a pitbull mix, goes to “school” at Biscuits and Bath, a dog daycare center just up the block from Greg and Kelly’s apartment on the West Side of Manhattan.) When Greg arrived, Ruckus was in “the box” — as in “penalty box,” the designated area for disciplinary “timeouts.” Since Ruckus seldom misbehaves, or so we’re told, Greg was curious to know what mischief his dog had been up to. Well Ruckus, it seems, has appointed himself protector of his buddy Hercules, a black Lab who happens to be twice his size. Watson, a Golden Retriever and the biggest dog in school, was picking on Hercules. And Ruckus wasn’t about to let that happen. In other words, Ruckus was in “the box” for having his buddy’s back. Or at least that’s the story Greg was told. And he bought it. Happily.
Look, all of us doggy dads take pride in our “sons.” I remember a guy at the beach last summer who was all over his dog — giving him commands, making him do tricks, sending him to swim in the waves, having him pose for photo after photo after photo. All of this very publicly; he wanted to make sure we could all admire and appreciate his dog. When he started flinging tennis balls far down the beach, my very own Kemba inserted himself, uninvited, into the game — and beat Super Dog to the ball. Every time. Hey, my dog is fast, I’m not gonna lie. He’s a jock. And I take pride in him, I admit it, the way I did with my boys when they excelled in sports. But this guy was devastated. “I’ve never seen a another dog faster than mine,” he said to me, shaking his head. “In fact, I was told my dog is part greyhound.” That encounter probably sent him hurrying for an appointment with his shrink.
I’m making fun, but I’m not much better. A few days ago Kemba and I were at Winslow Park, and I was, as usual, launching tennis balls with the Chuckit. Kemba would anticipate where the ball would land, let it take a high hop, and snag it in the air. One lady did a double-take. “Did I just see that?” she said. I think I burst a few snaps on my jacket, I was so puffed up.
Back to Greg. So after Ruckus’s first day at “school,” Greg forwarded this Instagram post (above, right) to me. Apparently he ate up the caption (“handsome . . . sweetheart . . . great”) with fork and spoon, as well as whatever verbal reinforcement he got at pickup that day, because he told me that after Day One, Ruckus is already the star of the class.
I can only imagine how over the moon this son of mine is going to be sometime down the road at that first Back-to-School night when the kindergarten teacher starts dishing out the superlatives about his human child.
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