“The puppy on the front doing this.” I raised a hand in imitation of a puppy giving paw. “And that book says that not wanting your dog to be sad is normal and sensible, and it’s okay to do things to make him less sad.”
“I’ve read all the puppy books, and none of them recommend sleeping on the floor in your study.”
Oliver could get unhelpfully stubborn when you told him youwanted to try, as Mum put it, the autoroute. “No, but it says it’s okay to let the puppy sleep in its den in your room for the first few days or weeks.”
“That might be what one book says, but it’s not the—”
“Don’t say ‘It’s not the consensus.’”
It wasn’t normal for him, but Oliver was looking almost petulant. “Well, it’s not.”
“Okay, but—”
“What’s more likely”—now he was crossing from petulant to argumentative—“that this one person has discovered an otherwise unknown technique for training a puppy without doing any of the emotionally difficult parts, or that everybody else is right and the book that happens to agree with you is wrong?”
I was beginning to get a sense of what Oliver was like in court, and it wasn’t a sense I particularly wanted to get more of. “I don’t think it’s really a right-or-wrong situation,” I told him, depressingly aware that he was better with words than me.
“Ofcourseit’s a right-or-wrong situation. I do not want to be the kind of dog owner who can’t control their pet because they didn’t have discipline when it counted.”
Honestly, I’d been hoping this conversation would take more of aWhy gosh, Lucien, you’re completely correct; how could I have been so foolish?direction. But hoping wasn’t the same as expecting. The worst of it was, I could almost hear the ghost of David Blackwood in Oliver’s voice. The never-quite-unlearned lesson that hurt was good for you.
“Come on,” I said to Oliver and Spud both. “Let’s at least take this out of the kitchen.”
We went through to the study, and I opened the patio doors so that Spud could play in the garden, while Oliver sat on the step and I stood beside him, halfheartedly chucking a ball in Spud’s general direction.
“Could we at least try it?” I asked, finally.
“You really want us to dismantle the pen every night, rebuild it in our room, and then reverse the whole process in the morning?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Lucien”—Oliver was rubbing his brow in thatdealing with meway he sometimes had—“if this doesn’t work…”
“Then at least I won’t have spent a fortnight sleeping on the floor?”
“So you’re saying either we do what you want or you move permanently into the study.” Oliver had upgraded from brow-rubbing to glaring.
“You said we had to do it your way or send Spud back to the pound.”
“This isn’tLady and the Tramp. It’s a perfectly reasonable dog’s home. And, anyway, it’s notmyway; it’stheway.”
I wasn’t quite in a glaring-back space, but I definitely hit incredulity hard. “Oh my God, can you hear yourself?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I literally found a dog expert from one of the dog expert booksyou gotwho says there is, in fact, more than one way to do this, just like there’s more than one way to do lots of things, and you won’t even try because…because…” I threw the ball with such frustrated distraction that it hit the doorframe and bounced back into the study, much to Spud’s confusion. “Because you think things are only good if they…if theysuck. And…and…” I didn’t like being angry with Oliver. I wasn’tusedto being angry with Oliver. “I’m going for a nap.”
And then I left the room with grace and dignity. Without, at any point, accidentally stepping on any of Spud’s squeaky toys.
* * *
Angry naps are both the best and the worst kind of nap. Likeprobably, from a mature, grown-up, has-a-dog perspective, they’re not the best way to process your emotions. But also having feelings is exhausting. And Ihadspent two nights in a row on the floor. I sausage-rolled myself in the duvet, drifted into resentful unconsciousness, and stayed there until Oliver woke me a respectful angry nap length later.
“Lucien,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“And?” I replied, only slightly pettily.
“And you may have a point.”
