I have a more profound understanding of the phrase “the dog ate my homework” because one year ago this week I met Juniper Love Sunshine Rose Wigginton, and just yesterday she ate three whole crayons–red, orange and blue, my five-year-old’s turkey sandwich from the table when she left to get a glass of milk with a bendy straw, the dregs of my protein drink, the lid of my protein drink in its entirety, the contents of the bathroom trash can including some quite unmentionable items, dirt from my pet houseplant, duck poop on our morning walk, a spare blueberry that fell on the floor (which she immediately spit out, ew! blueberries!), a balloon--unblown, a barbie shoe, an important paper I was supposed to sign and return to school for my son and, of course, three cups of her favorite dog food split into two feedings, morning and night. I thought, perhaps, back when I didn’t know Juniper Love as well as I now do, that her propensity towards eating random household fodder was a sign that she was hungry, starving to death like my children’s screams before dinner each evening, but four cups of her favorite dog food split into two feedings gave us the same disastrous dietary results, plus a puppy that was looking a little heftier than the doctor ordered, so it was back to three cups.
I wanted a little blonde doodle who could fit on my lap and maybe even my purse and I ended up with a giant yellow lab who sheds on everything and pulls my arm straight out of socket on our walks and has eaten five leashes in her one year in my home, plus a bunch of other things like my daughter’s pink Native shoes and the wiring to the brand-new electric blanket on my bed. The little dog’s name was going to be Juniper for reasons that are still lost to me except for the fact that I thought of it one day and fell devastatingly in love, so I named the big dog Juniper too because even if she wasn’t my breed of choice, she could definitely have her name. We got her near Valentine’s Day so Love was an obvious selection for a middle name and also is there anything more loveable than a fluffy little lab with a tennis ball in her mouth? Juniper loves eating tennis balls. And baseballs. And whiffle balls. And three kickballs because I kept ordering more thinking that she wouldn’t make me that sad again by popping the next one, but she did so I stopped ordering more.
She’s a papered puppy, and Juniper Love was going to be her stage name in its entirety, but then my nephew gave her a few extras and they stuck harder than a kindergarten nickname so now she’s a five-named hound because of her tendency towards late-afternoon sunbathing (Sunshine) and also because she ate a big red garden rose when she was a psycho puppy—petals and stem and stickers and all—and the cousins figured she either really loved roses or else really hated them but either way it was probably a good idea to add the name Rose to the list. If we were naming her after ridiculous things she ate the list would go on and on and on and we could add things like Pinecone, Pebble, Doorstop, Stuffing from a Toy Squirrel, Clorox Wipe, Entire Chicken Drumstick Swallowed Whole or Chocolate Bar to the list. A few of those are supposedly lethal for pups like ours so maybe a more fitting moniker would be Iron Stomach or Unkillable or Bottomless Pit because she doesn’t act sick or upset or vomit or anything, the worse we get are some crayon-colored poops on our morning walks, and frankly that’s not all that bad all things considered.
I was never really a dog person to begin with and I wasn’t planning on becoming one even after bringing home Juniper Love and spoiling her rotten, I’ll admit just purely rotten, because there is nothing–I promise you–cuter than a little lab, but now it’s been a year and she sleeps in my bed and fetches sticks from the lake and patiently quietly loyally follows me from room to room and I feel confident that a little purse pal could never have been to me what Juniper has become. She barks at the mailman and she waits by the window for her children to come home from school and she melts into a puddle with all four legs in the air when we start petting her. She watches baseball and lets children lay right on top of her and she’s always in a new costume–hats, bandanas, glasses, shirts–and she looks so annoyed and yet acts like there’s nothing she wants more than to dress as we wish. A little dog probably wouldn’t eat furniture and socks and cardboard pizza boxes and because it’s Covid, masks in all their variety, but it doesn’t even matter, because despite my very best effort we love her more than she loves to eat.
Juniper Love Sunshine Rose Wigginton was the best part of 2021, and she’s making 2022 pretty great also (except for a few days ago when she ate a dozen warm chocolate chip cookies straight from the baking sheet and oooh, I was mad).
