There she was, quiet and almost a bit morose, while her brothers trotted about urgently, sniffing at everything like their life depended on it. I can’t say I took to her right away. She was Chandran’s pick. The breeder wouldn’t stop talking about her. “I’ve called her ‘My Dream Come True’ - the first puppy in my first litter. She will be a model. Only give her mineral water”. No. She would get normal water like the rest of us. But she could be rescued from that name.
Unbeknownst to anyone at that point, Bailey was going to be alpha among the two dogs in the house. She trained Obi the day she stepped in. If he approached the people she was interested in, he would get his neck bitten. He nursed bloody wounds on his neck for weeks and to this day he won’t approach me if she does. She trained the humans too. She howled at night and wouldn’t be left alone in her crate. She’d wake the baby up by scratching incessantly at the door and once out in the garden, would sit calmly and stare back at your face. There was an attempt made at returning her but have you ever tried returning a cute little puppy - a few days later the doe-eyed pirate came to stay.
For the next eight years or so, Bailey delivered on her early promise. She ate the wall, half the sofa, the plants and their pots. She vacuumed every road in the neighborhood. She licked strangers in the face. She “played” with baby birds and delivered their heads at the doorstep. She did her poo on things she was denied access to and then looked defiantly into my eyes as I told her off. She ran away not once but twice with a pack of rowdy dogs in India. She learned all of Obi’s hot buttons and used them at every opportunity. If you heard him crying, she was probably crouching at the landing, quiet and observant, ready to attack if he tried to come upstairs to his people.
She trained intensely to catch ice-cubes. It started in jest but became a real sport for her. You throw it any direction, she could leap at it, catch it, eat it within a fraction of a minute while also drawing possible trajectories in her head for the next throw. I tried to do that with Obi but he’d just stare at me incredulously as the ice cube plonked on his face (his is a dancer and philosopher, not a sportsman - also he likes his ice crushed not cubed). She was also an expert digger. She dug a tunnel under the wooden fence in the garden to get to the restricted section. Given her cat-paws, that must have taken a lot of time and focused effort. But Bailey was no quitter - if there was anything out of bounds, she’d have it.
Bailey’s face was mostly calm and slightly sad. You could tell more from the tail (and the crazy face-licking) than the face. Her face looked like that when she was happy. When she was getting an injection at the vet. When you showed her a treat. She did not like hugs and hated being on a human lap. You could only see a deeper glimpse of her when she was very sick. The first time she was so sick she had to have surgery, she walked onto my lap and lay there trembling. And I realized with acute pain that it takes a lot for this little girl to express that sort of vulnerability. She had surgery and aftercare thereafter - it took a while and I don’t think she liked it. When I went to check on her, she turned her face away, even her whole body to the extent that she could.
For two years now, I have only seen Obi and Bailey on Skype. The kiddo gets to seem them in person and he takes pieces of cloth I wore, so they could sniff at me. He also hands me his dachshund and beagle plushies when I’m sick or sad. We saw her on Skype today. There she was, quiet and almost a bit morose. I called out to her. She turned her face and then her entire body away from me. Chandran offered her ice-cubes - she licked at them and moved away. The kiddo cried himself to sleep. We were all crying. Bailey was not happy with me when she took her last breath. Maybe she felt that I’d left her. She had no way of knowing. That as much as she defied me, she was me. My little girl. My dream come true.
