Scientists Might be Barking Up Right Tree

Some scientific observers have advanced the theory that the circumstances surrounding the birth of a child can profoundly affect that child for a lifetime.

Though this hardly has the status of a government-funded scientific survey, observations of our two assorted-breed pups appear to bear this out.

Both dogs were born to the same mother, Cuca, but under vastly different circumstances.

The male pup is Tyrone. The good Lord must have said, “oops!” when He made that dog, a rag-bag combination of Emmett the Clown and Disney’s Benji.

For reasons known only to Cuca, immediately after Tyrone’s birth, she dumped him into a deep hole she’d dug in the backyard.

After that lonely cold October night, my son found him half frozen, squeaking faintly, apparently near death.

Maybe Cuca abandoned Tyrone because she sensed he was in some way defective.

She did her duty by him from then on, but it was too late for that pup’s psyche.

He probably won’t ever develop much optimism about what the world will do to him next.

Of all the litter, though, he was the first and the best at sounding the alarm.

If anyone approached their nest in the closet, he’d bark fiercely in his tiny puppy voice, all the while retreating to the back of the box and frantically burrowing under his brothers and sisters.

He still goes through life like a lot of humans, dreading the worst, menaced by everything new and strange.

He eats every meal in a crouch, his back legs tucked for a fast sprint to safety.

Why he connects impending peril with the act of eating isn’t clear, but obviously he does.

For Tyrone, a bath is occasion for woeful rolling of the eyes, for great and terrible tremors.

Merely approach him with a collar to buckle on, and he runs and hides shuddering under a chair.

On the other hand, Tyrone’s sister, Veronica, with the angelic look of a harp seal and the heart of a Jezebel, was born with her two sisters and her two other brothers, in the quiet comfort of their mother’s warm bed, where they knew love and nurture from their first moment of life.

Veronica doesn’t fear the devil himself. She bounds through life, brash and happy, equal to any occasion.

She greets each new experience as a grand and joyous adventure.

Tyrone lets Veronica investigate each new phenomenon while he observes from a safe distance. She was the first to swim in the ocean. Tyrone hung back and waited to see how she managed to survive this enterprise. He still swims timidly and doubtfully, but he does it.

It has been an inspiration and a delight to watch as, little by little, he conquers his fears.

We kept Veronica because she’s so heart-meltingly cute. We couldn’t trust anyone else to raise Tyrone.

We’re giving him Brave Lessons and lots of love. Surely he deserves credit for the courage he musters from his craven cowardice.

It takes real guts to be brave when you’ve been afraid since the moment you were born.