The Joyful Springer

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This is Alynn’s Intrepid Muggins, aka, Muggins.  Also known as Puppies, Mugs, Muggy, Magoo, Mugger, The Mugginator, Mugster Goose, Noodle, Monkey, Pookie, Sweetie, Princess, Sweetums, Puddly, McPuppy, and GRAND AND WONDROUS.

Vital statistics:  White and black Springer Spaniel, Field variety.  One of eight in a litter born to Alynn’s Alaska Moon Beam (Dam) and Venetian Chalice (Sire) on October 2, 1992.  Bred by Lynn Winchester of North Bend, Washington.

Muggins is the subject of the memoir, Puppies Interrupted:  The Story of Muggins, Me, and Our Unfinished Work, the proposal for which I am currently shopping to agents.

Here is an excerpt from that book, a couple paragraphs that capture my first day with Muggins:

We were at Lynn’s house just before 10 a.m. on a typical Pacific Northwest morning—cool and overcast.  When she opened the front door, we heard some rather interesting sounds coming from the utility room.

I wish I’d had a tape recorder.  It’s hard to capture the creativity of those noises on paper.  These weren’t whines or growls or yips or yaps or barks or woofs.  These were sounds of an entirely different sort:  arwanhs and wahwahwahs, nasally hrrrrnnnrrrhs, howling wrearrs, emphatic mmrrrbs.  This was a being attempting to communicate and in the effort, using every sound its vocal chords would allow it to make.

Lynn grinned at us and led us back to the utility room.  All the puppies, but one, were asleep in their enclosure.  The conscious puppy sat in the midst of the dozing litter—gaze alert, ears perked, head cocked as if contemplating the future.

It was, of course, the puppy we had come to claim.

My ex-husband and I brought Muggins home with us on November 23, 1992.  From the first, Muggins made it clear she was extraordinary.  She was house-trained in two days.  She was attuned to my moods in less than that. She spent the next 17 years of her life guiding me to the best parts of me.  She was my “Velcro Dog.”  Muggins saw me through two divorces, severe depression and near suicide, the building of a new career, a new (and great) marriage, and the entrepreneurial struggle that has not turned out the way we’d hoped.

Muggins was an eager, exuberant, energetic dog who loved to run in the woods and on the beach.  I walked with Muggins almost every day of her life, in rain, wind, sleet, hail, and snow.  She loved to play keep-away.  She was the most graceful swimmer I’ve ever seen.

She decided she was a lap dog (all 40 pounds of her).  She loved to lie on top of me.  She was the giver of intense, endless face and hand baths.

Muggins was, as I told her daily, GRAND AND WONDROUS.

Muggins began having health problems when she was nine years old–pancreatitis and gastrointeritis.  We nearly lost her, but with the help of a holistic vet, herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture, special meds and supplements, a home-cooked diet, and later (thankfully) Darwin’s Pet raw food, she returned to health.

We wanted her to live forever, but for a breed that usually lives to be 12 or so years old, 17 years wasn’t so bad.

I couldn’t sleep the night Muggins died.  All I could do was cry and gasp for breath.  How could the precious being I’d shared my life with for 17 years be gone?

I got up before 5 a.m. the day after she died.  I was trying to keep moving so I wouldn’t fall into a pile on the floor and break into shards of grief.  For weeks, I’d been dancing to my mp3 player for exercise, so I put on the earphones and started dancing.  Above the pantry door in our kitchen, we have a plaque that reads:  “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass … it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

I looked up at the plaque, and crying, I said, “I’m dancing Muggins.  See?  I’m dancing.”

That was Muggins’ first and last lesson.   Joy, Muggins wanted me to know, is a choice.

I believe that Muggins is now in a place of pure joy.  Maybe it’s a place like this:

Visit Draw the Dog to see more dog cartoons like this.

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