THE BOOK OF BRIOCHE
It all began in March when we first wore masks and stayed home and saw no one except on zoom and even avoided grocery stores. Neighbors were no longer neighbors. I said I wanted a puppy and a dear friend quickly sent me an adorable, huggable toy puppy. I put him on face book and far-flung friends sent suggestions for names from France and even from Kyrgyzstan. But by then Governor Cuomo had started his daily briefings. I watched them, relied on them, took comfort from his insistence on FACTS, even when those facts were devastating. So this little pup was named Mario in honor of Cuomo’s father and predecessor as governor (I had revered Mario Cuomo during my tenure at Lehman College in the Bronx) but nicknamed Merry. And Merry took up residence in my study, on the couch where I watch TV, and eventually rode in my car the long drive out to Long Lake and Traverse City.
But by then I had decided to REALLY get a puppy, only it had to be a black female miniature puppy. This story didn’t just start with the covid and the quarantine. It started when I was born many decades ago to a mother whose primary occupation once she quit nursing to raise her five daughters was to also raise, train, show and sell poodles, standards and miniatures. She even imported them from England, and on a trip we made when I was twelve we brought two beautiful pups home with us for her kennels.
Only and always poodles, often five or more at the
same time not counting new puppies, because each of the sisters had her
own. That trip when I was twelve is
probably when I first got my own puppy to train and take care of. So there’s a long history pre-dating Brioche. My sisters and most of their children in turn
and also my children included dogs in their families, though not always
poodles. Two of my sisters were among the first and best obedience trainers in
the 40s when they were teenagers, and their poodles, Ivan and King, won awards
up and down the East Coast. 
My last poodle—and by then it was the third to share my
life for its lifetime—died when I was divorced, two of my kids away at college,
one finishing up her high school years, and I was working fulltime as a vice
president at Lehman College. It made no
sense then or later when I was working even longer hours as a chancellor at
Indiana University Kokomo to contemplate getting another dog. So I lived
instead with a succession of cats, always two cats to keep each other company
when I was at work or my work required me to travel outside the country.
Before the covid, even after I was retired, a puppy
was unthinkable in what was my normal life until mid-March 2020. Several days a week I would ride Metro North
from New Rochelle to Grand Central Station in Manhattan to meet friends, see
doctors, attend theater or concerts, sometimes in one week reveling in an
orchestra at Carnegie, chamber music at Alice Tully, and an off-Broadway
performance in the Village. That would have left no room for a puppy. But since
March my life and all our lives are changed, perhaps permanently.
When I started looking in May I first asked rescue
shelters. At that point I would have taken any poodle mix, but I discovered
that the only poodle-mixed dogs available were aging toys with the prospect of
short lives and huge veterinary bills.
People clearly were dumping their elderly pets. I was saddened by this
but not ready to assume that responsibility or those costs. So . . . a puppy.
One of my nieces had kept in touch with AKC, the
American Kennel Club, and did the research to help me find two different
breeders of pedigreed miniature poodles at affordable (though still big)
prices. One was in upstate New York, the
other in Maryland. I got in touch with both, paid deposits conditional on their
having a black female puppy, and then waited.
The births were due in late July or early August and a
disappointment. No females at all in the
first litter and only two cream-colored ones in the other. I was contemplating one of those when, sadly
and weirdly, the breeder texted that something had gone wrong and both had
died! But she had another friend
expecting a litter and referred me to him. This time I was lucky because his
dog had four females, three of them already spoken for, and just one black one
who was available. Black apparently is no longer a “hot” color for people
purchasing poodles. So this little black
female puppy, born out in the Catskills in a busy home with other litters, also
a menagerie of parrots and parakeets making continuous ungodly noise, became my
new inseparable companion on September 14.
Born on July 24, she was by then not quite 8 weeks old and weighed a
scant 3 pounds.
When I first saw her, as the breeder lifted her out of
the playpen where all the others were barking and trying eagerly to climb out,
she just sat sadly by herself, tail down, definitely a shy introvert to the
point where I worried how she would turn out when I took her away from her
litter mates. Even when I sat quietly on the floor to let her make the first
move she was very hesitant and not happy.
A month later, with her true personality revealed, I realized that this
was VERY deceptive behavior. Brioche is smart, funny, inventive, curious,
fearless and indefatigable. Some of Cuomo’s mantra fits her perfectly: tough, smart, loving . . . maybe not so disciplined yet, but she’s still a baby.
But definitely united with me.
I had bought a traveling crate for her and padded it with soft cushions and towels and there was nothing for it but to pay the breeder and stick her into the crate and drive the long three hours from the Catskills to my home in New Rochelle. That first night I followed the current training policy (new since the earlier decades when my sisters and I raised and trained dogs) and stuck her back in the crate. That worked for exactly one night. The second morning before I came down it had seemed to me that her crying was surprisingly loud. Yes. She had gotten out of the crate (the door was still closed and latched) and was at the bottom of the stairs summoning me.
I tried for one more night. Crates are, they say, the modern way. The dog is supposed to be comforted, this is
her cave, her familiar space, and small enough that she shouldn’t soil it. Well, Brioche was NOT comforted. I had taken the precaution of securing the
door by tying it even though it was already latched. But Houdini was out again the next
morning. We ditched the crate.
The next night I tried shutting her into the first
floor bathroom. She didn’t get out, but
she wrecked the bottom two inches of that door. So, never again in that bathroom
or any other small room until she has much more training.
At this point I should confess that I’m of what I’m
calling the Dr. Spock school of child/puppy raising. No young parent would
follow Dr. Spock’s advice now. Remember
how he said NOT to respond when a baby is crying because he/she is training
you? Let that child cry and soon he/she will go to sleep without crying? Mean,
yes, but I’m at an age where after getting up two mornings in a row before 5
a.m. to answer Brioche’s call, I had vertigo and took very long naps those
afternoons. So while I apologize to
Brioche and anyone else who disapproves, she now spends all night from about 10
p.m. until 6:30 OR LATER the next morning shut into my kitchen, quite a generous
space, and with lots of her toys, water, puppy pads on the floor. I’m too old to be the mom for 2 or 4 a.m.
feedings, or to walk a puppy at 4 or 5 a.m.
Not possible. She loves my bedroom and study and has found snug nooks in
both where she sleeps while I read or work, but at night we do not yet share
the same space.
A neighbor helped install a deadbolt on the door
leading into the kitchen. But Houdini
rose to that challenge. The next morning she was once again at the foot of the
stairs, having apparently pushed against the door wiggling and jiggling until
the bolt slid out. Amazing! And she must have worked quietly because I
heard nothing, no barking, whining, scratching, until she had emerged
successfully.
Now at night I use the deadbolt but also wedge a towel between the upper part of the door and the wall (this was originally a swinging door, whence the extra space). This works. Brioche accepts it, and at night curls up on a cushion on the kitchen floor with her favorite companion, a floppy brown toy poodle from the Traverse City Good Will. I am eternally grateful to whatever Michigan mom decided her kid had outgrown this toy. Brioche cuddles with it, attacks it, carries it around from room to room, and always sleeps with it.
When I come down now and undo the deadbolt and remove
the wedged towel, she waits quietly until the door opens and she can rush out
to greet me. Right against the door
waiting with her is her favorite rawhide bone and this floppy little toy puppy. We leave the toys behind and she and I run
down to the beach to welcome the dawn, sometimes to photograph and share its
beauty on Facebook, and to race around on the sand. Only then can I go back to the kitchen and
settle down with coffee for me and kibble for her.
I plan to install a camcorder because I want to watch
her attempts (if any) to open the now resistant door, also to learn what time she first wakes up, uses those puppy pads, and brings her
toys to the door to keep her company while she waits for me.
I’m assuming this all happens around 5 or 6 a.m. but I don’t know.
LESSONS LEARNED OR INNATE SKILLS
Over the long years when I and my family lived with
many poodles—the smartest dogs that exist in my opinion—one advanced skill
taught in obedience classes was to retrieve.
Broken down, this had multiple parts: identify an object like a stick or
a ball, usually a ball that the owner throws; encourage the dog to go retrieve
it and then bring it back, unharmed (poodles typically have soft mouths and can
be used to retrieve ducks for hunters) and give it or drop it at the owner’s
feet.
Many dogs, even poodles, hate something in their mouth
that isn’t food and will sit with a ball or stick held limply, loosely, looking
much as we feel when dentists are intruding unwelcome things into our mouths
and we have to endure it or else. It’s almost impossible to teach a dog who is
that resistant to play this retrieval game.
Many more dogs genuinely love to run and chase a
moving object, ball, stick, Frisbee, anything that can be thrown, but their
next step is to run off and play with it on their own, chew it if it’s
chewable, as most things are. Another
tactic, and a game that is beloved by many dogs and also kids playing with
them, is indeed to bring it back but then not release it, hoping to engage
their human in a tug of war.
Brioche stunned me with her variation on this
pattern. She loves to hold things in her
mouth and on our walks will pick up stones, sticks, a stray leaf, a shell from
the beach, even her own leash. A few
weeks ago she nabbed a stick roughly a foot long and an inch in diameter and
proudly brought it all the way home from a neighboring park and onto my front
porch. She dropped it at my feet. I threw it down the porch. She raced to retrieve it, brought it back,
clearly thought about the tug of war but I showed no interest, and she then
dropped it at my feet. I must have thrown
it a dozen times with the same result each time. And we’ve played the same game with a rubber
ball in the enclosure I built for her, also on the beach. This is not learned or taught behavior, but a
game I believe she thinks she taught me.
LANGUAGE SKILLS
So already she will stay in the kitchen at night, and
more times than not when she’s in one room (always on a leash; the training
book I follow warns never to give a dog the run of the house where you can’t
see her/him before completely housebroken) , when she’s there and restrained
and I leave the room briefly to get something or answer a phone or the door or
get more coffee, or whatever, if I say to her very firmly, “Stay there; stay! I’ll be back,” she
doesn’t whine and fuss. Not always—she’s
still a baby and I suspect her quiescence has a lot to do with how sleepy she
is or how tired—but more often than not she will wait, sitting at the furthest
reach of the leash towards the direction where I went, and wait quietly. I find this amazing.
I do realize that I’m like a proud new parent boasting
as though mine were the first and most unique baby ever to have been born—the
belief every good first time parent should of course hold—but Brioche is not my
first dog, far from it, and her obedience and intelligence at the young age of
three months does amaze me.
So, for language, I would claim that “stay” already has a meaning for
her. "Come" or "come here!"definitely resonate, and she obeys, most of the time. And after a week of repetition the
one word command, usually the first for all dogs, “sit,” is also totally clear to her and she executes it beautifully
and immediately. I have to admit that
when she does this she is expecting either a treat or an actual meal, but
that’s okay. We have to move on and
acquire more vocabulary, probably “down,”
also a useful thing to master. And, like
a good linguist, eventually to put together “sit” and “stay.” But I
have to remember how very young she really is. And of course “no” is something she like any baby hears
often and definitely understands but doesn’t like.
AGILITY SKILLS
Not long after she figured out the dead bolt, Brioche also managed on her own to master a flight of stairs. Not to go down, that’s still scary for her, but to come up, in fact to race up so that the word “flight” is apt. Before that she had already been navigating some steep steps—a bit like the broad jumps in a steeplechase—on our way down to the beach. Long ago when I moved onto this same street there were no steps there. In fact, the road we live on continued smoothly down to the beach which made trailing our little sunfish down there very easy. A subsequent owner and neighbor altered this by turning the macadam into lawn and then set steep foot-high stone steps about every six feet all the way down to the beach. This has hindered transporting even the smallest crafts, alas, made my own navigation of that path treacherous at times, and for little Brioche it was cliffs to jump down as we went down and really tough hurdles (I carried her up the first few weeks) coming up. Now, having grown from 3 pounds to almost 5 pounds, she leaps both up and down like a gazelle or a steeplechaser. And of course on the way up she is also always carrying some new treasure in her mouth, stick, stone, shell, flotsam or jetsam.
In our dawn trips to the beach I don’t use a leash. There are no cars, no pedestrians, nothing to tempt her or scare her into running away from me. As we come back up to the house she always races ahead of me, but stops almost at every step to make sure I am following. Truly, I am in awe of this little creature.
HUMAN FRIENDS
Shy at first, backing off from any stranger
approaching on the street or even in our house, she now wags her tail and
engages in a kind of flirtation. Anyone
who gets down on her level will have her licking their hand and climbing into
their lap very quickly. By reputation,
poodles are very monogamous. Brioche
knows she and I are a team, but at the same time she is eager to schmooze with
many other people and that surprises me.
Not sure how I feel about it.
Better that than barking or growling at them or being afraid, but I
didn’t anticipate this level of friendliness to both men and women.
A graduate student at Sarah Lawrence shares my house
and, once acquainted, Brioche greets her with the same enthusiasm I thought she
reserved for me! She clearly hasn’t understood that poodles are meant to be
monogamous. It’s much more fun to make many friends, and it’s plain this is
where she’s headed. Curiosity also plays a big role. If a workman comes to fix a window or paint
something, if my housekeeper comes to clean, even if she runs a noisy vacuum or
he a noisy drill, Brioche is still fascinated and watches, tail up, from a safe
distance, ready to play with either of them. The noise does not frighten
her. That, too, is good.
CANINE PLAY DATES
For the first three weeks after leaving her litter Brioche never saw another dog. Even in the park we seemed to walk at times when there were few or no other dog walkers. But a week ago on a Sunday I invited two separate dear friends whom I had not seen since early March—each owned a dog—to come here for lunch and to meet Brioche. I drove into Manhattan to bring them here so they wouldn’t have to risk subways or Metro North. You can imagine my own joy at seeing these two friends, one my theater and concert buddy for the past twenty years and my colleague before that, the other the phenomenal young bass/baritone from my choir. Anne’s dog, inherited from a friend now deceased, is a sober 10 year old bull mix named Bonita. She was totally indifferent to me and to Brioche. Adrian’s 5 year old Maltese/poodle mix, Bullet, was thrilled with Brioche’s toys more than with the puppy herself. Brioche was beside herself. Not since leaving her litter mates had she played with another dog and this was true joy. Now, if we see another dog on a leash in the park she tugs me in that direction and I have to resist her enthusiasm. All three dogs were sweet-tempered. None growled or showed a tooth all afternoon. Bullet clearly wanted to take some of the toys home, in particular a blue stuffed animal that he could make squeak (Brioche with her smaller mouth can’t get squeaks out of any of the toys). Adrian agreed that he had to get Bullet his own stuffed animal, but without a squeak. We sent him home with a bone.
My puppy raising/training Bible, my Dr. Spock, is a slender volume published in the 1940s by a woman named Blanche Saunders, a pioneer in obedience training, and herself a poodle owner. Training You to Train Your Dog covers everything from feeding to grooming to house training and then to early and advanced obedience training. I have found it to be really helpful and, when in doubt, I consult it again and again, just as I did Dr. Spock with my kids. Stranded once far from hospitals with a one year old son with a high fever it was Spock who told me how with tepid water to bring his temperature down. And many other such calming, reassuring messages.
Brioche is indebted to Mrs. Saunders for her diet which every day in addition to kibble includes one meal that thrills her, because it’s real meat whether ground beef or chicken or liver (the best!) or infrequently fish. Needless to say, these gourmet meals at midday reflect what I’m eating. But, respecting Saunders' dicta and my own peace while eating, she has to wait until my meal is finished. No begging at the table. Again, a lesson she has learned very easily. But her anticipation at noontime is palpable. Thanks, Blanche, that so far there's no canned food for Brioche.
GROOMING
Saunders advises early experiences including riding in
a car, hearing loud noises (the vacuum and drill have done that), exposure to
other humans and other dogs (we’ve done that selectively), walking with a leash
(almost since day one; most often she is leading me, not the reverse, to the
point where I have to slow her down), and of course grooming. Brush, comb, clean ears, and the dreaded electric
clipper. All of that. Her beauty parlor, easy for me while
standing, is on top of my clothes drier.
When I lift her up there she knows what to expect.
If the breeder hadn’t already clipped her face before I got her, I might have waited a while, because I love those little furry faces, but with the clean poodle face I had to continue and clip feet and tail leaving that proud pompom, her panache. Because I started so early and have continued every few days she tolerates the brushing, combing (less), and the electric clipper around tender spots like her jaw or eyes or toes or tail. I think she really enjoys the brushing. Her coat shines and is very soft, so I am rewarded for any effort to keep it groomed.
TRAVEL
We’ve taken many rides in the car. Saunders recommended starting that early in order to find out about any car sickness. So far, that is not a problem for Brioche. Her only concern is that she has to sit on the passenger seat and not climb into my seat. Modern practice would have her safely confined in a crate in the back. She sits less safely on the passenger seat where her only protection would be what my mother had for me before seat belts came into being, my arm flung out in front of her. Very inadequate protection, I know. I do try to drive responsibly and watch out for other drivers. I’ve left her in the car very briefly to run into the post office or other places where she can’t accompany me and so far I have not heard barks or loud whines, but it’s been very short and I use the same magic words she is used to in the house: “Stay there; I’ll be back.” I am sure if I left her for a longer time she would vocalize and someone would come and accuse me of neglect and worse, but so far what we are doing works for both of us. It only took her a half dozen times of being alone for a few minutes to figure out how to climb over the center divide and wait for me on my seat rather than the passenger seat. One more easy accomplishment. Not to take her along on errands would mean long periods shut up in the kitchen at home, and I think we both prefer the companionship.
So far she still can be weighed on the kitchen scales. 3 lbs when I got her, she's now a whopping 5.8 lbs. Perhaps by the time it's Christmas she won't any longer fit on those scales. And perhaps her training will have progressed--or her ability to sleep through the night--so that she can move up from the kitchen at night to my bedroom, bringing that toy dog with her of course.
The world and our future look different today from September 14 when Brioche entered my life. The 2020 presidential election is over. Biden and Harris have won. We can all take a deep breath. Other key elections won't take place until January 5, but the waiting and the uncertainty are eased for me by living with this little dog. Brioche makes me laugh. She kept me distracted and laughing even in the darkest days and hours of the past two months. What more could anyone ask for in a companion, human or canine? I'll stop now, but the story of her adventures is on-going, and you can expect a sequel sometime in the future. And of course more videos for her fans on Facebook.
As always I write my blogs when I have something to say that pleases me. No one needs to read any of them. I toss them out like bottles in the sea that some will never see, some will note and discard unread, and perhaps a few dog lovers or some of my friends and relations will recognize as a story they share.
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