Building a Dog

I have spent considerable time trying to understand the specific theological reasoning behind the golden retriever.

Not their existence; that part I accept without argument. What I have been working through, quietly and at some length, is the internal logic of the design itself. Because whoever was responsible for it made a series of choices that I can only describe as deliberate.

Consider what was put on the table: loyalty so complete it registers as a spiritual condition. Eyes that carry the full range of human emotion and then some, communicating joy and concern and deep personal offense with a precision that most people manage only in writing and after several drafts. An intelligence that reads a room better than most of the people in it. A gift for making strangers feel like long-lost family within approximately forty-five seconds of introduction.

Captain does this. Morgan does this, though with considerably less patience for the social niceties and considerably more nose.

The result, by any reasonable assessment, is a masterpiece.

And here is where I believe the Almighty paused. Because perfection, apparently, was not on the table. Perfection belongs to the house. Everything else gets a flaw.

With the golden retriever, the decision for flaw was hair.

Not a modest shedding. Not the polite, apologetic loss you might find on a throw pillow or a car seat. I mean a daily, committed, structurally comprehensive redistribution of coat across every surface in the known world. Captain and Morgan between them have furnished this house with enough hair to suggest that somewhere on the premises a third dog is being assembled, slowly, from parts.

The furniture has surrendered. The clothing situation requires planning; specifically, a pre-departure inspection that has added genuine minutes to my morning. There is a lint roller on every floor of this house, stationed like first responders, and still I have arrived at professional obligations wearing what appears to be a golden retriever accessory.

I have found golden retriever hair in locations that, by any law of physics, should be inaccessible to golden retriever hair. In a sealed container, in a shoe, once in something I had just removed from a package. The kitchen, despite my best efforts, operates under a hair advisory that I have simply chosen to stop announcing to guests. Meals are prepared here. The Boyz know this. They consider it a collaboration. There are two coats involved. I mention this not for drama but because it seems relevant to understanding the scope of the operation.

I vacuum on a schedule that I will not share publicly because it would concern people.

And yet.

Every morning Captain finds his spot on the rug and regards me with an expression of such uncomplicated affection that the whole accounting system falls apart. Every morning Morgan makes his case for breakfast with the full force of his considerable personality, and I am reminded that I have, somehow, been assigned to care for two creatures who consider my presence the best possible development in any given day.

Whatever flaw they carry, they are completely unaware of it.

I cannot say the same for myself. But I keep vacuuming.