It was decided - without my approval, I might add - that we should get a dog. My sister wanted a dog because I didn’t want one. My mother wanted a dog for protection - from what, I didn’t know. My dad wanted the majority to be happy, and I ended up being outnumbered, and so we all went to see this lady who had some puppies.
It was decided - without my approval, I might add - who should do what with regards to this dog, like - who should take turns to feed it, who should take turns to walk it, who should play with it and who should clean up after it.
It seems that this was the family dog, and we all had to take an equal share in looking after it. Why couldn’t we have something that looked after itself? I wasn’t thrilled about us having a dog.
When we arrived the dog lady's house, she led through the house, which smelled of dogs, and out back to a shed in her garden. One by one, she brought seven or eight puppies out of the shed and put them on a blanket on the lawn for us to look at. The mother dog - my mum, called it a bitch - was there taking care of her pups and fussing over them. She seemed quite proud of them. We looked at all of the puppies, and in the end, we decided on one puppy, which, according to my mum, was better than all the others. He kept jumping up at my mum, wagging his little tail and yapping a lot. Mum said that he was a lovely puppy. She said that he was the right puppy because he felt right, whatever she meant by that. This was the one that we took home. I felt sorry for the bitch, but the lady explained that the 'mummy dog' had enough puppies to keep her occupied and would be pleased that one of her puppies was going to a good home. I wasn't quite sure how she knew that, or that we could provide a good home since we had never had a dog before, but I'm sure we could give it a good home if we tried.
. . .
Rabbits don't seem to care for dogs, and the rabbit was cowering in his corner as I told him the story of us getting a puppy.
"Don't bring that dog thing here," snapped the rabbit.
"I won't," I promised.
"Why can't people have nice pets?"
"Such as?" I asked.
"Ducks!"
"Ducks?" I tried to imagine a duck waddling about the house.
"Yes! Ducks! Ducks don't bother rabbits - rabbits don't bother ducks!"
I sensed that the rabbit was not in the best of moods today as he was being pretty off-handed in his remarks. Perhaps it was due to the fact that we now had a dog.
"So why did you pick this particular doglette or dogling or whatever it's called?" asked the rabbit, still being off-handed.
"It's called a puppy. You know that it is called a puppy. You're just being silly."
"So, why didn't you pick another one? Why did you pick that one?"
"I don't know. We had to pick one. We couldn't take 'em all home."
"But why did you pick this particular puppy?" persisted the rabbit.
"I suppose it was because he was better than the others. That's what my mum said. Mind you, I liked the puppy that tried to jump on the other puppies whenever they came close to him. My sister liked the one that kept rolling over and wanted his tummy rubbed. My dad liked the one that wanted to be chased. He tried to run away when my dad tried to catch it. But we took home mum's favourite. The one that wagged his tail and yapped a lot. Mum said that he was better than all the others."
"How do you know? You may have missed a better puppy. How do you feel about picking out a second rate puppy?"
"I don't think that the puppy is a second rate puppy. I don't know that there was a better puppy," I defended.
"And what about the others?"
"What others?"
"You said that there were seven or eight puppies all told."
"I don't know. We really didn't notice them. What are you getting at?"
"The point I am trying to make is, before anyone is willing to consider you, you first have to be noticed, and that first contact is the most important impression that you can make on someone. This puppy made a good impression, and he got taken home, and now you think he was the best puppy. You don't care that there could have been a better one."
"But he is the best," I insisted.
"I can see that I'm getting nowhere with this," sighed the rabbit. "Let's look at it from another point of view."
I sat patiently.
"Pretend that you can't hear and that you can't see."
"But I can see, and I can hear."
"PRETEND!" said the rabbit, raising his voice. "PRETEND that you cannot hear or see."
"Okay! I'm pretending. Anything for the sake of peace!"
A couple of rabbits came to the hole to see what all the commotion was about, saw that the rabbit was talking to me, and left.
"Pretend that you cannot hear or see, and then pretend that you met someone. Now tell me about that person."
"How can I? If I don't touch them, then I won't even know that they are there."
"That's right! You pretended that your fourth and fifth senses didn't work and so you had to revert to your first sense. Now pretend that you can hear but cannot see. Now tell me about that person."
"Unless they speak or make a noise, I can't."
"Good! We're onto something. Now pretend that you can hear and see."
"But I can hear and see!" I protested.
“Then un-pretend.”
“Un-pretend?”
"Yes! Now tell me about that person."
"Well, I can tell... I don't know."
"Let me put it another way. Could you tell more about the person if they stood out, compared to if they blended in with the background?"
"Well, yes, of course."
"So you agree that given that you can see, then your first form of contact is usually visual - your fifth sense!"
"I guess so," I agreed. "But why is my first type of contact - you know, seeing, my fifth sense? Why isn't 'seeing' my first sense?"
"As soon as your kind learned to count, you have had this incredible fascination with putting numbers to everything, which one day you will realise can have its drawbacks. But to answer your question - as animal life evolved - and I think that I've mentioned this before, the first impression of its existence was that it was able to touch its environment. As a result, we developed sensitive nerve endings to experience that touch. This was a good start, but then it had to eat and to do that, it had to find food. That's when smell was developed. Some foods were good, while others were poisonous or even rotten. Therefore taste was developed to distinguish good food from bad."
"You mentioned this before," I said, suddenly remembering. "But you didn't explain it."
"Oh, that's right," said the rabbit, thinking back. "Well, as I was saying - to not be eaten by a bigger predator had its obvious advantages, therefore to hear something creeping up on you improved your rate of survival and so we developed sensory organs to respond to sound waves - ears! In addition, fluctuations in light caused our systems to develop light detectors which eventually evolved into eyes."
"Oh!" I said, thinking how glad I was that I didn't have to evolve - that I already came complete.
"So coming back to appearance - doesn't it make sense to look your best? That way, you will at least give someone something to remember you by."
"And what happens if they're blind?"
"Then I suggest that you sound good."
"And if they can't hear, I suppose you want me to taste good as well!"
"If you want to be noticed, you have to appeal to someone's every sense, bearing in mind that some things will appeal more to some than to others."
"Such as?" I asked.
"Four different puppies appealed to each one of you, and three or four puppies went completely unnoticed. For someone to notice you, you have to be noticed. And you should always learn to be remembered - give people a reason to remember you.
"I always give somebody something to remember me by," I boasted.
"Yes, you do," conceded the rabbit, "but is it always a good impression?"
"It would seem that any impression is better than no impression."
"Why do you say that?" asked the rabbit smiling.
"Well, there's a kid at school and nobody, and I mean nobody, seems to know he's there. It's like he's invisible. He just stands over near the wall."
"Um," mused the rabbit. "He's not actually invisible - yet he just seems to be invisible?"
"Yeah, like he appears to be invisible."
"It's hard to image, but if that's the case, then why do you notice him?"
"He's just there - nobody else notices him, but I notice that he goes unnoticed."
"Regardless, first impressions are very important - assuming that you want to be noticed, of course."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll no doubt have noticed that all rabbits, free rabbits that is..."
"You mean - wild rabbits."
"I told you before, I'm not wild. Free rabbits are brown. At night we're very hard to see. We like to be unnoticed. We get to live longer, but we're getting off track. It's one thing to be camouflaged, but if you want to be noticed, you have to appeal to someone's senses. You have to make an impression, and for the most part, it's actually better to leave a controversial impression than a good impression."
"What about a bad impression? Mum keeps saying that I sometimes leave a bad impression."
"There are two types of bad impressions," stated the rabbit.
"What are they?" I asked eagerly. I only knew of one. If there was another, I wanted to know about it.
"What's the other type?"
"The type that leaves no impression at all, just like your friend at school, or by the other three or four puppies that you all ignored."
I thought back to our new puppy. Dad and I thought that he was a nice colour and his white patches looked cute on his chest and four paws. My sister had said that he sounded nice when he yapped. My mum had said that he felt good when we patted or stroked him. She said that he had a nice smooth coat, and he smelled like a puppy. We hadn't tasted him, but he had tasted my sister 'cause he jumped up to lick her face as she bent down to pat him. In the end, we all felt that this puppy was the right one.
Coming back to the present, I said, "I see what you mean. Does this mean that perhaps there could have been a better puppy?"
"Does it matter?" asked the rabbit.
"That's the whole point that I'm trying to make. If you can't get people to notice you, then it doesn't matter what you have to say or how good you are - who cares? There is probably some poor little doglette..."
"Puppy!" I corrected.
"...puppy wondering why he didn't get taken home. He probably thinks that he was a better choice, but it is too late for him to make that first impression."
"But that isn't fair because everybody looks different. Some people look better than others. It's alright for you rabbits. You all look the same."
"No we don't! There isn't a single rabbit, except for twins, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets and sextuplets that look the same."
"They all look the same to me."
"People all look the same to me," retorted the rabbit, "hairless, bipeds with funny little ears..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
"Appearance is not only what you look like but how you present yourself."
"I see."
"You see? It's interesting that you use the word, 'see'."
. . .
I went home to play with our new puppy.
"Do you know why we picked this puppy?" I asked my dad.
"Your mum wanted him," he answered.
"There were other puppies to choose from."
"I know, but he looks like a nice puppy. Mind you, there was one puppy that I liked, but I guess it doesn't matter about the other puppies - the decision has been made, and so we'll just have to learn to go along with it.
'Go along?' Dad liked the puppy that kept playing chase - the one that would go away and want dad to go after him. But then again, my dad had also used the words -- look and learn. I wondered what he meant by that.
I went and found my sister playing with the puppy.
"Do you know why we picked this puppy? I asked my sister.
"Mum wanted him," she answered.
"There were other puppies to choose from."
"I know. This one doesn't understand me as well as the one I was playing with at the dog house."
"Kennel," I corrected.
"The lady didn't live in a kennel. Dogs live in kennels. The lady lived in the dog house."
There was nothing I could say, so I didn't.
"Don't stand there looking stupid, no one will notice you. Say something."
"Say what?"
"What else do you want to know?" she asked.
"My dad...
"He's my dad too."
"... dad said that we have this puppy now, and that's that."
"I know what you mean," said my sister as she tried to get the puppy to roll over and have his tummy rubbed. "But he sounds cute when he yaps," she added.'
Yaps?' I went to look for my mum.
"Mum, why did we pick this puppy?" I asked.
"He'll make a good guard dog. He'll protect us all."
Why was mum always being so protective, I wondered. "How can he protect us? He's so small, and he only yaps," I stated.
"He's only a puppy now. When he grows up, he'll bark."
"We all liked other dogs," I pointed out.
"I thought everyone liked this one." Mum looked surprised for a moment and then said, "Well, it's too late now. We have this one, so everyone had better get used to the idea."
'Idea?' It was mum's idea to have a stupid dog in the first place. I wanted a rabbit.
. . .
Next chapter coming soon!