(Sorry, peeps! I never pressed the “publish” button. Sorry, Shelly you had to nag about the dog post.)
For six weeks K drew pictures of Cupcake, wrote stories about her and told every person with whom we came in contact that she was getting a dog named Cupcake. Exactly like the black kitten she willed to our house, K spirited a white dog to us. Well before the email arrived from the elementary school listserve announcing Tosca Toscana, a two-year old white mixed breed needed a home, my children incessantly chattered about the white dog they were getting. In the background I listened but never had any intention of helping them procure their white dog. Guess they didn’t need my help.

Sunday morning with temperatures expected to race past one hundred-degrees the children pace the sidewalk in front of our house waiting for the dog to arrive. Wiping sweat from my face I try to sit with them but it is unpleasantly hot and I linger inside the dramatically cold house peering out the front windows. Finally, a messy gray car arrives with a dog’s head swiveling back and forth trying to wrestle free from the tether holding it in place in the backseat. A rather tall Mexico City-style woman wearing a long gray sleeveless dress with no waistband alights from the car and then assists the guest of honor onto the street.

The wild dog immediately wraps her leash around Baby G and upends him to the sidewalk. Dog smell hits me and in less than five seconds I’m ready to say, “This won’t work.” In the photograph Tosca’s pale, slender face was slightly elegant and her perked ears playfully feminine. All summer I imagined petting her silky white hair, but the reality is that only her head has soft hair and from her shoulders to her tail she’s broad in a repulsive masculine manner with wire-y, bushy hair.

The woman who is offing Tosca to us has fostered her for eighteen months and says that she feels the dog needs a family and more active household than she is able to provide. While the woman speaks, the dog humps her leg in an effort to demonstrate to me that she is the leader of their two-dog pack. I give the dog the eye and silently let her know that in this cave, I’m the leader of the pack.

With a patrician accent the creamy complected woman tells me how she spotted Tosca at a café in Mexico City and complimented the owner on the beauty of the dog. As it turns out, the dog was a stray and the woman in the café was trying to find a home for her. The dog-loving women exchanged contact information and decided if a proper Mexican home could not be found for Tosca that arrangements would made for the furry hound to become an expatriate in America, the land of opportunity.

In our breakfast room Tosca leaps about the furniture and flinches her big body like a neurotic small dog each time the children make a big move, which is often. My smile is permanently fixed, and I stare empty-headed at the woman acting as if Tosca’s new life in our family will be like her current life where the dog is the boss.

“Tosca starts out sleeping on the floor, but then she gets into my bed.” Sure thing, I think. I’d love those sandpaper claws on the antique linens I spent years locating. Not even my children are allowed in my bed. The Husband, in fact, is hesitant to climb in each night and always reconfirms which pillows he is allowed to use.

We bid the weepy foster mother goodbye with many thanks and lock the door. Eye to eye Tosca and I stare while K uses her thin voice to repeatedly chant, “Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Tosca, sit.” Down the tree-lined street we walk with dog and children. Yes, it’s hot. It’s sweltering, in fact. However, we’re not walking to Japan, we’re walking in the shade and we have plenty of water.

Tosca sits down and refuses to walk. “Yank the lead and get her moving, K,” I call. “Mom, I can’t pull her leash because it will make her neck bleed. She’s too tired to walk.” At this point in the walk we are barely a block away from our house.

Watching K with the dog, it all becomes vividly clear – the dog is K as a baby and K is me as her mother. Screaming baby in my arms I was bamboozled by K’s hysteria and always thought that my infant must be refusing to eat because she was sick. In retrospect, K popped out as dominant child and I paved the way to let her behave that way.

Taking the lead in my hand, I give Tosca a hearty yank and move her over-sized butt down the street. During lunch she sits quietly under the table occasionally lapping water and receiving a pet on the ear.

* Follow-up: The next day Tosca had her first training session followed by a bath and haircut. No longer is her coat dirty, smelly and shedding, she’s light and white. For almost a week she’s walked four miles each day and has become a happy member of the family. She plays in the creek, rides in the car, goes to park playdates, sits at outside restaurants, fiercely guards the children while they bathe and gets into her crate every night to sleep. She seems to be happy that I’ve taken over as pack leader. Truly, I think she’s relieved that someone else will do the work.