The Sebastopol Times is taking a break from news over the holidays. We got 24 submissions to our personal essay contest. This is one of several essays we are publishing between now and New Year’s. Have a beautiful holiday.
By Elizabeth French
Tallulah (or Talu as we affectionately called her) refused to answer to her name. This wouldn’t be so concerning, except that by 10 weeks old she was already proficient and obedient at a handful of the typical commands: sit, stay, down, leave it, and fetch. But say the word “Talu,” and you could fuhgeddaboudit—it’s as if she had never heard this sound before. Yet there we were coaxing her by this name dozens of times a day.
By the age of four months old, her repertoire of words was impressive. She knew and obediently followed about 30 commands, playfully executing all the actions she learned with swift authority all the while eagerly looking into our eyes in her own way of communicating. And yet… call her by her name and she would act as if you hadn’t said a thing—preferring instead to sit stoically, scanning the horizon diligently for whatever else was much more important and interesting than the word Talu could ever be.
My friends thought I was nuts because it took me two years of searching to finally settle down on an Australian Shepherd/ Standard Poodle mix. I was looking for a dog that would be easy to train and fun-loving with a higher-than-typical working drive. I was looking forward to years of heavy training that might lead to a myriad of service dog jobs. Though Talu encapsulated each of the traits I was looking for, she did not quite have the intensity I was hoping for, so her job became that of family dog instead. As the charisma (and frisbee skills!) began to slowly emerge as she grew older, what I was not expecting, was the other side of her personality—the one we call Ms. Independent.
Not a particularly needy dog, you would often find her self-entertaining, tossing balls a few feet in the air only to catch them in her mouth again when they came falling back to earth. As a confident spirit, not only did she become content making up games for herself to play, she became gifted in her astute attention to detail. If someone in the group was lagging behind on the hiking trail, she would check up on them earnestly and often. If there was a toddler getting too close to the surf and the parents were nearby chatting away, she would look back and forth between them, barking to alert them as if to say “Hey! You better start paying attention!” While she was adept at keeping tabs on the pack and would come running whenever we used her recall command, she was also happily going through life palpably ignoring her name.
At six months of age, I was beginning to wonder if my prodigy of a puppy would end up essentially nameless, refusing to be called something that didn’t fit her. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to learn; this appeared to be something she didn’t want to learn.
Then one beautiful summer morning with dew on the bright green grass—I remember the day vividly—we were out playing in the yard, tossing toys back and forth in a game of fetch. A little ball of mottled fluff, Talu was making cute little chirping sounds, and my partner and I were commenting on how her chirps were like the sound of little birds. Naturally, the next time she caught the toy in her mouth, we cheerfully called her back to us saying, “Come here Talu-Bird!” And just like that she stopped in her tracks, tilted her head and gave us the most wide-eyed expression. We both looked at each other in amazement. Did she just respond to her name?!
“Talu-Bird?” we enunciated more cautiously. Again, she tilted her head the other direction.
“Talu?” Blank stare.
“Bird?” Another head tilt.
“Birdie?” This time she came bounding towards us, and it was in that moment we knew that she had finally told us her name.
Birdie is now almost four years old, and we are happy to say that she loves answering to the sound of her name and excels in communicating with her numerous facial expressions and her big brown eyes. She has blossomed into an affectionate, funny and heartwarming member of the family and continues to keep tabs on the pack while we are hiking in the woods or paddling on the water. Though still fiercely independent with a mind that is always working, she has taught us many times over that we cannot put expectations on the personalities of other living beings. If we give others the space they need to tell us who they are, we will be rewarded tenfold in discovering who they were always meant to be.
When a stranger asks us what we named our dog, we can’t help but smile when we tell them that we didn’t quite name her. She named herself. Because we think, in Birdie’s eyes, her name was never ours to give.
Elizabeth French is a long-time West County resident, women’s autonomy educator, and dog training enthusiast.
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