Paws That Smell Like Pineapple

Hello, darling. Today I want to share a little secret

with you. My aunt has become my entire personality. There was

probably a time in my life when I had hobbies, interests, things

to talk about, and then I got four babies. Now my human kids

ask me how I'm doing, and somehow within a minute, we're

discussing manna's poop situation, and I don't mean

casually. Uh-uh. We analyze its shape, color, consistency,

frequency, and perhaps the most ridiculous part: her poop

affects my emotional being. Perfect poop. Oh, that is a

beautiful poo poo. Today's going to be a great day. Slightly

questionable poop. What's wrong? What does she eat? How does her

tummy feel? Is she acting normal? I'm canceling

everything. We have a situation. Mammy must monitor Mana for the

next 24 hours. And you know what's really funny? I don't

even think this is weird anymore. That's the problem

because Poo is only the beginning. There are things I do

every single day that would be absolutely disgusting if Mana

wasn't my baby. I pick her eye boogers with my bare fingers. I

wipe her nose with my hand. It's practically a daily ritual for

me to smell her breath, her ears, and yes, sometimes her

butt. Very close-up butt inspection is occasionally

necessary and important. I'm her mommy. I have responsibilities,

and then she'll spend who knows how long licking herself. Walk

right over to me and lick me directly on the face. And what

do I do? Do I think about where that tongue has just been? Of

course not. I go, oh, thank you for the kisses, baby. This is

who I am now, right, Mana? And darling, we haven't even gotten

to the pause. The pause. Please tell me I am not the only person

who smells for baby's paws because sometimes they smell

like popcorn, and Haru Haru's paws actually smell like

pineapple. I don't know why. I don't need to know why. I just

know that they do, and I deliberately sniff them. Mana

will be sleeping next to me. I'll bury my face in her soft

tummy, and I'll pick up one of her little paws. Hmm. I know.

I'm aware. That sounds weird when I say out loud. I do it to

Sora too, and then I squish their little paws a little bit,

touch each of their paw pads, give them little massages, and

then I tell myself, "This is so good for them, the massage. But

the truth is, it's really for me. There's something about

holding those little paws that comforts me, it makes me happy.

It's my happy place. So apparently, I'm a paw sniffer,

and I'm not even ashamed. Actually, when it comes to my

fur babies, I am absolutely a drama queen. People have said to

me, "I would never spend that much money on the dog, and I'm

like, "Then, don't! I'm not asking you to. We used to live

up in the mountains, and Manna loves the snow. She would stay

outside and play in it forever if I let her. So of course she

had snow suits, not just one, and some of those snowsuits cost

about as much as a high-end ski jackets for human. Was that

ridiculous? Maybe, but she could play in the snow without

freezing. She was so happy, and she looked fabulous. So

everybody won, and in the summer time when we went. Mana always

wore her coyote jacket. That thing cost about as much as a

bulletproof jacket, but she's tiny. We lived where there were

coyotes, and in my mind, there was absolutely no way I was

going to let a coyote snatch my baby, not on my watch. Then

there is her food. Manny's food probably costs more than mine

every month. I research ingredients. I craft her

recipes. I cook for her as though her life depends on it,

because according to me, it absolutely does. Amana isn't

even the only one benefiting from this situation. Hoku, Sora,

and Haru-they have their own bedroom, a whole room. Emily

says, "It's the cutest room in my house. I even made them a

little opening in the door. It has cat ears on one side and

tail on the other, and they left their room. Meanwhile, my adult

human kids no longer have beach rooms in my house, but cats do.

Sorry. And you know what?

I used to feel like I had to explain some of these choices:

why I spend what I spent, why I cook the way I cook, why I

organize parts of my life around these little beings. Now, I

really don't, because when it comes to my fur babies, I know

what matters to me and to them. Although it took me a while to

get there, and one of the things I used to worry about: dog

friends. Does Mana need dog friends? Should she be playing

with other dogs? Am I socializing her enough? Is she

fitting in? Am I being socially correct with other dog mums? The

funny thing is, if Manna was sitting in the rescue waiting to

be adopted, I am pretty sure one of the recommendations at the

top of her profile would be, "Would do best as the only dog

in the household. That's Manna. She loves people and her cat

brothers, dogs. She can take them or leave them. Mostly,

leave them, like 98.7% of the time. But when she was younger,

I didn't trust my intuition when it came to her. I thought there

was something I was supposed to be doing differently. One of the

first trainers I worked with really emphasized that Manna was

behind on certain skills and needed more socialization. She

needed to learn from the pack. I was her leader and her boss, so

Mana was put together with a lot of other dogs. They were all big

dogs too, and I wasn't there with her. When she came home,

she wasn't herself. She seemed so small, shut down, almost like

she was afraid to take up any space, and I remember looking at

her and thinking, "This just doesn't feel right, but I still

had that little voice in my head. Maybe I'm being

overprotective. Maybe this is what she needs as a dog. Maybe

I'm the problem. Maybe a good dog mom would make sure her dog

knows how to be social with other dogs. So over time, we

worked with several different trainers, and eventually we met

Trevor. I call him the manna whisperer, and one day Trevor

asked me a very simple question. He said, "Do you need manna to

be friends with other dogs? And I swear, something just clever.

Because suddenly I realized, oh, this isn't about Manna. This is

about me. I was feeling guilty because Manna didn't have dog

friends. I was worried that she wasn't fitting in, and somewhere

underneath all of that, I think I was reflecting some of my own

insecurity about not fitting in. I was asking Mina to fit into

this picture I had in my head of what a happy, well-adjusted dog

was supposed to look like, and Manet was basically saying,

"Mummy, I'm so happy being alone with you. So I looked at Trevor

and said, "Absolutely not! I do not need Manna to have dog

friends. And what a relief that was, not because Manna never

needs to know how to safely exist around other dogs. Of

course she does, but she doesn't need to become a social

butterfly just so I can feel like I'm doing dog motherhood

correctly. She gets to be Manna, and I get to know Mana well

enough to make choices for the dog who is actually right in

front of me, not some imaginary dog I think I'm supposed to

have. And something happened after that. I started trusting

myself more, not just as her caretaker, as her mummy. I

stopped asking quite so often, "What does everybody else think

I should be doing? And I started asking, "What does mana need?

Actually, something happened just the other day that made me

realize how much I've changed. My neighbor has a mouth to prove

too, and she asked me if I wanted to start walking together

every day, make it a little dog mom's thing, and it was very

sweet. But I said thank you, but no, thank you. And it wasn't

personal at all. I see her walking her dog all the time,

usually chatting with another person while they walk, and

there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For her, the

walk may also be time to connect with a friend.

That's lovely, but my walks with Manna-that's our time, which is

ridiculous because I'm with her basically all the time, but

apparently 23 and a half hours together is not enough. We still

require quality time. But when Manna and I walk, I leave my

phone at home. I talk to her. Yes, I talk to my dog, and yes,

she understands me, right, manamana? Oh, Hatcher came to

visit. Hi, Hatcher. And when she stops, I stop. When she wants to

sniff something, I wait. Sometimes I'm curious about what

she's smelling. I watch her, not let her explore, because I

realize something. I'm not taking Manna out so I can get my

walk in. I'm taking a walk with her, and those are two very

different things. I don't need our walk to look like anybody

else's walk. I don't need mana to have anybody else's social

life, and I don't need our relationship to make sense to

everybody else. We know what works for us, and these days,

that's enough. And maybe that's really what changed. I stopped

needing our relationship to look normal to somebody else, because

trust me, I know how we look. I take Mana everywhere. I talk to

her all day. I plan around her. I cook for her. I check her poo

poo. I smell her feet. Apparently, we require private

quality time, even though we are together 23 and a half hours a

day. I know, and sometimes people use words like "too

attached. Maybe we are. Who cares? I mean, seriously, who

decide how attached I'm allowed to be to the little being I

adore So much, Mana is not just a dog to me. She never has been.

She is the love of my life. She is my heart, and I'm absolutely

delighted that we are this bonded. I know her, inside and

out. I know when something feels different. I know the look on

her face when she wants something. I know her sounds,

her moods, her routines, her smile, and I know when she needs

mummy, which is all the time, and she knows me too. She knows

when I'm happy. She knows when I'm stressed. She knows when I'm

sad. Sometimes I think she knows what I'm feeling before I do. If

something isn't right with Manna, of course I feel it, and

when something isn't right with me, she feels it too. That's us,

that's our relationship, that's our normal, and our normal

doesn't have to be everybody else's normal. Actually, please

don't make it. Everybody else is normal. That we'll all be

standing outside smelling our dogs' feet. Yeah, right, Mana.

Oh, that could be kind of fun. No, never mind. Mana says she

doesn't want dog friends? See, I've learned, Manna. Mummy

learned, but there was something else I've learned too. For a

long time, I thought loving Manna this much meant I needed

to make sure I was doing everything right, the right

training, the right socialization, the right food,

the right choices, and somehow, somewhere along the way, I

stopped trying so hard to beat the right kind of dogma, and I

just became Manna's mommy. Perfectly imperfect, definitely

not normal, probably a little ridiculous, but Manna loves her

mommy, her wonderfully weird mom. I know her. I listen to

her. I pay attention. I make mistakes. I learn, and I adore

her with all my heart and soul, exactly the way I know how.

Maybe that's why I don't feel embarrassed anymore about the

ridiculous things I do, because when I look at the woman I

become with Manna, she is crazy. But whatever, I really like her,

because this woman, she loves without trying to be a cool

dogma. She nurtures. She notices. She pays attention.

She's curious. She stops when mana stops. She wants to know

what manna is sniffing. She cooks. She protects. She worries

sometimes way too much. She gets things wrong, changes her mind,

learns, trusts herself a little more than she used to, and she

gets ridiculously excited about somebody else's bow movement,

and you know what? I think my fur babies have given me

permission to soften, to play more, to care deeply without

worrying so much about how it looks from the outside. Maybe

even to be a little weird, okay, a lot weird, and I'm good with

that. And maybe that's one of the unexpected gifts of loving

them.

They don't need us to be cool. They don't need us. To impress

anybody, they don't care whether somebody thinks the snowsuit

costs way too much, or whether the cats should really have

their own bedroom, or whether Mummy smells their feet.

Actually, they may have some concerns about that last one,

but they let us love them, adore them completely, and somehow, in

loving them that freely, maybe we learn to give ourselves a

little more freedom too-freedom to love the way we live, freedom

to build a life that feels right to us, freedom to trust what we

know in our heart, freedom to stop explaining every little

choice, and maybe freedom to like ourselves a little more,

not because we're doing everything perfectly, not

because everybody understands us, but because this life we

built with them, this relationship, this love, feels

like ours, and I think there's something really beautiful about

that. Now I think it's time to ask of our babies what they

would like us to know this week. Hopefully, it's not about poop.

Okay, this week's card from my love messages from your pet

oracle is, I trained you well. You absolutely did, Mana. I

mean, I analyze your poo poo and peepee. I cook your meals. I buy

your snowsuits. I stop when you stop. I wait while you sniff. I

smell your paws and belly. You have done an excellent job, mana

mana. And maybe that's exactly what mana would say. Pay

attention to me, mummy. Listen to me. Trust what you know about

me. Stop comparing me. Let me be who I am. And while you're at

it, mummy, let yourself be who you are too. Okay, Menna, I've

been trained. Well, my darling, I told you my secrets today, so

now I want to hear yours. Tell me the ridiculous, the weird,

and yes, the absolutely disgusting things you do because

you adore your fur baby. What's that one thing you do that would

make absolutely no sense to anyone else, but makes perfect

sense to the two of you? I love to hear what you and your fur

baby discovered together this week. Until then, take gentle

care of yourself and your precious one, because your

happiness matters.