Like Penny Laine, goldens Nala and Lucy love when Posey snuggles with them. (photo by Emily Jilg)
If golden retrievers ran the world, all movies would have happy endings. All dates would end with love, then hot fudge sundaes in a Paris hotel room.
Free warm muffins would be available on every street corner, and you’d get a big lollipop just for waking up each day … multiple times, as nap-happy goldens are prone to do.
Golden retrievers represent our better selves. They might be angels. You can’t bribe or coerce a golden because they ache to do the right thing no matter what. They drip with moral rectitude.
Goldens are the Gatsbys of the dog world, prone to idolatry yet not so tearfully sentimental. Neither are they – most of them – intellects.
Golden retrievers generally have only one brain cell, about the size of a sequin, pink and rubbery as gum. They are ruled by impulse, not evil. A golden is capable of gross misbehavior but not murder or even armed robbery. Unless food is involved.
Some people model themselves after great athletes, movie stars, pop icons or even politicians. I model myself after this stupid furry specimen snoozing in the corner, dreaming of steak scraps topped with Twinkies. Penny Laine is her name. I think of her as a very attractive amoeba.
She belongs to my older daughter and visits us often, hoping to establish residency and eventually marry me. But she really belongs to everyone, as all goldens do. Like oxygen, or Elvis, or Metta World Peace.
All Penny Laine really wants out of life is belly rubs. That’s all most of us want out of life but we are too timid to ask. She is shameless in her quest for belly rubs, almost promiscuous. In the middle of traffic, or amid raging artillery fire, if you said, “Hey, sista, how about a belly rub?” Penny Laine would roll on her back, smile. “Sure. Get in there,” she’d say.
Basically, they are baby blankets.
Goldens are also avid swimmers. They don’t really float all that well, weighed down by 400 pounds of spongy fluff and their 75-pound, wrap-around tongues.
Basically, they float like an abandoned refrigerator … bobbing, gasping. They swim just well enough to breathe. And every time they climb out of a lake or pool, they shake ferociously, car washing the planet.
Sure, I like other types of dogs. Big-eyed cocker spaniels, for instance (we had two). Growing up we had proud dachshunds. I’ve had mutts, wolves. One dog I had might’ve been part reindeer. The beauty of a dog is they’ll breed with anything. Like you, they were born to love.
Silvery Suze has a tiny thug of a dog that might be a squirrel, might be a gerbil. That’s good too. Stuart Little has a ratta-tat-tat diesel bark that annoys the hell out of everyone. Yet, those eyes … that button nose … those … hey, what are those, lips?
God decorates dogs the way Germans decorate Dusseldorf for Christmas.
Look, you can keep your insipid “influencers,” your TikTok superstars. Give me a good dog any day.
And this golden retriever tops the field.
Once, on a long walk up a grassy trail, Penny Laine stopped to scarf horse manure. Another day she yanked an entire bag of double-stuffed Oreos off the counter. Gone in six seconds.
She would jump the moon for a French fry. She would invade Russia for a corner of your ham sandwich. Last week, she downed a bag of flour. Unbleached, delicious Pillsbury flour. Yum!
She used to eat every shoe, every slipper, but seems to have outgrown that. She still quaffs paper of any kind – report cards, tax returns, love letters, toilet tissue … wow, does she love tissue.
Occasionally, vast dams of tissue and tax returns block her pipes. She never complains. After all, that’s what new carpets are for.
Love is too weak a word for what I feel for Penny Laine. See, goldens inherently know when you are sick, or grumpy, or simply disenchanted.
Somehow, they know when your favorite ballclub goes on a skid, or your 401k plummets. They know when you are bummed because you didn’t get into Crypto like everyone else, or when you simply crave a long, lazy day in a bookstore or a pub.
They know when your heart is broken, your car is in the shop, your knee aches or your wallet goes missing (probably because they ate it).
They know when you’re jumpy about a job, suspicious of a text, guilty because you haven’t been to church since Easter.
It’s kind of inexplicable really, this whopping sense of empathy they possess.
In conclusion: The world doesn’t need more soldiers, more tech tyrants, more visionaries, more scolds.
What the world needs now? More belly rubs.
Get in there.
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