The Marigold Dog

The underpinning of existence glows most brightly through the eyes of a dog and where are a dog’s eyes anchored, but in the one he calls home.

There were hard truths and then there were subtle ones, and Tamara Ryu fancied herself as one who could endure the hard truths and absorb the subtle ones. A trainer of dogs, Tamara Ryu steadied herself in a soundless landscape where her pupil could speak and she could listen. That was training in a nutshell, the ability to listen, and it was a subtle truth gently flowing from one decade to the next. After years of experience with hundreds of dogs, Tamara could name off all the middle road truths she knew to a class of young trainers without thinking.

Relationship is everything.

A pocket full of various treats will never go to waste.

Desensitization is a gift that keeps giving.

Play is just as important as concentration.

Impossible is an obstacle to train around.

Truths multiplied and diverged, came together, and sprung anew and it was at truth’s rebirth did hard truth ripen and Tamara, despite all her instinct, never knew when hard truth would drop firmly at her feet. The older woman, now in her eighties, reflected often on truth and when her thoughts grazed those hard-shelled memories locked over in hard truth, she would close her eyes. A hard truth was the sight of an emaciated hound arriving at her doorstep. Neglected and ridden nose to tail in disease, fear, and willingness to trust. Tamara did what she always did when a dog was abandoned at her home; she cared for the dog, trained the dog, and then let the dog go to a suitable home. The circle of this behavior people seemed unable to break was another hard truth Tamara found. It seemed no matter what, there would always be a late-night knock at her door, the sound of feet running away, and the hurry of a vehicle skidding down the road from their responsibility. The abandoned dogs were so much like Tamara was in her youth; forgotten, pained, confused, and lost.

Even the hardest truths eventually became effortless at Tamara’s determination and, like the treat pouch always at her hip, hard truths became part of the background. Tamara’s exuberant method of training impressed her teachers, but their experience warned Tamara of a hard truth she had yet to overcome, something they called the Marigold Dog. Some teachers warned a Marigold Dog was golden in nature, but like the flower, their season was short. This did not mean a Marigold Dog’s lifespan was shortened, but that its time with its trainer vanished with the dewfall. Quick to learn, fast to grow, and enthralling to watch, a Marigold Dog met experience with passion and bloomed tenfold a kind of peace few humans would ever know and losing that serenity meant either acceptance or breakdown. For some trainers, a Marigold Dog ruined their careers as training such an animal sapped their skills in the most glorious way and watching such a dog leave for a new home or profession became a sort of torture on the soul. For others, a Marigold Dog posed a question that would take a lifetime to answer. Tamara’s Marigold Dog would not come into her life until after exhausting a lifetime of listening.

It was Tamara’s sixty-first birthday and like the birthdays before; she spent this one on the shore of her property’s lake. Alone, but content, Tamara watched the loons and listened to the frogs while sipping coffee and eating homemade macarons. When the sun became too hot and the water too attractive to insects, Tamara gathered her things and walked the dirt road home. At the backdoor, she never saw the patchy cardboard box at the front door and she never heard the soft squeaks hidden by a fleece blanket. It was by chance, Tamara thought to go to the front porch and read the many letters sent to her by grateful families who had adopted her assistance dogs. By then the little fawn puppy perched his attention over the rim of his cardboard home and with golden eyes fixed, he watched Tamara find her cushioned seat on the porch and sort through the mail. Already used to strangers and their varying degree of kindness or cruelty, the pup escaped his box and wagged himself silly to Tamara’s feet. When she noticed the underweight pup at her feet, Tamara’s reaction was as it always was; observe. Unlike the dogs before, this pup sat with tail now still and looked up to Tamara for as long as she looked down on him.

Emil gained weight and muscle fast and enthusiastically. A little above Tamara’s waist, Emil’s full size and final structure proved mystifying to Tamara, as she could not pin down his exact ancestry. The grin of a beagle with ears fine as a Chinook’s, and a smooth Boxer coat with some wire to it at the curl of his tail. Strong Rottweiler legs with broad Great Pyrenees feet and ebony pads capable of running fast as a Greyhound, the dog made foot travel easy as breathing. Emil’s abilities spoke volumes as his senses outdid that of Bloodhounds, Basset Hounds, and Labrador Retrievers, and his intelligence multiplied with every training session. What took years to train an average dog, Emil mastered in half the time and once more the innate behaviors most difficult to condition were already present in Emil. He was gentle and never fearful. He led with poise but shifted to follow without being asked. He created games and remembered everything from the blades of grass along the path to his favorite meadow to the eight-hour road trip taking him to the beach.

A dismaying night unfolded itself before Tamara when she awoke with a plea in her heart she had ignored until the weight of it threatened to level her. It was almost time for Emil to leave her. It was almost time for him to go where he could expand the gifts given to him and find those too lost to find themselves. The plea drained Tamara and at its greatest depth she found the hardest truth; Emil would take all of her. He would sweetly carve her soul from her body and gently peddle the good from her heart so that he could multiply it, and it would be most painful and joyful. Emil sensed this pain in Tamara and she knew if she did nothing to settle it, Emil would only return to her again and again despite his responsibilities.

“Emil,” Tamara spoke all those years ago and still remembered the way he perked up.

“You’re going somewhere tomorrow.” Emil’s reaction was the cocking of his head, but he already knew the truth.

“You can’t come back here. No matter what, you can’t come back.” Tamara’s dwindling skill fused together a final time to keep the tears back and for it Emil released a rare whine before insisting he and Tamara play a game. When Emil’s new family came to pick him up the little girl insisted she gift Tamara a marigold flower in dearest thanks for Emil. In the time it took for the flower to wilt, Tamara had concluded that Emil was, in fact, a Marigold Dog, but it would be months after Emil’s departure she would learn what kind of Marigold Dog Emil was.

He was the kind who posed a question and unfortunately for Tamara; she had yet to acquire the cosmic vocabulary to form the question, let alone an answer.

Lately, Tamara would wake up and the first thing she would do is rub the weariness from her hands before spreading her fingers out and examining the palms. How many dogs had she trained? It took looking at the many pictures framed throughout the house to remember, but then her eyes always ended on Emil. The formless question, all these years later bubbled into her mind where she let it abrade and then sooth without answer. It was the afternoon of Tamara’s eighty-first birthday and as a gift to herself she slept in and then grabbing her favorite cane, went down to the lakeside. She waded in the water, drank her coffee, ate her dessert, and then headed home. As she did every birthday of hers since Emil’s departure, Tamara found a book or letter and went to her front porch where she waited.

Tamara remained on the porch until the sound of evening crickets and their noisy neighbors, the frogs and loons, sounded out a farewell to day. Headlights paused the woman as a car circled into her driveway. When a woman aged more by loss than time exited the vehicle, she explained to Tamara who she was and why the dog in her car needed a home. “He fulfilled his duties remarkably. He rescued so many and found those thought lost for good, but I can’t keep him as he reminds me too much of someone I love that is no longer with me.” The woman cracked the car door and carried from it an aged canine with a grey muzzle and whitened feet. Tamara covered her mouth and lost her breath as her returning soul ruptured her chest.

The days passed gracefully with Emil mostly at rest and eating well for a dog missing half his teeth. Catching up with Emil revolved around games where neither the dog nor the human needed to stand much. It was an easy kind of reunion with ear scratches and strolling walks like nothing had changed, but then things did change. Tamara swore the grey around Emil’s face receded to show his true fawn color, and lately when she woke up her hands required less cure to their soreness. The walks got longer, with Emil running at times and Tamara following after. When Emil began waking Tamara up in the morning by jumping on her bed, she responded by insisting they go for a morning swim and it was not long after that Tamara noticed Emil had no grey attached to his face or white around his feet. As for herself, she no longer required a cane and the thought of driving eight hours to the beach was invigorating, not exhausting. It was on one of those road trips with the windows down and the music up, Tamara understood the multifaceted question of the Marigold Dog come home. Was it possible a moment of joy could heal a lifetime of trauma? Yes, but the rich joy could do more than heal, it could expand itself to blanket the past and warm the ever-living future.