an immense(ly adorable) sense of responsibility

by Bibek Ghimire

My mom recently surprised me by getting me/herself/us a puppy. If you had asked her that morning if she wanted a dog, she’d have told you no. I’d been trying to convince her for years that she should get one and I could help tak care of it but to no avail. Somehow though, when she found herself standing beside my cousin and his girlfriend who had just decided to bring home one little pup, she saw his brother trot out and couldn’t resist grabbing him for herself. She called me during their car ride back to her place to surprise me with the news (and boy was I surprised…)

It’s now been four weeks since we welcomed that adorable little cockapoo — now named Kaju (Nepali for Cashew) — into our home and it’s already been quite the journey. As I’d been told by many others who have been through the experience, raising a puppy is a lot of work. But this fact turns out to be one of those lessons in life that you can’t expect to properly understand until you experience it yourself.

Each day with this new teethy bundle of curiosity is filled with incremental steps — or more accurately, leaps — towards falling in love with him. Each time I unfasten his crate’s latch to welcome him to the new day ahead. Each chewy little 4-calorie treat I hand-feed him in my efforts to train him how to be in this world. Each hug and cuddle I give him as he desperately tries to squirm out of my grasp. The love I feel towards him and from him has a depth and purity that I can feel is exquisitely special and worthy of savoring.

Along with this abundance of love, I feel an immense sense of responsibility and duty. I feel acutely aware that this creature’s existence revolves around us, in the specific case of our pup and us but also in the general case of most dogs and the humans that care for them. We’ve co-evolved with dogs for over 30 millennia such that to take on the role of being a dog owner is to take on the responsibility of equipping them to thrive in a world where they are no longer self-sufficent.

From this lens, I’ve found it somewhat shocking how lax the process of bringing Kaju into our lives has been. After rushing back to my mom’s to meet him on the day she brought him home, my type A personality immediately kicked in and I immediately started Googling and watching YouTube videos on questions like “what to do on puppy’s first day home”. I had heard somewhere that a puppy’s first few days, weeks, and months in their new home are the most important so I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to optimize Kaju’s early experiences.

A few days ago, I started reading in more depth about raising a puppy by picking up a book recommended by Reddit’s r/puppy101 subreddit, Puppy Start Right by Kenneth Martin. I’m still working my way through it but a few of my most salient takeaways so far have been:

  • There are fairly specialized methods and principles for training a dog’s behavior and a lot of them are counter-intuitive for humans (e.g. shouting “No!” to dissuade bad behavior is ineffective at best, harmful at worst.)
  • Puppies have various explicit phases of development in the first several months of their lives. For example, they have a “fear period” typically from 8–10 weeks and “traumatic experiences to stimuli that induce fear during this sensitive period may be generalized and produce lifelong aversion responses”.
  • It’s incredibly important to socialize your puppy with other people, dogs, and environments from an early age. Not doing so drastically increases the risk of behavioral problems later on in life.

I was surprised to read these essential (and in some cases, urgent!) pieces of information. But more importantly, I was surprised that I was surprised. It felt wrong that I was learning these things only because I was being a proactive dog owner and reading this book. It felt like I and/or my mom should have been required to read something or take a class before even being allowed to bring Kaju home.

It reminded me of the time I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite, a hike where the last 30 minutes or so involve pulling yourself up a ridiculously steep and slick granite face in a narrow single-file line of dozens of people, using nothing but steel cables installed on either side of you. I’ve never really been fearful as a hiker but that afternoon, I was blown away by how dangerous (albeit breathtaking) of a situation I had found myself in. I remember thinking “How am I allowed to do this without having signed a waiver? Any person in front of me could lose their grip and kick off a domino chain of people falling off this mountain.”

I kind of feel a similar way about bringing Kaju into our lives. I’m shocked by how little we had to prepare for and demonstrate our readiness for the task ahead and I’m having a fear period of my own about making sure we’re doing everything right.

But I guess that’s unavoidable. The best we can do is to stay curious, keep learning, and keep doing what’s best for him every step of the way, especially in these early months. I also know that the love I feel around that little furball is going to make it all worth it.