Murphy

Murphy is my dog. I should say that she’s our family dog, and while she does acknowledge (even love and appreciate) the other members of the family, she has attached herself to me, and the feeling is mutual. She came to us when Philip, who at 16 was told he could not bring a puppy home from the flea market, did anyway. And so Murphy, named for “Murphy’s Law” (whatever can go wrong will go wrong) has been an integral part of our lives ever since.

After nine years she seems more than a dog. For example, I was sitting on the couch chatting with a friend of mine when Murphy, who was sitting sentinel at the window, found something in the neighborhood to comment on and began to make sounds. My friend said, “She’s almost human, she practically talks.” I don’t know if other dogs make these same types of sounds, but Murphy’s sounds (to project a human interpretation on them) have an emotional valence to them. Over the years I have learned to interpret these sounds to mean various things: “someone is coming; there is someone walking too close to our house; someone is walking with an animal too close to our house; a friend (dog) or enemy (cat, squirrel) is in the yard, so I must go greet (if friend) or frighten away/kill (if enemy) them.” In all of these cases, Murphy must be let outside. She will stand at the window and make these various and sometimes distressing sounds until I say, “Murphy, do you want to go outside?” Then she races me to the back door (still speaking in her doggy way), until I open the door. Then she races out to accomplish whatever it is she thinks she must do.

Murphy is both a joy and a pain in the petute. The petute part occurs when we’ve had a particularly active morning with members of the animal kingdom in my front yard (thus activating the aforementioned noise system and frequent trips to the back door). The joy part comes when I come home and big brown eyes look up at me and her happiness indicator (tail including her whole backside) wiggles with excitement. It also comes when she’s lying on the floor and a warm, soft head flops gently over my feet or when sitting next to me on the couch, she snuggles as closely as possible and puts her head over on my knees.

In spite of her name, Murphy has been one of the best things to go “wrong” in my life.