Cooper the therapy dog: a sad story

A couple things you should know about me right up front: I love dogs and because of my current living situation I can't have my own dog.  Also important, I guess, is that I've been feeling kind of stressed lately with trying to find a new job and that I once had a little black and white Shih Tzu named Frank who I loved with all my heart and all the days of my life until he died 6 years ago.

Enter Cooper, the therapy dog.  So recently at work they advertised that at the library along with books and periodicals, you could check out Cooper, a little black and white Shih Tzu puppy, for 30 minutes of therapeutic play time.  You just go to the Countway circulation desk (Countway is the Harvard Medical School Library which is adjacent to my work on the medical campus) and give them your card and they give you 30 minutes of dog love.  I went the day I found out about it.

When I got to the library I was told that "Monsieur Le Coop" was available and I was taken back to a little couch with doggy gear, a miniature tennis ball, and Cooper.  First impressions of Cooper were: this is not a puppy (his black hair was starting to gray as Frank's had in the twilight years), he could use a bath, and it wouldn't hurt him to lose a few pounds.  Second impressions: who am I to judge.  I greeted Cooper with as much enthusiastic puppy love as I could, though, unfortunately for both of us, I quickly found that the library setting is not conducive to my usual high pitched puppy coo.  I tried to make up for it with enthusiastic hand motions and quick breathy inhales, but Cooper was not impressed.  He just kind of slumped on the ground like I had interrupted a much needed afternoon nap or had just fed him dog chow laced with a tranquilizer.  Still optimistic, I sat Cooper next to me on the couch and tried some old tried and true Frank methods to get him interested in his mini tennis ball and other toys (picture me smooshing them repeatedly into Cooper's face and then pulling away quickly), but to no avail.  He just looked at them half heartedly and then turned away as if to say "how long do we have to do this?"

Somewhere around this time Cooper began to get a little anxious and started creeping perilously closer to the edge of the couch (something Andrew and I used to call the "danger zone" with Frank), as if he wanted to be anywhere but next to me.  Trying to deceive myself into believing he was playing some kind of game I would shake my head amiably and scoot him closer, only for him to start slowly inching away again.  I started to feel anxious myself--what would the people at the circulation desk think if Cooper jumped ship and started wandering around in the stacks.  They'd come back and I'd be sitting there on the couch by myself, pretending like I'm having too much fun with the mini tennis ball to notice Cooper's absence.  Thirty minutes started to look like a lifetime.

Cut to two minutes later: Cooper is on the floor continuing to inch further and further away from me and I'm on the couch trying to weigh 21 more minutes of Cooper anxiety versus admitting defeat and turning him in early.  Suddenly, from around the corner, two high pitched (total lack of library imposed inhibitions) girl voices asked if they could see the "puppy".  The moment they spoke Cooper's ears perked up, his tail waggled (needless to say I'd been wondering if his tail still worked) and he jumped to his feet with the jaunty puppy-ness of years of yore.  I admitted defeat and relinquished my reservation.

The rest of the day I felt pretty depressed.  It's one thing to have unemployment looming on the not-so-distant horizon, but it's quite another to be rejected by a puppy whose only job in the world is to like people and who looks exactly like your dead dog who yes you still dream about and still cry over when watching stupid animal-lover movies like Marley and Me and Homeward Bound.  So today when I saw a reminder in my inbox for the new Countway therapy puppy I just shook my head.  Oh Le Coop.  Tu ne m'aimais pas.  Tu voulais uniquement jouer avec mon coeur.