Schatz

(or, sweethearts)

When my parents separated, my mother, younger sister, and I moved into her father’s house in Rindge, New Hampshire, about half an hour from the Massachusetts border.

My grandfather had a German Shepherd named Schatz, which I later learned means “sweetheart.” To my nine-year-old ears, though, the name meant something else entirely. It sounded sharp. Violent. Like something that pierces skin. Like a shot.

Her bark was deafening. Whenever the house was empty, Schatz was chained inside the open garage, where she lunged, growled, and barked from the moment she was clipped in. The chain gave her enough room to sit in the shade or station herself at the top of the long paved driveway. Her stance felt like a dare.

I was certain that if given the chance, she would eat me.

Which is why it felt especially cruel whenever I was the one asked to unclip her when we got home.

I do not remember protesting. I remember freezing. Standing there, staring at this loud, furious “sweetheart,” trying to calculate whether she would go for my arm first or something more ambitious.

Somehow, a few times, I managed it. I got close enough to unhook the chain, and she would tear off, either toward the yard to check on the chickens or down into the finished basement by the wood stove.

From this distance, the details of that house sound charming. The chickens. The garage. The country quiet. But Schatz swallowed most of the peace I could have found there.

For years after, dogs felt to me like creatures best admired from a distance, preferably by someone else.

The child I was would never have believed that by my mid-forties I would live with three big, loud dogs and love them so completely that I call them babies. To most people, they read as intimidating. To me, they are family.

That change matters more than I usually let it.

Too often, I look at the visible messes of my life and use them as evidence that I am still the same person I have always been. Still disorganized. Still caught in old patterns wearing slightly different clothes.

And then I remember this: I used to be terrified to unclip one dog from a chain.

Now I share my home, and my heart, with three of them.

Of course, I’ve changed.

Hopefully, I’ll never stop.

They don’t look so intimidating when they’re in a puppy pile, but the mailman definitely doesn’t find them to be this angelic.