My Poodle Teacher: What I’ve Learned From Rocky About Accepting Change

When my friend Marge, who’s now pushing 103, asks how we’re “doing” in Paris, I say “some good, some bad” and then add, “But Rocky is really happy here!”

“Good,” says Marge. “You should learn from him.”

She’s right. Anyone who’s spends time around animals knows — and research confirms — that not only do our pets communicate with us, they are often our teachers. Hence, the unexpected popularity of the Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher.

So, why not my Poodle teacher?

Rocky, a caniche nain, as the French call him (“dwarf poodle”), is the youngest of our immediate-family ecosystem: two humans, one 17-month-old dog. We frequently change homes — and cities. Eleven days ago, we began living in a different country as well.

The truth is, everyone is dealing with the unfamiliar and the difficult these days, not just us. Many have it much worse. But we neither planned nor anticipated a move in the midst of the pandemic. And in the harried months before our departure, Rocky — like all young creatures cared for by older, stressed-out humans — continually found new ways to demand our attention.

He hid, chewed up, or peed on anything he couldn’t eat: shoes, emery boards, pens, cardboard boxes. He unrolled the toilet paper, dug out the sheepskin lining of my Uggs slippers, always leaving a trail of masticated lambs wool in his wake. At night, we humans counted how many times a day we wanted to kill him.

Miraculously, we haven’t wanted to kill him since we arrived in Paris.

Admittedly, he had a short bout of jet lag. But who can blame him given the six-hour time difference? At 11 pm, he didn’t think, Hey! Why are they putting me in my crate at 5 pm? Dogs have no concept of time. But when his humans finally woke up at 10 am Paris time, his body knew something was wrong.

So, there we are — me dazed and Rocky raring to go out to pee. I gingerly walk down the dark, unfamiliar stairway, Rocky tugging ahead. Downstairs, I fumble to push the button that opens the first door of our lobby when Rocky decides he can’t wait another second. He squats on the marble tile. I swoop him up, hoping to stop the stream, just as an elegant older Parisian lady enters from the outer lobby. She immediately looks down.

Mortified, I manage the perfunctory “Bonjour, Madame,” followed by a flood of apologies. “Je suis désolée! Je suis désolée! Je suis désolée!” And then I blurt out in French that would make David Sedaris sound like a native speaker, “Je ne parle pas français très bien, mais avez-vous du papier?” (Translation: “I don’t speak French very well, but do you have paper?”)

Seriously, what was I thinking? That a complete stranger, a French woman no less, would give me something to clean up my dog’s pee? Was I hoping for a paper towel she just happened to be carrying, waiting for a hapless American to request it?

Now beyond embarrassed, I repeat my désolée line — again — and run up the stairs to our apartment and bang on our door. My partner, confused at my return and still in PJs, cracks open the door to see me holding Rocky like a sack of potatoes.

“He peed in the lobby,” I say sotto voce. “You have to clean it up!” I clarify in a slightly louder voice, as if I’m speaking to a foreigner. “I’m taking him oooooout!”

Rocky got over his jet lag by the next day. He never needed Advil PM to get to sleep. We weren’t as fortunate.

So what’s his secret? For one, he’s curious and unconditionally excited by our new environment. He doesn’t complain about the rain. (We do.) And he assumes he’s welcome everywhere and doesn’t care if he isn’t. He sniffs, snoops, and scopes out every clump of mud, endlessly fascinated. A psychologist might call Rocky “mindful.” *

That Rocky is also interested in meeting new dogs works in his favor, too. What is a place without its inhabitants? If Rocky and I don’t connect with a compliment of “consequential strangers” in the neighborhood, Paris will never feel like “home.” He is already romping with the dogs of the Champs de Mars, a block from our building. He isn’t worried about his accent, the rules of formal engagement that elude Americans in Paris, or what he’s wearing. He just runs and hopes the others will chase him.

He has challenges. Some dogs are tougher or bigger than his dog-park cronies in Washington, DC, where we last lived. Some only speak French. There are also new smells, new sounds, new footpaths. He was initially hesitant about the thick metal grates on the streets. But he faced his fear and now walks around them. I try to think like him. Nothing is the same; it’s not what I’m used to, but it’s not bad. It’s just different.

Most important, Rocky always wakes up to a new day. He has no past regrets, no future worries. He puts one paw in front of the other and faces whatever’s in his path.

Marge was right: We can learn from him.

*Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. When you do that, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It’s the essence of engagement. And it’s energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. (Ellen Langer, in “Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity,” Harvard Business Review, March 2014)