Before I took possession of this new puppy, I spent a weekend in Seattle with my boyfriend, who arrived clutching Sondra Gotlieb's story about her puppy shopping, and he had underlined some passages. Jamie believes Tig is so spoiled that he is like a Roman emperor near the very end of the Empire, so indulged, his every desire granted before he even feels a whisper of said desire, that he is detached from the fact that he is a dog or even human, more like a god, and as such is thoroughly neurotic, even closet psychotic. During the weekend, at odd moments, therefore, he would unfold the story and start reading these passages. " 'The two of you couldn't handle a half a Jack Russell between you,' said a friend" he'd quote. Or, "with a Jack Russell both the puppy and the owner must be subjected to strict discipline." Finally I was driven to opine that the woman was quite clearly a bloody fool. "She is not!" he said (neither of us have met Sondra). "She is a highly intelligent, talented and sensitive woman!"

(Copyright National Post 2001)

SALTSPRING ISLAND - I've been given, recently, fresh insight into the female id. So all you gals who think that girls are by nature, better and nicer, gather round.

My four-year-old Jack Russell, Tiggy, is in the throes of a clinical depression and the reason is Siouxie, five months old, and cute enough to make old men in the video store line up to cuddle her.

Now Tig has been king of my heart for four years, and his reign has been exclusive. Friends can come and go, as far as Tig is concerned, he likes them all and he likes (beyond the odd episode of mournful howling) to see them go. He is a raving beauty and is, since winning "Best of Opposite Sex" in Connecticut when he was a puppy, acutely aware of it. He is accustomed to the obeisances of middle-aged women, accustomed, hell, addicted. If, during the day we have not gone down to the village in order for him to receive his admirers, the howling starts. Wherever we go, many more people know his name than mine. "TIGGY!!!!!" cry a busload of schoolchildren on the ferry, and I am once again, dragged into the centre of a crowd, while Tiggy preens and pouts.

Several of my girlfriends have Tig's photo in their respective offices. This is because he has a way, if he likes you, of placing his paws around your neck and kissing you with the ardour of a 16- year-old boy, forceful, passionate, unstoppable. I have seen grown women's eyes prick with tears, remembering perhaps when a human kissed them with such unrestrained joy. Tig is an old-fashioned, velvet smoking jacket, embroidered Tricker's slippers, kind of playboy, er dog. He is acutely sensitive to pain. He isn't very interested in food (has to watch his waistline). He sleeps on a sheepskin, on a campaign bed from the Franco-Prussian war, and some mornings I come into the sitting room to find he has piled his stuffed animals and several down cushions around him. "How's Tig," asks my mother on his phone. "Oh, he's working on his comfort," I invariably reply.

Before I took possession of this new puppy, I spent a weekend in Seattle with my boyfriend, who arrived clutching Sondra Gotlieb's story about her puppy shopping, and he had underlined some passages. Jamie believes Tig is so spoiled that he is like a Roman emperor near the very end of the Empire, so indulged, his every desire granted before he even feels a whisper of said desire, that he is detached from the fact that he is a dog or even human, more like a god, and as such is thoroughly neurotic, even closet psychotic. During the weekend, at odd moments, therefore, he would unfold the story and start reading these passages. " 'The two of you couldn't handle a half a Jack Russell between you,' said a friend" he'd quote. Or, "with a Jack Russell both the puppy and the owner must be subjected to strict discipline." Finally I was driven to opine that the woman was quite clearly a bloody fool. "She is not!" he said (neither of us have met Sondra). "She is a highly intelligent, talented and sensitive woman!"

You see I don't believe in training dogs. All that sit, lie down, stay, all that training with liver snaps -- damned silly, I think. Dogs need to understand three things. No! is one. Come here! is another. And Stay! is the third. Anything else is humiliating to both. The only way to train dogs is to teach them that you are an epic source of fun, therefore must be obeyed on the grounds of self- interest alone. It's worked for me anyway, all my dogs have been slavish, with fully developed personalities. The marriage therefore, would be a snap.

But then my daughter called on Siouxie's stopover in Montreal to say that she was prettier than Tig. Oh dear oh dear oh dear, I thought. And when this imp with the white fur sticking straight up, the soft brown ears, and the ink black eyes emerged from her two- day trip in a crate, without a whisper of stiffness or fear or any effect at all, I thought Tiggy is not going to like this at all. This is not the soft-as-dust sweetheart companion that he needs. This is the devil in disguise.

Siouxie does not feel any pain. She earned her name after leaping into a steaming hot bath, when my back was turned, and with a series of little yelps, leapt out and dashed around excited by this interesting burning sensation. And she is piggy, she'll eat the glue right out of book bindings. She soaks up all the attention, takes Tig's favourite toys right out of his mouth, sleeps on his sheepskin, shoves him out of the way and eats his lunch, literally and figuratively.

I have been, therefore, the repository of many long soulful stares through narrowed measuring eyes. Tig has 30 different ways of registering extreme disapproval and we run through them all at least once a day. He is noble, he says. He is forbearing, he says. He understands that sometimes I make mistakes, he says. Human servants do from time to time. It's all right, just get her out of my house. So this is what I did. I spent the weekend in bed with the flu, and then, only getting up to make risotto, and share it around (dogs love risotto). And on Monday, we went to town, bought some wine gums, and drove around the island, thoughtfully chewing, and thinking about the future of Canada. And all hopped up on sugar we came home and had a good old rambunctious play in the meadow, and Tig let her pin him to the ground and try to tear his throat out a dozen times. And then I fed them. She ate his lunch. And, then this odd mixture of male vanity and resignation, and the demon id-ette fell asleep on my bed on top of each other. Halfway to being in love. Am I a dog wrangler or what?