When we all go outside together for an evening walk (me, Mom, Cricket and Ellie), Ellie has taken it as her job to escort her grandma. She won’t leave the apartment until Grandma is with her, and she won’t go down the stairs until Grandma takes the first step, and often, unless she really, really has to poop, she’ll walk next to her Grandma at a leisurely pace, while Cricket drags me up ahead. It’s a lot of pressure for Ellie’s small shoulders, but she seems to have accepted her role as “the good one.” She really had no choice, though, with Cricket as her sister.
Ellie comes when she’s called, even when she’s busy chasing a squirrel (she came to us like this, that’s why we kept her original name instead of choosing another insect to name her after). And she will give up on a barking campaign (for food, attention, or outings) as soon as she realizes that it’s not helping her get what she wants, whereas Cricket will shriek endlessly no matter how little response she gets, and no matter how little she actually needs whatever she’s begging for.
Ellie will gladly eat kibble for breakfast, as long as there’s something tasty sprinkled on top to get her started, whereas Cricket will eat off the cheese, from both bowls if possible, and leave the kibble behind (Cricket will finally eat the kibble in the middle of the night, when she thinks no one notices, but we can hear her tags hitting the bowl. Shh.).
Ellie tolerates me wiping off her eye goop on a daily basis, as long as she then gets head scratchies and a back massage, whereas Cricket will growl and bite if I go anywhere near her eyes (to be fair, Cricket’s eye goop is much more like concrete than Ellie’s softer goop).
Ellie was a breeding dog for the first four and a half years of her life, and once she got spayed she was thrilled to be done with all of that. So when Kevin, the mini-Golden Doodle, is out, and Cricket hops over to him like a baby goat, Ellie speed walks back to our front door and waits to be let back inside. I think Kevin’s enthusiasm and energy and curiosity freak her out, even though he’s a much nicer and more empathetic dog than Cricket would ever want to be.
Cricket’s favorite activity, aside from punching Kevin or barking at Grandma, is sniffing the grass (Mom recently found out that Cockapoos in particular need to do a lot of sniffing, for the intellectual stimulation). And Ellie, sweet as she is, has really tried to get interested in sniffing, for her sister’s sake, but it’s just not her thing. She prefers to chase cats, zoom around the yard in figure eights, and then sit and rest with her people until it’s time to go back inside and sleep. Or eat.
There are times when I worry that Ellie might be missing out on things because she’s so careful to be a good girl, and to please her people, and especially to avoid annoying Cricket. And I worry that having Cricket as her sister has kept her in second place, as the easy one and the good one and the sweet one, and never as the squeaky wheel that gets all of the grease.
On the other hand, maybe this is who she really is. She loves to stretch out in her own space and rest; she loves to eat; she loves to run; she’s shy around other dogs and people, but has learned how to share space with Cricket and even to cuddle with her people a little bit.
In fact, Cricket’s the one who taught Ellie how to bark for what she wants, and to try new foods, and to run, and to cuddle. Cricket, who can be a terror, and standoffish, and stubborn, has now made a safe home for two rescued breeding mamas (Miss Butterfly was her first), teaching them how to be dogs, and how to lean on their humans, and how to enjoy snacks and scratchies and always ask for more. Not a bad record for such a curmudgeon. I think Miss Ellie would even agree with me about that, though she’d throw in some side eye too, because Cricket has taught her the joys of sarcasm on top of everything else.
Oh wait, that might have been me.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 