FOR THE LOVE OF IT
Alright Dog People, I Get It! RILEY IS A one-year-old, medium-sized jet black standard poodle with a little white tuxedo stripe on his chest and that lanky adolescent way about him. And he’s ours. Well, actually, he’s our oldest son’s. COVID had the opposite impact on our son’s job than it had for many people. He was called into the office to cover for coworkers stuck working from home with school-aged kids. So, Riley came to stay with us for what was going to be a few weeks until schools re-opened last year, but that plan never happened. Riley is now a permanent resident in our home. As the weeks went on, my wife and I felt latent parenting skills awakening in us. I tricked out the garage with a kennel large enough to raise a calf, and she assembled a set of shelves for dog food, treats, toys, and harnesses—not unlike the set-up in the baby room that each of our three kids rotated through. These days, we talk about him, we laugh, we discuss his future, and we think hard about dog-sitting options. What I didn’t know about dog-people is that they are actually people-people. Through the most frustrating days of COVID, Riley needed to be let out, and it was those long outdoor walks in our new neighborhood that kept me sane, introduced me to our new neighbors, pushed smiles around, created spontaneous conversations, and injected joy into what felt at times like a joyless world. We’re doing our best raising Riley. We really don’t know what we’re doing, but guess-and-check techniques that worked on our kids seem to be working pretty well on him, so we’ll stick with that plan for now. When all else fails, we just smile, nuzzle into his hypoallergenic sort of smelly furry neck, rub his ears, roll him over, scratch his belly until that leg starts kicking, and look forward to meeting more and more of our neighbors. Riley is love to me. A different kind than people-to-people love, but a catalyst to it that I never saw before. I get it now.
TOM HOBAN is a proud father of two UP grads and currently serves as a trustee on UP’s Board of Regents.
FALL 2021
49
