Monteluco Musings: Toward a Primer in Anti-Genetics

One morning I am going to wake up and find that none of my dogs have ears. Finimondo has inherited Zio Zuzu’s habit of ear-chewing. He is trying to chew off Fenomeno’s ear as we speak. I hear the rubbery gnawing that sounds exactly like that sound I used to get in my ear back in the days I used to chew on Barbie legs. It amazes me that Fenomeno puts up with this, amazes me that the only consequences of this zealous mastication is a slobbery shriveling up of one soggy ear that I trust will dry and un-shrivel as the day goes on. But Finimondo is so aggressive and heedless in his ear chewing, I really do sometimes fear the worst. When Zuzu feasts on Desiree’s ears (and for some reason he only wants his mother’s), he’s certainly more delicate, more of an ear-connoisseur who licks and savors as he nibbles; plus Desiree’s sheer pleasure is undeniable, the way she leans into him, flops on her back, surrenders with eye-rolling, sighs and smiles. Fenomeno does not resist or complain, but he looks at me with wide curious eyes as though wondering: Is this supposed to be happening? Are you sure I’m okay? I think he’s okay, but wonder if the ear-eating gene has gone amok.

One of the great joys of having several generations of dogs is this minute observation of the trickling down of traits, for better and sometimes for worse. Serious dog breeders study pedigrees and like to believe they are masters of eugenics, capable of creating a super-race of animal, desired qualities obviously prevailing over the undesired. In dachshund-breeding, such breeders want a certain head, a certain back, a certain girth of thorax, a certain curve of muzzle, dip of tail, a certain coat. But the interesting thing about conformity breeding is not so much the welcome beauty of the features that conform, as rather the mystery of the parts that don’t. Daniela can go to an international dog show with 600 dachshunds on the bill and know which dogs derive from her dogs because of a quirk in the tail. This quirk is, as far as I know, a neutral trait—neither sought nor avoided—but it mysteriously prevails, much to Daniela’s delight because it’s an inevitable and foolproof sign of the perpetuity of her original animal—a drip in the gene-pool 20 generations ago that keeps radiating outward inexplicably.

Great, great Grandmother Sottosopra, Great Grandmother Usquetandem, Grandmother Zizannia, Great Aunt Tarontola

At present, my personal family of dogs includes three generations, though counting Daniela’s dogs (above and below), we have incarnate, six generations, plus her memory of the fourteen other generations that flit around in heavenly ethers. Of course we celebrate the features that culminated in Zizannia and Sesamo earning their world championships. But it’s the bizarre that hooks our hearts and makes each dog special.

Father Apritesesamo

Finimondo has inherited the stunning head, back, coat, buttocks, tail, overriding beauty of his best-in-breed father, but to my secret joy, his forelegs are pigeon-toed and so he can’t compete. The vet has put him on a regime I can’t always follow: let him go hungry, get skinny, take weight off those legs and maybe they will straighten; don’t walk him on asphalt, on a leash, but let him run free in a grassy field, and maybe those legs will straighten. He’s too beautiful to be pigeon-toed, but to me his pigeon-toes make sense. He’s mine. I’m a pigeon-toed kind of breeder. I live for the quirky. I wouldn’t feel like myself if my dogs weren’t quirky. And how the sweet inward turning gait of my little ear-chewing Finimondo endears him to me! Thank you, thank you God, Life, heaven, the gene-pool—whatever forces came up with Finimondo’s pigeon-toes. I’m off the hook as far as dog shows and future litters-of-champions are concerned. I’m free to let him be and love him in his weirdness.

There’s an ancient man who does a single giro of the Rocca on a three-legged cane every morning who will not believe that Fenomeno is not Zizannia, simply because Fenomeno barks exactly in the tones of his grandmother, and barks insistently, uncontrollably, in a way that made the city issue a kind of order that Daniela never walk her dogs before 8 o’clock. Of course, Zizannia’s barking would be the last trait any of us would have wanted to perpetuate, but what joy it brings me, amid frustration, this imprint of Zizannia, this trait in her that, in my experience, most defined her as Zizannia (a name that means “bearded mischief”) echoing through to me in this owl-featured pup with the fuzzy, funny-colored fur and delicate bone-structure of Evangelina bundled in the sweetness and cuddliness of Desiree.

Mother Evangelina and Zio (uncle) ZuZu

I find great-grandmother Usquetandem’s too close-together eyes in Fenomeno’s gaze and remember Daniela saying once: “It’s those eyes, her eyes, that make her my favorite.” Finimondo’s chocolate color—the brown-rather-than-black nose—come from Desiree surely and Desiree’s father, Ugo; the blue-green eyes, from somewhere else that possibly Daniela can recall. Fenomeno has vestiges of father Sesamo, but nothing concrete, more a ghostly halo around each feature—the muzzle black like Sesamo’s and curved in a certain way, but not exactly Sesamo’s way. He looks a little more like his grandfather Catullus, the Hungarian pup I chose as father for Zuzu and Evangelina in defiance of Daniela and the serious breeders—a long story, not worth relating here, but I mention it to suggest that somewhere in Hungary there exists a strain of other mysteries that may be showing up in the here and now, perhaps in the blueness of Finimondo’s eyes, perhaps in the ear-chewing.

Desiree with her father, Ugo

(he has the right sized head, but I think Desiree's small head is cuter!)

Oh Desiree, of the stunted muzzle, oh Zuzu of the too-soft hair, oh birth-traumatized Evangelina who goes for the guzzler of anyone who interferes with her attachment to my heart-chakra, oh Finimondo of the rabbit-hind legs who leaps on beds, chairs and tables impossibly, oh phenomenal Fenomeno, the leg-heister, the hard to train: you were each made to order to meet my heart’s and life’s purest need—I have no doubt of that. But how oh how can anyone codify a breeding agenda that will prepare for the likes of any of you? Impossible.