The Extraordinary Life of Dr. Snuggles

The Extraordinary Life of Dr. Snuggles

A most erudite and learned dachshund.

Dr. Snuggles was a dachshund with a friendly disposition, a rich brown-black coat and big brown eyes. He also had a remarkable gift -he could read. His owners were the Bonheure family that lived in a cheerful, well-tended brownstone in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn adjacent to Prospect Park.

Snuggles was brought into the world of the Bonheures as a puppy. After he was potty trained and house broken, he was left alone for long hours of the day while his owners, a very kind, hardworking man and his wife were out earning their way and his sister, Eloise was at school. The master, Adam, worked as a lawyer in a prominent Manhattan firm dealing in intellectual property. But as is the case of many in this noble profession he was at heart, a creative and philosopher and dreamer. This being the case, he had a splendid library filled with all manner of wondrous books. And just so, it was in these long hours of repose and solitude, that Dr. snuggles, the cheery little dachshund of the Bonheure family, became a most learned and erudite dog.

One day, as a youthful pup, he had ambled into the Bonheure’s library. The shelving was constructed, due to the ample number of volumes possessed by the patriarch of the brownstone, from floor to ceiling. So, in his curiosity as a pup and enjoying the richness of this still very new world, he had moseyed up to the first shelf on ground level and nuzzled the peculiar wall, until a book had flown open on the floor. At first, he did not know what this strange object was. But quickly he realized, owing in due course to some thorough licks and sound sniffs, that it was not food. He glanced more thoroughly at the leafy folds contained within its hard shell. And to his astonishment, he found he could understand the strange symbols before him.

Now, he did not know why or how he could understand such odd little scratches on this thin material. But what he came to know was the marvel of the human intellect and the profundity of the human spirit. In later reflection, once he had come to understand the works of the evolutionists, chief of which was obviously Darwin and so on down the line, he wondered if he had experienced a random mutation. Maybe environmental particulates present in the chemical soup that characterizes the ecology of the planet in late-stage capitalism and hyper modernity enabled his ability to comprehend the symbols of the higher life forms he came to know and love.

Regardless, from the first moment that he realized that he could understand, he was transported in his mind’s eye to far away places or lofty, icy realms of conceptual towers in the sky. It was then he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life pursuing this wonderous accumulation and assimilation of myriad facts & artistic expression.

In fact, it became a running joke in the family that Dr. Snuggles was an avid reader. After several weeks of Eloise (the first of the family to return home on a daily basis) finding Dr. Snuggles with a book open in front of him, in fact sometimes several, and staring at it in stillness as if he was reading, she relayed this at the dinner table with hilarity and wonder. The parents found this idea amusing, of course, and laughed about it, adding some silly quips in the moment. Soon the conversation passed onto other subjects. But, about a month later, Eloise made the same comment - that she had discovered Dr. Snuggles with a different set of books than before. All this was confirmed by the family’s digital security camera.

Indeed Dr. Snuggles had discovered an ingenious way of extracting books from higher shelves by nudging the rolling librarian’s ladder horizontally around the room, scampering up it and demonstrating herculean effort (for a dachshund) by using his paw or snout to send a book of apparent interest crashing to the floor. Then he’d approach it with reverence and appear to read it for several hours. Now, Dr. Snuggles had truly earned his name, as formerly he had been called Mr. Snuggles. The family had in good humor and in deference to his avid and dogged pursuit of knowledge, renamed him with the honorific: Dr. Snuggles. As a happy byproduct, his acumen in snuggling did seem to improve as well.

Despite this happy development, there was once a kerfuffle. As Adam, quite reasonably, seeking to protect his treasured library, had installed gates on the doorways that prevented Dr. Snuggles from entering to avoid any possible damage to the quality of the sometimes rare and expensive books contained therein. But what occurred in response to this seemingly natural prohibition was most unexpected. It was as if someone had trampled on the soul of this poor cylindrical canine.

In the intervening two weeks, before Adam relented and switched tack, Dr. Snuggles was inconsolable. He spent day and night whining and crying inexplicably. Whereas before he had literally lept at the chance to cuddle with any of the Bonheures as they sank into the couch to watch Netflix in the evening, he now could only give them a profoundly forlorn look and would slink off to his little bed in the corner, breathing heavily and with obvious distress. The penultimate expression of Dr. Snuggles’ malady was made manifest by the acute loss of control of his bowels (to his great embarrassment, mind you) indoors. He was a dog supposed to be well beyond such dreadful episodes and he was as much chagrined as his owners were frustrated, driving him deeper into his doggy depression.

This went on for two weeks until Adam, in conversation with Dana and Eloise, decided to rescind his prohibition on the library for Dr. Snuggles. Clearly, beyond all conceivable possibilities, this dachshund of theirs was made a happy pet by having access to this room. The converse was abundantly apparent. So, in order to address his concern for the continence of his books, Adam installed a padded carpet in the library, that in addition to an aesthetic of coziness, also provided for the soft landing of his prized possessions. Dr. Snuggles’ jovial and ebullient disposition was quickly restored thereafter.

And from the outside, life returned to normal for the Bonheure family and many years passed. Dr. Snuggles, with his charming name and winning disposition, was always welcoming and a favorite of house guests. He went on car rides, on family vacations and guarded the domains of the brownstone with every fiber of his being from nosy squirrels or uncouth Amazon delivery drivers. Birthdays, weddings, holidays, seasons, anniversaries and the like passed in revolving succession. With whirling speed but ever punctuated with a cozy evening of snuggles, the pell-mell of modern life between the Bonheures and their beloved dachshund passed in harmony.

Yet, as is our misfortune among men and canine alike, a tension arose. Dr. Snuggles’ command of the various disciplines of human knowledge grew as the years passed. Soon enough he had read every book in the grand library that he was lucky to inhabit. Then a year or two after that, he had read many books twice and some of his favorites three or four times.

But alas, he could not share his remarkable knowledge of Heinrich Heine’s romantic epics or the mysteries of Quantum Mechanics or the symbolic significance of the temple of Angor Wat with his owners. To them he was simply a cheerful, silly, peculiar dachshund. He could not communicate with his humans, no matter how hard he tried, the level of sophistication and depth of his accumulated understanding.

In the early days, after he had first garnered enough time reading and felt he could speak to the psychological ebbs and flows of the household that were echoed in many great works, commonly known as the human condition, he had hopped onto the chest of Adam or Dana as they watched the evening news or cuddled in Eloise’s lap as she did homework, and looked into their eyes - longingly, achingly – attempting to express to them the various reflections and observations he had of their family life.

He felt assured if he were able to relay these insights, which would then naturally be incorporated into his family’s mental models of themselves and reality, they would beget much serenity and happiness due to their improved understanding of the origins of this or that malady that beset them in day to day life. Whether it was the Freudian Oedipal complex or the prescient observations of Ernst Junger’s The Worker on the woes of a technocratic global elite that had become enslaved by technology and the false god efficiency, Dr. Snuggles had real insight into the struggles that his beloved humans experienced. At some point in his mid-life he grew a deep sense of despondency and his owners noticed the change in their pet, a change that he had only exhibited once in his life before.

Now, please do not misunderstand Dr. Snuggles. He loved his role as the family pet. He was lavished with belly rubs, treats and rubber toys. Walks with his family around Prospect Park, the neighborhood and local dog park were extravagant in their wonders. Sniffing the anuses and genitals of the many neighborhood dogs was a never ceasing feast of resplendent and pungent curiosities. The squirrels of Prospect Park could be chased to no end and the delight in this instinctual pursuit was ever fresh, like water from a mountain stream.

But it was when he was at home with his owners, in the moments of their tender human frailties; sadness, anger, jealousy, and the like, that he became most distraught because he could not bring to bear the greatness of humanity’s finest minds and souls for their edification. Who could forget Lev Tolstoy’s tender admissions of suicidality at the height of his fame in his work named after the sacrament? Was not St. Augustine’s journey from Manichean devotee to pastoral great man and bishop a tale to marvel at? Could these stories of human greatness and God’s grace not be of use to his humans, whom he loved so dearly, when they raged and lamented at the state of their lives?

Like when Eloise was thirteen and her boyfriend Ricky had dumped her for her best friend Sarah and had posted a picture of them kissing on Facebook and swapped his relationship status from dating Eloise to Sarah to notify her of this relational decision? Eloise had sat up all night crying. Dr. Snuggles earned his namesake then and stayed up with her, sometimes being held and rocked like a teddy bear, soaking up her tears, sometimes nudging her with his nose when she rolled over into a fetal position and cried too long. If only he could convey to her the ephemeral nature of human bonds in youth, giving her hope that this hurt now would someday crystallize into a mature willingness to be vulnerable combined with a shrewdness honed to selecting a good man to honor that loving, supreme courage. But he could only whine, trying to show the depth of his empathy and solidarity in her plight and by rubbing his wet nose against the back of her hand, which he knew his humans called being tickled and seemingly always brought a smile to their faces.

And what of the time when Adam and Dana fought over the options for treatment when it was discovered Adam had prostate cancer? If only he could remind them of the therapeutic agreement needed to bring the divine word into play amongst two people who loved each other amidst the negotiation of fraught relations, as explicated by Dr. Carl Rogers. Maybe then that night wouldn’t have ended in frustrated sighs and Adam sleeping on the couch, but instead some reconciliation and accord facing the uncertainty and terror of death.

Was there not more that he could offer? How could he be cursed with such an aptitude in acquiring the most delightful and soothing gems of human knowledge yet simultaneously be robbed of the language necessary to communicate it? It seemed a great cosmic joke that he, the most trusted being of the family, who was privy to more of the tender intimacies of each member of the family than they were often able or willing to communicate between each other. Like a Freud or a Jung or any great armchair observer of the human condition, he had reems of data concerning his family and better yet, the intellectual theory born out in the veracity of experience to render some aid. But alas, such was not meant to be.

He wrestled with this paradox for some time. At moments feeling like Job, cursed and at the mercy of some strange wager between God and Satan. The inability to communicate weighed upon him like a plague.

And then one day, after much inner turmoil – in fact in the midst of reading Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus, Eloise (then 17) burst through the door of the brownstone, makeup streaked and crying. She fell onto the couch in a heap and louder sobs proceeded to issue forth, shaking her whole being.

Immediately Dr. Snuggles leapt into action. Circling around her covered head on the couch, he gently but firmly wedged his snout through her arms and onto the side of her face. Suddenly, the deluge of tears turned to a trickle and Eloise looked into Dr. Snuggles’ brown, searching eyes. For a moment, the clouds shrouding her soul seemed to clear and she smiled, just barely perceptible, and wrapped Dr. Snuggles in her arms. He stayed with her like that the rest of the afternoon, as she cried softly. About what, he did not know.

Then, about thirty minutes before her parents came home, Eloise got up. But before she did, she leaned over and planted a kiss on Dr. Snuggles’ head and rubbed his tummy. He wagged his tail and could see in her eyes she would be ok as she smiled at him. This time a full one.

After that moment, the paradox of language, even when it bothered him, never caused loss of hope. He realized that despite his massive accumulation of knowledge, his gift of loving and of being loved remained ever the same. And so, when the time came for Dr. Snuggles, as it must for us all, he died a happy, beloved and loving dachshund.