Outdoors/Adventure

When Scrooge becomes a dog lover, the holidays get festive

This year I bought holiday stockings for the dogs and hung them near the woodstove. It’s something new for me to add to the long list of things I did not imagine I would ever do. Like let a dog sleep on the bed.

It’s not like I “let” them. Although sometimes they let me.

There was a time when I did not know what it meant to hang stockings by the chimney with care. Back then, I wondered who was carelessly hanging stockings. It became clear to me only after I fell off a barstool while attempting to staple eight human-foot-shaped bags to a railing this year.

Since childhood, whenever asked to explain something that happened, I begin with the earliest related event. When my mother would ask why I was fighting with my sister, I would inhale deeply and she would interrupt, “Start with today and not that ‘I was born a very small child’ stuff.”

The details of how I came to fall off a barstool began long before I was born a very small child.

In a story of unknown origin, date or accuracy, a poor man in a village had three daughters who left their recently laundered stockings to dry by the fire. That night, a chimney-traveling man named Saint Nicholas visited the house and filled the stockings with gold.

Fast forward at least 100 years to when I purchased eight red stockings big enough to fit a giant so I could put dog treats and toys in them. Not only did I hang the stockings without care, there were creatures stirring all over the house.

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It’s difficult to accomplish any task with a houseful of sporting-breed dogs before they’ve gone on their daily walkie. I also did not want to become the person who would use baby talk in regard to dogs. That was another rule broken long before I was knockied off my blockie.

In fairness to myself, I do not replace “woof” for the word “love,” and my baby talk remains as grammatically correct as possible (it’s “I am cute,” not “I is cute”). Somehow, “walkie” entered my vocabulary, and I can’t seem to extricate it.

I know they are hunting dogs. They just is very cute.

And, somehow, my non-holiday-loving heart had me buying the entire supply of sale stockings at the grocery store. The human heart is mysterious.

I do not know what to say about my newfound festivity to my human family members, who host many holiday events I do not attend. It’s been several years since anyone invited me to a gift exchange. I’ve never had the holiday spirit. But, I have gone to the dogs.

So, what to put in the stockings?

Steve suggested that if we were to go by what they treasured most in the yard, it might be a frozen … “No,” I interrupted. They were not going to get the proverbial lump of coal.

If I am going to entertain the notion that a man comes down the chimney with a beard still as white as snow to fill socks for my dogs, who don’t wear socks and can barely follow one-word commands and so will therefore not understand any of this, I know I must care for them a great deal.

That’s all that matters. The funny ways we show how we care, the physical injury we incur hanging lights or hauling trees into the house, don’t have to make sense. It’s perhaps why animals are so curious about humans — what are these funny creatures up to next?

Why are they covered in sparkling clothes, dancing around, singing, and always coming up with so many complicated celebrations?

I wonder about that, too. I was never going to do it. I got into hunting to experience a deeper connection to the outdoors and the realities of life on this planet — far away from holiday cheer.

I got a Labrador to retrieve ducks, not hog the recliner and ransack the garbage. After the first few setters joined the family with the stated purpose of finding and pointing birds, I got lost in the joy of having them around, and the dogs soon outnumbered the humans. Reason abandoned me.

Now, we have as many bird dogs as Santa has reindeer, and they don’t all hunt, much less haul a sled. Instead, they cause a series of events that led to my becoming a nearly crippled dog mom.

If there was a collective noun for the number of dogs I have, it might be a “celebration” of sporting dogs.

Some might only have a reasonable number of hunting dogs and keep them in a kennel or the yard, never allowing them in the house. Yet perhaps more of us than anyone knows are like my friend who got stockings for her wild rescue rabbits or the clerk who rang up my pile of dog toys.

“It’s harder to keep toys hidden from the dogs than the kids,” she said.

It’s true. Kids can’t sniff out a long-sitting grouse or a stuffed porcupine in a Santa hat like a dog.

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“I hide them in the chest freezer,” I admit and advise.

“Good idea,” she said.

I nodded, even though I doubted my logic, and said, maybe for the first time, “Merry Christmas.”

Christine Cunningham is a lifelong Alaskan and avid shooter who lives in Kenai.

Christine Cunningham

Christine Cunningham of Kenai is a lifetime Alaskan and avid hunter. She's the author, with Steve Meyer, of "The Land We Share: A love affair told in hunting stories."

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