My Dog Would Like A Word
by Zen Ren
Recently my friend Eileen, a researcher, interviewed me about language learning. I told her I was studying Portuguese because my partner, Zé, is from Portugal. But the truth is, I only speak Portuguese to my dog, Lex.
A decade ago in Sintra, Zé plucked the quietest puppy from a cardboard box and affixed a satin bow to him. Lex was silent all the way to the Christmas tree, then dropped the act and never again gave anyone a moment’s peace. In Portuguese, “petting” translates to “making festivities.” True to his heritage, Lex rejoices at everyone with leaping paws and yelps. He barks when our phones reflect shards of light. He whines when Zé begins stirring in the morning. And if you rub his armpit at just the right depth, he’ll give you a deep, tectonic grumble.
I address him in the formal você and ask him if he feels saudade for sardines on toast or crumbs of Christmas chestnuts pilfered from cobblestone streets.
Although he recognizes the tones of his native language, he doesn’t respond to me. But he doesn’t have to–the people in my life have always lent him their voices. Whenever my boisterous friend visits, Lex joyously rips across the house to barrel into her while she shouts: “Well hello–I’m the best boy–I’ve never done anything wrong–please feed me–I smell your apple!” Her hand forced, she pays tribute with generous slices. But in the tranquil voice of Zé’s best friend Mel, Lex becomes placid against worldly demands. The plush hills of her Alabama accent always loosen his stubbornness into serenity: shoot, I ain’t coming inside, I’m gettin’ my tan on.
Once a year, Zé’s mom visits from Lisbon and declares in sentimental Portuguese how fine Lex has grown. Only she can evoke his deepest nostalgic essence that dreams of sailing to the homeland along a swift caravel. With her help, he responds to me in the familiar tu.
For a long time, the only person who never offered up their voice was my own mom. When she grew up in rural China in the 70’s, dogs often ran wild and seemed like wolves to her. Lex’s eagerness felt predatory, unpredictable. “He’s so loud. Why do you obsess over him so much?” she asked as she shrank away from his snout.
Somehow, it was her alone whose personal space Lex respected. Whenever she visited, he circled her with urgent, stifled hops. I want to know you, he seemed to beg.
I wondered what it would take to get her to recognize who he was.
***
What inspires this human desire to give our voices to pets? The linguist Deborah Tannen says ventriloquizing them allows us to do all sorts of things, from resolving conflicts to developing a family identity. Some people do it to allow beloved pets to share their thoughts in human activities. When I asked my friends, one said, “I only make Lex whine about getting table scraps because it entertains you so much.” I considered my own 5pm ritual: when Zé notices me and Lex peering into his office in the hopes he’s done with work, he vocalizes our shared impatience with the voice of a rabble-rousing cartoon character. When I voice Lex, he’s a petulant schoolchild demanding a snack or a walk (human me makes similar entreaties). I have no idea where I came up with this, but I continue it because it makes Zé laugh.
My friend Eileen’s theory about how a pet voice comes to exist struck me: “It only becomes apparent once a person talks with another person.” I was reminded that the one voice I consider Lex’s “true neutral” is the first one he was ever gifted. It’s immortalized in a flip phone video from 2012: him as a puppy wrestling a stuffed Gumby, Zé and Mel goading him on, a fireplace crackling away. They coo over him together. Mel, knowing Zé has survived a tough December, voices Lex with increasingly silly mannerisms; Zé adds to it, they smile. Today, Zé’s rendition of Lex weaves in those same quotes and Mel’s gentle cadence.
That current of love flowed from her to Lex, to Zé, to Lex again, and then finally to me: a chorus that sang over a decade and across an ocean to make us a family.
Granting a pet a voice has always been such a tender gift.
So it surprised us all when my mom finally added her own voice to Lex’s chorus.
***
Recently, my mom’s weekend visit unexpectedly ballooned to two weeks when my dad tested positive for COVID back home. She promptly closed off her room from Lex, set up a workstation at the dining table, and conducted my kitchen into the familiar orchestral notes of dumplings hissing in hot oil. I berated her for working when she should be relaxing. She berated me back for not letting her cook me my favorite foods.
I remembered a story she told me when I was nine: “When I was your age, my family couldn’t afford meat except on the big festivals. One time we got to eat pork, my dad snatched a scrap out of my chopsticks and put it in my brother’s bowl. All I wanted was to steal it back.” She had casually relayed this trauma while ladling the fattiest ribs onto my rice.
The hunger pangs of that memory shot into me. I let her cook.
Lex found it mysterious that someone besides me was in the kitchen. He tracked her around with the diligence of a detective. My mom regarded him nervously, only relaxing when he gave her space. The first time she accidentally dropped some rice, she was startled by how swiftly he descended upon it, but joked how convenient it was that she didn’t have to sweep.
Sensing a boon, Lex began to devote himself to her side whenever she cooked. My mom began to drop more grains of rice, testing his acuity. At dinner one time, he draped a careful paw over her knee to prove how well-behaved he was.
“What does he mean by that?” my mom asked me.
“He’s making festivities with you,” I answered.
She asked me what Chinese ingredients were safe for dogs, then omitted alliums from her dishes. She tore apart buns that she typically only made on holidays, and gave them to Lex with quick, nervous gestures. She was still wary of his hunger. She would always be wary of hunger.
I watched these two immigrants figure out each other’s fears and desires and adapt to them using their own languages. By the end of the week she braved petting him on his cheek, fingers so close to his teeth. They cuddled on the couch while she watched dramas on her phone. She praised him in Mandarin. He avoided licking her face, a gesture he realized made her anxious, and simply burrowed deeper into her side.
On the twelfth day of her visit, my dad tested negative, and my mom packed her bags. She lamented that she would no longer get to offer Lex the choice cuts of meals. Then she saw him prowling around her leftover omelet. That’s when I saw it strike her: that irresistible resonance of a shared feeling, a bottomless hunger that demanded to have a voice.
She laughed, and called him a rotten egg. The ultimate Chinese term of affection.
Then she leaned over to whisper to me, and for the first time, gifted him a voice of Mandarin:
我就拿一点.
It’s mine to steal.
***
Now my mom texts me for updates about Lex, frequently forgetting to ask about me or Zé. But I’m happy with this arrangement, and snap many pictures of our furry ambassador. The harshness of the camera always highlights the first grays sprouting on his chin. I scratch them and tell him it means he’s a distinguished gentleman.
It’s hard not to think about how time affects us in a fundamentally different way. I read once that to dogs, we’re elven myths, ageless from their beginnings to their ends.
I will never be ready for the day he becomes just pictures. But now I’m comforted that his voice would live on within the voices of others. So many forms of love compel us to transform our pets through ourselves: the magic of making someone laugh, the excitement of observing your own truth through them, the deep need to speak to what we share.
I realize now what makes it so special isn’t just the fact we give him our voices, but also that we personalize them in those moments of connection with other people. Every time someone recognizes a shared feeling in him, we’re compelled to tap into the tuning fork of his body, whose melody we hope resonates into others. Zé’s lighthearted comments–shaped by Mel’s Alabama intonations–calm me on stressful days. My mom reminds us that Lex is part of a Chinese family by voicing him in a sprightly Mandarin that flaunts his naughtiness. Lex knows tão lindo, good boy, 真乖. He wags his tail every time he recognizes himself in the words of other people.
So many people I care about have granted him the shape of love in their own voices.
Now the love from their voices will always take the shape of him.
Sources:
https://www.thecut.com/2019/08/let-me-tell-you-about-my-pet-patricia-lockwood-miette.html
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3704_1?cookieSet=1
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/12/why-do-people-make-voices-their-pets/603718/