Bravo for Brin

Dan and I are married just over a year. We live in a one-bedroom apartment in Medford, NJ. He’s working extra hard to prepare a tenant house on the farm for us to move into. Once we do, we figure it’s as good a time as any to expand our little family.

Between my rereading Jane Eyre and Dan’s fascination with Lewis and Clark, we grow attached to the idea of having our own Pilot or Seaman and spend hours using my recently acquired library card researching the Newfoundland breed of dog. I romanticize these gentle giants, dreaming of having such a noble animal at my side in my new role of cranberry bog bride. Dan is all for such a manly beast. While scouring ads in our local newspaper, he comes across a breeder of “dry mouthed Newfies” in Browns Mills, only half-an-hour from where we live.

We have so few possessions, moving out of the apartment won’t take much packing effort. The day before our lease expires, we take a drive to meet some puppies. Both the dame and sire live with the breeder. While I am captivated by little bear-cub-like puppies plodding around, Dan checks out the temperament of the parents. I fall more and more in love with a fluffy black ball of a girl. Dan watches her with her siblings, then plays with her himself, and we are done. I should say done-for!

Once back at our apartment she makes a mess all over my kitchen floor with her water bowl, then proceeds to fall asleep with her head right in it. We can’t wait to show off our water-loving dog at the farm. I examine her enormous paws; they really have webbed toes. She’ll be an excellent swimmer; I just know it.

Months later, we’re all moved into the little shoebox house and settled. Our roly-poly black ball of fluff gains about 2 pounds a week, and is now half my weight. She doesn’t know her size and leans on me when I stand in one place, almost knocking me over many times a day.

I let her explore her breed identity by walking her through the fields from our house to Uncle Bill’s Pond. We might easily spend an hour out there with me chucking a stick as far across the pond as I can, and her happily heaving her girth into the water, then swimming back with the stick in her cavernous mouth. Each retrieval brings a big shake all over, covering me with mucky water. I go home wet from head to toe.

Come October, I’m so excited for my second year of cranberry harvesting. The beautiful background of golden orange leaves reflect in water where our crimson harvest waits for loading onto an elevator. The glory of October is never going to get old for me.

Brin pads along at my side on the dams between bogs; her full-grown feet leaving huge prints in wet sandy soil. The Cambodians who work for us point to the tracks and say, “Tiger!” in awestruck tones. Dan reassures them the tiger prints were left by our giant breed dog.

Our method of harvest requires making a corral of the berries with cedar boards about eight feet long, attached to neighboring boards with pins. Brin and I walk alongside the dam where harvest is going strong. As more berries are loaded onto a truck, the corral shrinks, and the Cambodian workers remove a board, then throw it into the water behind them. Brin barely glances my way for permission. This is the job she’s been waiting for! One effortless powerful leap over the side of the dam, and my water rescue dog paddles out to the lifeless board floating helplessly fifty-feet away. She grasps it gently in her muzzle, lifts her head above the water, turns and brings the board to the shore. It takes a little more effort to haul it up the hill to the top of the dam, but once up, she looks at me triumphantly, shakes her massive body from jowl to tail, wrapping a long stream of spittle around her snout in a bubbly loop. “What a good girl you are, my Brin! Bravo.”

Brin and I admire the work longer. Each time the ring holding berries shrinks significantly, another board is popped out of the corral. In goes Brin, again and again, retrieving each board and laying it next to the last one she saved. She seems to be in her glory, so I brag on her each time and pat her massive head with special scratches behind her rounded triangular ears.

The time between board removal grows shorter. Brin barely catches her breath on the dam before the next one is thrown out, but she soldiers on. In the last few minutes of the harvest, she gets no rest. The next board is already discarded before she can lay the current one down. “It’s okay, Brin-Girl. You can rest.” But my dog gives me a frown between her gentle brown eyes and lets out a disturbing whimper of a sigh before returning to her self-imposed duty. She will not let me drag her away until every board is gathered. “Bravo, Brin. Bravo.”

Your Turn: The Newfoundland was bred to be a water rescue dog. You can see those instincts playing out in my description of our dignified, benevolent Brin. What breed characteristics do you see your dog displaying out of instinct?