Quick
My dog turns into a monster when you clip his nails.
It’s a two person job. One person rests him between their legs, upside down like a flipped turtle.
(He loves this when he’s not battling for posession of his feet.)
The other person (always me) has the pleasant task of lining his gums with peanut butter and clipping his nails while he screams at me.
Animals with curved claws have a core in the center of the nail called a quick. If you cut a nail too short, blood comes pouring out. Almost all of Nuri’s nails are clear, which makes it very easy to see where the quick is.
In four years, I have never cut a quick. Despite this, when the clippers come out he acts as if I’m about to chop off his foot.
Nuri’s a dainty walker, so I cut his nails a little bit and often. This keeps his quicks short. Being a spunky little thing, I don’t want him to break a nail when he’s playing with a friend or scrabbling up rocks. The thanks I get is a whole lot of bitching.
I told my good friend about Nuri’s weird quirks, including the nail clipping shriek show. But I also told her how much this little dog adores me, how when I come home he loves nothing more than climbing into my lap and resting his head against my neck. How he sleeps on my sweaters if I leave them on the couch because they smell like me. I think he loves me as deeply as is possible for one living thing to love another.
“That’s the thing with shelter dogs,” my friend said. “They are broken and neurotic, but they love deeply. They know what sadness is and don’t take their home for granted. There’s something simple about purchased purebreds who have never suffered. And that is probably fine and much easier for most people, but I could never have a breeder dog. I don’t understand them.”
She paused. “You and I,” she said. “We are shelter dogs.”
Shelter dogs, canine or human, spend most of their lives ‘cut to the quick’. If you, too, are a human shelter dog, it’s likely that you spend much of your life trying to forget the well-intentioned advice that you feel too much, that your skin is too thin. That you are too emotional to be taken seriously and you don’t have control over yourself.
After all, winners brush it off and don’t let anything cut them to the quick.
This is based on a false premise. All quicks are not created equal. Though their quicks may be short and sturdy, your quicks are long. And sure, you could train them back and teach yourself not to bleed. Life would be safer this way.
But should you?
If you love yourself, you recognize that you are crippled and you are gifted. You recognize that the phantom frequencies you see, that specific hum of the universe — they are special. And while you cry in the car when certain songs come on, while you’re devastated by a flippant remark made in good faith, your fragility does not undo you. Your fragility makes you strong.
You sense a wholeness, the ebb of life. It flows. It changes. Sadness is natural. Ecstacy is natural. You are an observer, an explorer. A fine connoisseur of the bouquet of feelings life offers. Do not let people balm your sadness or tamper your delight. Feel what you feel and examine where you are.
And continue to love deeply.
