Dream Barking

Juno turns one in less than a month, and I’ve never heard her bark. She yaps plenty while scrapping with Doc, my older dog, a kind of high-pitched yelling that resembles laughter. I’ve heard her low woof, a chuffing, half-bark when standing at the window and a deer ambles from the thicket. Once alerted, Doc barks in her stead. But I’ve yet to hear her let loose a full-bodied, get off my lawn, assault from deep in her gut.

***

Juno’s eyes are an unusual hue, light-colored with a hint of mystery. Looking into her face is like getting trapped in the knowing gaze of a seer. Her quiet manner smacks of something deeper, a no-nonsense attitude that doesn’t require a bark to back it up. She’s beautiful, but her silence can feel a little ominous.

Then she’ll get the zoomies and any notion I have about the majesty of her countenance flies out the window. She loves to play a mouse to death, tossing it in the air and then stomping on it. She’s clumsy as an ox often falling over her own feet, zero athletic grace.

***

I’ve spent most of my life being selective about when to bark. I call it discernment, but the truth is, I’ve been auditioning every bark in my head for decades before letting one out. I want to say I’m above petty noise, but mostly I’m afraid of making a sound I can’t take back. Maybe Juno feels the same. Or maybe she intuits that once you start barking, people start expecting explanations.

The funny thing about Juno is that when she’s sleeping, she often falls full-bodied into puppy dreams. Paws twitching, snout flickering, she’s living out loud in some dreamland fantasy playing out in how she sees herself once reservation falls away. With her mouth closed, out ripples a ribbon of sound that isn’t barking so much as the fantasy of barking, the capacity for it. As if in her dreams she’s able to fully let go, barking to her heart’s desire, at a full-barreled run, in pursuit of what she intends to conquer and subdue. What she can’t embrace when she’s awake manifests in slumber.

That’s it, dreaming as rehearsal for courage. She’s running fast, leaping with grace, barking at invisible threats, doing all the things she’s too self-conscious to do when she’s awake. I relate. My bravest moments happen in my head too, usually in the shower or on long drives, when there’s no audience to witness my intensity. I’ve delivered entire monologues to people who will never know how eloquently I put them in their place. Juno and I, a couple of dream warriors, fierce when unconscious, civilized when awake.

Maybe the lesson is that you don’t always need to bark in daylight. Sometimes it’s enough to rehearse your courage in private, to run and leap in a world where consequences don’t exist, where you can fully own your ferocity. And when the moment finally comes, when a bark, or a word, or an action is demanded, you carry the memory of those practiced runs with you. Juno wakes, stretches, and wanders off, silent again, but I can’t help watching, knowing that somewhere inside her, she’s already conquered the things that scare her. Maybe I’m doing the same.