My name doesn’t matter much in this story. Karl calls me Dad, and that pretty much covers it.
I want to tell you about my mornings, because I think it will help you understand who this guy is.
Somewhere between two and three in the morning, I will feel it. A cold, wet nose touching my toes. Just a touch. Just enough. Karl checking to see if I am awake. I am now, buddy. I tell him it’s bedtime. He knows what that means. He goes and lays back down.
Less than an hour later, he is back.
Nose. Toes. You up?
No, Karl. Still bedtime.
He goes back. He waits. He returns. This is the ritual. Every single morning. And here is the thing about that ritual that I want you to understand. He is not being a pest. He is not trying to be difficult. He just loves his people so much that every morning feels like the best morning that has ever happened, and he cannot wait one single minute longer than absolutely necessary to start it. That is Karl. That is who he is in his bones.
By four or five in the morning I am up and moving, and when that happens Karl celebrates like I have returned from a very long journey. Full body joy. Whining. Bouncing. Prancing. We live in an RV right now so there are only so many feet to cover, but he covers all of them, repeatedly, at high speed, with his Chuck-It ball in his mouth. It does nothing to muffle the sound. I think it makes it louder, actually. Karl does everything at one hundred percent.
There is no idle setting on this Shep. Whatever he feels, he feels it completely and he wants everyone in the immediate area to feel it too.
I get his harness on, which requires convincing him to stand still for approximately three seconds, which is like asking the wind to pause. We get his sister Sugar leashed up, head outside so they can take care of business, and then back inside for coffee. Karl already knows what comes next and he is winding himself up accordingly. Faster pacing. Louder whining. He stops next to me and looks up. Is it time, Dad?
Yes, Karl. Let’s go wake up Mom.
She is already awake, of course. How could anyone sleep through this? I sit on the bed to talk with her and Karl absolutely cannot stand it. There isn’t a way to get alongside the RV bed and her feet don’t hang off the end like mine do, so he can’t reach her. She leans down and pets his head. He accepts this but makes very clear it is not enough. I tell him he is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. He responds with a loud squeal and sprints to the other end of the RV. He is back in thirty seconds. After a few minutes Mom gets up, partly because she loves him and partly because she physically cannot listen to him carry on anymore. Both things are true at the same time. That’s Karl.
Now. I want to tell you the other side of him too, because it matters.
Karl is brave in a way that most people will never fully appreciate, because his bravery is quiet and it costs him something every time. After his seizures began, the world got louder for him. Fireworks. Thunder. A car door closing down the street. Music drifting from a neighbor’s window. Any of these can send him into a full panic, heart racing, body trembling, pressing himself against me like he is trying to disappear into my side. The cruel irony is that the fear itself, the elevated heart rate and the panic, can trigger a seizure. So the thing he is afraid of can cause the very thing we are all trying to prevent. We carry medication for the times when cuddles and calm voices are not enough. We plan around fireworks. We cannot plan around thunderstorms.
But here is what I want you to know about Karl. Every single morning, after every hard night, he gets up and he tries again. He comes and finds me in the dark. Nose. Toes. You up? He picks up his Chuck-It ball and he prances down the length of the RV and he greets the day like it is a gift. Because to Karl, it is. Every morning is another morning with his people, and that is enough. That is more than enough. That is everything.
I include him in everything I do. He loves to help and I genuinely love having him with me. I would guess he is in physical contact with me about a quarter of the day and within one foot of me for most of the rest. He is my shadow. My velcro Shep. My guy.
Today was mani-pedi day. Nail trimming, brushing, ear cleaning. Karl has been shedding a lot lately, which has its own backstory. He grew up in Alaska, which affected when his coat came in, and he started seizure medication at two years old. All of that together meant his coat ran on its own schedule, which has him shedding like it is always spring. Because for Karl, it basically is. Sugar gets all of this plus a trim on her foot hair. She grew up in Alaska too and her coat never got the memo that we moved. She grows so much fur between her toes that she slides around on hard floors like a cartoon Shep. We call her a hobbit. She has earned it.
I do all the cooking around here, including Karl’s meals. Shepherds with seizure disorders shouldn’t eat high protein diets, and since we believe his is connected to food sensitivities, we are careful and stick to limited ingredients. He loves fresh fruit and vegetables. He will eat a pickle without hesitation and look at me afterward like he just did something impressive. He kind of did, honestly. I never imagined I would have a Shep that eats pickles. But then I never imagined a lot of things about Karl, and he keeps surprising me.
He woke me up four times last night.
He is pressed against my leg as I write this.
People sometimes ask me if it is hard, managing his seizures and his fears and his medications and his very loud, very constant need to be near me every moment of every day. And I want to answer that honestly. Yes. Sometimes it is hard. But Karl doesn’t know hard. Karl knows joy. He knows his people. He knows that today is going to be a good day and that his ball is somewhere nearby and that somewhere in this RV his mom and his sister are within reach. He meets every morning like it is the best one yet, even when the night before was rough, even when he is scared, even when the world feels too loud.
That spirit. That stubborn, goofy, wholehearted, completely ridiculous spirit. That is what I get to wake up to every single day.
He is a tremendous pain in my ass.
And I love him fiercely.
Karl’s Dad, out.