What I Talk About When I Talk About Adopting a Puppy
I made a resolution at the beginning of this year to write a new blog post once a month. Then we adopted a puppy, and already this first post of 2017 is overdue. Puppy demands walks and cuddles and food. Puppy distracts me with her floppy ears and gangly legs. 
Puppy chewed my computer cord and left me – until yesterday – disconnected.
I had planned to write about Haruki Murakami’s memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a book I’d wanted to read for years. I found a copy recently at a twilight market stall, and bought it just before the rain started and the remaining books were hastily covered up.
I had wanted to talk about Murakami. But then we adopted a puppy, and everything shifted slightly sideways. Even now I’m writing this at 10pm, with puppy – finally – asleep beside me on the couch. Even now I’m snatching time between walks and food puzzles and games of fetch to Get Things Done.
(Note: I am aware that adopting a puppy is not the same as having a baby, and that there may be an amount of hyperbole present in this post.)
I had wanted to talk about Murakami. About how this was the first of his non-fiction I had read. About how it wasn’t as inspiring or thought-provoking as I expected it to be – I was waiting for more connections between writing and running, waiting for it to come together somehow. But it felt very stream-of-consciousness, like a journal without much editing. Some of the phrasing felt cliched, even a little cheesy. These could all be problems with translation; apparently Murakami’s work is often translated very literally, without much poetic license taken. It could also be that I am not a runner. Not really. I dabble in a few laps around the park here and there, but I don’t do marathons.
Or it could be that we got a puppy, and my attention was elsewhere. When I talk about adopting a puppy I talk about training. I talk about toys and vet visits and food. I talk about the joy and the stress relief. I talk about the way a puppy at once takes over life and somehow also fits into it, the way writing does. And, I suppose, running does, too.
One of the most useful things Murakami focuses on in his memoir is the importance of using writing as a way of clarifying personal goals and clearing thoughts. Playing with a puppy, I think, can help us do the same things. Being on the floor with a piece of rope, playing tug-of-war, relaxes my brain and frees it up from thoughts of school and grocery lists and uni assignments to wonder about other things. Like a piece of music on the radio, or a new novel, or a friend I haven’t spoken to for months. This funny, floppy, furry little girl is taking me on more walks, but she is also slowing me down. She is setting a new pace for our lives. And we are – so far – happily keeping up.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was first published in 2008, and was translated by Philip Gabriel. Other works of non-fiction by Murakami include Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.
