At four o'clock this afternoon Caleb's truck pulled into the driveway, and Hank was already at the back door, talking. He doesn't know what a calendar is. He does know that when both of us are home early on a weekday and I'm holding my phone like a camera, something good is about to happen.
October 2 is Hank's gotcha day. Four years ago today we brought home an 18-month-old golden mutt from a foster home in Anoka, a skinny dog who had ridden north on a transport van from an overfull shelter in Oklahoma. I told that whole story back in April. Today is about the tradition we built around it, which has three parts and has not changed once.
The river walk
We walk the same stretch of trail along the Rum River, from the little parking area down to the sandy bend Hank considers his. It's a little under two miles out and back. The first time we did it, in 2022, we'd lived in Cambridge for about six weeks, and the walk was half celebration, half figuring out where everything was.
The Rum is the same river that runs through Anoka, where his foster family lived, which I didn't put together until Caleb pointed it out at the bend that first year. I like that more than I can explain. Hank likes that the bend has sand. In October the water is cold enough that he only wades in to his elbows, which he does anyway, every year, and then shakes off next to me.
This year the cottonwoods along the trail had gone yellow, and he flushed two squirrels, which is two more than he has ever caught. He stood in the river for a long time, looking downstream like he had business down there.
The burger
When we get home, I cook one plain burger patty in the cast-iron pan. No salt, no onion, no seasoning of any kind, just ground beef. I pour off the grease and let it cool on a plate by the window while Hank sits on the kitchen floor and vibrates. Then I cut it into pieces and hand them over one at a time so it lasts longer than four seconds.
We trim his supper kibble back that night to make room. One plain patty once a year has never bothered his stomach, but he's our dog, and anyone thinking of starting a burger tradition of their own would do well to run it past their vet first.
Mabel gets her usual can at her usual time and watches the whole burger ceremony from a kitchen chair with an expression I can only describe as policy disagreement.
One photo under the maple
The last part is one photo of Hank under the big maple in the front yard. One. I take too many pictures of this dog every other day of the year, so on gotcha day the rule is a single shot, and whatever comes out is the photo.
The four of them are stuck to the fridge in a row now.
- 2022: Thinner, ears back, the maple barely turning. About seven weeks later he ate the Thanksgiving twine, which is its own story for next month.
- 2023: Mid-sneeze. Eyes shut, lips flapping. Rules are rules.
- 2024: Sitting square and looking straight at the camera, with a leaf on his head neither of us noticed until we printed it.
- 2025: Today. The top third of the maple gone orange, the rest still green, and Hank lying in the grass with wet elbows and the face of a dog who knows a burger is coming.
What four years looks like
He's five now and 68 pounds, and the nervous dog from the transport van sleeps against our back door every night like he's guarding it. Caleb, who told me before we adopted him that he was "not really a pet person," can't get from the truck to the house without a golden shadow. Hank still falls apart at fireworks and thunder. He still grumbles when we're too slow with the leash. He still treats every squirrel as a personal matter.
Tonight he's asleep by the back door with his chin on Caleb's boot, smelling faintly of river.
Hank's take: the patty was the whole point.
