THE BELL CURVE:Excepting barks, mostly high marks

It’s time for a three-month progress report on our new dog, Gia. She has now had plenty of time to adjust to the rules and regulations of our household and to perform the duties we hoped and expected from her. So here’s how she shapes up.

She gets A’s in bringing new life and energy into our house, enthusiastic affection for adoptive parents, and defending our home against marauding meter readers and passing horses who frequent this equestrian neighborhood.

Then, her grades drop off precipitately. My stepson, Erik, won’t approve this section, but I don’t plan to show it to him before publication. He isn’t ready to admit there are areas in which Gia clearly needs to improve. She gets a B-minus in kidney control, a C in courtesy toward arriving guests, a C-minus in excessive barking, and an incomplete in obedience.

Some of these shortcomings can be ascribed to her dubious background. We got Gia at a rescue halfway house called A Wish for Animals in Laguna Niguel, run by a dedicated young woman named Toni Eakes who was as particular about our qualifications as parents as about Gia’s as a permanent house guest. I accepted the name Eakes had given Gia with some misgivings. It sounds a little too exotic for this blue-collar dog who had been picked up as a stray. Gia was presented to us as a year-and-a-half-old schnauzer, which we happily accept even though it’s clear from studying the “Dog Bible” that some critter beside a Schnauzer had a part in the creative process.

None of this is important, however. The only thing I would like to know about her past is who and what threatened her before she landed in our house. She is exceedingly skittish when someone comes up to her unexpectedly, especially if the interloper is carrying something sizable. It seems clear that somewhere, somehow, she’s been hurt more than once, and a few months with us isn’t enough to purge those fears.

But they clearly appear to be diminishing, and most of the time she is a delight, restructuring our lives to her fancy.

We have been three years without a dog since our ditsy dachshund, Coco, died, and even though we were determined not to go through that kind of loss again, there was no denying the hole it left in our psyches. So it didn’t take long after adopting Gia to learn how emotionally enriching it was going to be to plug that hole again.

In the process, we have repeated all of the excesses we allowed with Coco — and probably will again if there is ever another dog. Gia is permitted to sleep on my bed, for example, as long as she stays on her own blanket. This worked until I noticed a heavy dog smell on my blanket and discovered she was waiting until I was asleep and then moving into my space. This could be partly rectified by bathing her more often, which is unlikely to happen since Erik, who does most of the bathing, tolerates — even, it seems to me, almost welcomes — the unwashed dog smell in his own bed.

We have also allowed Gia to reinstate a subtle kind of blackmail — once practiced to an art form by Coco — by rewarding her for normal bodily functions. When Coco early on dragged out her peeing rituals before we went to bed, we discovered we could hurry it up by giving her a treat when she was successful. When she got older and smarter, she figured out that she could get multiple treats if she spread out the process. During her last years, she ran this scam on us, and we never properly figured out how to counter it. So now, only a few months into her life with us, we are doing the same thing with Gia, all the while wondering when she’s going to figure out the same gambit.

Gia takes her role as defender of the house to a fierce level. She hasn’t yet figured out how to separate friend from enemy quickly, so, like every effective bodyguard, she assumes all visitors and every moving thing passing by her vigilante station near the front door are enemies until proven otherwise.

In discharging these duties, she has picked up on one peculiarity we have tended to nurture, subtly, without trying visibly to train her. I’m convinced, even though it is difficult to prove, that she barks much louder and more fiercely at Republicans who visit our house.

I haven’t tried to dissuade her from expressing such honest emotions — on the grounds that it would be traumatizing to her.

But all this nit-picking is dwarfed by the energy and warmth this new arrival brings into our life. She plays the way I remember my dogs from boyhood — rough and ready. So rough I have to put on gloves to roughhouse with her, but gentle and appreciative when we quit.

Although she is small enough to be, she is no lap dog. She wants to be where we are, but in her own space.

She’s a great model for a gentrifying owner — noisy, brash, charged with energy, but warm and enjoying the sweet things life has to offer after some rocky times.

I think we’re going to keep her.