I’m shaking off the cobwebs from a little over two month’s time lacking a creative rhythm while treading residential and emotional water…
After realizing the suburbs weren’t for us and that 2 people and a dog didn’t need much space, we decided to sell our home in Arlington and move back into DC. Our house was under contract less than a week after we went on the market (yo, full asking, bitches!), so we went into scramble mode to find a place in our targeted DC neighborhood. When you are looking for a place at the same time hordes of summer interns are also hunting for digs, you have to treat house hunting like you’re on a survival trip with Bear Grylls. For a few weeks, I armed myself with Lou Lou’s doggy resume and copies of our credit report and transformed into the pushiest version of myself. I’m happy to report that after a lot of legwork and checkbook waving, we are happily ensconced on Capitol Hill in a great rental row house that will allow us the time to find a similar place to renovate to our likings.
For me, moving is no longer an emotionally stressful event like it is for some people. We have scaled down quite a bit and are pretty mobile for people who have a dog with her own closet. Instead, moving has become an annoying speedbump in getting to the next place I want to be. So we move fast-and-furious-style: packers come one day, the movers come the next and the new place is unpacked and organized within 2 days after the move. No drama, just gettin’ it done so we can get on with life. Now, that kind of sequence requires a suspension of life as we know it, but John and I have perfected our roles over many a move these past 11 years, so we don’t mess with what works. Of course all of this is happening during baseball season, so for the most part I am flying solo while my husband has to log some obscene hours at the ballpark (he works in the Washington Nationals front office). I can’t complain about that, because in the words of Sammy Sosa, “Baseball been very, very good to me.” What does suffer, unfortunately, is the undivided time I crave to be able to write well. I managed to eke out one article during this time and I’m glad I had the stones to tell my editor that I couldn’t take on more without quality suffering.
In the midst of the move and real estate pain-in-the-ass-back and forth of selling a home, we had 2 big health scares with Lou Lou. The first was a lump on her lip that turned out to be an adenocarcinoma. Yep, she had a cancerous tumor on her lip. She underwent surgery to remove the lump and had follow-up care with a veterinary oncologist. Good news: they got it all and her body/lymph node scans are clear. While this was happening (as if doggy cancer isn’t scary enough), she came up lame in her left hind leg. Diagnosis: partial CCL tear. For you non-dog people, that’s pretty much the doggy equivalent of a partial ACL tear in humans. Strict exercise restrictions and drugs came with the news, which could have been worse (a full tear would have meant surgery). So we dodged the bullet twice, but not without it taking a toll on me.
The fear I felt while caring for Lou Lou during these trips back and forth to numerous veterinarians was the worst kind of fear I’ve ever felt. I won’t go into much detail here (check Dog Mom Diaries soon for the full account), but suffice it to say that the sheer powerlessness of it all added onto the the thought of losing her to cancer really rocked me. I was already pissy and tired from the move and this all just sent me into a worry-cave. Some people find that writing their way through something difficult is cathartic. Not me. When the shit hits the fan, I get quiet and pull back. I tend to focus on the core things that really matter, so from Lou Lou’s lip surgery until she was able to come off exercise restriction, I tended to the basics. Feed and care for dog, self and spouse. Ignore they grey roots and the dog hair accumulated on every horizontal (and vertical!) surface. Drop the heavy reading and pick up an US magazine. Have a glass of wine and some Mc Donald’s fries. Whine a little bit on Facebook. Cry in the shower so the dog doesn’t get stressed from seeing you be an ugly crier. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Considering where I felt we were a few months ago, I think Drake says it best:
“Started from the bottom, now we here…started from the bottom, now my whole team fucking here.”
I have my dog, my husband, my family and my friends. Deep breath. The reset button gets pressed…now.
I was on the phone with my friend C yesterday morning discussing her Puppy M. Specifically, we were talking about when Puppy M will be ready to be left home alone outside of her crate. It brought back some memories.
Let’s set a scene, say February in Chicago circa 2006: A light, dry snow falls outside and John and I are preparing to walk up to Gamekeepers for 10 cent wings. It was a Thursday dinner tradition among some of our friends and neighbors where the joke was that we couldn’t afford not to eat there. Before we started layering on scarves and stuffing our feet into boots, I told Lou Lou to go ‘Night-Night’, which is her command to get in her crate.
This is where I’d like to point out that this dog LOOOOOVES her crate and always has. Once she figured out that her dog cave was a private, quiet, no demand zone, she took to hanging out in it whenever she wanted to` have a moment to herself. We’re not talking about a dog who shrieked and banged on the crate door to be let out. We’re talking about a dog who would go into her crate, spin around three times, lie down in a curl of fur and sigh deeply before closing her eyes. Her crating behavior always makes me wish for an Amy crate that I could escape to and not be bothered, preferably accompanied by a glass of red wine.
As soon as the words ‘Night-Night’ popped out of my mouth, John (ever the expert dog trainer that he isn’t) piped up. It went a little something like this:
John: Babe, let’s just leave her out of her crate, she’s old enough.
Amy: Hon, she’s just over a year old. She’s not ready to be unsupervised like that.
John: It’s cruel to leave her in there for so long.
Amy: It’s not cruel; it’s what dogs want. She’s just going to sleep while we’re gone. She was at daycare today. She won’t even know she’s in there. Besides, she likes her crate.
John: I don’t like her being in there, so then if all she’s going to do is sleep, then she’ll just sleep on the sofa or on her bed by the door.
I resisted, making the case that we were still puppy-proofing the house and keeping closet doors shut at all times. Even though that period in time was the most organized my house has ever been, she had rightly earned the title of “The Eviscerator” with her ability to speed gut level 10 Tuffy’s Toys. She had shredded a toy tire (made from recycled tires-hard!) in the span of a commercial break. I was buying deer antlers every time petexpertise.com had the right size in stock. In other words, she was a dedicated chewer.
Our discussion was turning into an argument, so despite the fact that I had visions of her munching on the baseboards and the coffee table being reduced to kindling, I caved. She had been doing so well at school, plus she had been to daycare that day. She would sleep the entire time we were gone, right? Right?!
Fast forward as few hours. After some 10 cent wings and a chardonnay that I would describe as having notes of jet fuel and acetone, I decided to head home while the men-folk watched sports. As I walked back down the street, I thought it great night for a quick walk around the neighborhood. The snow glowed pale yellow under the street lights and I loved the pleasantly hissy sound of snow falling around me. I envisioned Lou Lou and I padding through the snow, up past St. Michael’s, over to Wells and then back home. A peaceful time for just the two of us. Ahhh.
I visualized Lou Lou curled up on her binky by the door, which was fashioned from a fleece crate pad on top of a folded old queen-sized down comforter. Please focus on the words queen-sized down comforter. Here is a photo of said comforter when it was enjoying its butter-yellow life.
Looks like a lot of down is in that comforter, eh?
When I opened the door, my first thought was, “O shit, O shit, O shitshitshit someone done pulled a Spider-man! Scaled up to our 4th floor deck, broke in the sliding glass doors and the snow is coming inside!” Clearly the chardonnay was talking because it took a second for me to realize that it wasn’t snow, but an entire queen-sized bed’s worth of down floating through the air, kept aloft by our ceiling fan and a dog who was giving herself whiplash by snapping a mouthful of comforter back and forth. I was stunned. I called for her and she trots out of a swirl of down, grinning. If life were a cartoon, her thought bubble would read, “Mom, it was so fun, the more I ripped with my teeth, the more fluffies came out. Don’t you like fluffies? Have fun with me! You can try and catch the fluffies in your mouth!”
I hustled her out the door and into the elevator to take her to potty. I tried to project that nothing was wrong. Since I hadn’t caught her in the act, it wasn’t a “teachable moment” and it was our fault for putting her in a situation that provided an irresistible chewing opportunity. Dog-parenting FAIL.
Back upstairs, I grabbed the vacuum and attached the hose. I figured the hose would allow me to suck up the down that was still careening through the air. I figured wrong. Down is funny, it moves on the slightest breath of air, which makes it rather difficult to vacuum. Add to the fact that I was flailing around with the body of the vacuum in one hand and stabbing at the air with the hose in my other hand while Lou Lou was jumping about trying to grab down in her mouth and we had a down derecho of sorts. The more I tried to vacuum up the down, the more it swirled around, which made Lou Lou bounce around more, which made the down swirl around again and lather, rinse, repeat. That’s when John walked in. For a man who talks for a living; he was speechless. He grabbed the dustpan and whiskbroom and tried to help. For a fraction of a second, I wanted nothing more than to transform the vacuum hose into a laser death ray and turn it on my spouse, vaporizing him. He knew that this was one of those I told you so, your silence is very much appreciated-type moments in a marriage and kept his mouth shut. I think he finally apologized in 2009, but I can’t recall for sure.
What seemed like hours later, we had most of the down collected, though I would find down in the oddest places for the next few years. The comforter, or what was left of it, looked like Edward Scissorhands had tried to fold it. I was peeved at both man and dog. Man was sheepish, dog was clueless.
That Saturday at class, we relayed the story to her trainer. After she finally quit laughing, she told us that all dogs are different, but based on a number of factors including Lou Lou’s energy level and drive to work, we were very much in the teenage years. It wasn’t until she was over 2 that she gained full house privileges, and the Baby Gate Saga that led to that purchase is a story for another day.
I have gone to great lengths of grossness to keep my dog healthy, but there’s a reason why. When Lou Lou was a puppy, we saw Dr. Barbara Royal for acupuncture for Lou Lou’s incontinence. At her clinic, which was in those days located around the corner from us on Wells St., I met her dog Tundra who seemed at first glance not much older than Lou Lou. My mistake. Tundra was 15 at the time.
While Lou Lou lounged on a mat and did her best acupuncture impression of a pincushion, I hung on every word Dr. Royal had to say about exercise and nutrition. I figured if a dog that looked a bit like Lou Lou could live so long and in such good health, then heck, the good doctor probably knows what she’s talking about. Following Dr. Royal’s advice is how I found myself touching, sniffing and even tasting things that the mere thought of would make most people gag.
We’ll start with the switch to frozen raw food. Not a biggie. It comes frozen in a bag and looks like square hamburger patties. Depending on which protein it is, it most often tastes like gamey hamburger meat. Score on the Shades-of-Gross-Out (SGO) scale with 50 being maximum gross out and 0 being no gross out? Zero when frozen and maybe a 30 when the power goes out and it thaws in 98 degree heat in a closed freezer when you are out of town. Let’s face it, everything organic gets a little fragrant under those conditions.
Then there was our mild obsession with tripe. You know, as in animal tummies and intestines. Mmmmm. Green tripe (cow stomach/intestines) is a wonder food for some dogs that is also one of the most foul smelling things in its raw, unfrozen state. Dried tripe on the SGO scale earns a score of 15 due to its rather pungent smell, but once ingested, the smell is gone. Handling it kind of feels like dried mushrooms. Tastes like grassy leather. No biggie.
Canned tripe? That’s taking it up another level. I bought a few cans at Kriser’s and couldn’t wait to get home and bust out the can opener. This is where I’d like to suggest that we add a smell-o-meter rating to canned goods labels. As soon as I punctured the seal on the can and began to twist the can opener, a whoosh of fetid air shot straight up in my face. A lesser mortal would have fainted. I just started to breathe though my mouth and smugly reminded myself how I was the best dog mom EVER. By the time I got the tripe out of the can (I swear I can still tell which fork I used) and into Lou’s bowl, I was headed to the deck. I like to think of it as Lou Lou enjoying her meal al fresco. Taste it? Not so much. We slept that night with every window in the house open, nevermind that it was December in Chicago. SGO score= 40. I did eventually figure out that keeping the cans in the fridge helped, but not by much.
One would think that almost vomiting in your dog’s food bowl would cure me, but I was determined to feed her like an Olympic athlete. So when a girl in one of our therapy dog classes who shared my zeal for canine nutrition asked me if I wanted to go in on some fresh green tripe with her, I said yes. I should have politely declined, but I kind of had a girl crush on her. Her name was T and she was a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, Polish nanny with a handsome lab. Chicago has a large concentration of Polish people, and I’m pretty sure T must have been connected to what I liked to call the Magic Polish Network, which could make amazing things happen when you were in dire need of something. I know this must be the case because who else would have a tripe hook-up at a purportedly halal butcher in the West Loop?
I drove since T didn’t have a car. What we picked up was a cold, double-bagged lump of brownish-greenish goo. I chickened out on helping her divide it. Her? Strong like ox. Me? Strong like stuffed animal. What she brought to class for us next week was 20 smaller bags of frozen tripe. She said I needed to thaw the tripe completely before giving it to Lou Lou. Fat chance. Lou Lou was going to learn to love the tripesicle. I did taste one teeny bit of frozen tripe. I would assign it the flavor profile of chewy-crunchy rotted grass clippings. Based on that and what my car smelled like for a week after we picked up our treasure, fresh tripe earns a 45 on the SGO scale.
Our next flirtation was with raw organ meats like hearts and livers. For someone who really liked anatomy and physiology classes, it was kind of fun to poke around and try to identify veins and ventricles and what-not; it’s not much different from handling any other raw animal protein. SGO score…a measly 5. I mean, if you can take the giblets and neck (also yummy to dogs) out of a whole chicken, then you can slap a chunk of beef heart in a bowl.
Let’s not forget treats. We try to stick to natural treats and by natural I mean smaller dried parts of animals, not Milk Bones. When someone new to the canine flock discovers what bully sticks really are, it tickles me. The expression on a person’s face as she processes the concept of Fido going to town on a dried bull penis is priceless. Add in tendon flossies, tracheas, smoked marrow bones, raw meaty bones, rolled salmon skins, dried sardines, antlers…you get the picture. Lou Lou enjoyed nose-to-tail eating before it was all the rage. Until today, I was pretty sure that we had seen and eaten it all. Ha.
While hanging with my friend C and shopping at Dog Krazy in Fredericksburg, VA (one of my all time favorite stores on earth, more on them later), I was chatting with Dana and relaying how we were feeding cooling foods on the TCVM scale due to Lou Lou’s allergies. She pointed out something I had never seen before. Dried rabbit ears and feet, with.the.fur.still.on. She promised me Lou Lou would love them, so I put a few in our bucket along with some dried duck feet and milled around the store, sniffing them (no real detectable scent to me) and petting the fur while I tried to wrap my head around feeding parts of the Easter Bunny to my dog. What? You need a visual? I’m happy to oblige you.
Nose to Tail, Canine Style
The jury is still out on this doggy delicacy’s SGO rating, but I did give her one after dinner. Suffice it to say that watching your dog eat something that still has fur on it is the closest thing we’ve ever had to a Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom moment at our house.
I knew before I even opened my eyes what kind of day it would be. I could hear the rain beating against the window. I rolled over and was greeted by a big paw headed in the direction of my nose. This is how Lou Lou likes to wake you up when she is in a bad mood. She sits on the floor beside the bed and as soon as your face is in range, she smacks you on the nose with her left front paw. How do I know she’s in a bad mood? It’s raining.
Lou Lou + Rain = A Very Trying Day For Me
Rain wrecks this dog’s world. Please bear in mind that we are talking about a dog who will sprint to jump in any available natural body of water. Lake, ocean, creek, river, you name it. The dirtier and stinkier the water, the better. But rain? Hell no. This is a dog who, when forced to go outdoors during a rainstorm, acts as if it is acid fire falling from the sky and each individual drop feels like a dagger being plunged between her ribs. Puddles also present a huge problem since she likens them to small pools filled with microscopic attack animals that will eat her fur and flesh starting from her toenails up. So even after it has quit raining, I’m still not out of her melodramatic woods.
Don’t make me go out in the rain, please!
What’s the big deal? It’s raining, so she doesn’t go out as much. Yep, and therein lies the problem. Every day of her life, except when it’s raining, begins with a long walk coupled with an off-leash session of high-speed ball chasing or wrestling with a buddy. She expects it and I’ll readily admit that it’s one of the best things we’ve done when it comes to her health. After getting all her crazies out first thing in the morning, she’s a mellow dog for the remainder of the day. It works perfectly when the weather cooperates since it gives me a dog who is content to lie underneath my desk for hours at a time. When the weather doesn’t cooperate, I’ve got emo dog to deal with.
Rainy day Lou Lou begins her campaign of crabbiness from beside the bed and continues it throughout the day. The first wrinkle is the rainy day poop strike. This dog will not take a shit in the rain. She’ll dash out and pee, but will not entertain a walk or being outside in the rain long enough to do #2. Even after hoovering her breakfast, she will not go out to poop. This sets us up for hours of stealthy doggy death farts. She will lie under my desk and let ’em rip until the rain stops and she consents to go outside. If we lived in a place where it rained for days at a time, like Seattle, we’d have to invest in gas masks to wear around the house. As I type this, I have a farting, backed-up, grumpy dog under my desk, a candle burning and an open window. Sheer bliss.
In addition to the malodorous under-desk emanations, I have a whiny, restless, under-exercised dog on my hands. She’ll pace around the house, drag all the toys out of each toy bin, and then come back to fart under my desk. When I’ve had enough of this, we’ll decamp for the basement agility dojo, where she’ll halfheartedly run a few short courses until she decides to lie down and hide in the tunnel. You can practically feel this dog’s ennui at being trapped inside due to fire-water falling from the sky. Next, it’s stuffing all the Nina Ottoson dog puzzles with treats and hiding them around the house. After that, we’ll practice rally-o or work on a trick. Then I’m out of options and cursing the weather gods until it stops raining. Any ideas, dear readers?
Earlier I shared that it had taken me the better part of two days to get ready to leave town. I can pack quickly once I know the weather forecast, so my trip preparation has everything to do with getting Lou Lou ready.
I would have made an excellent Boy Scout because I believe in being prepared. No one who has ever traveled with me has complained about being with the person who always has Immodium when you really need it. I try to apply the same game plan when we leave Lou Lou at home.
The first task is Auntie prep, which means getting Lou Lou’s instruction packet together. Operating under the theory that information is king, I place her four pages of typed directions in a folder. These directions attempt to cover every contingency in addition to our flight and hotel information. Also in the folder are maps and directions to her regular vet and the emergency vet. I even go as far as to include annotated photos for particularly complex things such as when she has to wear her face cage. Add Starbucks cards (alert babysitters perform better in emergencies, I think), a blank signed check and a emergency credit card, and the Aunties are ready for almost anything short of nuclear war or an Ebola pandemic.
The next area of focus is making sure Lou Lou looks and smells presentable. I try to give her the whole spa routine, but this time we had to make do with the canine version of a PTA (pits, tits and ass) shower. Nails, ears, the Furminator and baby wipes. Presentable in a pinch. My biggest fear is that the Aunties will have a crazy emergency and have to take her to the vet. I’m not worried about an emergency that would entail a visit to her regular vet because Dr. C knows she is an extremely well cared for dog. No, I worry about the emergency that would have the Aunties taking her to the emergency vet who doesn’t know us from Adams’s house cat. I would die if someone were to look at her and think she had slatternly parents because she was stinky and in need of a good brushing and a nail trim. It’s like putting on clean underwear when you leave the house. Everyone knows that clean underwear magically protect you from being in an accident. Only people who wear dirty drawers end up in the emergency room with a bunch of nurses tut-tutting over your poor choice in foundation garments.
Invariably, at some point we have to put clothes in a container in order to take them with us. This is where Suitcase Syndrome enters the picture. From the Suitcase Syndrome-A Killer Hiding in Your Closet website–“Suitcase Syndrome is a terrible malady that strikes 103.78% of dogs at some point in their lifetime. Symptoms such as lethargy, extreme and frequent sighing, loss of appetite and attitude throwing can mimic other, less fatal diseases. Know the signs of Suitcase Syndrome and seek treatment immediately. Most dogs recover after one or two ball-throwing sessions, but sometimes treatment needs to be repeated. Please help us find a cure, before it’s too late.”
Lou Lou suffers from Suitcase Syndrome
Lou Lou first began to experience Suitcase Syndrome when John began to travel a lot for work. Back then, John would put his suitcase on the bed and pack the night before a trip. She quickly figured out that the box on wheels made Daddy go away, so the box on wheels became the evil trigger. Even after we tried to pack at the last moment in the office and leave the suitcases there, she still figured it out. She has honed her skills over the years and works a guilt trip like she’s channeling Joan Crawford channeling a nun channeling my friend S’s Bubbe.
This trip had us leaving on Friday, so the attitude ramp up began Tuesday. Just as the creative juices began to flow, from underneath my desk emanated deep, long, sad sighs that soon began to come at an even clip, accompanied by faint whines on the finish. In order to get any work done, we decamped for the bed with the laptop so she could lie halfway on top of me while I tried to type around 55 pounds of dog.
She’s always been a Velcro dog, but becomes an iron-on patch dog when she know’s were leaving. My guilt gets the best of me, so in addition to spoiling her with time and attention, I also spoil her with goodies; she somehow ended up with 3 new toys and a marrow bone. It makes me feel a bit better, despite the pitiful face she puts on when we kiss her goodbye.
We’re set to leave for Miami in the morning and I’ve spent the better part of the last 2 days trying to make myself feel less guilty for leaving Lou Lou behind. This happens every trip that she’s unable to join us…and it never gets any easier.
It’s been noted that Lou Lou leads a charmed life. When she was a baby, she once stayed at a kennel when we took our first trip without her. Once. Although it was one of those pricey, designer, “just like they’re at home” type of places that had popped up all over Chicago, we picked up a puppy who looked a tad shellshocked and smelled like kennel funk underneath the cloying scent of vanilla scented puppy shampoo. It took her a few days to get back to her regular self, but I had made up my mind in the car on the way home from the kennel. I was going to figure out a way for someone to stay in our house with her while we were away.
It couldn’t have happened more perfectly. One of her trainers at the Anti-Cruelty Society’s School of Dog Training had also become our walker on the days she didn’t go to doggy day care. From then on, whenever we had a trip, E, her pack of dogs and her boyfriend moved in for the duration of our travels. We left wine, beer, food and grocery money along with E’s payment for services rendered.(No 401K, but I would have offered it I could!) It was the best deal going. Lou Lou had a pack of playmates over for the doggy equivalent of sleep away camp and we had someone we loved and trusted in our home taking care of her.
When we moved back to DC, finding the new version of E was really at the top of my worry list. I interviewed a gentleman who did in-home boarding and came recommended by a neighbor, but he was full for the dates we had planned for our next trip. Reluctantly, we left her with family and I hated myself for it. For a dog who is accustomed to a big dose of daily exercise, play sessions several times a day and the universe revolving around her, I had sent her to the canine isolation house. This family’s own dog suffers from benign neglect; it goes into the yard to poop and pee, gets fed, no walkies, gets inconsistent attention, and goes way too long without proper grooming and nail trims. The entire time we were away, I felt tremendously guilty that we had left her in a place where she was getting the same level of care that most shelter dogs get. I checked on her via email daily, as is my usual pattern when we travel, but still had a pit in my stomach. There had to be a better way.
One of the wonders of Facebook is how much easier it is to keep in touch with people far away. During my last tour of duty in DC, I had a group of senior students that I was particularly close to. I knew their parents and siblings and we had kept in touch while they graduated from college and embarked upon life as educated adults. S and B were back in Arlington, working and going to grad school, respectively, and just happened to be two of the best human beings going. So I recruited them. Lou Lou now has two Aunties.
I can go on vacation and breathe easy again. I leave them 4 pages of directions (down from 6!) and the same ‘care package’ that E always had. They adore her and she adores them. Now only if we could avoid the dreaded ‘Suitcase Syndrome’ that afflicts Lou Lou every time we get ready to leave…
OK. The affenpinscher won best in show and now I can unclench my jaw. The buzz around the annual Westminster Kennel Club competition sets my teeth on edge every year. I’m not a fan and here’s a few reasons why:
1. The kind of breeding that goes into perpetuating a breed standard is canine eugenics. When natural selection takes a back seat to smooshier faces or more pronounced topline slopes, we get what’s coming to us served up by DNA’s karma. Breed standards no longer ensure that a dog’s appearance, movement and temperament are indicators of a sound, healthy dog. A few years back, I asked a veterinarian who had been practicing for over 40 years her thoughts; she readily admitted that health problems that would only occasionally be seen in some breeds have become more prevalent and more severe in nature. Would we allow human breeding for certain traits even if it compromised certain aspects of our species’ health? Hell no. So why is it OK to do it to dogs?
2. A breed standard in the US often calls for surgical manipulation of a dog’s features. I’m not down with that. Tail docking and ear cropping are cosmetic surgery, plain and simple. There is a strong argument against tail docking and it’s been outlawed in some parts of the world. I would hazard a guess that most of the argument against tail docking would also apply to ear cropping. The last time I saw a totally natural Doberman, dewclaws and all, I couldn’t get over how beautiful he was with his long, thin, tapered tail and beautiful, floppy triangle ears. We need to leave dogs with all of their communication tools intact, period.
3. In a world where too many animals are put to death each year in shelters, I think the money and time that go into everything that surrounds a competition like Westminster could be better used elsewhere. I wish that social pressure were enough to get most people to rethink where they get a companion animal, but we’re not quite there yet. I cringe every time someone talks about getting a dog from a breeder. I keep my politics to myself, because every dog needs a home. I’d happily put my own well-trained, well- socialized, registered therapy dog of a mutt up as an example of what can become of a shelter pup in loving hands.
4. I worry about the quality of life these dogs have. Last year a photo in a Washington Post gallery (no. 43) almost made me choke on my breakfast. Sophie, a standard poodle, was getting primped and readied for competition. Her display of what some behaviorists call ‘whale eye’ stopped me cold; her mouth was also crunched in a show of discomfort while her groomer/handler poked at her with a makeup brush. Here was a dog being manipulated into a human-manufactured standard of perfection. I’m pretty sure Sophie wasn’t having fun, but the better question is does she even know what fun is? Has she ever been allowed to run wild through the woods and sniff everything she could get her nose near? Or is that too risky for a dog whose value lies in her looks?
At the end of the day, we know who the winner is in our house. She’s a mixed-breed, totally natural, adopted, center-of-our universe dog who reminds us daily that we all won the day we brought her home.
I am a great fan of sleep. I “do” sleep like no one else. John often remarks, “Waking you up is a full contact sport.” Having researched the general rule of thumb that puppies can hold their bladder an hour for every month in age, we were working on a 2 hour cycle for puppy potty-breaks.
That being said, the first night at home went something like this:
A few minutes before the timer went off, I heard Lou Lou whimper and paw at her crate door. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my puffy coat from the floor beside the bed (I had planned ahead, of course), scooped her out of her crate and headed out the door to the elevator. I paused just long enough to stuff my feet into my slippers.
Once downstairs, we headed out to the gangway and then it hit me like only a sub-freezing wind chill can. We, genius team that we are, had brought home a puppy. In winter. In Chicago. You know, the Windy City where a mayoral election was won on a snow-removal platform.
By the time Lou Lou peed, my ankles were frozen, my ears were numb and I could barely feel my fingers. I hadn’t planned well enough, clearly. Once upstairs, I secured her in her crate and proceeded to set out what became my Puppy Mama Uniform. Long puffy coat, Uggs, ski cap, gloves and scarf all arranged on the chair nearest the front door so I could be weather-ready in seconds.
Convinced that potty-training a puppy during a Chicago winter would be a cake-walk, I set the timer for two hours and crawled back into bed.
The timer went off at 2 am, and I shuffled into my Puppy Mama Uniform and was able to get Lou Lou downstairs and outside before I started to sweat inside my winter armor. Lou Lou took her sweet time finding the perfect place to pee and by the time we got back upstairs I was wide awake. Dog back in crate, peel off layers, set timer, crawl in bed and stare at ceiling. Lather, rinse and repeat until the 6 AM reprieve when John took her out, then we were back up at 8 for breakfast.
This pattern of me getting no more than two hours of sleep at a time lasted for 2 weeks, in which I discovered many things about sleep deprivation. It makes you stupid to the point where you’re in the grocery store and you have a list, but find yourself unable to remember where any of your list items are located, so you go home without anything you needed. You go into a room for something and you forget why. You can’t remember if you brushed your teeth or put on deodorant. You can’t hold the thread of a conversation. As if the mental impairment wasn’t enough, you start to resemble that bad mug-shot of Nick Nolte that everyone thought was Gary Busey, but was actually a Polaroid shot.
The nice person in me would now like to formally apologize to all my friends who are human-baby moms. I used to think that childbirth had somehow lowered your IQ. I now know your brains didn’t come out with the placenta, you were just fucking exhausted.
When the Adoption Counselor returned, she shoved a sheaf of paperwork at us and said something along the lines of congratulations…go up front and pay…they’ll bring her out. When they placed her in my arms at the processing desk, all 10 weeks and 12 pounds of her, I went into a deaf-mute fog until they asked us what we wanted to name her. I blurted out, “Lou Lou!” John mumbled something about we didn’t discuss this, but the chipper shelter volunteer had already pressed enter.
As we made our way to the car, me clutching Lou Lou like she was a life-preserver, it dawned upon us that we did it backwards. One should prepare before adoption, not after. This so clearly went against my nature of being prepared for every contingency that I felt a little sick.
We had nothing for a puppy, nada, zip, zero, so we drove straight to Petco on Clybourn. Once in the store, John dutifully went about procuring a crate sized for a shetland pony, food, bowls, toys and everything else we thought she needed. Almost a thousand dollars later, we felt we had enough to get started.
Welcome home, Lou Lou! by Amy Knebel
When we got home, we first worked out the logistics of a potty area in our building’s gangway and congratulated ourselves on our cleverness. No going out into the street for midnight poops for us, no sir. Next, we set up her crate, bowls and found a place for her toys. As she ran amok checking out her new home by chewing on every surface, it hit us that we needed to puppy proof the house, which for people with no children took quite a bit of time. We dutifully read the crate training tips that accompanied her crate and discussed our night shift/day shift roles. Hey, maybe we didn’t do any advance prep, but we were gaining on it.
After a last potty trip outside, we climbed in bed and listened to every noise she made in her crate placed in the hall outside our bedroom door. Sleeping in yoga pants and sweats, I set the timer for two hours and drifted off. I had no clue of my forthcoming sleep deprivation.
We had been living in Chicago for a little over a year. After a stint doing freelance writing for a boutique PR firm, I decided that I wanted to return to teaching high school English and set my sights on getting certified to teach in the state of Illinois. With all of the hoops I had to jump through and the tests I had to take, I was looking at the next school year before I could teach.
So I subbed a little, tutored a little, but couldn’t really do anything full time since I lacked state certification. I was running to the Thompson Center on a weekly basis trying to convince the very nice ladies at the State Board of Education that I was indeed a US citizen, not a sex offender, TB free and had all the paperwork to prove it.
I turned into the crazy dog-stalker in the neighborhood. If you and your dog were unfortunate enough to encounter me on the sidewalk at that time, I apologize for the clingy hugs and kisses I bestowed on your dog. Obsessed with having a dog, I trolled petfinder.com and shelter websites daily for hours at a time. I developed a list of criteria that we would look for in a dog of ‘blended heritage’: puppy age, medium to large size, female and mellow. It was important to us to adopt; we wanted a shelter dog to find a home with us versus buying a dog from a breeder. All I had left to do was convince my husband that this was the time to bring home a dog.
I had spent the first 4 years of our marriage lobbying for a ball of fur to complete our family . Timing hadn’t been right in the past, but it sure was now. We were homeowners, stable (debatable based upon your definition) and I had 8 months of time to devote solely to raising a puppy before going back to work full-time. This was one of those things where I was bound and determined to get my way. I was going to be a Dog Mom or else. Game on, hubby-hub.
The night of my 34th birthday, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, I pulled off an Academy Award-winning crying performance, begging my husband just to go to the shelter the next day and look. As I wrapped up the tears, I launched into my overly rehearsed pitch, logically detailing why this was the perfect time to adopt a puppy. I’m not sure if it was the wine, the tears or the embarrassing scene, but he acquiesced. Anti-Cruelty Society, get ready, here we come.
Dog Mom 1, Spouse 0
