JourneyPersonal

Why I No Longer Have a Dog

Matt found a little brass collar tag of Snicker's yesterday, showed it to me, and said it made him sad. It made me sad, too. I pass people at the park with their dogs, and I miss having a dog.

Then I was trolling through my journals from last year for novel notes, and I came across this item:

[Please note: I *know* it's not OK to abuse animals. I offer my own bad behavior up as a cautionary tale - this is what can happen when you refuse to accept your own limitations and at least TRY to address them. This snapshot shows me the extreme dysfunction I found myself in while trying to maintain my personal mythos as supercoper.]

****

[Tuesday, May 4, 2004] Last night, Greg complained a lot. A lot. About the car, the road construction, his mother's tree over her driveway, other drivers, us being late.

I never said, "Please stop complaining now. It's driving me nuts." I should have.

When Greg got home (after another call, to gripe some more), he holed up, leaving me to play with Matt and feed him. Matt asked me to come help him wipe his bottom. I left my cereal on the coffee table "for just a moment" and Snicker was at it when I returned, though she started away guiltily.

She'd puked earlier, spent the day annoyingly underfoot to the point of craziness. Maybe she was trying to settle her stomach, who knows?

I totally lost it, spanked her flank hard and screamed at her. Matt gets justifiably upset when I abuse the dog. Into the garage with her.

Then not 5 minutes later, she was up on the downstairs bed, where she knows I don't want her to be. I yelled again, pushed her off. She peed on the comforter, incontinent in the face of my towering rage. And rage it was.

She also peed in Greg's office - he cleaned it up, but made a huge, fucking production out of it while Matt's playtime with him dwindled, his bedtime getting later, my rage building.

The fucking dog! I wanted to bash her skull in, pierce her body and make it bleed, grind her bones, step on her, break her.

I realize today that this was a case of shit rolling downhill.

I won't ask Greg for what I want.

I won't say no to Matt, or set any limits on what I'm willing to do for him.

But <clorox grandma>By God</clorox grandma>, this fucking DOG has to do what I say, respect my boundaries.

My rage was so out of proportion to events. It occurs to me this is exactly (well, maybe not exactly) how evil, bad and wrong slaveowners felt as they were whipping their slaves. That rabid sense of needing to punish a transgression. How automatic, righteous, inflamed my reaction was.

This morning, Snicker cowered around me, making it worse. Then she wiped her asshole on the carpet right in front of me. Whack! <Whine!>

I indulged myself in a monologue. You may NOT eat my cereal. You may NOT piss in the office, or on my bed. And you may NOT wipe your asshole on the carpet.

Greg tried to help, but ended up condescendingly lecturing me about the dog's level of understanding. I cried and told him I didn't find his advice helpful.

*****

Yes, we got rid of the dog. No, it wasn't fair to her. Yes, I still feel badly about it. No, I don't want another dog.

Contracting again

I spent two of my precious writing mornings this week at the large financial services company where I used to work, getting set up as an independent vendor to help with marketing, writing and editing copy and giving directions on layouts.

It's gratifying to see all my old buddies, and even more gratifying that they seem happy to see me, confident in my abilities.

The downside? The band of pressure all around my chest at even the *thought* of going back, which got steadily worse as I neared the gate. Even though my client had notified the guard gate that I was coming, of course they couldn't find my name on any list, and I had to pull to the side and wait like an unclaimed piece of mail.

Retrieved at the front lobby with the bright orange, can't-go-pee-by-yourself VISITOR badge on, the badge reader at the turnstile refused to let me through. Over to security to get my badge, where we discover the background check they had planned to do on me hadn't actually happened, so I couldn't upgrade my badge, log on to the LAN, and so forth.

I've only been gone since March. Can't you skip the background check? No, afraid not. Who knows what kind of hairy shit I could have gotten up to in that 6 months?

I've been working with my friend Karin to practice listening to my intuition. Well, it was shouting at me in this instance, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?!? You just escaped this place. Get the hell out, right now! Go home and write your novel!"

Trouble is, with neither of us pulling any income right now, I'm feeling too insecure. Despite the Mom Endowment for Susie's Novel, which is still hefty enough to last us, even if Greg didn't get a job, through next March, with careful management.

I'd had trouble sleeping the night before, sweating about getting a health insurance better than the COBRA offer from Greg's school district, which would be like a car payment to me on a car I'm not driving and enjoying.

When I'm stressed, I fall right into my old stress-relieving behavior, Getting More Work. Used to work like a charm, because my biggest worry USED to be money - or at least, that's what I thought it was. Looking back, it was the same bouquet of dysfunctions I've always enjoyed - self-esteem issues, emotional eating, inability to set boundaries. But Getting More Work used to make me feel in control, so now that I'm under stress again, I'm hightailing it back to that comfort zone.

Eww! But there's more to it than that. My rational mind sings in its most persuasive, hypnotic tone a compelling song about how long the novel will take to write (at least another year, I predict, and that's with making steady progress like I am now), how freelancing is different from wage slavery, how even if I assume a successful, well-received first novel, I'll need supplementary income way before next March, and that my professional contacts and skills could grow rusty and cold, functionally useless, unless I keep them up.

So I went back to the trough, the salt mine, again this morning. We made more progress; I'm a card-carrying vendor now, can go through the gates and roam the building freely, got my electronic tether, a second cell phone. Hopes are high that I can log on the next time I visit, early next week. I'm telling myself I'll keep it to a couple of meetings a week, a few quick afternoon swings in to check the e-mail and touch base, reserving my precious mornings for the novel, running out like a scalded cat at 2 to pick Matt up at school.

I had a great time at lunch with dear Pam, catching up on the past 6 months. The people have always been what makes or breaks a job for me, and I do like these people, even if they're mired in this silly, bureaucratic system with all its counterproductive politics.

But my intuition isn't buying it. I'm still hoping I can have both the financial security AND the time to write the novel. Can I make space for both? I hope so. If not, I'll have to kiss one or the other goodbye, and it sure as hell will be the one that feels like an anvil around my neck!

As God is my witless!

The Clumsy Puppeteer

I've gotten to the point where I'm writing scenes for my novel. Much of the time I'm still reading source works, making notes, adding to my characters' bios and all that background stuff. I realized belatedly that I don't have a real antagonist in my novel; I was relying on the historical events I've chosen as a setting to do most of my dirty work for me. But it occurs to me that it may be best to have both the larger, impersonal antagonistic force of events and politics, and a more personal, identifiable villain or two.

Just as in my swimming practice, I need to actually swim to get better, in writing my novel, I need to practice writing scenes - throw them away if necessary - to get good at making the characters live. Right now I feel like a clumsy puppeteer. The characters are alive and exciting in my mind, but when I try to get them to move on paper, through dialog, it all feels uncomfortable, contrived, laborious.

That's how my swimming feels, too - but with each lap, it gets a little better. So I'm pushing on, willing to throw out hours and hours worth of scenes, if in the end I'll be competent at it. It's so much harder than I thought it would be.

Greg and I took Matt to ride bikes in the park last night. Matt is on his new, fancy bike - a bit too big for him, still, but the next size down is too small, and he's growing like a weed. He's had his training wheels off for a year now, but the bike is unfamiliar to him, still, its balance sometimes precarious.

I was catching up to his speeding little butt yesterday when suddenly - WHAM - his handlebars suddenly swung to the side and he crashed onto the ground, hard. Turns out he'd taken one hand off the handlebars to wipe his nose, and lost control immediately. We encouraged him to get back on the bike and try again, despite his bleeding knee, knowing that it'll be harder to motivate himself the longer he waits. We know he'll master the damned bike. But Matt's not sure yet. Everything about riding that bike feels like an effort, and just when he's feeling he's got it, now we're going - WHAM.

I'm in that same precarious spot with my writing - feeling excited, trying to speed up, but my balance is wobbly. I haven't practiced enough to be able to relax about the writing process itself, and just let the ideas flow. I'm still worried about first- versus third-person, or where to start, or which scenes to do, or whether to include lots of description or not.

Is all this worry a necessary part of mastering a new skill? Here I'd thought that I already knew how to write. Now I'm starting to understand that not only is fiction a completely different beast than nonfiction, but the different genres are also very different in their requirements. And I've picked one of the more difficult genres, I suspect. Historical fiction is proving to be labor- and research-intensive. Romance is challenging because it's so personal, and so easy to go too far and be saccharine or contrived. I'm trying to do both at once.

I suppose it's like moving from a sturdy little tricycle to a 24-speed bike. Possible, but it will require patience and lots of practice.

Sordid Snicker Saga

We finally got rid of Snicker. I say "got rid of" and "we," but neither is accurate. Here's what happened, really.

We got her from Animal Defense League 4 months ago - an adult dog who'd just had puppies. She was small, sweet, cute, short-haired, good-natured about Matt wrestling and loving on her. Sort of housetrained; she'd wait and go outside if we kept on top of it. A win, when I thought about what we could have been going through with a puppy.

There was a downside, one that I tried to look past. Apparently abused by a tall, white male (judging by the few times I heard her growl at people), she was incredibly anxious about being left alone. The first night, I crated her in the laundry room, but she almost chewed her way out, and had knocked the crate across the room, destroyed a rug. We let her sleep on Matt's bed. I was home writing during the day, so I only left her for brief periods, during which she'd maybe pee in the office or strew the trash all around and eat stuff. I can get past this, I told myself.

She bonded to me, since I was home all day, and she hated to be left alone. She was up my butt all day long. I still had trouble getting her to accept me as the alpha, though. She walked me, pulling me and jerking me, stepping in front of me, obstinately stopping and pulling back. After weeks of struggling with her, reading books, watching videos, talking to everyone I knew with dogs, I finally got tough enough with her that she'd show belly at any sign of displeasure from me, but remained disobedient whenever she thought she could get away with it. We worked on "Sit" for four months, and she still wouldn't do it reliably.

And the housetraining was driving me nuts. Since I was training for the Danskin triathlon, I took Snicker on my long morning walks. She got used to peeing and pooping a mile from the house. Unfortunately, she'd no longer go in the yard, so if we didn't take her on the long jaunt at the right time, she'd pee in the house. Increasingly a problem. We couldn't leave her in the yard, because she could get out - under, over, through the fence, and if I chained her, she'd destroy stuff or wind her chain around things and trap herself away from her water bowl. I went back to crate training, but she could outlast me all day rather than pee in the backyard. I was spending all day trying to train the damned dog, not writing, not working, fuming.

At the same time, I'm in therapy to learn to express my anger. And dear little Snicker was a very handy anger target. The millionth time I walked her in the back yard, praying for her to pee, I'd lose it and yell at her, knowing it was just going to make things worse. When I found a big pee puddle in the office where I'd carefully blotted, cleaned and deodorized yesterday, I yelled at her again, swatted her flank, directly against the advice of every dog training treatise.

It got so that everything she did irritated me. The more she cowered, the more I hated her. I fantasized about killing her, dumping her in the country. At one point, I opened the front door and pushed her out on the porch. She refused to go. Each time, I'd vow to keep my temper, stop traumatizing her and making it worse. The problems were all my fault, for losing my temper, being impatient.

I contacted some trainers, most of whom prefaced their comments with, "That's probably why she was at Animal Defense in the first place." I dreamed of sending her to boot camp and having her come back home, all housebroken and trained. The trainers weren't willing to take her, though, since she wasn't reliably housetrained.

I have a problem setting boundaries in my life, my therapist tells me. She and Greg asked repeatedly if I wanted to get rid of the dog, since I was griping about her all the time. I didn't; I felt she was a good fit in many respects, I'd made a commitment to including her in our family. Matt loved her. I'd feel like I'd failed with her, not done the training right, not made enough effort. I was always willing to do a bit more to work things out.

When school let out, Greg started doing a lot of the Snicker stuff. It was affirming to hear that, indeed, taking care of Snicker was a ton of work. Too much work.

Greg and I took Matt to his swim lesson at 5:45. Snicker was at home, still crated, because she hadn't peed on any of the dozen backyard walks. Greg asked me to decide; was I ready to get rid of her? I didn't have to dedicate my life to this dog, we could turn her in. I finally agreed. He went back to move her to the chain outside, since we were both afraid she'd ruin something in the house. I felt guilty about it, but relieved. I called Julie to vent.

When we returned home an hour later, there was Snicker out front, bristling and growling at some neighbor's leashed dog. Her chain was wrapped around the tree, the collar left dangling off the ground where she would have hung herself if she hadn't been able to slip it over her head.

I'm sure it was traumatic for her. I tried to feel something for her besides disgust. I called the Animal Defense League first thing in the morning, but they were closed until noon, have a month-to-month waiting list going. The Humane Society accepts animals on a space-available basis on MWF, with appointment, but you have to call on those mornings. No. I was finally OUT of Snicker coping, completely out. I walked her a couple more times before Greg took her to the pound for me.

Matt is sad about losing her, but his main observation was, "People who knew we had her will ask about her." And I said, yep, they will. We'll just tell them the truth." I told him I was sorry, but I'd tried as much as I was willing to try. And he's seen that I have.

I hear the jingle of her tags, the furtive biting at the hot spot on her flank I used to tend with Benadryl. I still carefully close the door to the pantry, even though I don't need to anymore. Ghost of a dog.

My parents lied to me about the demise of my first and second dogs, and I was greatly disillusioned when I found out. I minded that more than losing the dogs. So I told Matt the truth about her final fate - she'll probably be put to death, though there's a slight chance someone will adopt her. I hope so. She's sweet, cute, short-haired. Almost housetrained.