So I come home after working away during the day to discover that Dylan (our 1 year-old
Golden retriever) has not only dug a forbidden hole in the yard (which creates an absence of grass and a proclivity to mud) and left numerous strange white droppings (indicating a recent gorging of some strange and potentially harmful substance), but he has also chewed off the entire top of our neighbor’s ornamental tree, leaving a two foot stump sticking out of the ground and its shredded leaves strewn about the yard.
Something about dogs’ deviant behavior really gets under my skin. I didn’t think I had much of a temper before I owned a dog. (polite chuckle) Only it’s not really deviant behavior for dogs. Dogs are dogs are dogs, and dogs like to chew and dig and bark and get themselves into all sorts of canine trouble. They lead fairly simple straightforward lives. The complication arises from human companionship and our expectation for their behaviors to neatly align with our own homo sapiens standards of living.
So today is no different. However, suddenly I have reached my limit of frustration with the challenge of canine compatibility. I look dumbfounded at the two foot stump of a tree, straight and thin coming out of the ground and ending severely in a hopeless frayed frump. I close my eyes and hang my head in silent resignation of dog ownership. I am the proverbial camel and my back has done broke. The load of straw tumbles through my mind and all the irritations and inconveniences of life with Dylan as I have known it over the past year suddenly vivify and conjure my longing to be free, free, free!
In times past I had vowed never to own a dog in the city as I did not grow up equating dogs with cramped city life. However, somehow my wife convinced me to give it a try – on the condition that we would be moving out of the city in one year. And we left that city – but our home now is not a windswept, tree-lined golden acre of space – we are back in town - arguably better for a dog than the city, but still unarguably inconvenient.
Let’s just say that as first time dog owners we were somewhat naïve. Despite a bag full of doggy books loaned from the library, lots of lessons remained to be learned by experience. House training takes time and lots of accidents. Having a puppy inside the house is great fun – but terribly annoying when your yard is a sinkhole of mud during a northeast Ohio “winter”. Puppies never start out shedding their fluff, but when it does happen, as it inevitably will, daily vacuuming is not enough – one must learn to wear dog hair as though it is the latest fashion. You must be quick on your toes to throw away your child’s chewed up toys before she sees them – so as not to cause undue stress. Active dogs need regular exercise, even when the temperature outside is in single digits, and even when you don’t have any more time in your day – especially then. Dogs also do not self-regulate their plant-eating habits. If they eat poisonous weeds you won’t know it until they lie around half dead, or puke, or have nasty sudden-onset diarrhea.
So during your first year of delightful dog ownership, hopefully you don’t have to learn all of these lessons at once. Ideally these “critical learning points” will be evenly distributed over time and interspersed with lots of the cute cuddly stuff so as not to break the camel’s back.
So today, quickly ascertaining that this line of “critical learning point distribution” had clearly been crossed, I burned inwardly to get rid of “the dog”. (for in times of stress, he loses his rank as Dylan, and simply becomes “the dog”) I was upset and depressed for most of the evening and was brainstorming on the necessary procedures for dog disposal, a task that at first seemed daunting but was quickly gaining enthusiasm within my brain. I talked at length to my wife about how I had really not liked the dog all along and had only been putting up with him – and conveniently forgot all the cuddly stuff.
But upon reflection and time lapse between me and that critical moment, I realize that I am just too uptight – life is too short to be so stressed about mud and hair and inconvenience that I cannot enjoy a healthy, loveable dog. I realize that what unnerves me the most about taking care of him is that it is a constant reminder of my uptightness, my lack of time; my inability to relax, to play, to rise to the challenge of training a dog; to engage, to discipline, to love.
In this sense the dog dilemma is a universal one – whether it is a relationship with a child, spouse, father or friend. Every relationship is fraught with inconvenience, mess and crisis – if we can dare to open ourselves to those critical times and allow our own inadequacies to be exposed and matured- maybe we can find the stuff that makes relationships worth their while.
Where would I be if my loved ones hadn’t learned to put up with me?
Golden retriever) has not only dug a forbidden hole in the yard (which creates an absence of grass and a proclivity to mud) and left numerous strange white droppings (indicating a recent gorging of some strange and potentially harmful substance), but he has also chewed off the entire top of our neighbor’s ornamental tree, leaving a two foot stump sticking out of the ground and its shredded leaves strewn about the yard.
Something about dogs’ deviant behavior really gets under my skin. I didn’t think I had much of a temper before I owned a dog. (polite chuckle) Only it’s not really deviant behavior for dogs. Dogs are dogs are dogs, and dogs like to chew and dig and bark and get themselves into all sorts of canine trouble. They lead fairly simple straightforward lives. The complication arises from human companionship and our expectation for their behaviors to neatly align with our own homo sapiens standards of living.
So today is no different. However, suddenly I have reached my limit of frustration with the challenge of canine compatibility. I look dumbfounded at the two foot stump of a tree, straight and thin coming out of the ground and ending severely in a hopeless frayed frump. I close my eyes and hang my head in silent resignation of dog ownership. I am the proverbial camel and my back has done broke. The load of straw tumbles through my mind and all the irritations and inconveniences of life with Dylan as I have known it over the past year suddenly vivify and conjure my longing to be free, free, free!
In times past I had vowed never to own a dog in the city as I did not grow up equating dogs with cramped city life. However, somehow my wife convinced me to give it a try – on the condition that we would be moving out of the city in one year. And we left that city – but our home now is not a windswept, tree-lined golden acre of space – we are back in town - arguably better for a dog than the city, but still unarguably inconvenient.
Let’s just say that as first time dog owners we were somewhat naïve. Despite a bag full of doggy books loaned from the library, lots of lessons remained to be learned by experience. House training takes time and lots of accidents. Having a puppy inside the house is great fun – but terribly annoying when your yard is a sinkhole of mud during a northeast Ohio “winter”. Puppies never start out shedding their fluff, but when it does happen, as it inevitably will, daily vacuuming is not enough – one must learn to wear dog hair as though it is the latest fashion. You must be quick on your toes to throw away your child’s chewed up toys before she sees them – so as not to cause undue stress. Active dogs need regular exercise, even when the temperature outside is in single digits, and even when you don’t have any more time in your day – especially then. Dogs also do not self-regulate their plant-eating habits. If they eat poisonous weeds you won’t know it until they lie around half dead, or puke, or have nasty sudden-onset diarrhea.
So during your first year of delightful dog ownership, hopefully you don’t have to learn all of these lessons at once. Ideally these “critical learning points” will be evenly distributed over time and interspersed with lots of the cute cuddly stuff so as not to break the camel’s back.
So today, quickly ascertaining that this line of “critical learning point distribution” had clearly been crossed, I burned inwardly to get rid of “the dog”. (for in times of stress, he loses his rank as Dylan, and simply becomes “the dog”) I was upset and depressed for most of the evening and was brainstorming on the necessary procedures for dog disposal, a task that at first seemed daunting but was quickly gaining enthusiasm within my brain. I talked at length to my wife about how I had really not liked the dog all along and had only been putting up with him – and conveniently forgot all the cuddly stuff.
But upon reflection and time lapse between me and that critical moment, I realize that I am just too uptight – life is too short to be so stressed about mud and hair and inconvenience that I cannot enjoy a healthy, loveable dog. I realize that what unnerves me the most about taking care of him is that it is a constant reminder of my uptightness, my lack of time; my inability to relax, to play, to rise to the challenge of training a dog; to engage, to discipline, to love.
In this sense the dog dilemma is a universal one – whether it is a relationship with a child, spouse, father or friend. Every relationship is fraught with inconvenience, mess and crisis – if we can dare to open ourselves to those critical times and allow our own inadequacies to be exposed and matured- maybe we can find the stuff that makes relationships worth their while.
Where would I be if my loved ones hadn’t learned to put up with me?
3 comments:
Matt, I got a lot of laughs and smiles out as I read through your delightful story of the dog and two foot stump.
Dawn
well put! luther makes me want to send him far, far away some days, but i do think the older he gets, the fewer tear-my-hair-out moments we have. when he ran away last winter and we thought he was gone for good, i could hardly believe how much i missed him! your dylan is beautiful. wish i could meet him.
i think it's about time for another post.
d
Post a Comment