2blackdogz

Summer Solstice Haiku 1

2009-06-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Me and my bitch
chomping buffalo jerky
on the cool tile floor

Not super happy about the Obama dog

2009-04-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

The new Obama puppy is adorable. But he is not a rescue dog. He's a purebred Portuguese Water Dog, a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy. I get it. If Senator Kennedy lobbied me to accept one of his exceptional dogs I'd be hard-pressed to reject it.

But I had such hope when Obama said they preferred to get a rescue dog. And he could have used a PWD rescue dog organizations or actually taken his little girls to a shelter that housed an allergy-free dog or two. He could have set the example for millions to follow. He's our national icon; realistically, thousands of people are now going to search out purebred PWD's. They'll get them from puppy mills. It's inevitable. And this breed is reputed for its high level of energy and tendency to mouth everything. It's a nightmare for the uninformed consumer. Which means for most consumers. Which means two years from now animal shelters will be killing thousands more mid-sized black dogs just like Bo.

Only not so lucky.

Image source: Pete Souza, NPR.org

The Distress of the "Aggressive" Dog

2009-03-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Here's something interesting.

Buddy is lying at my feet, looking dejected.

What just happened is this: the back-neighbor's handyman finally showed up (4 months late) to replace their portion of the back fence--the one with all the holes in it through which her dogs have begun fence-fighting with Petunia. Buddy mostly ignores those dogs; he might wander back for a sniff now and then but in the last year or so I've never seen him fighting with them (nor with Petunia's arch-enemy next door, for that matter).

But Buddy doe react to strange humans entering our property. He once chased a meter-man who'd jumped over the fence and into our yard. Didn't bite him but scared him and looked ready to attack. And of course Buddy did bite the man who entered my front door unexpectedly last year so I warned the neighbor's workman last August--and again last January, and again last month--that whenever he began dismantling the back fence he would need to telephone me so I could keep both dogs in the house.

He didn't.

Instead, he tore a panel off the back fence--with the neighbor's dogs still loose in their yard and without confirming where mine were. (Because Buddy is so quiet in the backyard the workman probably assumed the coast was clear.) And so Buddy charged toward the workman and started jumping up at him. It all happened behind the hedge, in the easement between our properties, but I could hear and deduce. I shouted out to the workman and he kept saying "It's OK" and so forth in that way I've come to recognize as shorthand for "It's OK, all dogs love me, I'm not worried, I'll just make friends with this dog no matter what the dog is doing."

Which is stupid as hell.

So I asked him to stop talking so I could call Buddy off the fence. Miraculously, this worked. (Am I actually learning something? Maybe about being more assertive with humans--wouldn't that be nice.) Buddy made eye contact with me behind the hedge and came out and followed me into the house and then sat down in front of me looking demoralized. Traumatized, really. The workman didn't harm him in any way that I could see or hear. I didn't even use an angry voice with Buddy. Just a serious one I've used before.

After securing Buddy I returned to the back yard and spoke with the workman again, making arrangements to keep the dogs indoors the next couple of days. He kept apologizing for the misunderstanding and I finally said, "He's a really good dog but he doesn't know you and he *will* bite you." I meant that Buddy would bite him if he seemed to be doing something dangerous to our world over here--like ripping out our fence--without a proper introduction. And I hated saying it out loud--that my dog would bite him--but I needed to make sure this guy knew that just because he's big and tall and a good guy who likes dogs doesn't mean that he can ignore my request that he allow me to secure my dogs before ripping up the back fence.)

So I said it out loud: I have a dog that seems likely to bite someone in situations like the above. And the shorthand way of saying that is that my dog will bite--which means it's not much of a stretch to call him an aggressive dog. But HERE IS WHAT IS INTERESTING TO ME: he doesn't like being aggressive. When Petunia fence-fights with the BigGuy next door she looks triumphant afterwards. She is downright proud of herself. Exhilarated. (Which is why I'm going to such pains to stop the fence-fighting.) The trainers call fence-fighting "a self-rewarding behavior."

So wouldn't you think that a human-aggressive dog would exhibit the same sort of response?

I realize there are all sorts of reasons why a dog may behave aggressively and that the fact that Buddy clearly disliked his confrontation doesn't mean he wasn't being an aggressive dog. But this incident does show me that Buddy would rather not be put in that situation--and if that's the case perhaps there truly is something I can do to shift the balance of power in our home. In other words, maybe I truly can convince Buddy that I am capable of protecting us all, and of being the one who decides when it is appropriate for him to lend a paw.

The trouble with blogs

2009-02-05T08:45:00.001-08:00

The trouble with blogging is that so much and so little happens during the intervals when you don't post--making it seem at once overwhelming and underwhelming to compose an update to bridge the gap.

So I won't. Much.

I'll just say that the house is still divided and I'm working with a different trainer and part of my difficulty is not having a second human around to work the dogs simultaneously.

And of course the bigger problem still seems to be how overwhelmed I feel by this situation. I need structure and strength and the dogs need me to model that for them and I'm not doing it. Not consistently. Which is the whole point, right?

Since my last posting I've added the following to my repertoire and debt-load:

two sessions with an animal behaviorist (about 90 minutes outside of town--actually good because I was willing to drive out of state) who specializes in Tellington methods and says the dogs demonstrate the potential to be trained back into peaceful coexistence but they're not likely to ever be pals because what Petunia appears to want most from Buddy is to be left alone. (BTW I recently read online that Garbo said, "I never said, 'I want to be alone', I said, 'I want to be left alone'. There is all the difference." Yep. And in my continued empathy with Petunia I so get that. But I persist in believing I mustn't let my domestic history color my sense of what's needed for a reasonable canine homelife.)
60 bales of straw, delivered to my house so I could make a barrier to prevent Petunia from fence-fighting with the killer rottie (I've mentioned this, right?, that the rottie--who can actually be very sweet to humans--killed a doxie four doors down from us, in its own yard?). But the straw was too loosely bound to stack and started to fall apart as we unloaded it from the truck and was clearly going to be a nightmare in many ways so I paid the farmer for his time (ka-ching) and sent it back
fence posts, a post driver (that was a new experience), wire fencing, cloth, and staples--my latest alternative to the above
enrollment for mom and me at an all-day Tellington workshop this weekend
kennel fees for the dogs while we're at the above
a collection of Bach's Flower Remedies and of course the book on using them with dogs
more gear (including some at-home agility equipt since we can't do the lessons for a while, and "balancing" stuff for the Tellington approach)

Yes. I hear myself. Yes. I get it. Yes there are people with children who do this and these aren't children. Yes there are two-dog households where everyone gets along and there's maybe two leashes and two collars and that's it. Yes of course this is all about me.

* * *

I have one of those families in which everyone talks over-frankly about whoever isn't around. It's the default cocktail conversation topic. All good people but always eager to critique and to recount epic failures. I used to assume all families did this but my ex-husband's family *never* did--in 16 years of holidays with them I never ever saw it happen. Over time, perhaps because of my exposure to the alternate universe of the other family (who, truth be told, often exasperated/bored me with their tendency to refrain from saying anything about anything) I found myself feeling badly for whoever wasn't in the room. Even so it really wasn't until very recently that this one bothered me: the periodic discussion about how it's just as well Aunt Divorcee never had children because imagine how screwed up they'd be . . . Backed up by stories of her married life centering around a couple of overly pampered dogs, especially after the miscarriage, and wrapped up with the comforting postscript: "The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways."

Year after year this discussion never bothered me.

Protruding Benefactors?

2008-10-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

This week we had a session with both my healing touch person and a healing-touch-for-animals person who is also an "animal communicator." I'll need to be in the right mood to describe that session.

For now I just need to mention that I returned to feng shui for a little while tonight and noticed something interesting: although I've always known my house is unevenly distributed (according to the ba gua) with a protruding area in the "helpful people" area. What I didn't notice is that in some translations "helpful people" also includes "guardian angels." For months I've thought about the struggle with the dog-interaction in terms of what the universe is attempting to teach me; I've even called the dogs my guardian angels. So it seems worth remarking that my crisis at home right now is directly related to an over-emphasis in (or over-abundant activity from) my "guardian angels." These life-changing creatures of mine.

The ba gua also reveals a gap in my knowledge area.

No surprise there.

So as I look around for parts of my house that need fixing/cleaning and so forth, I'm tempted to focus on the areas associated with Benefactors, then Knowledge, then maybe the Children or Animals area. The animals area I didn't know about til tonight. Evidently the Fame area (which has the right structural proportions but is the messiest area of my house right now--owing to it being the place I made all my pre-tax-preparation piles) happens also to be the area associated with Animals. This is learned while perusing various ba gua images for use on this blog posting.

So maybe that means I should tidy my Animals area first, eh?

Image source: http://energymover.com/bagua2.gif

A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008-10-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

I spent the day waiting for dog school. Buddy began Canine Good Citizen class tonight. We enrolled in the class because the "intervention-night" trainer recommended it and because it seemed to me that if we could get him to pass the CGC exam it would "certify" Buddy as not a bad dog, which is the reputation he's earned by biting the co-worker who entered my front door without me and by fighting with Petunia and by wearing something my neighbor thought was a muzzle.

And now by pitching a fight with three or four dogs in class.

Oh Lord.

I spent the day waiting for dog school. I read some more chapters of Control Unleashed and was inspired by what the trainer described as "Twilight Time": making time to connect with your dog before an obedience class or an agility contest. Arriving early, giving the dog a TTouch massage, being calm and quiet together. I see it as a way to equalize your energy especially before an activity that could involve lots of stress and interaction with other humans and dogs. Sounds like just the thing we need.

I spent the day waiting for dog school. It started at 6:30. At 5 it was too early to start Twilight Time so I did some schoolwork, sent some emails to my department and to my students. And then it was 6:00. It was raining. I hadn't cut up Buddy's special food I planned to use as his training treats. (The trainer made me withhold meals from him all day in preparation for the class.) I was going to be late for class.

Shit.

So I played soft music in the car and tried to be calm and to visualize a good class. I did this CGC class at this same school a few years ago with Petunia and knew exactly what to expect.

We got there and must have been at least 10 minutes late. The small room was crammed with people and dogs. Big dogs. Lots of dogs. It was hot and the people were supposed to be walking their dogs briskly at heel around the room but dogs were sniffing each other and stopping and starting and Buddy was disoriented and distracted and whined at a dog or two and then got into a snarling match with a German Shepherd and soon after lunged at a big boxer and then at a small herding somethingorother and then it was all a blur. My heart was thumping against my chest and the instructor pulled Buddy into the middle of the room to use as a model for handling a "reactive dog" and a "dog-aggressive dog" and I just wanted to take my little boy dog out of the room and away from this intense unhappy place and be quiet and alone.

I remembered how the class was crowded when Petunia took it and I remembered not liking the class. And now I asked myself, "Why am I here? Why am I doing this to myself and to my dog?" I wanted to weep. I tried to do the click-to-calm stuff but everything happened so fast. Again and again. It wasn't just Buddy that was lunging and reacting. A few others were doing it also. But I couldn't keep it together.

The newbie trainer who was part of the intervention and who is also enrolled in my foundations agility class with Buddy took me aside to help me get control of myself and of Buddy. She said "click him for looking at you" and I did and she said "click him for looking at other dogs" but the room was tiny and any place he looked other than me could arguably be looking at dogs but I tried to click at all his room-ward head movements also and she said "click him for looking at other dogs and then for looking at you" and got into some logically cadenced explanation of what she meant but honestly I couldn't follow her. The room is small. He's either looking toward the dogs or looking away from the dogs and if he's looking away he's looking in my general direction so when do I not click in that situation? I tried to stay calm and click and the nice newbie stuck with me and whispered in my ear about how some of the other dogs had been bad in other classes and I don't know if any of that helped me or not. I just wanted to cry. I felt grateful to Newbie for staying with me and helping me calm down, or at least get rid of my whale eyes or whatever. But later she casually said to another student that Buddy "hates other dogs" which was a cruel thing to say and an oversimplification and made me angry.

So we survived the class.

Now what?

I'm having basically good experiences with Buddy on our increased walks and playdates with the pug and at agility. Why put us through this?

It's not for the certification anymore. Now the only reason I'll return next Monday is to see if Twilight Time makes things better and to stay on the perimeter of the class, outside of the regular class activities, and just to click-to-calm exercises with him for an hour during the class. It could be a really good way to do click-to-calm training.

But swear to God I will drop this class if it feels bad again next week. I realize I have to push things farther than I have been if I'm going to stand a chance of changing how the dogs react to one another and, i suppose to other dogs. But I never want to feel this utter wretched failure again. This awful, awful vulnerability and chaos surrounding my dog. And if we do ever go for a CGC it will not be with this instructor.

And P.S. I'm writing to the [local nonprofit that's sucking the life out of me] and officially resigning as a board member. I'm not going to transition slowly off the board like I'd planned. My dance card of soul-sucking activities is too full for both.

Oh, and P.P.S. My old hair stylist was there with her dog (we always used to talk dogs when she did my hair--which got too ash blond and she wouldn't listen to me about not wanting ash colors plus she was a gazillion dollars so I dropped her) and her dog was perfect (in fact, her dog was the one the instructor pulled into the center of the circle to demonstrate some sort of perfect walking thing) and she was perfect and her husband was perfect and she saw my hair that she hadn't done so now I've got stylist-switch trauma to boot.

Competitive Dog People

2008-10-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

Both dogs were wonderful in their agility classes today. Petunia is a prodigy--amazingly good despite my klutzy handling; Buddy was asked to demonstrate everything first in his foundations class, which was flattering. But what really mattered to me was that both dogs behaved just fine around the other dogs in class. At the end of the day, what makes me happy and peaceful is feeling they're okay in the world of humans and dogs outside our own home.

I love our trainer, who is all about making everything positive and fun and isn't totally competition-oriented.

I'm not too comfortable with those competitive dog people: the ones who adopt dogs for competition, who talk about their dogs' physical structure as a strategic competitive asset and their energy in terms of "drive."

I bought a couple of books on agility training for dogs with "issues" (both basically good but published by a company who must have a line-editor who did not major in English in college. The syntax and usage bug me now and then. (For example, in both books the author uses "that" instead of "who" when referring to people--two different authors, mind you; it's the editor for sure.) One is Control Unleashed and the other is Shaping Success.

Anyhoo, beyond the editorial glitches what alienates me as a reader is each author's emphasis on agility as a performance sport moreso than as simply a fun activity. CU does gratefully have a passage that entreats dog owners not to push their dogs into a sport they don't seem to love. But SS is especially for and about serious competitors. And the author describes her iffy underdog's impressive lineage (from flyball and obedience champs) in a way that I understand but don't really relate to. I realize there are good, conscientious breeders in the world but I don't much enjoy reading about purebred dogs because so many millions of dogs are killed every year--dogs that deserve a decent life and aren't adopted while breeders keep breeding and breeding more dogs. And choosing a dog as if it were a bottle of wine . . . okay, I know the author doesn't mean it to sound so boutiquey but still the author loses me when she tucks little sniffs of disappointment and dismay into her narrative about how this dog that somehow should have been more perfect because of its parents ended up being unpredictable and challenging. As if she or the dog is more heroic because the unexpected behavior is coming from a purebred dog . . . I dunno.

As I think about Petunia possibly competing in agility I worry about it being stressful--exciting but in a bad way. She seems so triumphant and engaged during her little practice exercises in class. I want her to be able to feel that way more often. But I don't want to get ambitious about all this. I don't want competition to be the goal. I don't want to get swept up in P's promising potential and become one of those snobby conformance people. They exist in obedience and in agility too. People who expect perfection from their dogs. I'm just not into that. Rules and structure only matter to me because they seem to be needed for a reconcilable household. But heaven help me if I ever consider it essential for my dogs to pick up metal dumbbells in their mouths or win ribbons.

My Paperwork, Myself . . . Some Context

2008-10-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

What sifting through my tax clutter has reminded me about my recent homelife:

In addition to remodeling my house, refinancing it, and divorcing my
husband, in 2007 I had something like four transvaginal ultrasounds
for ovarian cysts, took hopefully-deductible "continuing education"
lessons in oriental painting, and attended conferences in:

* New York
* Chicago
* Taos
* Beijing

Plus taught two classes in Singapore.

So maybe it's not entirely unexpected that my dogs and I need grounding and structure right now.

Clarification

2008-10-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

Not "clarity" yet, but clarification about our jobs.

Petunia's job is feng shui.

I've always seen this. Her gift with people and with spaces has always been her ability to energize nooks and crannies, sweeping dead energy aside, animating the faces of people who might otherwise feel ignored. She is joy.

During our unhealthiness, this energy has become misdirected or diffused, she is sweeping across spaces to reinforce barriers between herself and Buddy; she is uncomfortable with dogs entering her personal space and with areas she perceives as her space. My work with Petunia is to help her recognize her true work, which is actually more complex and interesting than her perceived work.

Buddy's job is compassion.

This, too, I've always seen but hadn't quite articulated to myself. Buddy knows this is his job, too, but during our troubled times he began to misinterpret his role as physical protection rather than compassion.

When I first encountered Buddy he was a neighborhood stray that didn't look like a stray. As Petunia and I would walk through the neighborhood day after day we would see him poised in a neighbor's yard, not as a guard dog but more of a guardian angel, an avatar of tranquility. He was peaceful and elegant. Observant but not suspicious. He moved from house to house but we only knew that because we would see him sitting peacefully in one yard or another. In each place he seemed to belong, to be in the right place.

My narrative for him now is that Buddy was bringing compassion to each place and to those who lived there. Compassion is the name for the connection I felt with him from our very first contact, and it is the name for the way he helped me through the separation and divorce. Petunia was empathy, but Buddy was compassion.

So my work with Buddy is to help him do his true work as well.

Clarifying these jobs in my own heart and mind is helping me relate to the dogs differently this morning.

Let's face it, all attentive dog owners tell stories to themselves about their dogs: who they are and what they do. If I'm weaving an elaborate metaphysical narrative so be it. If I know any truth at all about my situation it's that the dogs need clarity from me; they need a clear message from me about who does what in our home and in the spaces beyond it as well.

Our Jobs

2008-10-06T21:15:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention this:

I've decided Petunia's very clear job in our home is to spread joy everywhere.
She's doing a crappy job of it right now, growling at Buddy and making him feel oppressed.

Buddy's job is to bring us calmness and serenity.
Instead right now he's slinking around like a beaten-down stray. I worry about how he'll interact with other dogs in class. He got into a growling-lunging tiff with a pretty golden retriever named Maggie from around the corner and we passed one another walking on-lead. WTF?

* * *

So then what's my job?

To be the calm-assertive leader, structuring our lives--keeping our physical space open and safe and clean, establishing rituals and routines that nurture and protect and enrich and entertain us, being a model of harmony and strength.
I've been sucking at my job too.

What the Healing Touch Person Said

2008-10-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

She listened with compassion to my story about the dogs. How all the dog-behavior books and tv shows and some of my own trainers too point to energy: the need for a dog leader to have calm assertive energy, and the dilemmas arising from a lack of it and the fact that I have never, ever felt whole or strong or calmly assertive.

If this blog were to become a wacky dog memoir the New Age stuff would amuse.

But really is it any wonder I ended up meeting with an alternative healer today, a person who defines her entire role in terms of energy, given that so much of where I am right now seems to be derived from the most turbulent period of my life?

EE and I poured all our troubled energy into Petunia from Day One. She became our intermediary. We weren't entirely comfortable with one another emotionally or physically but we were 100% certain about P. She became the center of everything.

As the marriage further degraded I clearly preferred P's company to my husband's. Later of course the same became true of Buddy. And when I found myself breaking down, screaming in my car, fighting for a way out of my erroneous marriage, my solace was P on my lap and B at my feet. I fled to them.

And then I finally got what I wanted: a home alone with my dogs. And it seemed exactly right. And then this happened. And now here I am. With two dogs who seem to not want to live with one another anymore.

I told the therapist that the dogs are my heart and soul: Buddy my heart, my connection to calm and quiet affection; Petunia my soul, my empath. And she said you can't function with your heart and soul divided from one another. Whether viewed in terms of the dogs or in terms of myself the task seems to be attempting to integrate my heart and soul.

Our conversation drifted between metaphorical interpretations of the dogs' behavior and my own sense that ultimately they are manifesting something from me. At this point it doesn't matter what's causing it; what matters is healing it.

* * *

So here's what I'm left with from today's session:

* I need to give each dog a very clear job to do in our home.
Petunia still believes she is in charge--if not of me, at least of Buddy. Her sphere of influence has expanded. Tonight Buddy absolutely refused to go into the bedroom. Even when she was outside, behind the sliding glass door. He would not turn left and walk toward the bedroom while P was sitting outside the door, watching him. I brought his car crate into the house and set it up in the living room. He hasn't gone inside it. He's hoping to sleep upstairs in the guestroom. That's the opposite end of the house from Petunia. Kind of the way I would go into the downstairs room when EE was upstairs in that one. I try not to trace the parallels overmuch. The bottom line is that they appear to be more estranged than they were before and I don't know if it's because I've neglected their walks the last few days and been so stressed about digging through papers for my taxes or whether it is about reinforcing their separation with the gates or whether it's just them being themselves. But I'm frustrated. Deeply frustrated. And they're breaking my heart. Again.

* I need to integrate my heart and soul.
Whatever that means. Intuitively I do feel they are split. When I try to imagine "my heart's desire" I come up with nothing other than my dogs being happy together. For a short period a year ago I thought romance might be wonderful some day. But I'm back to feeling oppressed by my relationship with EE--a relationship that persists today in the form of our 2007 taxes, which I complain about in another blog. My heart--what does my heart want? It wants to be peaceful and open and safe and quiet and calm. It wants to survive intact. My soul--what does it want? I find myself feeling irritated even writing about all this. I want to say Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck it all. I'm so deeply frustrated. I'm so mad about ending up this fractured, feeble person. This person who might lose a dog because she can't get her shit together.

* * *

The therapist moved my energy around and whatnot but I'm feeling too irritated to get into all that. Right now I have to decide whether to let my dog sleep outside of a crate tonight or not. And I have to grade a pile of stuff before I can go to sleep for my early class.

And I'm wondering if my frustration and anger and desire to curse like a sailor is somehow a result of the energy stuff--maybe it's like getting a massage and the toxins flowing out of your muscles. Maybe the healer is helping me feel pissed. For good. Something my cognitive therapist has wanted me to feel for years but I've been feeling too guilty and too emotionally responsible for EE to really connect with my own anger.

One thing I've learned for sure from the Dog Whisperer

2008-10-03T10:19:00.001-07:00

I never ever pursue my dogs with the leash (or any gear at all).

Now I always wait for them to come to me. And they always do. Eventually.

Fung Shui, A Vedic Mantra, and A Healing Touch Specialist

2008-09-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

What's gotten better:

I've been walking both dogs more and for longer periods.
I've lost a little weight.
I'm eating better.
I'm kayaking around once a week.
The dogs are staying off the furniture even when boxes or tin foil are absent. (Which is good not because I give a flip about them being on the furniture but because it means they're obeying one of my otherwise meaningless hierarchical rules.)
I'm mostly maintaining the other house rules, such as feeding them twice a day and making them sit before passing through doors.
Petunia seems to really love her agility lessons.
I've enrolled Buddy in agility and CGC training also and those classes begin soon and will be good one-on-one time for us.
I'm becoming somewhat accustomed to walking every day with the dogs and am somewhat less bored by it.
I've gotten a little smarter about rotating the dogs around the house in a way that reduces Petunia's opportunities to growling at Buddy for crossing her perceived space.

What's gotten worse:

As should be evident from the last item above, Petunia is still growling and mean-barking at Buddy, despite the "improvements" in our household hierarchy.
In fact, she's gotten worse in the last week or so. Last month the two dogs would sit across the gate from one another without either one growling; sometimes an entire day would pass without a growl or bark across the gate. (It's always Petunia growling or barking, never yet Buddy.) Now Petunia growls more often then not, every time Buddy: (1) walks past the gate, regardless of whether I'm on the same side of the gate as her and, if memory serves, also regardless of which side of the gate she's on (though mostly when she is on the living room/front door side and he is on the dining room/back of the house side; (2) enters the bedroom at night. Mostly she growls when she is in her crate in the master bathroom and he is entering the bedroom. Buddy now cowers every time I ask him to enter the bedroom, as if Petunia might be in there or growl at him. So our current routine is that I have him enter the bedroom first at night, then have her go to her crate. When I crate them before work there seems to be less of an issue about entering the bedroom, though he still hesitates before entering the room. (Should I put one of their crates outside the bedroom? This is the returning question. The trainer said yes. But I worry that would give one dog perceived ownership of the bedroom (if this is about territory, after all, and if my attempts at being THE owner of the territory are still ineffectual, wouldn't I exacerbate the problem?).
The house--especially the dining room--has gotten much more messy, partly because I'm trying to *finally* (as in at last and forever more) sift through all my old divorce and pre-divorce paperwork and receipts to give my tax-preparer, and the kitchen because I've been working long hours and neglecting it. Though I should say my master bathroom has gotten cleaner because moving Petunia in there inspired me to tidy it and now I've kept it tidy for over a week.
I'm feeling deep despair. Inside I'm feeling panicky that this dog scenario won't get resolved and that it's all my fault because I'm such a fragmented, brittle mess.
Buddy is pulling on the leash again when we walk, even though I'm doing the same dog-whispererish stuff that I began over a month ago and to which he seemed to respond really well.

So where are we?

I'm trying three new things this week:

Feng Shui
Since not filing my 2007 taxes is not an option, I'm seriously focusing on getting through the majority of my paper clutter this week. For good. Financial strain has been a major source of stress for me and clearly part of why I'm feeling brittle (in addition to the dread of encountering marriage related stuff among the papers and clutter). The Wall Street debacle has me terrified of losing my house--remember, I'm on a second mortgage right now. So that would explain part of my increased anxiety that perhaps is fueling the dogs' behavior. I'm out of control financially, or nearly so. I've been spending far more than I earn in an attempt to fix and fix-up the house, and in my prodigal pursuit of dog-behavior solutions, to the point where I've never returned to my plan of establishing a budget or even figuring out what I routinely spend every month, much less strategizing for savings or even further debt avoidance. All this is a serious dilemma. And part of the solution, possibly the main part of the solution, is getting organized at last. Taking ownership of my paperwork, mercilessly tossing and shredding some of it, and getting to a place where I can see what I've got and where it's going. Doing so would clear my dining room and make me feel less like a total failure. I'm calling this feng shui partly also because I believe a core of financial organization would seed organization and tidiness elsewhere in my house and life. The consistently tidy master bath is a huge accomplishment for me. I feel peaceful entering that space and nowhere else in the house. That says something. And I think the dogs feel it too.

A Vedic Mantra
I had lunch with an old student this afternoon, a Buddhist and philosopher whose mindfulness I have always respected. I asked him to recommend a mantra to help me feel more grounded. I'm going to use it as my next effort at meditation.

A Healing Touch Specialist
My therapist recommended this woman to me months ago, perhaps even a year ago, to help me deal with some body/vulnerability issues related to my childhood and stepfather. I finally called her for help with my sense of fragmentation and inner weakness, my inability to feel that core of strength that I'm supposed to be tapping as a "calm-assertive leader." Whenever I try to Be that person I always know I'm faking it. Cesar Millan says "be Oprah . . . be Cleopatra . . ." I've decided who I want to channel is Bette Midler. Ha! No, seriously.

I told the healing touch person this over the phone and also mentioned the problem with the dogs. She asked me the names and breeds of the dogs. Not in that sing-songy dog person way, but in a trained-professional-who-could-be-asking-me-about-my-family-history-of-diabetes kinda way. She said she sometimes works with dogs and that she might ask me to bring one or both of them to a future consultation.

Yes, I know how wacky this all sounds. I don't care. And frankly if I'm going to continue on this quirky journey why not follow every path. And I must say that the moment she took an interest in my dogs I felt I was cosmically meant to work with this person.

So there you go. My appointment is this Friday.

My Daemon

2008-09-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt I had three Petunias. Three energetic black terriers hopping up on the sofa, demanding attention. Not a Buddy in sight.

They were adorable and I loved them all and made them practice only coming up on the sofa when I invited them. Then I found myself worrying that maybe I hadn't taken all three to agility class last night. Or maybe I'd only done the jumps with one or two of them and the other missed out.

Petunia is being brilliant in agility. She seems to love it and seems completely unfazed by the other dogs in class. Last night a rambunctious lab approached her and she was just fine. I accidentally held my breath as some sort of herding dog approached her and she was still fine.

This Saturday morning we rotate into our regular agility class, which will include that pit bull we met last week named Phoebe. The one with the calm energy. I feel certain Petunia's relationship with the pit will go south only if I'm weird about it. This may very well, at last, be the thing that drives me to practice meditation. I need to be able to anchor myself to calmness.

But the business of having three Petunias has me once again in mind of Pullman's book The Golden Compass.

I felt cosmically directed to read that trilogy (three separate events pointed me to it) so I finished Book One a few days ago. If I were actually "called " to read that book it's likely because of its premise that every human has an animal daemon that is a mirror of him or herself.

The idea of dogs mirroring human emotions and behavior is one that has come up repeatedly in my readings about animal behavior as well. And I've admitted all along that my tension and fragmentation have influenced if not caused the problems we're experiencing at home. But it's more than just being tense and off-kilter. If I were to truly contemplate this thing, I'd find parallels in Petunia's need for affection, her bitchiness, her anxieties, and her outright joy in structured romping outdoors.

So three Petunias. Was I supposed to be one of them--maybe the one left out of the agility class?

I've Seen Dog Heaven

2008-09-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

It's Shangrila.

And it's just 20 minutes due north of my house: the freeway nearest my house turns into a two-lane country road as I drive further and further north through pastureland that's slowly being developed into McMansions. Just when you think you've gone too far the country road becomes a modern, multi-lane intersection. Turn right and you're on another two-lane country road with long driveways extending into nowhere. One of those driveways leads through a residential security gate, then a tree-lined road (of the gentleman farmer aesthetic) leading to a vast ranch-style mansionesque complex that includes a fully developed horse-training facility that has been turned into an agility dog training facility.

Some paddocks have become semi-enclosed play fields where you can toss a frisbee to a dog that needs a little alone time; others are mini training arenas where a dog and her handler can focus on, say, weave poles.

Stables lined with aromatic wood shavings offer jumping apparatus at different heights.

A satellite building is now the dog trainer's office, fitted out with "dog-proof" decor with southwestern flair: slate floors, iron furniture, a franklin stove, a separate conference room with a viewing system so you can review your agility moves over a glass of iced tea.

Oh. My. Stars.

I brought Buddy to this alternative universe for what I expected would be a quick meeting with the trainer. We stayed three hours (I missed an appointment downtown for this), playing with some of the dogs--yes, we had a play date with a white schnauzer (a male, dominant schnauzer BTW). And get this: the schnauzer's owner works for the very Camp Bow-Wow that rejected us a few years back and said she'd get us special permission for a re-interview for Buddy since he was such a good sport with her dog.

He was calm and dear with every human and canine there.

I brought only Buddy because it's raining all weekend and I figured the storms would rattle Petunia too much for such an adventure to be sensible.

But around 1 p.m. I decided the place was too good for P to miss. So I drove home, switched dogs, and Petunia spent nearly three hours there as well. We wandered around and met other dogs. I was more cautious with her so no play date, but we did walk by many different dogs and nearly all were significantly larger. The dogs around whom she seemed *least * calm were Belgian Tervurans--the same breed as her best friend in the old days. The dog that seemed to be most calming for her was a pit bull named Phoebe. Yes. A big black female pit bull with a scarred up face (from her pre-rescue days), named Phoebe--she is now a therapy dog and does agility.

We played ball for about an hour in the separate space, just getting exhausted and happy. She returned the ball right into my hand, almost every time. Occasionally she'd head over to the horse trough for a drink and them climb all the way inside it, like Mr. Darcy in his bath tub.

She met lots of humans who gave her lots of treats and helped her experience much goodness in an unfamiliar place surrounded by lots of high-energy dogs making eye contact and so forth (in other words, these were assertive and alert dogs--amped up from running around and most were herding breeds, which tend to be, on balance, the most consistently unnerving breeds for Miss P). But she was fine and I was okay and the trainer said she saw nothing in Petunia's behavior that would cause her to worry about having her in a class.

So we're going to return for an individual "levelling" session to see whether we can enter as beginners (instead of as foundations or pre-agility people--in other words, whether we can get on the equipment sooner rather than later). Buddy is going into the foundation class and we're trying to get into the same class as his new schnauzer pal.

That's how I spent my day. My dogs are now snoozing on their beds and I'm feeling Gratitude.

Slightly Updated Training List for Now through Oct 1

2008-09-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

OK, let's call it our "Pre-Agility" List or our C2C 101 List

I had a nice talk with the agility trainer this afternoon and she said the #1 training priority for agility is getting Buddy to come when I call him because the dogs work off-lead.

Now, the whole reason we're doing agility is to give the dogs some structured play with me. Something fun and exhausting that includes a little obedience training and some structured interaction with other dogs. BUT part of me is fearful that the dogs may not be ready for re-entry into the off-lead dogworld. And that's something we'll need to just figure out. Either they'll be able to do it or not but I feel confident that if a fight were to occur I could pull my dog back safely and at that point we'd probably have to withdraw from class. Petunia did agility years ago, for six weeks, and never had a confrontation with another dog. If the dogs can handle the interaction I believe it will be important to them. And I'm speaking in the plural because I've decided to enroll in a separate class with each dog, if the trainer will admit each dog into a class. So there you have it.

And if we seem to be ready for agility that's OK because this training list will also help us get ready for Buddy's Canine Good Citizen training and for our general aspiration of living the good life. (Which at this point means the three of us safe and happy and healthy and not fighting. Seems to modest and yet so miraculous.)

So here's the list that I'm making into my next checklist (because evidently I'm better with a checklist):

Walk with each dog every day: 40 minutes min on non-teaching days; anything okay on teaching days.
Clicker train for eye contact ("watch"), both dogs, every day.
Clicker train for coming when called, both dogs, every day.
Maintain the current physical structure of our homelife every day.
Study bark-reduction and make a baby step towards it with Petunia each day.
Practice muzzle-time with Buddy, for fabulous treats, 5 to 30 minutes per day.
Practice backpack-wearing during Buddy's walks at least 3 times per week.
Practice gear-wearing time with Petunia, followed by fabulous treats or playtime, 3 to 10 minutes per day.
Bring each dog into an interesting socialization context (such as a store or public event) at least once per week.
Do at least one 30-minute down-settle with each dog every day.

Priorities (What Trumps What with My Dogs)

2008-09-08T16:38:00.001-07:00

This seems like a useful list to begin and hopefully to maintain.

It comes from what just happened outside: Petunia and I were playing frisbee (frisbee trumps treats for P). I had a sense that the neighbors were outside next door, which usually means their rottie is there too, but instead of returning inside I decided that a rousing game of frisbee would be a neat way to practice being in the yard simultaneously without fence-fighting (something P and the rottie regularly do, always with the same progression: the rottie watches us through the fence, P detects it, P charges behind the bushes against the fence, loud fighting ensues, somehow it gets broken up (I like to think that my calling her away is what finally makes her break off, or even that the neighbors' calling their dog off does it, but I suspect sometimes P just stops when she feels like it), P scampers away from the fence, tail high, looking triumphant and jolly. Needless to say, this behavior is on the short list of things I'm supposed to stop.

* * *

PETUNIA'S LIST:

Rottie at the fence TRUMPS frisbee.
Rottie at the fence TRUMPS splashing water (i.e., the promise of swimming and splashing games).
Frisbee TRUMPS supper.
Ball TRUMPS frisbee.
Mom clicking-and-treating Buddy outside TRUMPS hiding-under-the-bed.

BUDDY'S LIST:

Supper TRUMPS Petunia-watching.
Sitting TRUMPS swimming.
Click-and-treat games TRUMP frisbee or ball.

Aggressive Alice

2008-09-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

Season 1, Episode 16. That's the closest to my situation so far.

Solution: walk the dogs together.

Body Language

2008-09-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

A couple quick notes:

During my long walk with Buddy today his ears were more tightly back on his head than I'd ever seen them. I get confused about whether ears back is good or bad but in this instance it must have been good. He was walking briskly forward, at my side, tail wagging. Mr. Adventure.

Right now Petunia is under the bed again. This time it happened when I switched the dogs, like I do: moving Buddy into the bedroom then Petunia into the yard, closing the sliding door, then moving Buddy into the living room and bringing Petunia back into the house with access to the yard and back rooms. Buddy was on his side of the house, behind the babygate. I went to get them fresh water and found Petunia beneath the bed.

At some point during that switcharoo a gate fell down and made a noise and that disturbed Petunia but it happened before I took her outside and so it wouldn't be a "trigger" really, for her going beneath the bed.

Uncle Fester & Roller Skates

2008-09-08T08:43:00.001-07:00

Ick!

Petunia and I took another long circuit through the old part of the lake-park (I've never liked that park--built during the Eisenhower era and reminds me of Eastern Germany--in a bad way. Decrepit socialist minimalism or some such.

Anyhoo, we were stalked by a bald old man in little blue car. He'd park and adjust his rear-view mirror to watch us, then park again further up, then again. He drove like 3 miles an hour. Not lovely.

But the good news is that we've all done our walks for the day. I did Buddy first: a full hour in his backpack. We walked all the way to the dog park and back, which meant going over a freeway overpass. Lots of different sights and sounds and smells. I didn't put anything in the backpack for today. We just tested it to see if it fit properly and it seemed to be fine.

By the time I returned home for Petunia's walk I was pretty pooped so I took a break for about 15 minutes and then went out. My walk with her was only 40 minutes. I think she needs more. And I am seriously thinking about buying a pair of roller skates just for this. Not in-line skates but the old fashioned kind with four fat wheels side by side and a big fat stopper.

Petunia hid behind the tv this morning while I was making my bath and then she came upstairs and hid in the upstairs closet. It was sort of like yesterday: we were outside early in the morning; she was in the garden, seemed to hear something that startled her, then came inside and hid. The sky is overcast so I'm just hoping all this is about weather and not about Buddy. When we returned home from the walk the dogs approached each other mildly at the gate and she sat there waiting for me to get her supper.

Now she's sitting over by her bowl and Buddy is at my feet.

And I'm sweaty and relieved to have that item done for the day.

Trying Not to Feel Overwhelmed

2008-09-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

During one of the walks this morning I found myself mentally paging through all I've read about dog training over the past four years, and all I've been taught in classes. Trying to find a path for myself.

What makes this feel like a crisis is the fact that my dogs are physically separated and that, as time passes, keeping them separated could reinforce their animosity. Along with this is the bigger fact that if I can't "fix" the problem I'll need to find another home for one of them.

As I write this blog day by day I hear my own repetitions; I keep circling around and through particular points. My anchor (and not in a good way) is the crisis. If I were living with just one dog who bit people or was fear-aggressive with a neighbor dog or whatever I would be disturbed (as I was when those thing arose) but it wouldn't feel like a crisis.

But I must acknowledge the problem as something else. Calling it a crisis in my own mind is not productive. And I'm not Chinese enough to really appreciate the whole crisis=danger/opportunity thing. Though I get that too.

The ticking away of time stresses me, the sense that I'm not doing enough fast enough to get the dogs together. I'm not changing myself enough or walking the dogs enough or doing enough clicker training or making the right decisions. Those thoughts can really stir up a frenzy. And of course there are other aspects of my life that need fixing. My shakey finances, my disorganization, my extra 25 pounds.

A few weeks ago I considered taking anti-anxiety meds but I haven't followed through with that. I'm trying to give myself a little more time.

So here are some things I think I should focus on:

Establishing a solid, non-negotiable routine of daily walks, in the morning whenever possible (even if they aren't perfect DW ritual walks, they need to happen, and it doesn't matter whether I use gentle-leader head collars or slip collars or Illusion collars or backpacks so much as that I just get out there once a day with each dog, even if it's just around the block). And as I said earlier I've turned 180 degrees on the priority scenario and believe the walk must take precedence even over things I've been wanting to do for my own physical fitness such as bicycling. On my two intensive teaching days I give myself a "pass" to do whatever the heck fits with my day, and that includes kayaking or bicycling on the day with the heinous meetings. But the other days go to the dogs for now. And finding a way through interesting-destinations or whatever else to make the walks as peaceful and pleasant to me as possible so that I'm not judging myself at every step.
Focusing my clicker-training on one specific behavior: eye contact. I've given that a lot of thought and believe that the most important thing I can train these dogs to do right now is redirect their attention to my face on command. That's the foundation of click-to-calm. And it's something I can practice with them at home and during walks without much complexity. I still don't know enough about their body language to know when they're being rude or disturbing to one another. Thank God their behavior is still in that fairly subtle stage, even with the gates. Petunia growling at Buddy is an ongoing problem, and it's one she's done for years, and it continues to be intermittent rather than daily. Teaching her a "watch" command (and Buddy also) could help me redirect that bad energy, in addition to other benefits.
Maintaining the current physical structure of our homelife. Which means, for example, continuing the physical barriers around the house--not allowing them on furniture with me or without me. One addition to this is that I want to experiment with the placement of Petunia's crate. Right now it faces the door and that makes me wonder whether I'm reinforcing a "guarding" behavior with her, expressed when she growls at Buddy for walking by her crate on the way to his at bedtime. The trainers told me that not-correcting behaviors like that is nearly the same thing as reinforcing them, and reinforcing them leads to escalated behaviors. So even though P only does the crate-growling once a week or so I need to make it not happen. By physical-barrier for now and hopefully by behavior/attitude change later. I'm still not ready to remove either dog from my bedroom. But I am emotionally ready to move one into the adjacent bathroom if that might work (not sure if I can make it work, given the dimensions of the crates). And I'll continue feeding them twice a day and so forth.
Being more quiet, and requesting the same from them.I've cut way back on my girlie chatter to the dogs because I've been tense but also because McConnell and others say it's a sign of weakness to dogs. Additionally, though, I need to begin correcting Petunia's barking in the house. I realize she has a lot of energy to release and I don't want either dog to trade barking for fighting. But I think I need to look into a method of bark-reduction training. Maybe with a clicker, maybe with the "watch" command for redirection, maybe with another of McConnell's redirection methods.
Getting Buddy into the muzzle more often. Ultimately they can't be in the same space, even for a little occasional trial period, until Buddy is wearing a muzzle. I'm still inclined to believe it would be more fair for both dogs to wear them but Petunia seems more than resistant; she seems positively traumatized by head-and body-restrictions of any kind (it took me three years to get her to wear a bandanna without stiffening--not that I make her wear one but maybe once a year). The muzzle for P seems too extreme a step at a time when I want the dogs relaxed around one another. So for Buddy, we'll do the muzzle and I'll have to begin putting him in it for upbeat activities once a day or so for at least a week or two (I'm thinking at least two weeks, honestly) before I'll be ready to evaluate whether the dogs are ready for a little open-air time together. I've obviously been stalling about the muzzle. But I'll get back to trying it out with him today, perhaps later tonight I'll work in the garden for a little while and have him wear the muzzle for five or ten minutes. Long enough to get a little used to the idea but not so long that he really suffers.
Putting Buddy in a backpack for some walks to give him more exercise especially on days when I can't give him a long walk.
Putting Petunia in some sort of gear, either the head collar or a back pack, for at least one walk per week. I've made this decision because I do realize that some of P's resistance is just about getting her own way all the time. She'd rather not be encumbered, and I've rarely pushed her to be so. But on some level I think it's healthy for her to learn to tolerate a little physical restriction fro me. Right now it's all about the walk. She resisted a couple of times today when I had the slip collar high on her neck. But I ignored her and she stopped fighting it and did truly seem pretty relaxed afterwards. For the next week it's probably enough for me to just continue that level of physical restraint. But in a week or so it would be good to try the backpack and/or head collar. An additional reason for the head collar is that my mother will return for a visit at some point and be happy to walk the dogs with me. It's always a gift when someone enables me to have the dogs walking in the same space together. But Mom doesn't get the slip collar. She chokes the dogs with it. She means well, and understands when I tell her how to use it, but her attention wanders during our walks and she doesn't monitor her own actions. I think the headcollar would be a good tool for preventing the dogs from straining on the leash and for preventing Mom from choking them.
Continuing to bring the dogs into as many socialization situations as possible, such as bringing P to Home Depot and B to PetsMart. I think it's really good to continue exposing them to unfamiliar scenarios outside our home. So far both dogs continue to behave very well. P isn't thrilled to be wheeled around in a shopping cart at HD but she's polite to strangers and seems to benefit from receiving attention. She doesn't seem to love having strangers pet her. But she tolerates it. That's enough, perhaps. And over time if I could learn to read her body language better I could use those situations to practice more C2C. (As I type that a part of me is praying to God that we'll have a long, healthy life together that will accommodate that next level of training. A part of me feels doomed. Scared. Of what? Of a fatal fight at home, I guess. Or me dying. Mortality everywhere, frightening me.)
Doing at least one down-settle with each dog every day, while I read or watch something good. This is the activity that most closely approximates sitting and reading with a dog by my side. It's not nearly as good as having a terrier's fuzzy head against my leg. But it's something.

I'd love to add more things to that list. The trainers said I should teach each dog a new trick every week to stimulate their brains; they've given me that long checklist of obedience tasks to practice every day; etc. And a few weeks ago I was checklist-happy and I'm still going to make a checklist from the items above. But this week I need to focus on the things that seem to matter most to our situation and do so without setting myself up to fail.

I've also ordered the Calming Signals booklet and DVD that were recommended by my trainers and I've begun re-reading Patricial McConnell's The Other End of the Leash because I think I'm almost ready to truly begin studying my dogs' body language towards one another. This is another vital component of the click-to-calm (C2C) process. But I've been too caught up in my own emotions, I think, to be a careful and patient observer of my dogs' body language.

Today on at least three separate occasions the dogs went nose-to-nose at the gate. Calmly so. They looked just like normal dogs meeting each other. But no play bows (unfortunately) and no snarls (thank God). Just a brief acknowledgment of one another. I wanted to click and reward them but wasn't prepared for it and also maybe I subconsciously didn't want to interrupt it.

The irony of the DW is that he (like my other trainers) say that our dogs mustn't be the center of our universe; I think even one of my dog trainers was wearing the famous t-shirt, "Dogs aren't our whole lives; they make our lives whole." Yeah. Whatever. Try believing that when you're attempting to rehabilitate and repair an unhealthy canine relationship in your home.

And No, I absolutely have not missed the fact that on some level I'm re-living my marital breakdown right now. Just like I felt secretive and sick about having a disturbing homelife with my husband--needing to hide it and put on a brave face every morning for my students--I find myself in a parallel mode now. I'm sensitive to dog jokes; I'm wanting people to stay away from my home (OK, but to make this less black-and-white I have to say I'm not really in the mood for visitors much just in general, ever), including family, and my problem is severe enough that I can no longer find much solace in exploring it in conversations with friends because my friends mostly talk about "getting rid of one of them" and that isn't something I'm ready to do. In contrast, I *was* ready to get end the marriage. Knew it was the answer. With P&B I'm not there yet. I have more hope than that still. (And because of the terms of my divorce there's another dimension to all this--the ex has claims on any dog I would propose to re-home, and he would make such a scenario very painful and very protracted. Of that I have zero doubt.) So, No, I'm not in the same situation with the dogs as with the bad marriage. But the sickness and faking it are here and I need very much to figure out a way to move those feelings out of my heart and mind.

Eckhart Tolle says that if peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace in any situation. Later in the same chapter he says, "When you realize that what you react to in others is also in you (and sometimes only in you), you begin to become aware of your own ego. At that stage you may also realize that you were doing to others what you thought others were doing to you. You cease seeing yourself as a victim." (188-9)

I realize that on a very basic level the problem in my home is that my two animals sometimes fight and injure one another.

I also realize that on a different kind of very basic level the problem in my home is that I feel like a victim. Around some people I feel like prey; around others I feel taken advantage of; around others I feel helpless and damaged. And somewhere along the line I learned to participate in these feelings of weakness, to make them feel true, even at the expense of my own peace of mind.

Part of me believes that this business with the dogs is about the Universe giving me a way to heal myself. Or to accept the healing that was there all along.

Part of me is just freaking tired.

A Few Notes on Our First Attempt at a DW Ritual

2008-09-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from Buddy's walk and need to leave soon with Petunia but here are a few quick notes.

* Buddy peed on my foot but I think it was an accident. I'm still getting used to holding the slip-collar high and close to my left leg and maneuvering near a telephone pole got confusing for me. I tried not to let him stop and pee or sniff whenever he wanted to but did about half the time. I'm thinking this might be an example of where the clicker could be helpful. I don't want to over-complicate this whole thing, but realize I need to keep my eyes open for moments when I could communicate better with the dogs during a walk. I dunno. Plus I feel obligated to do some sort of clicker training to give the local trainer's advice a chance.

* This morning I watched Season One, Episode 19 in the tub. The "Sunny" story seemed promising: divorced woman who poured all her happiness into a dog that's now anxious and fear-aggressive. But Cesar just taught them to take walks. I get it about the walking and clearly need lots of reminding but I was hoping for more out of that story.

* I decided to make Buddy's walk the shorter one today (30 minutes) and give Petunia the longer one because the more I think about it the more I think getting P calm is the most important part of the equation between the two of them. She barks a lot and has a short fuse and may need the exercise even more than B. So while we all transition into The Walking Life I'm inclined to monitor her walking most of all.

* I found myself feeling bored during the B walk. People rode by on bicycles toward the lake and I thought about how I'd rather be riding. I've got to stop thinking about this stuff in terms of either/or. I could, arguably, read less Dickens and do more bicycling. So I need to shuttup and try the more-intense walking thing and learn to enjoy it more. I no longer love walking with my dogs because I'm still so worried about what will happen if none of this works. I'm still haunted by the trainers who told me, in unison, that even they have dogs that they keep separate all day every day in their homes because of fighting. I don't want to live that way. My great joy of sitting beside my dogs and relaxing is gone gone gone right now. Even the walking thing isn't fun 70% of the time because I'm wanting it to be a lesson in leadership. Shit. I realize I need to not think this way and not over-pressurize the walks. But I'm pushing those feelings back constantly. My hope is that this will be like anything--even yoga classes--in which the hardest part is getting into a habit and then appreciating the less-than-fabulous moments because the good ones always come. Like when you're stuck in triangle pose waiting for shivasana.

* * *

* OK, we returned home from Petunia's walk at 10:10, which means it was only about a 40-minute walk. We went so far (all the way to the lake, meandering here and there and pausing at a little beach to sniff the water and watch the ducks and geese) that it seemed like we must have been gone longer. But we walked at a faster clip and had a real destination (with Buddy this morning I first took him by the pug's house to see if he was home to play, but wasn't, so we sort of rambled). Seems to me that an important dimension of the structured walk is my having a destination. When we hit the sidewalk outside our neighborhood you can see a little patch of lake shimmering ahead. Watching that kept my head up and probably made me seem more confident to Petunia.

* P and I encountered a dozen or so dogs. At least one was off-lead. I circumvented a possibly-off-lead Rottweiler in the distance (on the off-chance it might be just too much for us both) but kept us on the path for all the rest of the dogs, including a pack of five being walked by two women (who seemed about 70% in control of them--not awful but not spectacular) and all five were large breeds--rotties and such. So I'm pretty proud of us. Petunia didn't flip; I didn't tense up much. When we passed the off-lead dog (a big fluffy white creature) I didn't look at it and I didn't look at P. I just kept moving forward as if it didn't exist. P seemed okay.

* Shortly after P and I returned home I noticed the dogs had planted themselves directly opposite the gate from one another. Buddy on the floor with his kong, Petunia on the stairs overlooking him; then when I called P down for a kong she moved around the corner from his line of sight and he rotated his back to her. I don't know if any of this means anything. They never seemed to be growling and I didn't sense any tension. As I've said before, I just don't know what to make of their dynamic most of the time. What they remind me of is cats. Aware of one another, slightly aloof--especially P.

* Now both dogs are lying sideways on the tile floor (best investment I ever made in this house): B beneath the table where I'm writing, P out of sight on the other side, growling occasionally at the sound of the lawn mower next door. For all the hoopla, today's ritual took about 3 hours, including the time for the time for the bath and the episode of DW. Both walks took less than 90 minutes. I think longer would be better for both dogs, and I didn't do the backpack thing today after all because I was hoping for a Pug-spree. But I feel like this morning was well spent. Even though I missed church. God knows what all this is for.

* Speaking of spirituality, as soon as P and I reached a clear view of the lake, as soon as the water filled my peripheral vision, my mind opened the way it does when I'm bicycling around the lake. It gave me much of what I needed. For me, anyway, there's much more God in that moment--the lake, my dog--than in any church.

* * *
7:18 p.m.

I was feeling pretty good until about 10 minutes ago.

I took Buddy outside, gave him some of the extra special turkey then put on his muzzle and had him keep it on while I weed-whacked the back yard (about 15 minutes). P was jealous, stuck in the living room behind her gate, crying. I closed the sliding door while B and I were outside but left the blinds open so P may have seen B in his muzzle. It's bright white against his black fur. I'd like P to get accustomed to seeing him in it just as he gets accustomed to wearing it.

For the first few minutes B tried to rub the muzzle off, then he lay on his side, as if he was just waiting for it all to end. Then he approached me and sat and I petted him. Toward the end he stood facing me, head down. Almost looking angry but it was hard to say because the muzzle hides his mouth. He wasn't growling. Just looked displeased. I'd just put the weed whacker away and so I had him sit and then removed the muzzle and gave him more turkey and played with him for 5 or 10 minutes with his favorite toys. I gave him a nice back scratch and told him how great he was. Then took him inside and switched places with Petunia, bringing her outside for a game of fetch in the yard and then in the pool. Toward the end Petunia gave up on the toy, seeming pooped. I dumped some mulch in the garden and she hung out there with me for a little while then wanted to go inside. I took her in, went to wash my hands in the kitchen, and then looked around for the dogs. Buddy was upstairs; Petunia was under the bed.

So now I'm thinking:

* Did something happen between B & P across the gate that cause P to flee to the bed?

* Or was there just a noise outside that made P ask to go inside and straight under the bed?

I'm hoping the latter.

But stressed, of course, about the former.

But here's one good thing: The under-the-bed scenario reminds me that I do have some ways of discerning whether there's been a change in our canine dynamic:

One of the signals that things had gotten bad between the dogs was when P increased her hiding around the house. Whereas it used to be only during storms or fireworks, she began hiding behind the sofa and under beds to stay clear of Buddy.

So as I'm looking for clues that things might be better, one thing to monitor is P's hiding behavior. Even though they are separated by gates, all three of us know that both dogs can scale the gates. P did agility; B once shocked the entire kennel staff by leaping outside his run a few years ago when P was being taken out of hers. P knows she can knock down the gate; she's nearly done it.

Their gate-separation is more about obedience than confinement, probably.

To me this means that the fact P hasn't been hiding from B is a really good sign. She's been on the stairs and in various positions in plain view most of the time. Seeing her under the bed tonight made me really sad, but at least it reminded me that she mostly hasn't been beneath the bed lately.

I's a beautiful evening. I'd love to have both dogs out here with me, playing on the soft, freshly mowed grass. That is my dream now. If I'm blessed with that kind of life again with these dogs, I'll appreciate it more next time around. Buddy wore his muzzle for 15 minutes. It's a start.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

2008-09-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

So I just finished the first disc in my Complete Season One of the Dog Whisperer collection. And here is what I'm thinking:

For starters, regardless of what else is happening here, I can say that watching this tv show motivates me to walk my dogs--especially in the moments after each episode ends. I've actually taken two extra dog walks this week solely as a result of my watching an episode and feeling afterwards that I must walk the dog sitting on the floor while I was watching it. Conclusion: I should continue watching this show. (And of course by now I've ordered all three seasons plus the book of his I hadn't read yet and the little dog-training journal suggested by Amazon.com as a complement to the book. (Click-to-Pay is a dangerous thing.)
Because I rarely watch tv and haven't been relaxing anywhere in the house (I still don't know how to relax and do things I love--like reading books--without a dog beside me. It's like when I quit smoking and couldn't figure out what to do with my hands. Plus I have empty boxes on all my comfortable furniture to keep the dogs off so when I'm on the sofa I've got big empty boxes next to me. Weird.) this business of watching DVDs with a dog on the floor is something I'm experiencing at a semi-objective level with the one benefit that it's helping me notice a few things about my household dynamic. What I mean is that I'm not just relaxing and watching DW; instead, I'm watching it and also distracted by the logistics of it. And I've noticed that when Petunia is the dog on my side of the gate, in the living room, she seems to relax when I put her on a down-settle instead of letting her roam around our side of the house. Maybe because it's one position in which we both know how we're supposed to be, physically. I *want* her on the sofa beside me and I'm tense because I can't let her be there--so putting her on the down-settle means I can stop feeling guilty and awkward and she can stop feeling the unsettledness of everything.Conclusion: For now, I may as well use my living room time as a down-settle time for whatever dog is in there with me. Even if it means more than an hour of down-settle for the dog. Because it's a structure we can all live with and not have to think about. And it would be consistent.
So far, my favorite episode is the one with the big black herding dog (a Bouvier). I loved that episode because it had such a happy ending--the dog's owners had the resources to be sure he'd be able to take herding lessons and they'll probably hire a dog-walker for the mornings, but most of all I loved watching the dog racing around with the sheep. Having dog-fun. My dogs don't get much dog fun because they aren't playing with each other (before The Incident they chased squirrels together and played now and then in the back yard--not tons, but some--and of course now they aren't permitted together without a barrier) and they only get their playdate with the Pug maybe once a week. It makes me so sad. The Bouvier episode got me fantasizing about doing agility lessons with Buddy and maybe again with Petunia. (She did agility years ago but just for one series of lessons then we moved on to other random activities.) You know, this is when it's so tough to be a single dog-mom. If a second human were here we could enroll both dogs in agility and take them into the agility ring together, on their leads, and give them a way to be in the same space safely, having fun, and use that as a way to re-structure their relationship. We could walk the dogs together also. At any rate, the Bouvier episode was positive because it gave me a way to visualize Buddy and Petunia having good fun, and feeling the elation of knowing they were having good fun. I need that. I really, really need that.
The backpack thing. I know all about the backpack thing. Both dogs have backpacks. Over the years I've used them in various ways. But there again, to be honest, I used the backpacks during my "backpack phase." I've read literally dozens of dog training books and taken all sorts of lessons. But I've never maintained a consistent routine with the dogs. I basically raised them the way my mother raised me: lots of lessons, lots of praise, lots of toys, not much structure or discipline. Anyhoo, I've decided to do the backpack thing with Buddy and make it a regular component of our walks, partly because I know that realistically during the school year I'm never going to be able to maintain the kind of daily walking-schedule that would really wear him out physically if I rely on duration-of-walk alone. I need ballast.
So here's my experiment for this week: I'm going to rig up a DVD-watching arrangement in the guest bathroom (the one with the tub) so that, in the morning, I can drag myself into the bathtub and watch an episode of DW while I'm waking up. I'll get out of the tub, into my walking clothes and *then* let the dogs out of their crates, taking one immediately on a decent walk. (I realize this is goofy and convoluted but I never feel like going for a walk in the early morning but I'm always ready for a fancy aromatherapeutic bath. I think I'd get out of bed for that and I think this arrangement might give me the momentum I need.) I'll go ahead and declare that my early-morning teaching days are exempt, but if I were to make this happen the other days it could be a major step forward for me and my dogs. Why? Because . . .
I have finally bought into the premise that ultimately what's going to need to happen is a bonding ritual in which I walk both dogs together on a regular basis, having them share space with me in the lead. I haven't abandoned the click-to-calm stuff or the other things the obedience trainers prescribed. But I do believe that at the end of the day this whole problem is about the structure of my relationship with these two dogs. Perhaps even more than it's about the structure of the relationship between the two of them. And the clearest way I can visualize progress is through a routine that involves the three of us walking as a pack. This is tricky as hell because we routinely encounter stray dogs while walking through my neighborhood and Petunia is fear aggressive, etc. (Some day I'll tell the story of the time we encountered the pit bull puppy while walking as a trio.) But now that the weather is cooling down I think I could take them to a local fenced-in spot (like a baseball field) and walk the perimeter with them, a large space protected by a fence. That's my plan. And with Buddy weighted down I think we'd stand a good chance. I wouldn't muzzle him for this because I would keep them on lead the whole time and I can separate them in that configuration. I know I can. I'm still big and strong and know how to get between them safely if necessary. And I'd bring my air horn in case of an unexpected stray or weirdness. So that's the goal: starting a regular walk ritual that will lay the groundwork for me handling them on a trio walk within a protected space.

Bedtime badness & Things that make me uncomfortable with the Dog Whisperer

2008-09-03T22:03:00.001-07:00

OK, so after the fireplace incident the evening wore on, with me still at the computer and the dogs separated by the gates.

They seemed to be facing each other more than usual, with Petunia in the dining room at my feet, facing toward the living room, where Buddy was lying near the gate, facing back at us. I worry about that configuration because I can't always tell whether they're giving each other the eye. Until the lunging-incident at the trainer's office I'd never seen Buddy be anything but calm or submissive toward P. I'd never notice either dog giving the other nasty eye contact, except for those time P would growl at B for entering a room. Which, again, was periodic but not hourly or daily.

But tonight I put Petunia in her crate first, then let Buddy outside and when he wandered into the bedroom (P's crate faces the door) she snarled at him and he fled the room and would not re-enter until I walked with him in toward his crate. Which is pretty much where things stood last month when their crates were side by side. Right now the crates are separated by my bed.

The C2C trainer recommended putting the crates in different rooms, even at bed time, and I've been resisting that because I don't want them to lose their sense of us all being a pack. But then I also know it's bad to let this stress between them be a 24/7 scenario. If it would give Petunia some emotional relief to be in a separate room from B then perhaps, over time their relationship could heal and then I could move us all into the same room.

But if I do that, which dog gets to sleep in the room with me? P or B? How do I make such a heart-breaking choice? I could rotate them. Get two additional crates (another$300) and have them take turns. (I don't want to drag giant crates around the house every night.)

Given that they both seem to be dominating me, I don't know whether it would send a strong signal to either one if he or she was chosen to stay in the room with me. From day to day I waver on which dog seems most or least calm and well-adjusted. Seems like I wouldn't want the more aggressive of the two to be the one that got to stay in my room at night. But which dog is that? The fear-aggressive one or the sneaky aggressive one? The sneaky dominant one that climbs on my pillow at night after ducking out of crate time? Or the stealthy dominant one that seems like Mr. Mellow for weeks then poops upstairs in the guest room?

And are words like "aggressive" and "dominant" even the right words for what's happening here?

I've begun watching my Dog Whisperer CDs and he uses the words 'dominant' and 'aggressive'. But I hate the finality of those words. They sounds like death sentences, like criminal convictions.

And if it's so uncommon for a male and a female to have this sort of combative relationship, why is it happening to us?

Today as I watched Season 1 of DW Cesar told a woman, "this dog has been dominating you since you first took him in" and that's definitely true of Petunia. My husband and I encouraged her to come between us (both because we adored her and because we didn't adore one another anymore). We slept with her between us. She was our conduit, the one thing we both cherished. We poured nearly all our affection into her or through her. When we were away from her she was what we talked about. The whole world was about Petunia. For us. And our imbalanced life fostered an imbalanced dog in an imbalanced relationship with us imbalanced humans.

I get all that.

And evidently I did a number on Buddy as well. Whether or not either or both dogs was born with the tendency to be aggressive or fear-aggressive, or whether one or both were damaged by their experiences of or before abandonment, I cannot say. But it still seems to me that if Cesar Millan lived in my house that these dogs would be okay together.

Speaking of Millan, here are a few things that make me uncomfortable about his show:

He keeps telling people to leave their dogs' choke collars and leashes on all day. I understand that it could be a good thing for a dog to be on its leash all day. But isn't it awfully dangerous to leave a dog to ramble around a house or yard wearing a choke collar? He never prescribes the choke collar, but whenever owners use them and say, "So I should leave his choke collar on all day?" He says yes. And this includes dragging dogs into swimming pools in choke collars. Seems dangerous to me.
He keeps telling weak people to be [whatever strong job they do for a living]. As if being a nurse or a teacher will generate all the calm-assertive energy they need to fix their relationship with their dog. I'm a teacher. Cesar would surely say, "Be a teacher. Be that strong, calm-assertive teacher you are in the classroom." Well, for one thing, I don't feel like a mighty, calm-assertive leader in the classroom. I'm just me. And my teacher persona isn't one of those tough cookies. I'm not entirely a marshmallow, but I'm not Cleopatra or Eleanor Roosevelt. I'm not an actress. I'm pretty much just me all the time. And who I am is a fundamentally and sometimes excruciatingly sensitive person. A worrier who wants people to get along and not upset one another or damage me. I speak up and get in the middle of things but I hate confrontation and only do it when it appears to me that someone in a vulnerable spot is being treated unfairly. So telling me to Be a powerful teacher isn't going to enable me to generate powerful energy for my dogs.
He goes away. Even if he came here and used his mojo and my dogs began to frolic together it would be just for television. He'd leave and I'd panic.

I must sleep now.

I'll wander off, though, wondering how much of today's confrontation business is a product of my behavior and how much is about something else.

Not so hot

2008-09-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

OK, I haven't really begun Phase II. I've been spending the last few days mostly sitting on my butt typing reports and proposals and schedules and emails.

As crap accumulates around me.

Is my neglect of the household connected to my dog situation. As I've often said on this blog, I think Yes. But yet I still lose all sense of space and time when I'm home working on my computer. And tomorrow I'm back and forth to campus all day and night. So Phase 2 won't begin til Friday.

And in the interest of full disclosure, last night we had another thunder storm and Petunia ended up beneath my bed again, very late (I was up very late working on my computer) and once again I couldn't get her gently out from the bed so I let her remain there and in the wee hours of the morning I sensed she might be on the foot of my bed but was too foggy headed to investigate so I said "Off" a couple of times, just in case, and then by morning she was on my pillow for sure. And in my tranquility I decided it was nice to have her there for a change so let her stay and put my arm around her (I know, I'm an idiot) til I got up.

Today all was pretty much quiet except that Petunia growled once at Buddy across the baby gate and THEN, just now, there was a pre-altercation growling incident when Buddy began nosing around the fireplace (I removed the baby gates this evening because I lit a fire in there and figured the fire would be barrier enough) and as Buddy was nosing around the fireplace (fire still lit) Petunia stood directly across from him and growled. Good lord.

Is there a cause-effect scenario here?

I did walk them both this morning, in the rain. I made them sit before feeding them and so forth. But I've been lax and inconsistent (the bed thing was really too much but geeeeeeeze).

So here we are. I'm turning off my nice fireplace and lighting some incense instead.

Day 28 of 30DR: Progress?

2008-08-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

Here's something I noticed today: crappy dog incidents seem to correlate with the tidiness of my house.

When my house is a mess, it's usually because I'm immersed in something else and neglecting it. Like for the past 2 weeks I've been starting school--especially the last seven days.

I haven't been blogging with behavior observations because for the last week or so I've been mostly just getting through each day. The dogs continue to be separated by baby gates. I've kept up most of the 30DR: feeding them twice a day in different locations, requiring them to sit before anything good, restricting them from furniture, crating them at bedtime.

What I haven't done *consistently* the last week: regular training sessions each day, 30-minute settles (in the 'down' position) for each dog each day, morning walks.

I've done most of those things much of the time but some days I did slip.

Something good I've done: taking them individually to a neighbor-friend's house to play with a pug-doxie mix. Both dogs have been doing really well with that dog. It's a joy to see.

This morning I took Petunia to play with the pug but there wasn't time to take Buddy afterwards. Instead of taking Buddy for the walk (he'd been waiting for it, knowing it was his turn, watching for us out the window as we returned) I put them both in their crates so I could make it to church. I came home from church, let each dog into the yard, then put them in their gated areas: this time P got the back of the house (kitchen, bedroom, my dining table/workspace, B got the front of the house: living room, upstairs guest rooms.

As I made myself some tea I heard what sounded like thunder--or a dog bouncing off furniture upstairs. As I climbed over the gate into the front of the house B was speeding downstairs and into the corner of the living room. Guilty of something for sure. Upstairs I discovered that he'd pooped all over the guestroom floor. Everywhere.

So I clean it up and make no eye contact with him and think to myself that this is because he needs exercise (and more discipline?) but meanwhile how do I respond?

I could crate him but I don't want the crate to be punishment. So right now he's on a down-settle, I haven't made eye contact at all--just put the collar around him and led him to the floor at my feet--and he's resting on my right foot and that makes me happy but I guess I need to move it in case it's somehow a dominance thing. Lord.

. . .

OK so after sitting like that for a half hour I told him to stay while I went into the kitchen to pour more tea. I returned to the living room and he hadn't budged. I didn't say 'Good Dog' but instead just returned to my spot on the sofa with my foot on the leash.

But throughout all this I'm still wondering if he 'won' because I'm giving him a form of attention (by ignoring him on a settle I'm still here with him on his side of the house) that constitutes a reward for his bad behavior upstairs.

Meanwhile, Petunia is on a dog bed on the floor, growling occasionally at the noises outside. I can see her through the fireplace.

. . .

While I'm sitting here, some additional updates:

* Yesterday when Buddy and I were outside I heard jangling and Petunia had pushed aside an improvised barrier to join us outdoors. I immediately led them back into the house and calmly separated them and during this process it seemed clear that they knew they weren't supposed to be together. Neither dog really greeted or approached the other. I think I led B back to the house first, perhaps because he was closer to the door. Buddy didn't seem to acknowledge P much and just went inside and took his position on the front side of the house. P did pretty much the same thing.

* Friday morning I was exhausted from my late-night class and allowed myself to sleep in later than usual. I let each dog outside then gated P in the room with me and climbed back into bed. She jumped up on the bed. I sent her off. A little while later I switched dog positions; B was with me in the room. He also jumped on the bed. I was half asleep and used that as my excuse for allowing him to remain on the bed a few minutes. I realized I was being inconsistent and wrong. But I *so* miss having the dogs near me. I got up within a few minutes so that i wouldn't fall asleep with him there, making myself an even worse dog-leader. That's the only instance of my breaking the bed rule, though, for nearly 30 days.

* I'm continuing to use the Gentle Leader with B. P continues to flee when I approach her with it. I've managed to set the neck-size for her but the snout-adjustment is trickier. It takes both hands and a calm dog in a sit position (not under the bed). I'll keep at it because I think it would be a good thing for her. She doesn't always pull on walks but does sometimes, especially with my mother. Also, from a leadership standpoint I think I ought to be able to require her to wear a head collar occasionally.

More exciting news:

I'm in the middle of a transition to Canidae dog food. The food-recall really pissed me off. We've been Nutro customers since I adopted each dog, and although the dry Nutro we use wasn't one of the recalled products the moist Nutro products were recalled. I had trusted Nutro with the health of my dogs. I did a lot of research and was confident the product was manufactured in North America and met exceptionally high standards. Standards, schmandards. They outsourced part of their production to China; standards were compromised; dogs died. Nutro has lost my business. Period.

Two DVDs arrived yesterday: the first two seasons of The Dog Whisperer. So far as I can tell none of the episodes is really about my scenario: two dogs living in the same house and not getting along with each other. The closest I've seen so far is the "Cinnamon and Chocolate" episode but that's really focused on the behavior of just one of the dogs (Cinnamon, "the rescue dog"--and BTW it irritates me the way the owners seem to attribute the dog's behavior problems totally to the fact that he's a rescue dog rather than a breeder-purchased dog). The DW doesn't really deal with the dynamic of both dogs. Don't get me wrong: I do see myself in the mopey-looking mother and daughter of that episode--they seem so weak and wimpy and I dunno just hideously squooshy. But I was hoping to see more about handling two dogs that have to be separated and simultaneously trained to repair their relationship.

The episodes in which the DW brings his pack animals into the picture are not helpful to me because I don't have a DW-approved pack to train my dogs to be dogs. Thank God for the neighbor's pug, that's all I can say.

. . .

So looking ahead:

The 30-day period of the 30DR is nearly over but we've really only just begun. Partly because I didn't do all the things I said I'd do:

* I still haven't acclimated either dog to a muzzle. (The P-muzzle-scenario is seeming less like a good idea now that I'm reminded of how traumatized she gets about things on her body--she's been so calm around B, even yesterday she came outside and didn't shrink away from him. If you knew nothing about their history you'd never guess a problem existed between the two. But of course that was true of them before the 30DR also: half the time they'd seem fine; half the time P would be hiding under furniture.)

* I haven't established a real walking routine for us.

* I haven't maintained the bicycling routine either. (I started the practice of reserving a kayak for myself at the boathouse after heinous meetings as a way to get myself off campus and into a calm state of mind before going home those days. I need the *reservation* part of the exercise because otherwise I'm likely to just return home and get distracted and neglect the exercise. The reservation gives me accountability.)

* I haven't done enough daily training sessions. Not nearly enough.

* I haven't kept my house tidy, which I think is something that needs to be part of this. Neglecting that part of my life seems to be a manifestation of other weaknesses. I'm not saying it's a cause-effect relationship but I do believe that changing more of my external behaviors will help me become stronger inside.

* I stopped using the daily checklist, which wasn't part of the first trainer's requirement but did help me discipline myself.

OK, so now what? Well, 30 Days Has September so I'm thinking it's time to regroup and start another 30DR, modified according to what I've learned from the first 30DR and the trainers who helped me, and the realities of my life.

I'll call it C2C and base it on the Click to Calm approach assigned by the new trainer. In a nutshell, here's that approach:

* Continue the basic rules established in 30DR.

* Enroll Buddy in the October Canine Good Citizens class.

* Make a daily walk a non-negotiable commitment to EACH dog.

* Use the training worksheets given me by the new trainer, using the clicker as part of the reinforcement.

* Teach each dog a new trick this month. Something that will really work their brains.

After watching DW I'm also thinking I should do something with each dog that reinforces my leadership role, like getting Buddy into the swimming pool with me and like getting Petunia to wear her Gentle Leader.

"Oh, is this the bad one?"

2008-08-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

Just now I saw the new neighbors in their driveway and brought Buddy over to meet them.

B & I had just returned from a lovely shopping spree (PetsMart, the dog bakery, a doggie boutique), in which he made many new human friends and was fairly polite to various dogs and was an all-around model canine.

I gave the new neighbors a bit of cookie to share with Buddy and as Mr. New Neighbor handed B the treat he said, "Oh, is this the bad one?" I laughed nervously and said, "Oh no, they are both very good dogs."

Evidently my neighbor on the other side had dropped by to say hello yesterday and during the conversation pegged Buddy as a bad dog. Here's the thing: in addition to the fact that my neighbor owns a rottweiler that actually KILLED ANOTHER DOG last year--as in pulled out of his leash during a walk and ran into another person's yard and attacked the barking dauchshund there--and that I would never mention such a thing unless someone's dog seemed clearly at risk--in addition to those things, my neighbor knows NOTHING about my domestic challenge with P & D or, really, about my dogs' behavior except that Petunia and his rottie fence-fight, which is why the old neighbor told me the sad story about his dog (because it places my dog at risk). I DID NOT retaliate by telling the new neighbors about the rottie's "badness."

I *think* his whole basis for condemning B is the fact that B was wearing a head-collar the other day and that my neighbor mistook it for a muzzle.

But even if my neighbor did know more about B's story---WTF?!

My new neighbors appear to be NDP (not dog people), which is nice because it means I don't have to worry about P fence-fighting on that side of the yard or about a new dog attempting to tunnel into our yard. But now they've been told to be fearful of one of my dogs, which of course will make them behave fearfully around him, which is completely unhelpful.

People are exhausting.

Day 18 of 30DR: Muddling Through

2008-08-24T17:51:00.000-07:00

I purchased Gentle-Leaders for both dogs. B-dog is always much better about tolerating new "gear" so I've been working with him first. Because this is a head-bound collar I'm hoping it might ease the transition into muzzle-wear. Also, of course, I'm hoping this lead will help me train both dogs to stop pulling the lead as we walk.

Both dogs are pullers, despite lots of training (never as much training as is humanly possible but still enough training that we ought to do better) as well as experiments with the Illusion Collar and shoulder-leads in addition to the slip-collars we used in obedience classes.

The Gentle Leader is recommended training gear in the Click to Calm book we're doing with the new trainers.

I'm trying to calm myself with the idea that I can focus on one thing at a time and measure some progress in that way instead of yearning for a miracle. But of course I'm still tense and worried.

Meanwhile, today I learned a couple of things:

B-Dog:
* Buddy really doesn't like the Gentle Leader but is putting up with it while attempting to periodically scoot it off his snout. I was going to trade his buff-colored leader for a black one so that people wouldn't think it's a muzzle (my neighbor saw it and immediately said, "Don't bit me, dog" and warned his little boy to stay away--I'm pretty sure this was all about the lead because he knows nothing about B-dog's situation and, for crying out loud, his dog is the one that actually killed a small dog down the street last year--Sheesh!). Anyhoo, I'd read about that reaction to the Gentle Leader because people freak out when they see dogs in what appear to be muzzles (Lord, they should see the real thing!). But I decided I'm going to keep the buff-colored one on B-dog because I need to be able to see whether it's slipping or loosening from his head, especially if we go for long-distance walks. If he wears black I may miss seeing it slacken. (Yes, if you put it on properly it's not supposed to slip but B-dog is Houdini and a little sneaky about these things.)

* During our walk a couple of very friendly humans (neighbors with rescue dogs of their own) approached B to say hello. The man was intimidating--big and hunched over--so I told him we're working on our socialization, etc. He insisted on petting B (you know, I've had this happen before: men say, "It's OK, I'm a dog person" and keep approaching even though--as in this instance--the dog's ears are back. B was looking wary but not growling or anything. I didn't want to alarm him by pulling him back so I said something like, "Well, thanks for saying hello but his ears are back so we're going to have to see you later" in as friendly a voice as I could muster.

This in-between world is so tough. If I'm going to use the label what I have right now is a couple of fear-aggressive dogs. And I'm trying to socialize them in a way that's safe for them and for those with whom they interact. And in a way that doesn't give me an ulcer (or worse).

* P-Dog:
Petunia is going to require lots of baby steps. She can read me like a book and can tell when I'm about to have her do something she doesn't like. She immediately goes to her crate or crawls under the bed. So tonight I managed to get the collar-part around her neck once, adjust it, but not try it again. (The Gentle Leader DVD suggests not to push dogs into the collar but instead to use lots of short sessions with extra-good treats.) Tomorrow I'll attach the leash to the leader before trying it on her because I think she's more likely to compromise and try the thing on if she knows it's related to going for a walk.

* Right now P is lying on her side, the dearest little bundle of fluff. Reminds of me of when she was a puppy. It breaks my heart to think that I could be endangering her by keeping B with us. I'm terrified of that. Even though there's been zero visible aggression between the two since the episode during the training session (at least zero noticeable to me). I continue to keep them separated by baby gates. But I'm still so worried about getting this wrong.

Day 15 of 30DR: Rebellion

2008-08-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

After my previous posting I decided I needed a brief rebellion: so I petted P again when she approached me near the sofa and then I drove both dogs to the lake and Mom and I walked them on (*gasp*) flexi-leads with no heel-ing or clicking.

At the end of that B-dog resisted going into his car-crate (for the first time ever). Lord: now I'm reading everything into that though praying not to. So I put him to bed in his at-home crate when we returned.

P hid beneath the guestroom bed upstairs while Mom and I stayed up late talking. But she's in her bedroom crate now and came into the bedroom voluntarily and didn't resist getting into her own crate.

The trainers said I should put their crates in separate rooms. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I feel like P needs to sleep closest to me but it breaks my heart to "banish" B to another room and, if I do, I'm not sure where his big crate will fit. So for now I just moved the crates on either side of my bed instead of beside one another.

I feel like I'm getting an ulcer.

But it was good to get outside tonight and I've asked my mother to help me ignore work long enough in the morning to get on my bike.

I've also decided I may need to take anti-anxiety meds for a while.

I Don't Know How to Be with My Dogs

2008-08-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

The trainers last night told me it's unhealthy to let my dog sit in my lap for a couple hours while I read. They said that means I'm petting her too much. She probably doesn't like it. And if she seems to like it (i.e., if I'm sitting and reading and she jumps up to sit on my lap while I read) then it's because I've created a co-dependent dog.

Of course, for over two weeks now there's been no sitting and reading with dogs on my chair or lap or ottoman or beside me on the sofa. My most blessed moments, my most tranquil and pleasant moments, are those when I sit with a dog or with both dogs and read. The trainers said I can never have a dog on either side of me on the sofa again because as I'm reading they could be passing negative eye contact and suddenly get into a fight with me in the middle. They told me about a woman's husband whose face was maimed by a terrier sleeping on his pillow. They talked about plastic surgery only partially reconstructing a ruined face resulting from bad dog-location decisions. So no more doggie "book-ends" for me. And for at least six weeks no more single dog beside me anywhere. And no more calling it "my great joy" to have the dogs so near me because that means I'm making the dogs too important. I need to find other things that matter, they said. They said I need to do more things that aren't with the dogs. I said I do plenty of other things.

What I love most, though, is my quiet time with the dogs. And now I don't have that. Not really.

For over two weeks I've been trying to seem authoritative, in charge, calm, structured . . . I've given praise only for obedience to the tasks in the 30DR. I've done "settle" and I've played but it's all been very structured, measured, calibrated.

This is not who I am.

I can't live like this forever. I'm paranoid about giving my dogs too much affection, about giving them the wrong kinds of reinforcement.

I'm so tense I could crack.

* * *

As I read what I wrote I find myself thinking that the solution, for me, must be to decide what I want most--what I'm not willing to compromise--and then to assert myself to make it happen. Isn't that calm-asserting leadership?

Right now my irony is performing the role of "leader" in a way that's tearing me apart, making me feel brittle, even self-destructive sometimes. I'm trying to trust experts to tell me what's right. And I have great confidence in the principle that I've been a weak leader and that's the root of the problem. But I need to redefine what me-as-leader means. I'm not going to transform into Cesar Millan. And I'm not going to become that semi-friend/bully at work who is so great with dogs but pushes me around (making me feel, perhaps, the way B makes P feel: herded and intruded upon).

I need to figure out what I can realistically become without losing who I am. Somehow that means sloughing off or excising the abused little girl who believes she deserves all manner of criticism, who can't possibly be good enough as she is. Somehow I've got to figure out where my strength is and how to build that as my foundation for leadership. Compassion, perhaps.

* * *

So I write myself into tears. And I leave the room so my dogs won't know I'm weakened and crying. And P-dog comes into the bedroom immediately and approaches me as I sit on the floor. And she sniffs my tears and nudges me to pet her and I give myself permission to break all the rules and pet her--without waiting 30 seconds, without making her sit first, without clicking her for not nudging me to pet her. I just pet her. And my first thought is, "I feel like a pedophile. I've snuck off into a corner and I'm hiding from the dog trainers and secretly petting my dog." And my next thought is complete disgust with a situation that has left me feeling ashamed of sharing a fundamental moment of comfort with my dog, who knows I'm hurting, who always knows what I'm feeling, and who knows I need comfort.

This is where I am. It feels so wrong to be here.

A Hero's Journey

2008-08-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

I just have to say this:

I still want this story to have a happy ending. I realize that my heightened emotional attachment to these dogs is part of what created the structural imbalance of our homelife that apparently contributed to (perhaps ultimately caused or at least fostered) the current crisis.

But I want this narrative to evolve into a Rocky-esque story, in which lots of hard work and the support of wise mentors leads to a transformation for all three of us.

I'm not ready to give that up.

Living with One Dog

2008-08-21T12:02:00.001-07:00

My headache is probably dehydration from last night’s sobbing and from today’s semi-suppressed crying. I’m too wiped out to explain more of the trainer’s verdict and recommendations and of my thoughts about all of that.

So I’m probably going to blog this one piece at a time.

My immediate decision is basically this:

Do I:

(1) Keep both dogs, knowing that the experts say I’m looking at keeping them separated forever, living in a house divided by babygates, with one dog always in another room or in a crate.

(2) Find another home for B-dog.

But the decision tree for (2) is really:

(1) Find another home for B-dog.
(2) Kill B-dog. (I first typed “euthanize” then “put to sleep” but who are we kidding?)

Why is (2) even on the table? Because B-dog is a Big Black Dog that has bitten at least one person and now has a history of aggression with his house-dog. He is not the sort of dog one easily places in a stable, loving, FOREVER home. I’ve read the foster-dog placement literature; I’ve interviewed people for pet-adoption; I’ve interviewed myself as a candidate for pet-adoption. On paper, I was the best pet-adoption candidate in the world. And yet here we are.

Of course I’m not going to end B-dog’s life. But when I make that commitment it doesn’t just mean taking him to the vet. It also must mean refusing to ever place him in any home that isn’t a better environment (canine-fit-wise and otherwise) than my home. And how many homes like that are there?

Even last night’s trainers, in full knowledge of how un-ideal I’ve been as a dog-leader, said I’m probably the best chance B-dog has.

So here we are.

And YES I am going to keep the alternative-home option in mind. But for now, what I owe B-dog is, at minimum, training to help him become less aggressive with people and dogs. Part of me knows this is a stalling tactic. But part of me knows that I need some of this also: I need more work on becoming stronger—for both dogs as well as for myself. So I’ll continue this work and see where we all are at the end of the year.

I’m enrolling B-dog and me in a Canine Good Citizen course that begins in October.

And I’ll keep up with my 30DR.

And I’ll pray a lot.

And here’s another thing: If either dog were to go to another home, I would be living with one dog. So I need to spend some time experiencing each dog more fully instead of just focusing on the logistics of keeping them apart. If at the end of this I end up with just one dog it’ll be like this: me and the one dog. So I need to stop mourning the idea of living with two dogs but spending time with them separately. As things stand, that’s what I’m going to get either way.

My Dogs Don't Like Each Other, and Never Will (Day 15 of 30DR)

2008-08-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

I just returned home from a meeting with three professional dog trainers.

During the observation session B-dog lunged for P twice, in neutral territory.

The trainers said that from the very beginning B's body language was more anxious and aggressive than Phoebe's, which was defensive.

They said that based on what they saw tonight, and my background information, and the fact that the two dogs have always rested in parallel rather than piling on top of each other, and that they've never done lots of cuddly play stuff, they conclude that these two dogs really don't like one another much, and that they never will.

They said I should keep them separate for life.

Forever.

Two of the trainers have dogs that can't be trusted together; they live with them separated always. They say it's possible to still have a decent life with your dogs that way. The whole scenario makes me sick to my stomach.

I was so much more hopeful when I believed that if I could just fix myself they would be okay.

I can't write anymore.

Day 14 of 30DR

2008-08-19T20:50:00.001-07:00

It's been raining the last two days so I haven't had my bike ride and the outdoor sessions with P&B have been shorter. None yesterday, I think. One today.

I've been reading Emma Parsons's Click to Calm in preparation for our meeting with the trainers tomorrow. Tomorrow I bring both dogs to meet with the trainer and her assistant to see where things stand and what I should do next to supplement or fine-tune the 30DR. This is a different trainer than the one who assigned the 30DR. I still haven't heard back from her.

So basically here's where things are:

Me:

* I really need to keep journaling every day. If it gets too tedious to record my notes in this blog I must still record them somewhere. I like the blog because it has the date/time stamp and makes this process more visible somehow. Even if only to a concerned friend out in cyberspace.

* Yesterday I got a little too comfortable perhaps and then didn't make a blog entry. When I don't write details I overlook details. My recollection of yesterday is that things were pretty much fine all day. I took both dogs out on errands in the car, just to give us all a change of scene.

* I remember now that at the end of the night I caved in and let P-dog sleep on the floor instead of in her crate. I'd kept us all up past midnight while I installed curtains in my bedroom. B went right to his crate, as usual. But P wouldn't budge off her dog bed on the floor so I let her stay there and gated the room so she wouldn't wander all over the house. She didn't try to get up on the bed. But there's a progression here . . .

P:

* Right now P is on the floor doing Part Two of her "settle." Part One was a punishment settle. Here's what happened tonight:

- After a long day at work and a peaceful morning and evening with the dogs I went upstairs to take a bath in the guestroom tub. When I got out of the tub P was on the guestbed. I saw her there as I was towelling off. Told her "Off." But was so bleary-eyed from the long bath (read several chapters of Dickens) that my request was pretty weak. After putting on my pajamas I walked into the room more assertively and said "Off" and she ignored me. I felt myself being hesitant: part of me thought she looked so sweet on the bed, so happy and sleepy, and my first thought was, "I don't blame her. I'd much rather sleep there too." But another part of me felt a little scared. I can't explain this precisely: I wasn't afraid of P but I was afraid she wasn't going to get off the bed at that moment. I feared a confrontation. And I got one (surprise, surprise--I'm doing my best Gomer Pyle as I type this). Instead of grabbing her collar to pull her off the bed (which I *think* is what I usually do), I tried to nudge her rump off the bed. She growled. Then she snarled. A nasty, warning snarl. THAT'S A NEW ONE. I don't remember her ever protesting like that when I've removed her from furniture. In the olden days (pre-30DR) I would nudge her off the bed to change sheets periodically and she would lie there like a lump and then give up and get off. I don't recall any defiance over it.

- I stood there with my arms folded and head up and ignored her for a few moments as punishment. But I was exhausted and wanted to get to bed. So I turned off the lights and walked downstairs. But when I got downstairs I remembered my 30DR says I need to require "sit-ups" (which are really "sit" then "down" then "sit" then "down"--at least that's what I've deduced) as punishment for misbehavior. So I put her on a leash and had her sit, which she did, then down, which she didn't. Now, we've been doing clicker training sit/downs for days. And she knew sit and down years before any of this began. She knows what "down" means. She was just ignoring me. So that's when I walked over to the sofa and started a "settle" and I kept the leash extra short. Not forcing her into a down but giving her very little domain. She struggled a while but at one point I got the feeling she was relieved that I "put my foot down."

- So here I continue to sit. Very sleepy and exhausted emotionally from all this.

* What else about P? Well she ate all her supper today during both eating sessions. I mixed in a little RB's dog food (which our puppy school trainer, years ago, recommended as a training treat).

* At the lake tonight she tugged as we walked but not in an abnormal way. Her tugging really varies. Usually she's much better at not-tugging than B-dog. Tonight she was just average.

* YESTERDAY during our errands I took P into Home Depot. Put her in the cart on a towel and she was very good. Tense at first but really engaged. Very interested in the whole experience, it seemed. She stood up, looking at me rather than out front, ears up, eyes wide, very alert and not too scared.

* Now she has gotten up from her Phase 2 settle (I just have the leash around by ankle now) and is standing looking at me. I'm feeling a little afraid of her, strangely. Afraid there's a confrontation formulating in her mind. All of this could be my karma for the obnoxious teenage years. I know in my bones that my present apprehension is what my mother felt toward and about me. I know this dog cares about me, we have a deep bond, but I feel like she's testing me and I feel incredibly vulnerable because so much depends on her behavior. She must change her behavior or else I'm going to be forced into an awful decision about moving one of these dogs into a new home. And I'm angry at her for putting me into this situation. Even though I accept the fact that my behavior fostered hers.

* And part of me keeps flashing back on EE's interactions with her. When EE played tug (and he did it even though our trainers told us never to play tug with her), EE would start with regular tug--his hands holding one side of the object in P's teeth--and then HE'D PUT THE OBJECT BETWEEN HIS TEETH TO, as P held the other side in hers. And he'd tug that way with her. I'd insist that he stop it but . . . SHEESH! She slept at the head of our bed, in between us. We both loved it. But we may have created a monster. Right now it's all my fault and all my responsibility to fix, if humanly/caninely possible.

B:

* Was really good yesterday at PetsMart and good today at the lake and good just in general.

* Having said that I'm getting increasingly worried that the physical separation weirdness could make it harder to reintegrate them physically later.

* Gave me THE BEST eye contact today on a Sit during one of our clicker sessions. Man, his eyes were so clear and alert and focused on me. It was gorgeous.

* * *

So now what?

* Back on the bike.

* Do walking with both dogs when Mom visits this week.

* There are things I want to ask the trainer:

- What's the best way to reinforce good behavior while their opposite the baby gates?

That's the biggest one, really.

* I need to purchase one or two more baby gates at Target. The Evenflow brand is the best, BTW. It's smooth and quiet and long. Much better than the dogs gate i purchased at PetsMart. I need at least one more so I can block both sides of the fireplace.

* Emma Parsons cautions us that dogs might get worse before they get better, behavior-wise. Maybe that's what this is with P.

* I feel like I need to pick two main behaviors to focus on, clicker-wise, for right now: their name command (to get them to reliably look at me when I say their names); practice walking on-lead without tugging. I've tried multiple techniques the last few days for using clickers to train loose-lead walking but so far they've all been pretty awkward. I'm going to try the 180 degree turn thing next.

I'm too weary to write any more.

Day 12 of 30DR

2008-08-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

P dog seems to be barking more than she did the first week of the 30DR. This might mean she's not getting enough exercise. Or that she's more comfortable with the at-home logistics (she was unusually quiet the first week). I dunno.

Today we continued to pretty much stick to the 30DR. I might have missed a "settle" here or there. The thing about the settles is that the dogs don't seem to notice them. As I've mentioned before, the dogs are accustomed to sitting at my feet while I read. And of course when we do the settle I pick up a book and read. If we settle late in the evening they just fall asleep. When we settle earlier in the day they often remain awake but just sort of hang out. P might tug a little but not much.

I might need to make the settle into a settle-down (which is the version I was taught a few years ago by another trainer) instead of the settle anywhere (i.e., the leash anchored to my foot but the dog is allowed to adjust her position as she desires). But that seems sort of extreme. I dunno. I might try it with P after the meeting with the trainer this Wed.

* * *

Other stuff: Not much to report, really. That seems like a good thing.

P-dog:

* Is barking an awful lot when I let her be on the side of the house facing the street. I can tell she's barking at other neighborhood dogs that are barking. None of this is directed at B and probably not at me either.

* Was super good tonight when I took her to campus for a big cookout with lots of students and parents. She accepted all sorts of petting--this is pretty normal for her but sometimes she snaps when men lean over her and tonight she did not. I was relieved about that. I realize I need to TRUST MY DOG more than I do. I'm uptight. But I'm hoping to get that trust back.

* Doesn't seem to want to drink or eat if her bowls are in a line of vision with B across the babygate. That's been true throughout the 30DR so far. I tend to rotate between having the bowls near the babygate and around the corner from it, just to see how it goes. But she usually won't eat if the bowl is near the gate.

* Might have had a little episode with me this morning as I was preparing to leave for church. I gave her her kong in her crate then remembered I needed to refill her little water bowl and when I went to the sink she'd taken her kong under the bed and refused to get out. The second time I swept my hand toward her she gave me a warning bark. I responded with a gruff voice. Instead of making it a confrontation I went outside and splashed water in the pool, hoping it would be irresistible to her (she loves to play with the water). She came outside immediately, so I played the splash game as a reward and then led her to her crate peacefully. Does this mean I just rewarded her for her bad behavior beneath the bed? I tried to think it through. I could have squirted her with the water bottle but that would have made her remain beneath the bed. I could have ignored her--either by standing still for as long as it took (missing church) or by leaving the house, which would have enabled her to remain under the bed as long as she wanted. I could have removed the mattress and boxspring and in that way frightened her out from under the bed. But just walking away and starting over seemed like the best route. Maybe my mistake wasn't splashing the water but by then playing the game. Oy.

* * *

B-dog:

* Is now barking also (not all the time, just at this moment), apparently to echo P. I'm sort of OK with that. It's something they can do together. (Am I an idiot?)

* Is still being mild and good around the house. Which is normal for him.

* * *

I:

* Went for my ride today.

* Walked both dogs, doing more training with B on the walk.

* Did the turkey-training thing with both dogs again--still trying to give them positive experiences within eyesight of each other and relatively close to one another (still separated by the gate).

* Did the cream-cheese and cookie in the muzzle thing with both dogs but no muzzle-attachment (again--sigh).

* Am just now noticing that I seem to be doing a little more training with B than with P even though P is the one who probably needs it more.

* Am still feeling tense about keeping the dogs separated--both the logistics of it and the worry that it might make them less likely to be comfortable with one another in the long run.

* Am feeling good, still, about the clicker approach. Part of why I like it is its OCD-fitness. Clicker training involves breaking down desired-behaviors into teeny-tiny steps--some trainers recommend making detailed checklists so you can chart your progress with the dog as you click toward the end goal. In this way it gives the dog-handler lots of positive reinforcement and hope that progress is being made. I need this sort of positive reinforcement. Regardless of how much the dogs need it, I definitely need LOTS of it.

* My state of being overall: tense. I'm trying to notice my own tension and to relieve it through external means (e.g., by riding my bike, walking with a dog) as well as by prayer and breathing/meditation. I need more of the latter.

Day 11 of 30DR

2008-08-16T21:00:00.001-07:00

I'm too exhausted from a very full day to write at length.

(Frankly, I put all my dog-blog energy into an email to a friend.)

Instead, let me summarize with:

* P just put herself to bed, in her crate, with no treat.

* B is waiting for me to close the lid on the laptop so we can call it a day.

* Both dogs were especially good today. Still separated but no growling at D. (She did snarl at Oliver, the baker's poodle, but that always happens and we'll deal with that after my "click-to-calm" training.

* P & I played brilliant frisbee but did not get around to the muzzle practice.

* B wore his new muzzle for about a minute. Then I removed it. We're taking this s-l-o-w.

* I felt better about everything today.

* I rode my bike.

Day 10 of 30DR & Envisioning Canine TriZenalon

2008-08-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

By mid-day today I was a complete mess.

I hadn't heard from the trainer (she was going to call last week to "check in" on the dogs' progress but never did) so I called and left messages on her cell phone around 8 a.m. and on her office phone around 2 p.m., wanting to get her advice on re-introducing the dogs to one another while wearing their muzzles and also to see what she thought about my accepting a friend's invitation to immerse one of my dogs in their pack of three for a little while to see how he'd do just being a "regular dog" for a while.

The latter (a kind invitation, thoughtfully given) had been eating away at me for hours and hours for reasons I still can't quite articulate but much of it had to do with my feeling like I would be throwing B-dog to the wolves simply to prove to myself that he was still normal.

So I finally declined the invitation because my heart wasn't in it and my heart is way more trustworthy and stable than my brain right now.

As I listened to myself leaving the message on the trainer's machine I detested myself--I sounded whiney and helpless and pathetic and was trying to somehow guilt the trainer into returning my call. What I sounded like (I later realized) was my ex-husband in the final months of our separation, when he seemed to be trying to use helplessness as a weapon. I believe he did that partially unconsciously; he felt defeated and his only apparent way to communicate with me was as a wretched, weak person. Our interactions left me feeling pummeled by weakness--it was an awful feeling. (Sort of like the fish-slapping sketch in Monty Python, only not a bit funny.) And now I felt like I'd become that person.

Meanwhile, my kitchen's a mess; my whole house is a mess; I've been complaining to my friends for hours and days about the dog thing, wallowing in it further here on the dog-blog. I just couldn't bear myself anymore.

* * *

So I took a bike ride around the lake.

Within minutes I felt like a better person. By the 8th mile I was inventing a new sport--I called it a tri-Zen-a-thon: it would involve maximizing pleasure by bicycling, kayaking, and photographing a scenic route on a lovely day. Participants wouldn't "compete" so much as "share" the experience: waving at one another (as we do riding around the lake), helping one another port our kayaks, finding nice spots to observe nature.

Then I thought an even nicer version would be the Canine TriZenalon: a trio of dog-walking, kayaking (with the dog), and bicycling (still possible with smaller dogs in a basket or kiddie trailer or with any size dog on a leash but only on shorter rides in mild weather).

These are the thoughts I have on my rides.

* * *

And I made a decision during the ride: to stop sending negative energy into the universe about my dogs. They're such good dogs. And I am not the worst yuppie dog owner in the world, either. When I tell my story to strangers (yes, I know . . .), I often get lots of irrelevant advice that assumes I don't have any rules at all, that I've learned absolutely nothing from my (many, many) training classes, and that they are totally untrained and vicious to everyone. When in fact I have dogs that do most of the things I ask them to do 85% of the time, that get into their crates voluntarily when they see I'm dressing for work, that tenderly attach themselves to my quite tall but perpetually falling-down, elderly step-father, that never rush the door when my petite mother wanders in for a visit and almost never rush out the door when she neglects to close it behind her. They play gently with the one-eyed pug-doxie mix around the corner. These are fine dogs that have become confused as a result of living with someone who meant well but didn't get it right the first few times on the training train but even today, even in my pit of despair, I took them out separately for walks and did our "settle" exercises and obeyed the feeding rules. I'm so ready to condemn myself, especially to others. (is this masochism? why am I so ready to invite others to view me as ridiculous and inept? what's that about? don't want to get into the childhood stuff again.) But it's nuts. And it's unproductive. Damaging, even.

So I'm going to stop narrating this situation like it's American Beauty and shut up and deal with it. And be grateful for all the good I keep neglecting to think about.

I'll keep recording potentially pertinent details here. But no more whining.

* * *

Today's status:

We're going to bed early. We still haven't done the full-blown muzzle experience. I have misgivings about reintroducing the dogs right after putting them in muzzles because it seems like a way to negatively reinforce their time in the same space. I know both will hate their muzzles. So I need a way to have them wear the muzzle for a while in a fairly pleasant scenario, like with me reading nearby or giving them some positive attention. Playing ball with P, perhaps.

Today they each licked cream cheese and a cookie out of their muzzles. Tomorrow I'll do a little one-on-one time with the muzzles.

So far both dogs have been really good. P still isn't eating much, B is. B-dog seems to really miss P. He seemed really disappointed when I refused to let him outside with her and again when I put the gate between them. Of course I could be reading everything into that but what else is new?

P seemed a little more comfortable with B on the other side of the gate today.

We did a little clicker training. Back to the beginning: click and treat. Using the extra special turkey.

That was because my old trainer finally returned last week's phone message (said she was out of town) and suggested I read Click to Calm.

I like the idea of trying clickers. it's something to do, at any rate. My 30DR is compatible with clickers and I'm sick of negative stuff like spritzing P for growling. It doesn't feel right to me. I'll keep doing it but I need another long-term solution.

I guess that's it for today.

Day 9 of 30DR

2008-08-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

That is the JAFCO muzzle I purchased for each of the dogs. I chose it because it's designed to be comfortable enough to be worn all day (though I definitely don't intend to make them wear theirs all day) and because it seemed the least Hannibal Lecterish of the ones I could find. The hot pink plastic ones I borrowed from Greyhound Rescue are pretty but hard and chafey and only intended to be worn for very short intervals (like during a race--long story).

I meant to begin acclimating the dogs to their muzzles today but procrastinated. So it'll start tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I've accepted an invitation to bring B-dog over to a co-worker's house to play with her 3 dogs. I'm nervous as hell about this idea and may still chicken out but as I watch my dear boy napping on the step, having been physically separated from P-dog for over a week (behind babygates all that time) I know that he needs real dog-play time and he can't quite have it with P yet. Also, being in a pack of dogs might be good for him psychologically.

The part of me that's nervous as hell is the part of me that's harkening back to August of 2006 when the dogs were rejected by Camp Bow-Wow for "not being comfortable with themselves" around other dogs.

I've been thinking about that trainer for a while now, the one who advised me "to get Zen with the dogs" and who was totally right and of course I tried in my own way but didn't follow her advice about acclimating them each back into the dog park and into other dogs and that is one of the reasons I'm totally blaming myself for the wretched scenario here at home.

I'm tempted to take B-dog back to her for an evaluation without P and see how he does. I worry that this weirdness with P is making him less practiced at dealing with / tolerating / ignoring obnoxious dog behavior toward him. That's why part of me thinks we should go ahead and visit my coworker's dogs. But then I think about McConnell's "hope and fear" mode, which is what I'll be in if I take him to that house where he'll be supervised by my friend and me but not by a trained professional.

Oy.

And like my posting from two years ago I'm thinking, "Shit it's August. If only it were the beginning of the summer and I could really work on this." Oh brother. It's like I've just slid backwards year after year.

* * *

But none of this is really why I logged on to the blog. I mainly logged on to make some notes about today's dog scenario.

P-Dog:

* Ate almost none of her food today. Barely a few bites of kibble. I gave her multiple chances but she just sniffed it and walked away.

* Hid under the bed during the thunderstorm, as usual. But also hid under the bed this afternoon when B was behind the gates in the living room and she had full run of half the house.

* On at least one occasion P stood in front of B, separated by the babygate. They stood looking at each other for a few seconds without seeming to snarl or cower. That seemed good. I think I said, "Good dogs" but am not sure. It happened rather fleeingly, though I am trying to train myself to give them immediate feedback to anything especially good or bad.

* At one point today (or maybe it was last night) they were going into their crates and P was in hers first and B did not want to walk anywhere near his crate. P was staring him down somehow. Not growling but definitely working her mean energy on him. I could feel it myself. B paused at the threshold and I had to talk him and walk with him all the way across the room and to his crate. She never growled this time, even after he got near her crate en route to his. But it was tense for sure.

B-Dog:

* Just seems sort of subdued. He doesn't play really at all unless I initiate it. He ran around the yard a little tonight but he's not getting any real fun that I can see except maybe fore our short "mental health walk" today.

* Ate all his food, right when I gave it to him, at both times today.

Me:

* I missed today's bike ride because time somehow slipped away as I did work-related emailing. I ended up with only about an hour between meetings so I chose to give us a "mental health walk" by taking the dogs to the lake and walking the in a new place. I took B down his first boat ramp; he was apprehensive about it but did it and we both felt proud afterwards.

* I'm feeling really tense about having the dogs separated so much, even though they can see each other. It seems unnatural and stressful for them and it's no party for me either. And now there's the added stress of trying to decide whether to "throw B to the wolves" tomorrow at my friend's house. (Not wolves, but two mixed-breed dogs: one B's size, one P's size, and a Chihuahua or two.)

* I should have ridden my bike before doing any emailing.

It seems worth noting that P never growls at B when they're around their traveling crates in my car. Those crates stay in the same location most of the time, so it seems to me there's a potential for a territory thing there. But they don't seem to mind each other at all in that space.

Two Sides of Me

2008-08-13T19:32:00.001-07:00

A wise friend observed that P-dog and B-dog seem to be two halves of me. Yes that is so.

For years I've called P "my little empath" because she seemed to absorb whatever I was feeling at any moment. Especially the bad stuff. She's so watchful. Her shiny black eyes sparkle even in darkness, beaming right into my soul.

But what of the situation now? If I were to identify traits of my own with those of the dogs during this awful drama where would I even begin?

I've spent hundreds of hours journaling (here and elsewhere) about how the dogs are aspects of what I want and need but I'm not sure I have the self-awareness or honesty to identify how the dogs are aspects of what I am.

So I'll pour a glass of malbec, stop thinking so hard, and see what comes out without censoring myself . . .

Right now, meaning in the midst of the 30DR,

P-dog is:

* conflicted and unsettled--her behavior snaps between pleasantly normal and anxious and mean, as if she's just not sure how to "Be"

* gentle and loving and wants nothing more than attention and kindness . . . except for when she wants to be left entirely alone

* unusually protective of her treasures--not in an aggressive way, but in a worried-they're-going-to-be-taken-away way (for example, a couple weeks ago I brought home a deliciously massive knuckle-bone for each dog--B-dog gnawed on his but P dragged hers into another room and just sat there with it for hours; today I gave each dog another precious treat--a vanilla-infused cow cheek--and again B devoured his but P brought hers to her hiding spot beneath the bed and sat with it; I could find no evidence that she even nibbled on its edges). She has always remained calm when I remove a treat from her, and she continues to seem OK with my capricious removals and returns of treats (more of my training/testing her) and I don't know what would happen if B approached. Usually, when they're in the same room with treasures they take them away to other places until one of them gets distracted and wanders off, which is when the more vigilant dog grabs and hoards both. The loser tends to just accept the outcome. This has historically been true of both B and P. Because I've kept them separated the past week I can't say what would happen now but suspect P would growl.

* scared--she is fearful of bodily harm. She remembers B injured her and doesn't want to take any chances. She believes B is dangerous.

* wishing she and I lived here alone.

* tense about this whole fencing-off-the house and changing-all-the-rules-about-the-furniture thing.

B-dog is:

* worried. Something is wrong and different and he doesn't like it and doesn't know what to do about it.

* bored. He's not getting to explore as much. Discovering the passageway (i.e., the pass-through fireplace) between the two confinement areas was fun but now that's gated too.

* afraid of P. She's freaky and doesn't seem to like him.

* missing me. He wants to just have mellow time together, without all the tension.

* oblivious. Feeling like things are really basically okay.

* Itchy. If I'd just scratch his rump more often and brush his fur he'd be pretty content most of the time.

* misunderstood.

OK, well there you have it.

*

Day 8 of 30DR

2008-08-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

I rode my bicycle again this morning.

Last night, as I rode around the lake, I spent the entire hour reciting things I loved about riding my bike around the lake--how it makes my calves feel strong, how it opens my mind and liberates me from the anxieties of my day, . . . I feel certain that the bicycle hour helps me be more calm at home.

But today by the time I returned home it was already too hot to walk the dogs. So I neglected that today but was pretty steady with everything else.

Behavior-wise:

* I crated them twice today. The first time P-dog quietly tackled her kong while B-dog entered his crate. The second time (even though all other conditions were, as far as I could tell, identical, right down to the kong) P-dog barked and growled at B as he entered his crate. He retreated to the bedroom doorway, then obeyed me when I insisted he come to me and enter his crate, with P barking and growling. I spritzed P with the water-filled spray bottle that I now keep there. I haven't yet rotated their crates. I'll do that tomorrow.

* Again today P seems tense when I put her in the living room and B in the dining room. She hides behind a chair to block his view of her. This morning she wouldn't eat her food. She did eat tonight's helping, though. I switch the dogs between those spaces throughout the day, trying to give them equal access to me and to the backyard. My gut tells me I need to get them un-separated soon or else the gates will reinforce the antagonism somehow. It keeps them from playing together. Not that they frolic much, really, but still a little frolicking is important. But they mainly frolic by chasing squirrels and I worry that muzzling them on hot days outside will be too hard on them. So again we hit the early-morning scenario.

Speaking of muzzles. They arrived this afternoon. They're still in the box. I just couldn't bring myself to open the box today. Tomorrow I'll start the business of gently introducing them to the muzzles--putting treats inside them on the floor and so forth. I hate this.

* As for B's behavior, he's still docile but seems a little tense and unhappy. Hard to explain. It's just his demeanor. He seems to believe he's in trouble with me.

I hate this.

Day 7 of 30DR

2008-08-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

It was a week ago that P-dog and I met with the trainer and received the 30-day regimen. I can't say that I was bowled over by the trainer: I didn't get that mystical "Dog Whisperer" sort of confidence from her that I'd hoped for, but she seemed compassionate and competent and knowledgeable and I trust her advice.

Also, she sent me a copy of Patricia McConnell's slim book on the multi-dog home, Feeling OutNumbered, which surprisingly I didn't already own.

Here's where things stand:

For the most part I've followed the regimen to the letter. I turned it into a checklist (with a column for each dog) and have been pretty disciplined. Some slip-ups:

The last two nights P-dog has not spent all night in her crate.
Rain storms came into town on Sunday (thunder frightens her) and at bed time she slid beneath the bed (which she usually does during storms) and I couldn't extricate her without trauma. I tried to make the right decision: on the one hand I need to stick to the rules--letting her sleep beneath the bed is giving her the choice of where to sleep, etc.; on the other hand, I'm trying to be calm and in control and crawling under the bed to wrestle her out seemed to be giving her too much attention and result in me being unsuccessful unless I removed the mattresses and so forth. It just seemed too chaotic and, besides (I rationalized) my chief goal is to keep her off the bed so beneath the bed is sort of OK.

About halfway through the night she snuck up on the bed and I got her off and into her crate. That was Sunday night.

Last night she pulled the under-the-bed thing again. I figured I'd get her into her crate again later in the night. She didn't jump on the bed but stayed on the floor and roamed around the house barking in the wee hours of the morning.

-->Note to Self:
From now on, she goes into the crate even if I have to remove the mattresses (ugh).
I'll see if I can make a barrier with laundry or some such each evening to prevent her from getting under the bed at bedtime.
If for some reason I let a dog sleep outside the crate one night I will remember to gate the door so they don't have access to the whole house.

My other main slip-up is that I've been neglecting my daily bike ride.
I've been drinking too much coffee, staying up too late, getting up too late, and not putting myself first. (Which is largely how we got into this mess to begin with.)

Now, anyone who knows me will appreciate the importance of the bicycle-riding thing. I'm notoriously boundary-less. I give myself away to everyone and everything. I put myself dead last. Especially after my dogs. Which is why--again--I failed as their leader. In order for me to be a leader to them I must treat myself like someone who matters. I deliberately chose something fairly easy--a bike ride, for crying out loud--that would help me practice "mattering."

But so far I've only gone every other day or so.

Some notes on the dogs' behavior:

P-dog seems to be more rather than less fearful of B. The nighttime crate thing seems to be tied to her fear of having him walk by her crate or be next to her. (Their crates sit side by side.) A couple of nights she growled at him as he walked by her crate into his. I detected no aggressiveness on his side. On the contrary, he seems to slink past her--head down, eyes turned away, almost cowering--into the crate. I feel like I need to correct both of them for behaving this way: spritz P with water for being aggressive; spritz D for reacting to her. I saw Cesar Millan correct a dog with fear aggression by forcing him on his side just for starting to get tense (not even for growling). Does this mean I should at the very least spritz P for behaving fearfully? I dunno. I'm going to keep a water bottle near the crates and squirt her for growling at him. But I don't know whether I should squirt her for acting fearful.

I need to differentiate here: sometimes she growls; sometimes she looks frightened and hides.

Yesterday she hid behind the couch after B-dog wandered up to the baby gate to watch her play with a squeaky toy. She behaves apprehensively more consistently when he's near the gate that separates them.
Despite all that, we have had some seemingly peaceful quasi-interactions. Yesterday I accidentally left both sliding doors open to the back yard and P-dog joined B and me in the yard. They chased a squirrel together in the garden without incident. I tried to give them a little space for that and then to stop it while things were still OK. McConnell says it's best to not live in "hope and fear" in situations like this: "I hope they'll do OK together but I fear they'll get into a fight."

Last night I invented "turkey training." They both love deli-style sliced turkey so I had them both do down-stays on either side of the babygate and I walked between them rewarding each with a little turkey while they remained down, each about a yard from the gate facing one another. P didn't growl once. She seemed mostly focused on the turkey but still it seemed like progress or at least not another step backward.I got that idea from McConnell also. She said it's a good idea to have one dog do a sit-stay or a down-stay while watching another dog be trained or played with. The idea is to get the other dog to trust that your time with the other dog means good things for him as well. So you reserve a special treat for the dog that's observing the play and reward him periodically during the play so he'll be invested in the whole scenario.
One more thing I'm learning: I need to do their 30-minute "settles" earlier in the day. Lately I've mostly been doing them at night (because, frankly, there's SO MUCH to do during the day). But squeezing in the settles at night means the dogs just fall asleep; they don't know they're settling.

Labeling what's going on doesn't seem entirely helpful. But I guess I should summarize what I think I know about what's happening right now:

* P is behaving fear-aggressively toward B. Not every moment of every day, but consistently so each day. I need to pay closer attention to the specific details of when and where she does it. Right now it seems to be mostly at times when B dog is closer to her than I am, or when he starts to enter "her space" which sometimes is personal space (though yesterday in the yard he sniffed her hindquarters briefly and she didn't react) and sometimes is an area surrounding her personal space (like outside her crate while she's in it).

* P is starting to avoid her crate at bedtime. Maybe this is a power struggle or just ingenuity. Maybe it's related to fear of B. I'm going to move the crates--partly to make her location less like her "territory" (in the same spirit as moving their food bowls per the 30DR) and see if that makes any difference.

* B seems about the same. He's cowering less around P but he never did cower all the time with her. Just in particular moments, notably he would do this when P was on the chair, sofa, or bed with me and he would enter the room. My concerns about B are mostly (a) that this situation does not somehow cause him to become more aggressive toward P (I still don't think he's aggressive toward her, really, except after a fight has begun that she probably started); (b) that I keep in mind B's pre-existing issue of being aggressive toward masculine visitors to my house, mainly because it's something that remains an issue in my life with B despite the fact that I'm concentrating on his relationship with P right now. My hope is that by improving my leadership-style with them, and by structuring our home-life somewhat differently, I'm doing things that will also help me improve B's manners toward house guests. I have very few visitors, but it's important that I not feel anxious about having company now and then.

* I seem to be getting that condition on my scalp (not sure what it's called) that comes from stress. A little mound has formed on my hairline. At first it seemed like a pimple or a mosquito bite but it's the kind of thing that will bleed profusely if I scratch it. I'm feeling the strain of all this.

* Oh, and I keep describing most of this in terms of P's fear-aggressiveness but the trainer mostly attributed the problem to possessiveness. The trainer said P views me as a possession and is being aggressive to keep B away from me. That would explain the growling when B approached the water bowl near my desk (and maybe, to her, the prospect of him getting to be on "my" side of the gate for a while. But I don't see the possessiveness scenario explaining P's growling when B approaches her crate or his. Unless she's saying, "This whole space near my crate is mine; keep out." Which makes sense. And then the under-bed stuff is just her attempt to expand her territory again or something. But her hiding behind the couch when he approaches the gate seems not to be about possessiveness. And their big, ear-piercing fight occurred in the living room, away from me, near the television, which is not a major possession in our house (I rarely watch it or do anything with it and neither do the dogs). I saw no toy on the floor after the fight so though it's possible there was some sort of "bone of contention" involved I don't know what it would have been.

As I log off I find myself reporting two more things:

* B-dog just realized he can get from the living room to the dining room through the two-sided fireplace (thus evading the babygate).

* I keep doing dumb things. After B-dog's unexpected arrival on this side of the babygate I put P in a sit-stay in the bedroom and brought the babygate to the doorway to keep her there while B dog remained in the dining room, which is where I am typing right now. I called B near the table to drink some water and P growled at him as he approached the water. Once again, it looks like the growl was about B entering her visible space (which is two yards from her position behind the gate) or maybe it's about him entering the space I've been working in (I wasn't sitting there at the time but P may have recognized the change as B entering my space, which P sees as her territory. I dunno.)

So I used my calm correction voice (such as it is) and put P on a downstay in the bedroom (McC says to do this within eyeshot of the other dog but P was already around the corner and there didn't seem like enough room near the gate--though I probably could have maneuvered her there--it just happened so fast). P did her downstay and while she was there I thought, "Now what? I should have just squirted her maybe. And now I'm here in the bedroom with her, which is probably like a reward to her for barking at B. So I figured I'd do the 30-minute-settle-while-ignoring-her session right then. But 5 minutes into it I thought, "Yeah, but I'm still giving her what she wanted when she barked at B: I'm now in her space instead of in his, and she's lying comfily on the floor looking out the window not seeming to care whether I'm ignoring her or not because for years I've done this--sat in this chair reading a book with her at my feet--and it doesn't look any different except that she's on the floor instead of on my lap." So I left her on the leash but walked back into the dining room and now I'm here with B.

Maybe it's time for that bike ride.

More Requirements (Supplements to the 30-Day Regimen)

2008-08-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

I added two things to the 30-day regimen: muzzles for them and a daily bicycle ride for me. Here's where that comes from:

In addition to the 30-Day Regimen the trainer suggested I get a muzzle for B-dog to relieve myself of anxiety during trial periods of letting the dogs be in the same space.

She said it's not a good idea to keep them totally isolated from one another, so the muzzle is intended to help me give them that needed time together. Additionally, I'm trying to mostly gate them in areas where they can still see one another.

During my research on the muzzles I spoke with several people who suggested I muzzle both dogs, not just the bigger one, because the smaller dog (P-dog) appears to be initiating most of the fights. She is definitely fear-aggressive (in addition to whatever else might be going on here) toward B. So the muzzle on P would: (a) prevent me from giving her an unfair advantage over B, should she initiate a fight in which he wouldn't have his mouth to defend himself; (b) level the field in general (making both less likely to severely hurt one another--so far P's worst was a puncture to B's paw pad but still . . .); (c) perhaps help me strengthen my position in their eyes as the leader of the pack (something I evidently need since everyone agrees I've let P-dog feel like the alpha--not just alpha dog, Queen of Everything--all these years).

The muzzles haven't arrived yet. (I'm relieved about this because I'm dreading the muzzle thing. But will do it.)

The trainer added the periodic-muzzle requirement.

I added an exercise requirement for myself: an hour per day of me-time on the bicycle to help me begin to feel stronger inside and to clear my head so I'll be less anxious around the dogs.

It's very clear that the dogs' problems won't be totally resolved until I fix myself. So much of this is all about me and my laxness and anxiety and overall feeling of vulnerability. I know I need a "30-Day Emergency Regimen" for myself as well as for the dogs. But I'm only requiring myself to do the 1 hour of bicycling for now.

30-Day Regimen

2008-08-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm going to keep a more-detailed journal about our experience trying to overcome the fighting.

Here's the list we received from the trainer last week:

Feed dogs twice a day, during a consistent time frame (ex: 7-7:10 a.m. and 4-4:15 p.m.) and move bowls to a different location each time, removing food even if untouched.

Give dogs zero people food except as training treats.

Require dogs to Sit or Down before every treat.

Walk each dog at heel but pause many times to allow her/him to wander around and smell interesting things while you remain stationary.

Lead two training sessions per day, 5 to 10 minutes with no physical petting.

Lead two eye contact sessions per day (5 times per session, OK while walking).

Conduct a thirty-minute settle (foot on leash; ignore the dog; down-stay not required).

Each dog has access to only one toy at a time.

Avoid playing tug-of-war or any game you do not initiate yourself. (Pause and walk away before initiating the play.)

Avoid walking around the dog; gently nudge out of the way.

Restrict dogs from beds, chairs, sofa (put empty boxes on them).

Before leaving home, put dogs in their crates (TV/radio on).

Do a surprise down once a week..

Remain calmly vigilant for problem behavior and interrupt it however possible.

Require sit-ups (Sit then Free; repeat) after problem behavior.

Sing the dog’s special jingle (including her name) twice a day for 7 seconds.

At bedtime, both dogs sleep in their crates.

Re-home

2008-08-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

"Muzzle" was the most awful word and image to me . . . until the trainer used the word "re-home."

Her actual sentence was something like, "You may need to consider rehoming one of them."

I said, "Consider what?"

That word re-home is dogworld jargon.I hadn't heard it or used it before. As soon as its meaning clicked I felt Lost. Like I'd already lost the battle to re-make our life.

The thought I didn't have at that moment but recognize now is how much my shattered-feeling is related to the divorce-and-rebuilding narrative of the past 3 or so years. Ending my marriage was a good decision. Then my forced-remodeling and home-ownership scenario: more upheaval, stressful as hell, but a necessary part of moving on. And throughout all this the dogs were my real life. They were my source of all rightness.

At the heart of everything was my belief that my purpose in life was to live as well as I could right now, to stay sane and strong, and to take good care of these dogs. I was starting over from scratch with everything but the dogs. The dogs were my family, my nucleus. I consoled myself night after night--beyond lawyers and disturbing handymen and mounting debt, and termites, and nightmarish phone calls from my ex--no matter how I'd handled or mishandled everything else that day I consoled myself that I was OK because I'd taken good care of these dear dogs.

I had already "re-homed" us all: spent the last year making it possible for us to live in a beautiful place with birds and a garden and everything we needed to be safe and peaceful together.

I don't have children. I have two dogs that were abandoned by other people and came into my world and made me feel whole.

But it seems probable that my way of caring for them was wrong for them, or at least not right enough to prevent the trouble they're having right now. Despite all my best intentions, despite all the books I read and classes we took--puppy school, basic obedience, agility, freestyle dance ( ! ), flyball--despite the dog park and the vanilla infused cowcheeks and the singing and the love--I blew it.

To make this less of a pity party I'll acknowledge that some of the problem is nature rather than nurture. But still I can see so clearly that most of what I've done "for them" were all the things I wanted to do, not necessarily the things they needed. They needed more walks, they needed more obedience practice, they needed reinforcement of the lessons we learned at school--lessons about home manners and responding appropriately to strangers, they needed a calm, assertive leader. I didn't give them enough of any of that.

The things I wanted them to need--affection, quiet times on the sofa, training as a feel-good hobby--these were not the things they needed most.

My point is that I knew better all along but I ultimately copped out and did whatever was most comfortable for me.

So here I am, on Day 7 of the emergency training. Praying to God we can all fix this. So I can keep my family intact.

(Some would say that my persistence in calling my dogs "family" indicates I'm still not doing what they need: I'm still treating them like humans rather than like dogs, still burdening them with my emotions. Yeah. Bite Me.)

Ignoring my dog for another 25 minutes

2008-08-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting on the soft with B-dog's leash beneath my left foot. Mom is here visiting and we had a late supper so I feel guilty about restricting his mobility after a long evening of crate time.

But I must do this. a 30-minute "settle" with each dog on the floor, my foot on the leash, while I pay absolutely no attention to them. Poor buddy.

And poor me, really. I'm sleepy from the beer at dinner and must repeat this routine with P-dog as well before going to bed. And since both dogs must now sleep in their crates (instead of on my bed with me, which I love) I'm trying to give them a little liberty time before hitting the hay. Sheesh.

* * *

The last few days I've been following the trainer's "emergency" regimen in an effort to fix us all. Since I've been too worn out to blog about it I'll paste one of my emails describing this saga to a friend, following my 1 or 2 hour meeting with the dog trainer regarding or problems at home . . .

* * *

. . . After the meeting I sat in the car and
sobbed. For so many reasons. For being such a poor dog-mom despite my
fine intentions. For being such an incompetent leader to animals who
need leadership more than anything. For not doing my best
for these sweet creatures. For smothering them instead of attending to
what I knew they needed.

I mentioned my willingness to do the big time crack-of-dawn dog walks.
The trainer said European research has shown that dogs don't need
intensive Dog Whisperer style exercise because that raises their
adrenaline and can actually make them more aggressive; instead what
they need is lots of mental stimulation. She said what I need to do is
take them for a walk for the purpose of stimulating them, not
exhausting them. She said their nose is their most important organ. I
dunno. Seems like exhausting them is a good idea. But I'm going to
follow her prescription and let them walk and smell things instead of
forcing them to zoom along for an hour. In this hot
weather it's a bad idea to push a long walk anyway.

She was kind and a terrier-lover and gave me lots of advice and a printed sheet
summarizing a 30-day
plan for restructuring your dog lifestyle. I turned that into a
checklist and will follow it faithfully for 30 days, starting
tomorrow. (Though I'm starting some things tonight--perhaps including
not letting the dogs sleep with me.)

The trainer didn't say I could never sleep with them or cuddle with
them on the couch again, but she did say I'd need to stick to the plan
until things changed.

She helped me see how I've always let P-dog be in charge: from the
very first day of B-dogs arrival when I mistakenly let her decide
when he was permitted in certain parts of the house--that should
have been my decision, not hers.

She also said there really isn't any such thing as Beta and
Delta--that whole hierarchy thing. She said packs have a leader and
then everyone else, the others' roles change depending on what the
pack needs at any time. The problem in our house isn't that P or
B want to be Top Dog so much as the fact that I'm not Top Dog.
Once again (as with every other trainer I've worked with) she
explained that the dogs don't believe I'm in charge. Right now they
seem to see me as a possession. Part of the territory they're fighting
over. If I were clearly their leader they wouldn't see the need to
fight over territory anymore. It would be my territory. And so on.

So my job for the next 30 days is to (1) protect the dogs from hurting
each other, and (2) make myself their leader.

The saddest thing in the world is that (1) involves making B-dog wear
a muzzle. The trainer said it's a bad idea to keep the dogs separated
all the time because it will ultimately reinforce the problem rather
than dilute it. They need to be in the same space now and then. But
the only way I can feel confident P is safe (today's bite BTW was
near her eye--I discovered it only later) is by muzzling the bigger dog. This
won't necessarily stop them from fighting but it will reduce the odds
of a horrifying injury and it will make ME feel less nervous which is
a huge part of the problem. I'm now terrified for P-dog and I'm no
good at pretending not to be tense in front of them.

So tomorrow is muzzle shopping. She recommended a metal basket-type
model and said that the Greyhound rescue people routinely use them and
give one to every adopter because Greyhounds are so prey-driven
they're a natural threat to cats and such. The image of B-dog as
Hannibal Lecter horrifies me. Makes me cry. But I just need to get
over it. Me being comfortable is partly what led to this awful
situation.

And becoming a leader is next. Lord. The trainer at first described
how her own mother was one of those people who you just obeyed as a
kid no matter what. I knew what she was trying to suggest and found I
had absolutely no parental analogue. Not one of my four parents was a
calm-assertive leader. My mother was animated but weak and
hyperreactive; my father obtuse and unconcerned; my stepfather
unpredictable and sometimes abusive; my
stepmother an uncompassionate alien.

Explains a lot, actually.

During my drive home I reflected on all those Dog Whisperer podcasts I
watched this afternoon and it occurred to me that I'm the red-line
dog. I'm the one who needs the hour-long exercise to expend my nervous
energy before starting my day with the dogs. I'm the one whose energy
is weak or anxious to the dogs. I'm the one who needs to be balanced
and predictable.

So for 30 days I'll do all the things the trainer prescribed plus an
hour of exercise, probably on my bike. An hour is about two rides
around the lake. I can do that. I won't be in the mood for it but I'll
do it.

It's so difficult to change who we are inside. Is it even possible?
I've felt vulnerable for so long that I don't know how to feel
otherwise. But I believe it will require a physical change--something
very deep--because faking it doesn't make it.

And I keep going back to my ex-husband's (EE's) role in all this. He was alpha. Always.
To all of us. And in retrospect I believe that when EE lived here my
weakness and frustration was already well established in the
perceptions of my dogs. I've always said their behavior change was
about protecting me after EE left. Actually, I believe the foundation
was forming even while he was here. I wasn't second-in-command. I was
just another member of the pack who happened to take them to obedience
school and to the vet but wasn't really in charge of anything.

My persistent exhaustion emotionally and physically, my sense of
debilitation, all this weakness comes from years and years of tension
and frustration that began long before I adopted these dogs. They've
always known me as this fundamentally weary person.

The training I will do. Every last thing on the long list. Every day.
Twice. But I realize the dog thing is unlikely to be truly resolved
until I change. Really change. For good.

Watching Dog Whisperer Isn't Enough

2008-08-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

To keep myself from crying I've been watching video podcasts of The Dog Whisperer. They're too short to be really instructive but I had to do something.

Tonight I'm taking P-dog to meet a new trainer and I've vowed to do whatever she says. For life. And I mean it.

When I briefed her on the situation over the phone she said, "This has been building for years." And I believe she's right. And it reminded me of all those studies of violent behavior when at first people say [any given menace] was "always quiet and polite and kept to himself" when in fact if you traced his history you'd see the awful incident was part of a larger pattern of behavior.

Well that's where we are.

At least no one's maimed yet.

But the dogs' behavior is now out of control. Last week they got in another scuffle in which B-dog clamped down on P-dog's ear and pierced it. I pulled them apart again but I have trouble visualizing them halting the fight on their own. This morning they got into it again by the backdoor and this time apparently P-dog punctured B's paw pad.

These are such dear dogs. I'm terrified for them both. Especially P. She spends most of her time beneath a bed and avoids crossing B's path. But when the fights begin I believe she's the one initiating them.

So now I'm having to keep them separated in their crates, letting one out at a time for exercise. It breaks my heart but I don't know what else to do. I mean I know lots of things to do; I've read dozens of dog books. I know I need to walk them an hour each day to exhaust them physically (Cesar Millan) and be a calm-assertive leader (Patricia McConnell) and treat them like dogs not people (Monks of New Skete) and so forth. But right at this moment, on a hundred-degree summer day, with two very tense dogs, I don't know what next steps to take to begin making everything all right.

I've begun walking them on short leads, and I intend to build up to an hour each morning per dog but that is going to mean getting up at 5 every day. An unrealistic goal? Yes. But it's too hot to do anything else. And of course we could walk shorter distances, blahblahblah, but the point is I've begun taking steps too late. At the rate I'm going I may not be able to curb things before a more serious injury.

And school begins in a few weeks so I won't have as much flexible time. Sigh.

And I realize a major part of this is behaving like a Calm. Assertive. Pack Leader. I am none of those things. I'm tense and anxious. I'm nervous and confrontation-avoidant. I'm exhausted and weak and want to just wander around the house doing whatever I want without setting an example for anyone.

Granted, none of the above traits are desirable. I need to change them no matter what. But I guess I figured I'd have more time to gradually evolve into a Phenomenal Woman. I've mostly been a Tired Woman.

And my dogs have been suffering the consequences. I'm so sorry.

This is why I planted red milkweed in the dog garden . . .

2008-04-23T12:00:00.001-07:00

Monarch Migration

Keep It Clean

2008-04-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

I killed a black widow spider yesterday in my garden.

Smashed it with a brick.

Like a freaking horror movie, the thing appeared as I rolled back some black weed-barrier material I'd kept over the garden last year. It was infested with crabgrass and needed to go. I was going to replace it but now I see it was the perfect habitat for something much worse.

As I write this my dear greybrador is curled outside on the pavement, napping in the afternoon sun. During summer he'll lounge for hours in the garden, on a corner of mulch spread over a sheet of black weed-barrier fabric. Good Lord.

I need to have some sort of path to keep the garden from becoming a big mess. But as soon as I make a path I'm making a potential black widow habitat--without the black stuff I still have mulch, which creates the same sort of darkness they love only one less impervious to dogs. Unless the dog paws the black stuff off the ground. Which happens sometimes.

Alas, there's no beneficial nematode that kills black widow spiders.

I checked.

So the garden people say the best solution is: Keep It Clean. Keep the garden clear from underbrush, dead weeds, etc. Keep the black stuff tightly down and the mulch packed down (because black widows are big and need elbow room, heh) and then just get on your life and stop being paranoid about future episodes. These spiders are rare.

Sheesh.

Yet all this advice is awfully familiar.

Image source: scottkinmartin

The Tell-Tale Bookmark

2008-02-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

As if there were ever any doubt that I am among the world's most over-extended community-service-learning professors, a colleague just noted that I routinely use the following website to dovetail my student-research treks according to civilian twilight visbility:

sunrise/sunset

PLF 1 - Situations and Strategies

2008-01-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

(pp 1-3)

Something I like from this section:

In a passage that reminds me of Carolyn Miller's "Genre As a Social Act" (and probably if I looked I'd find she drew from PLF), Burke discusses "recurrent situations" --he argues that proverbs retain their meaning over time and across cultures because they are stylized, strategic responses to those recurrent situations. And he proposes that we think of poetry (which includes all sorts of imaginative and critical texts) as similarly relevant.

Lord, that sounded more academic than I meant it to. Oh well.

To clarify, though. What interests me in the passage is not that it reminds me of Miller, or that it recollects the whole debate about whether rhetorical situations are recurrent yadda yadda yadda (Bitzer still bores me no end). What interests me is Burke's initial point that "critical and imaginative works are [strategic, stylized] answers to question posed by the situation in which they arose" and that an individual text such as a proverb [or a haiku] is an answer to a question arising not from the artist, necessarily but from the artist's situation. (Heck, perhaps neither the question nor the answer arises from the artist, but from the situation and from the artwork itself.)

This thought appeals to me partly because of my study of oriental painting, in which the process generates the craft as much as the intention of the artist. I've transitioned myself, as an artist and as a writer and learner, into someone who chooses to be permeable, spontaneous, and open rather than rigidly focused on a particular type of output. Now, Burke describes creative texts as "strategic" as well as stylized--in other words, deliberate rather than purely serendipitous. But I don't see this as contradicting my ponderings above, really. I don't think inspiration and art arise magically from nothing; they arise from a confluence of factors. But I'm choosing to pursue a path right now that includes openness and responsiveness to situations, to materials, to notions worth pursuing.

Sources mentioned in this section:

Korzybski's "levels of generalization" (this is the semantic ladder of abstraction guy, yes?)
Aristophanes lampooning Socrates
Hegelian dialectic
Coleridge's favorite proverb, "Extremes Meet" (I remember KB referencing Coleridge quite a lot so this seems a good time to read something on or by him)

Now, of course, I recognize that a meticulous approach would involve locating the exact books and such that KB was reading/most likely reading to obtain these sources. Since this is my indulgence rather than pure scholarship I'm just going to grab what I have in my office or whatever comes my way that seems to fit the bill.

Some of the sources that come readily to mind, from which I might choose my contribution:

Miller's aforementioned article
a haiku--preferably an old one, as an illustration of the proverbial-timelessness discussion
a Zen artwork (for the same reason given above)

Image: "Haiku Moon" by Marie Taylor

PLF - My Autodidactic Indulgence with an Indulgent Autodidact

2008-01-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

Heh. I've been wanting to do this for a long, long time.

Welcome to my post-doctoral, post-divorce, post-tenure, pre-sabbatical indulgence. With my faithful black Lab beside me on the sofa, snoozing in the glow of the fireplace that's keeping our home toasty as the temperature drops again below zero outside, and a glass of sherry within reach, I'm embarking on a very slow re-reading of Kenneth Burke, my favorite rhetorician of all time, living or dead (with the possible exception of Jim Corder). I never knew Burke personally, but I did know Corder for a time and as a rhetorician I adored him. Still do. Corder's rhetoric makes me hope and it makes me cry. Burke's rhetoric makes my heart sing, it rattles and warps and delights my brain. It's a Burkeian immersion I seek now. And here's how I'll do it:

I've chosen a book, semi-randomly, from my Burkeshelf: The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. Though I've dipped into this stuff over the years I haven't read any Burke cover-to-cover since grad school. I always thought it would be fun to teach a grad class in which the reading list was derived from a single Burke text plus all the sources he cites in the work itself.

Burke was an autodidact, and it seems to me we could gain much from reading all that he was reading as he was writing. Most of his references are pretty familiar to anyone doing doctoral studies in English literature or rhetoric, but I think in the rush to read Burke and extract his ideas we often assume we know what he means with his references merely because we follow his drift. What I want to do now is take the time to read at least some version of each source he mentions and have it fresh in my mind as I read his words.

And I want to log my process on this blog in whatever way amuses/interests me at the time. Another advantage of the anonymous blog is that I don't need to posture or "perform" my experience for my peers. What's that Zen tenet? Oh yes:

Being a spectator while one is also a participant spoils one's performance.

One dimension of this, in my experience anyway, is that my performance is spoiled utterly (for myself and for others) when I become too caught up in audience-awareness. I blog because the process intrigues me; I enjoy maintaining more than one anonymous blog for the purpose of exploring different (albeit overlapping) areas of my life and work. I choose a public medium for relatively personal writing because, I suppose, I'm curious about the way this textual artifact evolves and I want to participate in the genre in my own way. And the date stamp keeps me somehow accountable.

Back to the PLF project, I expect this will take months and months. I certainly hope so. I want a different experience with Burke than I've had in the past. In the old days I'd become so excited while reading Burke that I'd have to walk around the room to decompress--and I'd dash through his writing positively buzzing from the last quirky or provocative comment to the next. I'm still pretty excitable, but I want to experience slow, deliberate engagement with this writer. I want to make and take time to re-read what he's saying and where he's deriving his ideas.

And I think this process will be a wonderful way to return to material I read as a newbie rhetorician and see how it speaks to me now--what catches my attention, what affects me differently or not at all or entirely.

Also, to each section I want to bring my own source material--at least one reading per section that I see as somehow relevant or at least intertextually interesting. Could be anything. A cartoon, a poem, a novel. Whatever.

So that's my format:

(1) I read a section of PLF.
(2) I highlight his sources.
(3) I find and read some version of those sources.
(4) I re-read the section with the sources fresh in mind.
(5) I select a source of my own to bring to the conversation, and read it.
(6) I re-read the section again.
(7) I blog about all this whenever I'm in the mood to do so and in whatever way entertains me.

Image source: PLF home page at UC Press

New Year Haiku 2

2008-01-08T17:31:00.001-08:00

to my Namaste
man grunting through yoga class
poses a challenge

New Year Haiku 1

2008-01-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

vanilla ice cream
in the refrigerator
relatives depart

Shunning

2007-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm shunning my dogs. For at least another 2 minutes.

They've gotten into two big scuffles during the last day or so, one inside and most recently one outside. After pulling them apart (as I yelled for them to stop fighting and they ignored me) I held them apart for about a full minute without talking. Both dogs sat. The lab lay down. Then I gave them one command to go inside. That's when the shunning-as-punishment began.

A friend said she shunned her dog for about a half hour and he spent the whole rest of the day appearing to be devastated. So I'm trying to keep my own shunning down to about 10 minutes. It's eerily silent. I also removed their special vanilla-infused cow cheeks (uber treats). They know they're in trouble and I think they also know why. I hope so.

The consistent elements of their big scuffles are:

* me
* a highly desirable food item (usually my own dinner but occasionally a precious treat like the cow cheek)

Today I was carrying P-dogs cowcheek in from the damp grass when somehow the dogs collided. If I could slow it down frame by frame I'd say P-dog initiated the fight by warning B-dog away from me and the cowcheek and then B-dog refused to back down and growled back.

The fights happen so fast. I know that B-dog is powerful enough to seriously hurt or perhaps even kill P-dog if he wanted to; since that doesn't happen I'm concluding it's a sibling scuffle (possibly a a hierarchy test now that B-dog is an adolescent/adult). Mostly I just see a little fur fly. But still the scenario is troubling.

OK thanks to the distraction of blogging I've now shunned them for about 15 minutes so I'll stop now.

By the way I'm noticing I haven't posted to this blog since Sept. I got divorced and traveled to Singapore, blogging much of that elsewhere. But I'm planning a return to this blog in the new year.

A Flash from Auriga

2007-09-01T05:24:00.000-07:00

We were up early this morning to view the Aurigid meteor shower. P-dog chased creatures of the night and B-dog curled by my side on the ground as I tried to view as much of the sky as possible all at once.

I couldn't find Auriga in the early morning haze. So I just had to face northeast and hope.

After a while I stopped caring whether we saw anything because it was so pleasant to be up early with the dogs and the quiet and the flowers and grass.

I reflected a bit on my amateur astronomy--years and years of it. All the times I'd done this sort of watching and waiting. And the thought forming in my mind was this: that, ultimately, stargazing is truly about being open to the universe. Really. When I lie on my back and watch and wait at first I'm tense and expectant--I'm willing the meteor shower to appear, urging it along--but it never arrives that way. Pretty much the only time I see anything is when I stop needing it and open my heart to whatever is out there regardless of whether it's what I set my alarm clock to view.

This morning, in that mindset, I saw one brilliant flash.

I moved into a better position so I could see more but nothing ever came--at least not that I could see. (Another thing about stargazing is that brilliant things appear behind your back.)

After a while I decided that we really ought to do this every morning. Just spend a little time being open to the universe in the early morning sky. You never know.

Mulch is all I need

2007-05-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

Tenure, schmenure; let's talk gardening.

I'm seriously considering ignoring all planting this season and just enjoying the mulch.

I've got a self-combined mix of cedar and no-float cypress making a path through my ersatz cutting garden, aka the Dog Garden. The path matches their preferred route through the garden and roughly makes a Y shape. Everywhere else I'm supposed to have flowers. But I mostly have either crabgrass, or one of the five candy tufts I planted to create a tuffett for P-dog (she loves napping on this flowering evergreen when we visit her favorite aunt and uncle down south), or one of several totally unfamiliar leafy, as-yet unflowering plants that don't quite look like weeds but also don't resemble any of the (many) perennials I've planted in that garden for the past 2 years.

So tonight I pulled out lots of crabgrass and spread some of my gorgeous cotton burr compost mulch and B-dog wallowed in the fragrant, earthy stuff beside me and I decided that, really, it's good enough just like that. It smells divine (if you're into this sort of thing) and it's soft on your paws (for those of us who garden barefoot) and you can go to a conference for a week and come home and not worry about it withering away. The songbirds find lots to peck around in it. I don't have to "deadhead" anything. Really, once it's down it's done except for a little replenishment now and then.

And it gives me more time to hang out with the dogz.

Tenure

2007-05-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

Got it.

Everyone at work seemed to figure I was a shoo-in so no one is making a big deal of it. They're saying things like, "Well, yeah, of course." Which I suppose is way better than having everyone seem relieved or shocked. But still. Is it ungrateful to describe this as an anticlimax? Or am I needing external hoopla to make it seem real?

Oh well. Deep inside my Cheshire Cat is grinning--this is the grin that comes from the part of me that defies the part of me that for some reason is never much impressed by anything I do.

This weekend, after commencement, I'm taking the Cat into the garden to drink a split of champagne at twilight while the dogs wrestle. That's pretty much as good as it gets.

What I Pack for Conferences

2007-03-19T16:24:00.000-07:00

black shoes (2 pair)
black pants (2 pair)
black turtleneck
black non-turtleneck
black coat
black socks
black jacket
non-black jacket with black trim
black gym clothes
black-trimmed sneakers
something brightly colored that I toss into my suitcase at the last minute and often don't wear
a roll of masking tape for removing my all-black-dogs' strangely-only-partially-black hairs from all of the above

Spring Haiku 1

2007-03-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

The neighbor's blossoms
drift into my garden--
blanket my napping dog

Domino or Pepper or Grizzle?

2007-03-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

Oh My.

I just completed my pet insurance applications and for each dog I was asked to identify his/her color. I was about to type "black" when I encountered a drop-down menu with these choices:

Apricot
Beige
Biscuit
Black
Blenheim (red & white) <-- they defined this one
Blonde
Blue
Blue-Black
Blue merle
Boston
Brindle
Brown
Buff
Cafe-au-lait
Caramel <-- What? No soy macchiato?
Champagne
Charcoal
Chestnut
Chocolate
Cinnamon
Copper
Cream
Dapple
Deadgrass
Dilute
Domino
Fawn
Golden
Grey
Grizzle
Harlequin
Honey
Landseer
Lavendar
Lemon
Liver
Mackerel
Mahogany
Merle
Mink
Mouse
Mustard
Orange
Parti
Pepper
Pinto
Red
Red merle
Roan
Rust
Sable
Salt & pepper
Sandy
Silve
Silver black
Smoke
Spotted leopard
Tan
Taupe
Tawny
Tick
Tri-color
Wheaten
White
Wild boar
Wolf
Yellow

The Dog Ate My Gradebook

2007-03-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

OK, not entirely. But darn close.

My dining room is in transition (a polite way of saying I can't afford decent furniture) into what I'd like to be a study where I can do most of my work on a table that could also serve as a dining table during those, like, 3 times a year when people eat in this room. (Snacking while I google doesn't count.)

Anyhoo, in an effort to organize all the paperwork I've brought home from my office I made tidy stacks on the floor and meant to spend an afternoon listening to 'This American Life' archives and sorting all the stuff into some sort of system that would fit on a table in the corner.

You see where this is going, of course.

The dogs never touched the piles.

Til just now, when they made it the site of a spirited wrestling match--sloshing the papers everywhere, probably enjoying the added excitement of a slippery texture beneath them--and then B-dog snagged a page from my gradebook and chomped through Pei Lin C. to Geraldine L.

I can appreciate that this sort of thing would horrify a non-dog-person (NDP), but all I can say is "Yeah, I left the piles on the floor" and appreciate this spectacular mess.

Dog-gardening for THREE?

2007-02-20T12:16:00.000-08:00

A cocoa-brown muzzle is snuffling beneath the east fence. It belongs to a dear old dauchsund that, apparently, has become a permanent or semi-permanent resident next door. (His human is dating my neighbor, and he appears to be living in the backyard there most days.)

P&B are delighted. They chase his shadow and sniff his muzzle and can't wait to see what he'll do next.

To accelerate this discovery, B-dog has begun digging a trough under the fence. In about 4 more inches our neighbor will have no trouble squeezing over for a visit. At which point I fear my gentle companions may attack him. (Once when he ambled over to our front yard they became downright hostile. Not sure why.)

The humans next door are nice people but don't quite get the dog-in-the-backyard-all-day problem, and since they witnessed P&B's aforementioned bullying it seems doubtful they'd interpret my suggestion that they reinforce their fence as anything other than a sign that my dogs are bloodthirsty devils. Which is the sort of expectation that leads to weirdly self-fulfilling prophecies.

Seems to me I have four basic options:

keep my dogz inside until the romance ends next door, or until the dog makes his way into my yard so I can demonstrate the problem to the neighbor
talk to the neighbor about sharing the cost of reinforcing both sides of the fence with a concrete berm (which seems really unlikely both because of the dog-obiviousness issue and because she declined an invitation to share expenses for fence preservation a year ago)
do the concrete berm thing myself on just my side of the fence
build a 40-foot-long raised planting bed against the fence

Guess which one I'm contemplating?

Hope it's a sunny weekend.

Thwak!

2007-02-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

OK, in the time it took me to write the previous post, P-dog invented a new game:

When a critical mass of birds is in the garden--so many that the earth seems to be undulating with all the brown-black-white camouflaged feathers--P-dog thwaks the ottoman with her curly tail and watches a hundred birds flee in terror.

Backyard Theatre Takes a Hitchcockian Turn

2007-02-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

I created the birdgarden for P-dog after observing how much she seemed to enjoy watching the occasional songbird visit our little feeder. I added a second feeder and a cobalt birdbath, and read up on garden designs that were both bird-attractive and dog-friendly, planting lots of things with seeds and vines and flexible stalks and forgiving foliage and fibers that double as nest bedding and such. That, plus an established holly hedge and a lake park in the vicinity have yielded an afternoon like this one, with the dogz and I sitting (or pacing) at the window watching easily 200 (a conservative estimate) wildbirds of at least six or seven species devour a couple pounds of sunflower mix in, like, 2 hours.

A dozen birds pecking the ground is a cozy afternoon's entertainment around here. Winter and snow bring out the suet blocks, which reckless bluejays and unscrupulous squirrels sometimes release onto the ground--an event P-dog watches for with hawklike intensity (if I don't catch her in time she'll gobble enough suet to damage her pancreas, which means nothing to her except that she gets lots of yummy bread and crackers to soak up the crud).

But when the hungry hoards fill the birdgarden the dogz get territorial. Upside-down starlings look a lot like squirrels (evidently) and act just enough like them to get B-dog's adreneline rushing. As for P-dog, I think she's just peeved that the invaders are eating all her suet and seed and those nasty earthworms she likes to roll on.

Pet Insurance

2007-02-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

I'm nearly ready to take the plunge. Last time I checked, though, veterinary health insurance was going to run me $75 a month. So I've been stalling. Granted, I've been paying my estranged husband's health insurance for 3 years now, which was considerably more and will hopefully go away in the not too distant future. But Oy $75 a month plus sending in receipts and whatnot. I'm so bad at that. I never mail in rebates or keep track of expenses as I should. But budgeting is becoming a necessity--an urgent one--so I'm thinking that making the dogz's health care a regular monthly expense will give me peace of mind.

When I visited my friend in Vietnam her cat wore a flea collar. It caught me off guard. I'd forgotten about flea collars.

Remember flea collars?

You'd buy them at the grocery store, manufactured by Hartz or Sargeant's and they'd sort of work but you'd still find the occasional flea in the fur or hopping on your arm.

Of course, my middle American suburban dogs get monthly chemicals instead: expensive topical formulas that somehow prevent heartworm as well as fleas. Before that I used two expensive formulas--one ingested, one topical, I think. At any rate, I don't know of anyone who uses a flea collar in my canine social circle. Flea collars seem so primitive. SO AFFORDABLE!

Granted, the dogs I saw in Vietnam all seemed a bit, well, scurvish. Even the sweet cocker spaniel I met at lunch with some expats by the lake seemed rather lumpy and dull coated. But I can't say that dog has a lesser quality of life than P and B.

Who am I kidding? Of course I think my dogs are healthier than that dog. Maybe happier--that's hard to say. Dogs have a gift for being happy under most conditions. Including fleas.

So the insurance isn't about my dogs' happiness--maybe it's not even about their health since I'd be unlikely to let expense prevent me from providing them with whatever medical care they'd ever need. The pet insurance is all about me. Will it make me feel more secure as their guardian?

Pseudonymous Blogging

2007-01-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

Just read this excerpt of Bitch, Ph.D.'s MLA talk on pseudonymous blogging.

I'm fascinated and want to respond--just not right at this moment. So this is a placeholder for that.

Nah, I said I'd get back to my Southeast Asia trip too and I still haven't done that, so I'll go ahead and jot a quick response for now. Here's an excerpt from the excerpt:

We all joke that “on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” but it seems to me that, in fact, this isn’t true. Even unschooled readers are fairly savvy about generic form, and one of the formal conceits of public discourse is that people whose social identities are marked as “other”--women, in this case--will, when writing personally, draw attention to their persons. Pseudonyms prevent texts from being impersonal, from pretending to objectivity; they draw attention to the author’s role in a way that a straight byline does not. At the same time, though, pseudonyms make a text more fully public: by hiding the author’s identity, the author becomes potentially anyone. Pseudonyms mean something, and one of the things they mean is that the pseudonymous writer has a reason for pseudonymity. When pseudonymity becomes a generic feature, as with essay periodicals and blogs, one of the things that means is that the genre entails risk, that publishing is risky.

Yes, and it's worth mentioning that in the blogosphere you can comment anonymously, but you can't really author a blog anonymously. Even with an empty profile, you're still constructing a persona; the title of the blog will become the pseudonym if nothing else does.

2blackdogz is my pseudonym in the conventional sense, but it's also a pseudo-nym, an illusion of pseudonymity, for a few friends know this blog exists and I deliberately use it to share a bit of my life with them.

As for risk, there's that too. I'm nearly tenured and not particularly motivated to leave my institution right now so I'm not awfully concerned about the implications of future colleagues discovering that I'm a dog-lover who writes novice haiku and periodically rants about a very painful, much protracted divorce. To me the risk--at present--isn't about exposing my personal life to critical colleagues, but rather the risk is about inviting too many people into my pseudo-dialogue. I prefer the occasional posts of (a) total strangers with a genuine interest in the text, and (b) a few friends with close connections to my subjects or to me personally--to those who might otherwise look up my blog by name. It's my party.

My Barkean Parlor.

A Dog's Best Mac

2007-01-29T14:24:00.000-08:00

OK, my newfangled black MacBook has arrived and I must say it's already far superior to my old titanium powerbook--at least in terms of dog durability.

P-dog has already slammed the lid shut, marched across the keyboard, and licked it--no unsightly wear and tear yet. (Not that that matters overmuch, but it's nice.)

As I do most of my writing dogside--especially now that I teach the morning shift (another lifestyle revelation)--I'm excited to have a computer that's canine compatible.

Ratz, PetsMart, say it ain't so!

2007-01-27T14:29:00.000-08:00

I tend to feel OK about shopping at the Mothership because I appreciate their adoption program and I like the attentive salespeople who often bring their dogs to work and give me decent advice. Also, I'm grateful to have a socialization-practice venue so close to home. (It's maybe 1 mile from our house.)

Furthermore, while I generally try to support small, local businesses (such as the dog bakery) most mom-and-pop pet supply stores aren't pet supply stores but "pet stores" that derive most of their income from puppymills.

So this report from PETA leaves me feeling sad and conflicted and hopeful that PetsMart will clean up its behind-the-scenes act. I really, really don't want to switch to mail-order.

Can't socialize my dogs at an online boutique (the mail-carrier already does all she can).

Schnoodle or Schnerrier?

2007-01-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

Took each dog out for a drive this afternoon.

First, P-dog and I drove through Starbucks, then went to the seafood shop conveniently located beside the dog bakery. I got salmon and shrimp, P got lamb loaf, free snickerpoodle treats, and lots of attention. Afterwards we snacked by the lake and then went on a short muddy stroll in the park.

Then, B-dog and I picked up some red wine and various ingredients for M's famous French-onion-soup-in-a-crockpot en route to the Mothership to purchase a new halter for our walk with his pal Molly tomorrow. (Last walk he slithered out of his collar again.)

We also picked up some tasty-looking blueberry dog treats and I coughed up the money for a de-shedding tool. I've been wanting one since I first read about them on belly's blog.

While there I met a little puppy that looks and behaves a lot like P-dog at that age and (as I always do in these situations) got into one of those mystery-breed conversations with the owner. The puppy is an intentional mix of Schnauzer and Poodle; the last P-alike was a Yorkie-Poodle mix. P-dog's first vet and I feel pretty confident P-dog is a Schnauzer-terrier [bigger than Yorkie] mix. But there might be some poodle involved as well. I won't discriminate. After all, despite the funny hairdos and Nancy Reaganesque behavior, I've always admired the poodles in our agility classes (and, to be honest, envied their show-offy perfect eye contact).

So, like, would this make P-dog a Schnerdle? a Tenaudle? a Schnoodier?

Formula for Patience

2007-01-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

According to Wyndmere aromatherapy, the formula for patience is:

Patchouli
Rosewood
Lavender
Geranium
Bergamot
Vetiver
Palmarosa
Rose

As a birdwatcher on a snowy day attempting to guide the wary locals toward my new suet feeder, I'm learning the formula for patience is:

a pot of Starbucks Italian roast
a comfortable seat by the window
a laptop with decent web access
lots of work to do
an essential oils burner

But as a dog-mom attempting to keep the canines out of the birdgarden during my experiment I know that the formula for patience is:

two Kong balls crammed with a combination of crunchy biscuits and highly aromatic, compressed, rubbery chewsticks

Winter Haiku 3

2007-01-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

Suburban bitch--
so much depends upon
a hot pink collar

Winter Haiku 2

2007-01-13T10:54:00.000-08:00

old tag jangles
against the new collar--
too much noise

* * *

pebbles of hail--
so much work for a big-eared dog
with a new collar

* * *

pebbles of hail--
so much work
for a big-eared dog

* * *

so much depends upon
a flourescent pink collar
in the suburbs

* * *

so much depends upon
a flourescent pink collar
in the suburban snow

* * *

so much depends upon
a hot pink collar
on a suburban bitch

(I thought it would be interesting to chart the evolution of Winter Haiku 3.)

Love this one by Buson, Yosa (1716-84)

2007-01-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

At the over-matured sushi,
The Master
Is full of regret.

Winter Haiku 1

2007-01-12T14:19:00.000-08:00

ice storm clatter
a thousand tiny taps
a terrier's sigh

The Dogz's Season Words

2007-01-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Naturally I'll need to develop one of these too. Here's a start:

FALL
- crunchy leaves
- chewy vines
- holly leaves dry and sharp
- swimming in the lake
- field mice
- gourds drying on the grass

WINTER
- the whole pack visits
- frosty grass
- mud

SPRING
- cotton burr mulch
- fresh dirt in the garden
- a new season of fence fights

SUMMER
- Mom's home
- swimming in the pool
- frog-hunting
- dead, bloated frogs floating in the pool
- un-mowed grass
- mowed grass
- fresh compost
- flowers
- shady corners
- sunbaths
- shady hidey hole

Season Words

2007-01-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

Back from Asia--so much to say about the trip, too tired to do so now. It'll come over time.

For now my mind is mulling over haiku. I'm writing about one per day as part of my morning writing routine, and I continue to read about haiku and the writing of it. I'm also continuing to study Mandarin, calligraphy, and Chinese brush painting, all of which intersect with this haiku business, but that'll be fodder for future posts.

I'm pondering season words. In Japanese haiku season words connect the writer not only to nature but to Nature and to the cultural heritage and traditions embedded in each word. So, for example, in U.S. haiku fireworks would be a recognizable season-word for summer--connoting Independence Day celebrations and so forth.

But if I were to log my seasons--the ones that feel most true to me--they'd nowadays have more to do with the academic calendar and its "seasons" than with anything else. Although I'm still comfortable writing clunky, novice haiku, I do want my haiku to be true to me, not just true to the form--otherwise, I'd have to switch genres, frankly, to keep it satisfying. And this whole business of the season word surely got more interesting as a result of spending Christmas in Vietnam, where the holiday was quirkily visible but otherwise irrelevant to me. Of course my feeling that the holiday is irrelevant is more of a comment on my situation in life than on the enduring significance of the season. Ditto most holidays.

As with the Japanese season words, I must acknowledge that although most things (e.g., grading) happen during more than one season, some things are more indicative of one season than of another. (E.g., commencement happens at the end of the fall and spring semesters, but it is more clearly associated with the end of the spring, making it an end-of-spring season word.)

ONE ACADEMIC'S SEASON WORDS AND PHRASES

FALL
- the new year
- convocation
- homecoming weekend
- letters of recommendation
- advisees
- a new syllabus
- bad coffee

WINTER
- dark commutes
- family visits
- good coffee

SPRING
- a new coffee mug
- commencement
- spring break
- assessment reports
- Four Cs

SUMMER
- travel
- manuscript (heh!)
- writing retreat (heh! heh!)
- student weddings
- Birkenstocks
- changing the voice mail message
- pressing the regalia
- sneaking into the office

Mad at My Kennel

2006-12-24T22:01:00.000-08:00

Each time I bring the dogs to the kennel-with-a-fancy-name the staff assures me I'll be able to reach them via email to get periodic updates about P&B's health and well-being.

They NEVER follow through.

I'm truly not a pest: I email just once a few days after I've arrived, asking for an update. That's all.

Since I'm away for 2 weeks or more at a time, and traveling halfway around the world without reliable cell phone connectivity, I want to hear some assurance that the dogs are adjusting reasonably well. And, frankly, in the era of Doggy Daycamps that send cutesy postcards home after a single afternoon's stay, I'm stunned that an enterprise would neglect a simple email exchange with a regular client paying them upwards of $600 and $800 per trip.

If they'd send me just one proactive email during my trip I would bring them presents from exotic Asian shops and recommend them to all my fellow travelers. Instead, I'm bitching about them on Christmas day and wondering if they neglect to follow through on a promised email, what ELSE are they neglecting?

Autumn Haiku 6

2006-12-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Garbage day
Dogs at the window

Autumn Haiku 5

2006-12-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

Chilly morning
Labrador behind
a sliding glass door

Autumn Haiku 4

2006-12-05T07:23:00.000-08:00

Frosty morning
Terrier tiptoes out
and in

Autumn Haiku 3

2006-12-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

Labrador in the shrubbery
Rustling branches
Leaves unseen

The deal with the haiku

2006-12-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

It's part of my Zen dog project (remember that?) and also just something I'm enjoying learning more about.

I'm trying to write or revise one each day (no I won't post them all) as a way to pay closer attention to my world. Also, the craft of haiku intrigues me--the discipline of stripping away verbs, of integrating seasonal references to express the connection between the moment and the natural world and its cycles of life.

Eons ago I would write "witty" haiku for my own amusement--ironic, glib stuff. Mostly awful but still fun to write.

I'm still mainly just amusing myself, but differently. I'm not yet attempting to write "good" haiku, but I'm getting a sense of the verses that satisfy me and those that don't, whether written by me or by others.

Autumn Haiku 2

2006-11-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

A Labrador lopes
into the shrubbery;
rustling leaves

B-Dog's 2 Favorite Ways to Spend a Snow Day

2006-11-30T11:44:00.002-08:00

1. Successfully enticing P-dog to chase him around the yard with an old gourd in his mouth.

2. At the sliding glass door--open 6 inches, body inside the warm house, face in the wind.

An old lady question

2006-11-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

OK, what's the deal with the phrase, "Peace Out"?

Is it more like:

Far out

Over and out

Let it out

or what?

I'm guessing it's like, "Let's be peaceful and get out of here." But that's purely contextual speculation. And when I refer to context I refer to a dim memory of a boy band interviewee and, like, a muskrat on a cartoon show--as described by my kickboxing instructor.

I'm just so freaking old.

Autumn Haiku 1

2006-11-26T06:36:00.000-08:00

My Labrador lopes
into the shrubbery . . .
Squirrel Patrol

Why my relationship with my dogs is better than my relationship with my husband

2006-11-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

No, this isn't one of those postings about sex and toilet seats.

Quite seriously, as my separation replaces my marriage, I'm beginning to see more clearly why I'm more peaceful living with dogs. And I think this is important to blog about because in dogdom it's considered common--and sometimes code--to discuss dogs as intimate family members, and to joke about why we prefer canines to humans, while outside dogdom it's considered eccentric or sad. In both cases when those relationships are discussed in any complexity it seems to me that "gaps" are the focal point: dogs fill gaps left by an absent child, an absent spouse, an inability to relate to humans, and/or a more extreme detachment from human life caused by past (or present) addictions or traumas.

While all those things are often an important dimension of intimate human-canine relationships, healthy and unhealthy ones, there's a lot more happening.

Today, as I sit in my reading chair overlooking the birds in the garden with B-dog on my ottoman I can say truly that my peace in this relationship comes in large measure from its honesty. I am crazy-in-love with this dog, but I am also truly aware that he is a dog. My two dogs have awakened a childlike joy in me that I treasure for its purity, and I believe that is what enables me to be unguarded in my affection for them: I love them from the part of myself that does not anticipate disappointment or cruelty or--more difficult to describe--the kinds of complex neediness that come with intimate human relationships. This is not to say that I believe dog love is superior to human love. (Or that the word "love" means the same thing within each kind of relationship.) But it has a directness that I deeply appreciate and, at this moment in my life, need.

My dogs depend on me in a way that I generally understand and I manage to respond to their needs fairly consistently. Our homelife is somewhat messy and noisy (P-dog is a terrier mix, after all), and my training/communication with the dogs needs lifelong practice, but all that is as much a part of real life as the interludes of quiet and calm.

My dogs care about me in their own particular ways that I'll never understand. But I'm comfortable with that, just as I'm comfortable knowing that when I leave them at the kennel they probably forget I exist and that if I die before them they'll attach themselves to another person or family. When they want my company they seek it; when something more intriguing appears (or emits a scent or squawk), they dash away. And when I project attributes onto the dogs, or interpret their behavior, a part of me knows that I'm expressing myself through that process perhaps more than "reading" them--and that, too, is OK. It's just one more way I'm learning about myself and the world as well as about them. I call all of this "honest" because it comes as close to truth as anything I know. They are what they are, and I cherish them for that instead of wishing they were something else.

B-dog and P-dog are constant companions whose presence brings me tranquility rather than disturbance. This is especially true of B. He would probably prefer that we romp at the park instead of sitting inside working at the computer, but he's content to watch the birds a while and if he becomes bored he will occupy himself elsewhere or request to go outside. After a while, I'll play with him outside because I'll have had a peaceful and productive work session and will feel joyful about sharing his exploration of the park and immersing myself in his world. Or if I end up compulsively working all day he'll be OK with that too.

He occupies his own mind and does not await my actions or reactions to determine how he should spend his day. I am not critical of his lifestyle choices--though I may remove the occasional sharp or putrid object from his jaws--and I do not resent him for wandering aimlessly around the house while I endeavor to build a stable career that will enable me always to bring home the kibble, maintain our health coverage, and connect us with interesting opportunities for lifelong learning and community socialization.

I'd like to think that I could again reach a point in my domestic life when our circle could be expanded to include another human--not because I have any desire to further populate my heart, my house, or the planet, but simply because I don't want to deny or reject the value of human intimacy. I no longer feel a void, but it is not because my dogs are filling one. Rather, the time I've spent alone with the dogs has helped me experience different kinds of wholeness. I'm whole as a solo human accompanied by dogs that are themselves whole. Together, in our house, we are surrounded by a crazy hodgepodge of human and animal life as well as the residential and psychic debris of those who inhabited this place before us. With and without all that, we are whole and we are home.

So maybe Kerouac really was more of a cat person . . .

2006-11-21T20:16:00.000-08:00

A few of his haiku:

Holding up my purring
cat to the moon,
I sighed

Staring at each other,
Squirrel in the branch,
Cat in the grass

Kneedeep in the
blizzard, the ancient
Misery of the cat

Trying to study sutras,
the kitten on my page
Demanding affection

The barking dog--
Kill him
With a bicycle wheel

Ho Ho Hanoi

2006-11-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Travisa and to the compulsively globetrotting Poli Sci colleague who recommended it, my trip to Vietnam appears to be moving forward. I was worried that the Vietnam embassy's economic summit restrictions might keep me from getting my visa in time (and, for that matter, my passport returned in time) for my next teaching trek to Singapore.

So what's good is that I decided to go ahead and finally visit my friend in Hanoi for a few days over Christmas.

What sucks is being away from my dogs for three weeks. Hate that.

Honestly, nowhere is as joyful or as fascinating as my domestic dogdom. But the fact that I believe that so deeply is part of why I'm going. I realize I've been coccooning overmuch. And that I need to spend time with dear friends--even those who can't come to my house and hang out with my dogs. She's been inviting me to visit for, like, 10 years. Last time I saw her she was living in St Thomas, shortly after a hurricane nabbed her houseboat.

And she's a writer so I'm hoping she'll get my desire to just sit and write a bit while I'm there--mostly I just want quiet chats over tea and wine and good food and some wandering around. But I guess I'll just go with the flow no matter what.

Two dogz by the fire

2006-11-18T17:28:00.000-08:00

It doesn't get much better than this.

It started at 2 a.m. when a transformer blew and I lost all my heat and electricity. I rolled our layers of bedcovers and pillows into a bundle and schlepped it upstairs to the somewhat warmer guest room, carefully unrolling then tucking the dogz and me inside without disturbing the nicely made bed underneath (awaiting my mother's arrival later this morning--God forbid I would have to re-make the bed).

At 4 a.m. a city electric technician knocked on my door--dogz went berzerk--asking me to grant access to the easement in my backyard and replace the transformer. I did; he did; a dead raccoon plummetted into the hedge.

I looked up at the night sky--so much clearer from the blackout--admired the bright eyes of P and B (now flinging themselves at the windows) then gazed farther to Sirius and Canis Major. Felt glad I was up to enjoy it.

Around 8 a.m. P-dog barked me awake. I shuffled out back to retrieve the dead raccoon before the dogz could encounter it. Once I got over the cold and grogginess I began to enjoy hacking my way through the overgrown holly, productively pruning til I found the poor creature who actually looked alot like my favorite childhood cat. I shoveled him into a bag and let the dogs out. (Interesting how many dead things I've handled since P-dog entered my life.)

Spent the morning frantically cleaning house, vacuuming B-dog's blown coat, and berating myself for accepting my mother's invitation to "help out around the house" for a week before Thanksgiving.

Spent the afternoon immobilized by a technician's 5-hour window (from noon to 5; he arrived at 4:55 saying he might not be able to do my installation because all he had was a used part instead of the new one I needed).

Mom came, bought lots of groceries (including the stuff for my favorite comfort food casserole--hooray--and stuff I never bring into the house, like Cool Whip, hydrogenated chips, and fully leaded hamburger meat and a bargain packaged turkey (nothing hormone-free, organic, open range or vegan-fed around here this week, unless I sneak a Shelton's into the oven on Thursday).

After the technician left and the dogz stopped barking and I finished half my glass of Bordeaux and my third helping of Chinese noodle casserole I decided Mom should stay forever--OK, through Thanksgiving.

The dogz are ecstatic because they now get four plates of casserole residue instead of their usual lone dish of peanut butter toastcrumbs. My mother and her partner have gone to bed (it's 7:44 p.m.), and I'm here by the fire with my blogz and my dogz and the heater working and I'm the only one who likes the Bordeaux.

Nighty night.

A Little Less Red in the Bible Belt

2006-11-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

I'm so proud of my state for doing the right thing.

I sat up last night listening to the election returns, living as I do squarely in a neighborhood so Red that 2 years ago I worried that placing a Democrat candidate's sign in my yard might get me egged. Not all my candidates made it, but enough did that I feel downright relieved that perhaps this isn't the land of the pod people, that these nice folk really are paying attention--perhaps not to all the issues I care about but at least to debacles like prescription drug "choice" and the national debt and Iraq (at least some aspects of Iraq, such as the young people dying there).

So there it is. And now I'll log off and light a candle for Virginia.

Culture Shock

2006-10-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

So here I am in southeast Asia, teaching for a couple of weeks, and today a student tells me that dogs are unclean in Muslim culture.

How is it that I hadn't heard this before?

And what does it mean for my pedagogy, given that I came here with my Zen dog project as a fun in-class model for the research projects we're doing? (Have I begun to inadvertently alienate some of my students?)

And what do I do with this information?

I'm just deeply processing all this--my intercultural ignorance, my sadness that a community (or a portion of a community?) cannot experience a dimension of animal interaction that I've come to treasure above just about everything, my need to regroup in the classroom and pay closer attention to how I discuss my dogs.

The best thing to come of this, so far, is that it's truly an opportunity to learn from my students. But I'm still sad.

Some grateful bitches

2006-09-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

The other day one of my most favorite bloggers (bitch phd) included a "Grateful Journal" post--the Oprah thing where you record five things you're grateful for each day. She posted a friend's posting--not her own exactly. But since Ginger's blog also did it not too long ago I guess I'll join in--especially since it's the end of a very long day when I probably ought to be reminding myself about the abundance of the universe and all that.

5 Things I'm Grateful For Today

(1) B-dog, who is snoring on my comfy chair across the room, who gives me his presence as often as I'll let him and has become my whole heart.

(2) My soul-bitch, P-dog, for demanding my attention outside my own head, where I so often get stuck.

(3) For strong and true female friends who don't need me to be anything but myself and who give me courage to face a different sort of future than I'd planned.

(4) Aura Cacia organic geranium essential oil.

(5) A job I love with students I truly enjoy even on days when everything else is just too much.

Eating lamb spleens

2006-09-21T19:41:00.000-07:00

How can this be good for my dogs?

I look at the list of ingredients on the fancy all-natural foods I give my dogs--both made from lamb because the fancy dog food literature talked me out of any product made from "chicken meal" or "chicken parts" which mean beaks and feathers and rejected flesh and bones and such and then there's the whole mad cow thing. But when I read ". . . lamb hearts, lamb lungs, lamb spleens . . ." on my dog food I have to pause. I mean it's bad enough that I'm supporting an industry that treats one cute, furry, domesticated species as agriculture to feed a more favored distant cousin. Somehow when I visualized the dogs eating sirloin steaks and lamb chops it didn't seem so bad.

But spleens?

Blaaaaaaaaa

Yet another reason dogs should be invited into the garden . . .

2006-09-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

As you might expect, I'm a practitioner of dog-friendly gardening.

I have two gardens: the "bird garden" to attract wildbirds (initially created to entertain P-dog while I'm away at work), and the "dog garden" that serves as basically a wildflower jungle for the canines and doubles as a cutting garden for me.

About two months ago yet another "volunteer" plant appeared in the bird garden.

The foliage was pretty and the stalk was strong and it came up right where the volunteer sunflower had been so I decided to just watch and see. A few white and pink flowers appeared--unusual flowers with a jagged edge--then a second plant just like it appeared a few feet away. I figured it was another robust sort of weed but since the heat fried my strawberries and veronica I figured I should be grateful for anything that could make a go of it. So even though the things became rather shrub-like and weren't at all in keeping with my blue, silver, and purple "moon garden" theme I resisted the urge to pull them out.

A dozen times I figured I'd maybe take a stalk to the nursery to find out what they are because, I mean, get real: what are the odds that I'd just recognize a specimen while flipping through my Gardeners Encyclopedia? The only flowers I know for sure are the ones I planted this spring.

Heh heh heh. I guess there's one more specimen I know by sight after all.

As I sat in the mulch tonight B-dog zoomed by with a white fluffy thing affixed to his collar. He'd been bounding through the semi-dog-proof gardens all evening. I removed the white thing. Cotton! How cool is that?

What's especially neat is that I'd already marked the page in my encyclopedia because I wanted to try growing it next year in the dog garden. I was wondering if I'd be able to get it to grow. (Of course if the rule of Gardening Irony prevails I'll have no luck growing it on purpose!)

I found all this so exciting that I sent this story and a photo to my family. (Yes, such is life.)

Tomorrow I'm bringing it to school to show my students where t-shirts come from.

Bitching

2006-09-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

. . . about the gendered dynamic of home repairs.

I feel violated--by the men who talk too much and show up late and know it all and never leave, by the ones who try to sell me $9.99-per-month "VIP Service" plans (it is NOT A COINCIDENCE that they make this sales pitch late in the consultation when you are tired of listening to your "options" and about how much pride they take in their work and are trapped in an enclosed location within your own house with the serviceman smiling between you and the nearest exit) and by the ones who stand too close and by the ones who ask probing personal questions ("No way! I thought college teachers were all old men with beards. You can't be that old!" and "You're a smartie, eh? Is your husband a smartie too? What does he do?") And I hate HAVING SO MANY THINGS THAT NEED TO BE FIXED BY MEN in my life. My car is now making clickety sounds like an old Model T, and the side mirror is dangling like a cheap earring and I know when I go it'll be several hundred dollars and men men men telling me what I need and what it'll cost.

I hate it that I'm totally at their mercy--they could say something will cost $10 or $100 or $1000 and I have no idea what they're doing or what things should cost--unless I take more time out of my work day to do evermore research on home repairs and have other workmen come to give counter-estimates and whatnot, which is the LAST thing I feel like doing when I've already warped my day to accommodate their "2-hour window" and made the ultimate sacrifice of banishing my dogs to a kennel across town so strange men can climb all over my home and quote me prices for work I must trust them to do--and then of course having them do the work means they're going to spend MORE TIME HERE with me and that I'll have to spend more time schlepping dogs to the kennel when all I want to do is STAY HOME ALONE WITH NO MEN and be with my dogs.

I'm so sick of men. Pushy alpha males and relentless runts and silver-tongued scamps who are ever-so-worried that I'll panic without VIP-level service in the event of a woeful weather incident.

I feel like I need to do a New Agey smoke and sage cleansing ceremony to get them all out of my house.

Seriously.

Tomorrow I begin consulting lesbian friends about handypersons.

Seriously.

The American Response to Any Problem

2006-09-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

Shopping.

Yes, in addition to researching and writing an article on my newfangled Zen-dog rituals, I'm taking P-dog shopping tomorrow for her new Therapy Dog backpack. B-dog already has one (vivid red with a white cross on the side--think Swiss Army Dog).

I purchased the backpack for B-dog as a way to add weight-resistance to our walks, to give him more exercise on days when I can't walk a whole hour with him. I noticed his demeanor changed immediately after donning the backpack. He didn't seem uncomfortable, just more cautious and attentive to me. Like he knows it's a uniform that signals a different kind of activity. He walked more slowly, at my side, and paid more attention to me--all things I'm supposed to be reinforcing. So I'm going to get a pack for P-dog also, even though I know she'll hate it. (She doesn't like outfits--not even bandanas.) My plan is to have them wear the packs for our Zen outings. We'll do regular strolls without the packs. The packs will reinforce the message that we're doing something different.

The packs might also make us seem less weird when we go to the dog park to follow the trainer's instructions: strolling on the perimeter without interacting. We'll look more like we're in training. Truthfully, I still want to train P-dog and maybe B-dog as well for therapy work, and P-dog is eligible to test for Therapy Dog certification now. So if people ask what we're doing I'll say "We're training to be a Therapy Dog" and not "We just got rejected from Camp Bow-wow."

The Academic's Response to Any Problem

2006-09-02T08:19:00.000-07:00

I've decided to write an article about the "Gotta get Zen with your dogs" incident.

Seriously.

Perhaps not for College English, but I might try The Bark or some kindred publication.

The thing is: I realize the most important thing I can do to bring my dogs back into balance--to a place where they're "comfortable with themselves" as the trainer said--is to establish a more balanced routine at home and to project calm assertive leadership. I've read, literally, several dozen books on this subject but implemented very little of it. Evidently it's time. And I've found a way to make myself accountable for working on it:

The Academic's Second Solution: Attach it to a Class

In my grad-level tech writing class I'm doing a little creative-writing experimentation this semester. The majority of my students have expressed that they loathe writing and experience tremendous anxiety about it. (The class is a requirement for their curriculum in the B-school.) So I'm injecting some activities and assignments intended to help them alter their relationship with writing--find more enjoyment and comfort in the process of reading and writing and working with words. To model this I'm keeping a writing journal along with them and I'm encouraging those so-inclined to also maintain journals as a low-pressure place to experiment with poetry and other genres outside the conventional realm of business and technical writing.

I'm already using the journal to log my scholarly reading on a collaborative research project that I wanted to track. So I'm now devoting a section to writing about my Zen Dog Project--establishing a daily routine of work, play, and meditation as well as ongoing reading and writing (which I do anyway). Guess I'll have to get a creative commons license for this blog now :-D

"They're Not Comfortable with Themselves"

2006-08-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

This is what the dog camp supervisor (a dog trainer for 38 years who studied under some guy from Animal Planet) said about my heart and soul.

"They're good people dogs, but they're not good dog dogs."

Then she explained something I still don't entirely understand about how they're well behaved when I'm around because they know how to behave when I'm there--which is to take care of me--but when they're alone with dogs they don't know how to Be because somehow they're still trying to protect me. (I think I get it up to the point where they're trying to protect me when I'm not there.)

So I begged for advice and the trainer said I should take them to the dog park on-lead and walk the perimeter while giving them treats and not pausing to interact with the other dogs because I need to teach them that the dog park is a good place. (I thought they already liked it there but just got into occasional scuffles there.) When I said I'd read that you shouldn't use a lead at the dog park because it makes your dog want to protect you the trainer said that's only the case when you stop to interact with other dogs. She said I'm supposed to begin by walking the perimeter outside the fence, then a few weeks later go inside along the perimeter and then later let each dog off-lead but only during a time (like 6 a.m.) when only one dog is around. (Of course I worry that the only human who'd bring a dog to the dp at 6 a.m. would be another mental case with an imbalanced dog.)

They said I could bring both dogs back for a re-interview in 3 months.

When I asked for more specific advice and shared more details about our daily routine and domestic situation the trainer said something very close to, "Honestly, honey, what you need to do is get Zen with these dogs. You have to devote peaceful time alone with them every day, in a set routine, to get all of you in balance."

Ouch. Did she ever get my situation.

During my 80/20 post a few weeks ago I vowed something like this. Now it's become a therapy prescription for me and for the dogs.

If only it were the beginning of summer (and not the beginning of the most overloaded teaching and travel semester of my entire career when I'm also standing for tenure and contending with a heart-rending family reconfiguration) this might all seem manageable. Part of me is excited and enthusiastic in the way I get when facing a real challenge or a new chapter in my life. Part of me is hanging on by the toenails.

It's 9 a.m., and I just got the dreaded phone call

2006-08-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a Panera with a large mug of chai latte and a medium mug of coffee and a half-eaten spinach-artichoke souffle, ready to spend a few hours working while my dogs "interview" at camp.

I dropped them off at 8, hovered in the lobby watching their progress on web cams, then headed down the road to wait and hope.

I didn't really expect the phone to ring.

Evidently, B-dog (the gentle, playful fellow I wasn't worried about) attacked one of the "campers"--twice. Damn camper. Aaargh. So B-dog is out.

The report on P-dog is that she "wasn't thrilled but at least didn't go after anyone."

So I have to pick them up.

So much for my dream of "purchasing" improved socialization.

I'm only 5 minutes away from the place, so I'm going to sit here and at least finish my chai while I process this awful news.

What this means is that socialization is again squarely (and entirely) on my shoulders: back to carefully crafted play dates with precisely timed naps and interventions, back to highly structured training schedules and stickers on the fridge to keep track of the dogs' interactions with other dogs. And, so frustrating, it means I'll have to kennel the dogs while all the workmen are at the house. Days and days of kennelling instead of days and days of socialization.

It's not the end of the world. And it's nice to think (I'm just guessing here) that I can "test" our progress by requesting a re-interview in 6 months or so. I'll ask them about that. If the dogs can't behave in this facility I wouldn't feel comfortable placing them in a less vigilent one.

What makes me want to cry is that I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm in the middle of a divorce and facing the need to coordinate things that would be much more manageable with a second human. Sadly, before I evicted the second human I still felt overwhelmed and under-assisted. But at least he was a wonderful doggy dad who would have been some help with this socialization mission, even though he would not have made a mission of it, which I think at this point is necessary. But at least we could have walked the dogs at the same time.

Basically, I've got two dogs that very rarely interact with other dogs and have become over-protective of me. I can either live with that or work very hard to fix it. When I adopted each dog I committed to making the best possible life for him/her. To follow through with that I've got to bring them into balance. And I can't help but believe that their imbalances are directly related to mine. I'm so sad. And so, so sorry.