Making the decision for the first time to get a dog was like a right of passage for me. I had recently gone through a divorce, and rather than support my decision to move into another direction, my parents had turned their backs on me, only to provide loving support to my ex. I was feeling completely cut off from everyone. All of my friends from the "happily married days" didn't seem to know how to treat me or what to say, and little by little they just kind of dropped out of the radar screen. All I knew back then was I needed a job, and I needed a loyal companion. I tried dating at first, but that didn't pan out very well.
I was extremely lonely and an emotional wreck back then. My divorce wasn't even final when I found myself involved with a talented guitarist in a country band, who was about eight years younger than myself. I think I might have known at the time that it would never work, but he was there for me in a way that my ex never was. He listened to what I said. He didn't expect things from me. Somehow he made me feel respected, and cherished, and intelligent when I was around him. In many ways, I think of this man as my first love, not because I hadn't been around the block, but because I was still so naive back then. I wasn't raised to grow up and have a career. I was raised to find a man, get married, and be a stay-at-home mom. And I did just that.
Both of my children were young and still in elementary school. My daughter was in the fifth grade, and my son was in third. I thought they were at the perfect age to love and care for a dog. I knew I was on the right track when my son came home one day after reading the book, Shiloh, announcing that he wanted a beagle. So off I went to find us a dog.
I had driven over an hour to a small town breeder to obtain the puppy I was bringing home to meet my family. I could not get that puppy to stop howling from inside the dog crate, but that howl sounded super cute to me that day. It reminded me of a little puppy howl I had heard in a Disney movie, arroo, roo, roo. When I finally arrived home, I went straight to the backyard and let her run around so she could sniff around and become accustomed to her new home. She finally stopped crying.
I could not wait until the kids got out of school to meet the newest member of our family. I passed the time waiting outside, alternating tending my garden and providing tasty treats whenever I got her to sit, which wasn't very often. I thought that was unfortunate. Everyone said I was a natural when it came to training dogs. I remembered having the magic touch with both of the dogs from my childhood, and now I was utilizing the behaviorist techniques I had learned from my undergraduate psychology classes. In these first hours, I was noticing something a little off about her. It seemed like she was panicking in this new home. I was having trouble getting her to calm down. Not wanting to overwhelm her, I chalked it up to the new environment and left it at that.
By the time the kids arrived home from school, I had decided to name her Trixie - because we were going to teach her lots of tricks. I reminded them that our foremost task was to work towards getting Trixie potty trained, and I proceeded to teach both daughter and son the procedure for doing this. I explained that we would use the crate as a type of bedroom for her, and that unless we wanted to play with her outside in the backyard, we would have to keep her in her crate. If she was in the house, we had to keep her in our sights at all times and pick her up if she started to "go."
After a couple of hours, I realized that the children were not observant enough to keep watch over Trixie without me there to supervise. Trixie didn't seem to have any sort of regularity. After months of trying, the kids had pretty much lost hope of ever catching her do the dirty deed. As soon as they turned their heads, she would get busy. They had even come up with a game they called, "Trap the Specimen." It was a game a little bit like, "London Bridge," except that they wouldn't sing a song. Instead they would get a snack or eat some type of food at the table, and they would trap the dog with their little legs. Then they could pick her up and take her outside.
As the days went by, and the kids came and went to visit their dad, who by then had a steady girlfriend he was practically living with, Trixie didn't seem to learn much of anything. Let alone go potty outside. She HATED her crate, as nice as we tried to make it for her, she would howl, and howl, and howl. Especially when the kids weren't home. It was awful, and I couldn't get anything done without Trixie crying until they came back. If they weren't in the mood to play with her, I was sunk. I was going to have to do something. The winter months were upon us, and the foul weather was making things difficult.
In my frustration, I took Trixie to a dog behaviorist, who declared that she had separation anxiety. It took me about six more months after that before I realized I was going to go crazy if I didn't find her a new home. Trixie was miserable. It seemed like she never wagged her tail. What she needed was a home with at least one more dog, or kids that were home all the time. Since I didn't want to risk getting another dog, the kids and I decided together that it would be better for all of us if we found her a different home. It wasn't painless, but it was easy.
With the permission of my children, I had the courage to do the job right. I got on my computer and located an online beagle rescue site. There was a huge database where I posted a photo of Trixie, and I explained in my little blurb about her that I thought she needed to be in a larger "pack." It didn't take but a few days to find a family that had two dogs and lived near a dog park. I had found her a better place to live. When they loaded Trixie into the car with their two other dogs, she looked jubilant. It was bittersweet. It was heartwarming to see her that way, but I still didn't have my cool dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment