the dog that saved my life
Some years ago I
promised my dog, name of Crom and much less small than he used to be, that I
would stay alive for him. The thinking behind the promise being that he would
like for me to stay alive because he is fond of me, his human mother and the
person who purchases his snacks.
Some of the time (when
he wags his whole body because he’s so glad to see me when he puts his head on
my shoulder and sighs real deep, when he insists that he can’t sleep unless I
let him under the covers so he can press his fart butt against my much less
fartier butt) it is easy to believe.
Most of the time
(when he sulks at me, when he whines at me, when he cries at me, when he throws
a temper tantrum at me, when he refuses to look at me because I haven’t given
him a snack, no the right snack, no that’s not the right snack, when he turns
into a full sack of flour in a fur suit instead of cooperating with me to put
on his coat, when he freaks all the way out because I’m paying more attention
to my wife or our other dog or a cat or trying to read than to his needs –) it
is easier to believe that I could pilot my weeping ass into the sea and sink beneath
the wine-dark waves and he would not look up from gnawing on his cow knee bone.
We buy this
creature cow knee bones! And once I called up my then-girlfriend to weep about all
the evil in the world and how I couldn’t take it and I couldn’t be part of it
any more and then we were vegan for two or eleven years!
For this creature I
have discovered in full technicolor what a cow knee bone looks like even though
I still regularly weep at all the evil in the world (I am delicately-feeled and
also deep in the throes of pre-menopause) and despite that, despite the
tantrums, despite the fact that he’s never sent me a thank you card, I’ve still
handed it over to him with a smile on my face because I love him and I’m
staying alive for him, and if you smile you can pretend that doesn’t suck
sometimes.
This creature gets
knee bones and still throws tantrums because he gets bored. He can’t read, he
doesn’t like television very much, and he does not have opposable thumbs but
he’s requested them for Christmas. He wants to run and run after his ball, is
what he wants to do at all times.
This is something he
hasn’t been able to do since the summer, because he’s been recovering from a
broken leg, and his boredom has reached Geneva convention levels of find-him-a-new-mother.
And yet, even when he was able to run, even when we took him to run every day,
even when he ran all morning and gnawed a knee bone all afternoon, he was still
a sad dog, sad all the time, always, because we were always making him sad
because we want him to be bored and sad.
Which is to say we
should have thought of Montessori doggie day care way sooner. We tried regular
day care, but he came home and sulked. We tried hiring people to give him mountain
hikes and beach runs and daily walks at a pace that wasn’t sustainable for two sedentary
women who hate the out of doors and fun first, but he came home and sulked. We
tried letting him sulk, but that wasn’t fun for anyone.
So now we have an
intake appointment for him now to go to a place where he gets supervised play
time with his peers, and then one-on-one time with a tutor who will teach him
interesting things, and group exercise times because a healthy body means a
healthy mind and I am glad I have given up drinking because that’s the only way
we’re going to pay for this place once a week, plus his aquatherapy for his leg
and also arthritis, which is starting to really hurt him. Also there’s a dog
swimming pool now opening right across the way, so. Feeling lucky that I’ll
live just long enough to see our retirement accounts drained.
