2002-10-14 - 11:28 p.m.
Without invitation the dog hops into my lap and makes himself at home, curling into a neat little ball and getting that sleepy-eyed look, not unlike a cat. Regardless of the fact that he's been a pain in the butt all day, I have to admit he looks kind of sweet and cuddly when he does that. These are the moments I think our life together is working out or will work out.
The Pipsqueek is a two-and-a-half-year-old Maltese that we brought home from the pet store when he was twelve weeks old and weighed three pounds. We had casually talked about getting a pet off and on for years, but when we suddenly just decided to look around for a small dog, we brought him home the same day. When the pet store people got the little fluff ball out for us to handle, we sat down on the floor and the little guy grabbed my purse by the strap and started toward the cash register with it.
"Look! He's trying to tell you something!"
When we left that purse was $600 lighter, and we had a tiny white creature with two shiny black eyes and a collection of accessory items. The first words out of my mouth when we walked out were: What have we done? I had a premonition that this little being was going to change our lives.
From the beginning he was difficult to train, and seemed to defy all the conclusions to which I had come on the basis of my prior experience with dogs. We checked out a stack of books on dog care, dog training and dog psychology from the library and read all the conflicting advice. Most books and trainers are only interested in big dogs, and the issues we faced, other than house training, were very different.
We theorized that he must have been weaned too early or maybe spent too much time in the pet store because he seems to have a neurotic need to lick and suck on things, preferably people. Most dogs will give you a lick or two, but he is desperate to lick, and will lick at you continuously if he is allowed.
We barely slept for the first two weeks, as the puppy yapped and whined all night. Finally we found a device called a "barker breaker" that emits a high-pitched noise in response to barking and that put a stop to it. But the house breaking seemed to take forever. He was two years old the last time he made a deposit on the rug, and for all those months even though he knew better he couldn't seem to resist making a biological statement when we made him mad.
One of the main reasons we got a dog in the first place was that Skootie was working at home and she was kind of lonely all by herself in the house all day. So she was his primary caretaker and they bonded right away. Never having had a dog, she had no preconcieved notions about how it would behave, and was content for him to just exist and occasionally allow himself to be petted.
Not so for me. I had a whole set of ideas about what I wanted, and I soon realized this dog wasn't living up to his end of the bargain. The problem was that I had already had my favorite dogs in the world: Shelties. They were beautiful and intelligent and eager to please. I had taken them through obedience and agility training and they could learn anything I wanted to teach them. They sat by the door when they wanted to go out. They didn't bark. They were shy around strangers.
I thought I knew a lot about dogs. But I just knew about Shelties, and none of my previous experience applied. This stubborn little fellow just didn't seem to have any desire to please, and praise didn't have any effect. The only thing that would faze him was food treats, and when faced with an opportunity to get a treat, he just went crazy. Mostly he just seemed like a wind-up toy, skittering frantically around the house. And when we went for a walk, it was like having a squirrel on a leash.
It is embarrassing when we have visitors and he becomes Bezerk Dog, lunging manically at their faces, desperate to lick their mouths..... running in circles.... trying to hump their legs. Yapping insanely at every tiny sound.
I have always believed that every relationship, even one with a pet, is essentially a social contract. Both parties have to gain something for the contract to work. The kinds of things people want are so different. I think that for many people, just having something to feed and fuss over is all they expect of a pet. I had to ask myself why I expected so much more. Why I wanted the animal to be well-behaved, and reserved, to be a "credit" to me. And since I can't have that, can I just learn to accept having an animal in my house that wouldn't abide by my rules? Well, I just had to.
It has been a hard won compromise. Usually now when I look at him I just think he is cute, instead of: what does he want now. He has turned out to be a pretty good little walking companion, and is quite a trooper on the long walks I like to take. And then he has his moments of sweetness, like when I am stretched out on the couch and he curls up beside me. As he has matured, his attention span and attachment have increased and he understands a few words. He knows Good Boy and Bad Boy and seems to try most of the time to earn the former.
You can't change a dog into the kind of pet you wanted. So you have to become the kind of person who can handle having the kind of pet you have. Skootie tells me that she just doesn't apply any judgement to the dog. It just is. So I am trying to follow her lead. He's not a great dog, but he's an okay, a good (enough) dog. And some things in life are like that: you get what comes your way, not what you thought you wanted.
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