The Third Rail of the Brigham-Allen Relationship

Maybe therapy is the only answer. But I can't see spending big bucks on a therapist for me during today's economy and while we still don't have a college fund for either of the girls. Yes, the emotional third rail of our marriage has once again reared its ugly head and it is (drum roll please)... not money (we're both saver - types), not nookie, but yes, dogs. Yes, the "I want a dog" bug is back. Perhaps some of you may recall the 8000 annoying, tedious posts that I wrote about six months ago going on and on about dogs.

I must say that dog ownership has never been a big togetherness point for Mitch and I. Yes, he was a big supporter of my dog miya who I had when we met. And yes he was a great dad to Cleo and took excellent care of her and pretty much managed her cancer treatment single-handedly. But my obsession with dogs and somewhat neurotic need to always have a pet dog has thrown a monkey wrench into our relationship more than once.

There was the limping pound dog incident of 1998 (summary - two weeks sleeping on the couch because of dog fights - eventual re-homing) and now, most recently, the jeb foster dog debacle. The stress of the jeb situation and the tension/fights that inspired were enough to put me off dogs for a while. I was hoping that "not now" feeling about dog ownership would last a good long time.

But now it is back. The "where is my furry friend" feeling. Cats just don't cut it. I think I'm probably lacking some key human relationship gene/behavior/coping strategy and instead channel that energy into dogs.

Anyway Mitch is still strongly in the "are you insane? our kids are very little. we already don't sleep through the night. we already have piles of clean and dirty laundry in our living room. what about this situation says "let's introduce a needy, shedding, potentially biting NEW organism into this mix," camp. Yes, I can see how his viewpoint may be the one derived from the rational realm. But what can I say, that still doesn't erase the "my dog wherefore art thou" feeling...

Some Problems Cannot Be My Problem

No permanent dog for us these days. We've decided not to keep Jeb the foster dog. He is a great dog and is, in fact, the most well behaved dog that I have ever had. He doesn't run wild when off leash. He doesn't pull on the leash. He is super mellow around the house and like to just lay around. He lays in the shade at the park and doesn't run away even when other dogs go by. He completely ignores the cats. He is an almost perfect dog. He is a bit doggy-smelling, has fleas, and there is the whole separation anxiety thing (which makes one feel like they have a 50 pound furry ball and chain attached to them on a regular basis).

But here is the unanticipated context. I have a baby who still regularly keeps me awake for 1.5 to 2 hours in the middle of the night. I have a baby who likes to crawl up to the dog, grab his fur, and poke him in the eyes. I have a three year old who is extremely demanding and wants a lot of attention. These are my challenges, problems, realities, what-have-you. These are some of the elements of my daily existence. It turns out that within that context, adding a lot of scratching, licking, rattling around, separation anxiety, and other day to day needs of another living being isn't really working out for us at the moment. I do love the dogs, but all dogs come with their quirks and issues. Now is not the time in my life for extra quirks and issues. I've got a bunch of unavoidable, these are mine, can't give them away, type of quirks and issues already. So for now, as bad as I feel about it, I'm going to have to pass on the elective quirkiness and neediness. Maybe in another year or two.

Jebediah Ventura, Foster Dog

So I've been hard at work on the dog adoption front. I tried to adopt a sheltie-mix named Xena from a local dog rescue group. It turned out that they wouldn't let us adopt Xena because they thought we weren't active enough (???). The dog was in a foster home with some guy who takes her to the beach ten times a day so they have turned down adoption applications from about 4 different families. Anyway, I was getting pretty bummed out about the whole dog adoption thing. I had made one too many visits to our local dog pound which is full of pitbulls and chihuahuas. Then last weekend, the same dog rescue group that rejected us as a family for Xena called and asked whether we would want to be foster parents for a dog that was turned in the previous Sunday, a Aussie shepherd mix named Jeb.

So we all went to meet Jeb and Lucy liked him and he seemed to like Lucy. Mitch continued to be not thrilled about the whole idea but gave his reluctant blessing. So last Sunday I brought Jeb home for a visit. The deal with fostering is that Jeb stays at our house and we get to take him for a test run so to speak. If we decide not to adopt him, we can start taking him to the dog rescue group's facility in town to be viewed for adoption on Sundays. If we decide to adopt him we go in and fill out some paperwork and pay a fee.

So far it is a mixed bag. Jeb is a great dog. If we decide not to adopt him, I think I will be leaving the dog adoption quest on the shelf for a while (another year?). He is great with the cats (completely ignores them and now they are both pretty much over it, although Kathmandu still slinks around quite a bit). He is essentially a very lazy dog. He pretty much just lays around the house and watches the world go by. He is great with Lucy (we like to play find Lucy at the park where Lucy hides and then Jeb finds her and she gives him a treat). He doesn't bark much at all although he has started to bark now when someone tries to come in the house.

There are two main issues. One is...he is a dog. Maybe having a dog when you already have two small kids is not the best idea. Mitch phrases it this way, "Do I come into your office and add things that make your job harder??" On the one hand, having Jeb around for Lucy is very entertaining. On the other hand, he is one more living, breathing, animal who has needs in an already full household. So now that we have a dog, both Mitch and I are seriously considering whether having a dog is a good idea.

The second big issue is three personality quirks that the dog trainer is coming tomorrow to discuss. First, he has major separation anxiety and barks continuously any time we leave him home alone. This isn't o.k. when you live in a high density neighborhood like we do and when your duplex mate works at home for a living. In addition, he now also claws at the door when we leave him home alone. So we've got to resolve that if we want to keep him. His two other problem areas are that he snapped at Josie once when she was yarding on his fur. He's got to leave or ignore her when she bothers him. He's doing better with this and I've let her bug him quite a bit without any shows of aggression. And finally, he doesn't show any food aggression but I can't get him to give up a rawhide chew once I give it to him. I want to be sure that he knows that we are in charge and that involves giving up things he wants if I ask him to.

On Jeb's plus side: he has a wonderful fat tail, he is lazy and happy go lucky, he doesn't bother the cats, he walks well on the leash, and he "finds" Lucy.

So Jeb is just visiting for now. We will wait to see what the dog trainer says tomorrow and try to decide his permanent fate by next Sunday so that we can start taking him to adoption days, or not.

Dog Search Update

We miss our perfect family dog, Cleo, who died one year ago.
It turns out that Lucy hasn't missed much that's going on on the dog front.



A couple of things this week on the dog front. Yesterday morning Lucy, Josie, and I went to Lowes to buy some plants and rocks to convert the area next to our front door from a giant litter box to an attractive planting. While we were there, Lucy got into a conversation with the checker about her new pet dog - a lovely pink thing with giant eyes that sleeps, eats, and whimpers. The checker asked Lucy if that was her dog and Lucy said, "Our dog died." And then she goes, "But we're thinking about getting another one." Whoa - we haven't talked about Cleo's dying in several weeks if not months. And I thought Lucy hadn't even picked up on the fact that I was looking for another dog despite our two visits to the Humane Society a couple of weeks ago. Apparently she is fully aware of everything that goes on!

Anyway, since our retraction of our Briggs adoption application I went online and put in an application to a local lab rescue group, looking for a family dog that would be good with little kids and cats. Meanwhile I also went to the local Animal Regulation shelter and found what could be a good dog for us, a female lab mix. She seems like a good dog - submissive but not too scared, people oriented, and not too big. But I couldn't take her out to walk her around and check her out until two weeks go by. So on June 17th I'll go check her out with Lucy and if she does well, then we'll try going back to adopt her on the 23rd when I get back from visiting my dad. If someone else adopts her in the meantime then we'll have to find another dog.

The quest continues.

More About Dogs - Seeking the Perfect Family Dog

I am all about shelter dogs. I like adult dogs whose quirks are all out on the table. I lived with an adolescent dog once and it sucked. Puppies are cute but they have too much energy, too sharp of teeth, and any problems they develop are all your fault. I like to have the scape goat of the previous owner to blame all of my dog's faults on. I also tend to have quirky dogs and I am more of the work around kind of owner than the impose my discipline type of owner. That said, I also take all of my dogs to dog obedience and get at least a few of the details ironed out (sit, down, off, momentary stays, etc.). I also know myself and take care to pick dogs who are not out to dominate people from the get-go.

So when I started obsessing about getting another dog about six months ago, I started looking at shelter dogs on line. But now that I have two kids, I am looking for a very particular kind of dog. I am looking for a dog like the one I had growing up, tolerant, not disturbed by lots of noise and chaos, tolerant of molesting by small children, and generally happy go lucky. Because I feel like I need to be more conservative in our new dog's character, I think I will adopt our next dog from a rescue organization who has dogs in foster homes. This way they know more about the dog and can more carefully evaluate whether the dog will be good with kids. I spend a lot of time looking at lab mixes on petfinder.com.

I don't know when we will get another dog. Mitch and I are currently in negotiations. But when we do, I want to do everything I can to make sure that we have a dog that we will be happy with and that will be happy with us.

By the way, if you want to see some amazing photos and stories of a domesticated non-domestic dog (one that I will NOT be getting as a family dog), check out this cool blog that my friend Tiffany told me about www.dailycoyote.blogspot.com

A Short History of My Dogs

I am a dog person. I live with two cats and I was the driving force behind getting them as pets ten years ago. And don't get me wrong, they can be very entertaining, and even slightly comforting at times. But for genuine happy to see you, let's go out and smell the flowers, let's romp and enjoy the world, your pain is my pain, mutual admiration society, nothing beats a dog.

I have been trying to think objectively recently about why I want another dog. Actually saying that I want another dog is an understatement of cosmic proportions. I spend at least an hour per week looking at dogs on petfinder.com. I think about dogs a lot. When I have a few spare minutes at home, I am more likely to look at petfinder.com or read excerpts from How to Adopt the Perfect Dog than pretty much any other activity. If I wasn't married to someone who is not super excited to have another needy being in our lives, I would already have a dog, right here on the couch next to me.

The part about having a husband who isn't too keen on getting another dog right now is the part that is driving me to think seriously about why I want another dog. That and the fact that I have two small children and I know several small children who have been bitten by dogs. I haven't come up with any answers about why I want another dog but I thought I would write a little bit about dogs here since they are so much on my mind recently.

Somehow, for me, family just doesn't feel complete without a dog. I grew up with an awesome black lab named Suey (we got her as a two year old named Sue which we changed to Suey like chop suey). She was the most tolerant dog ever. I used to lay with my head on her stomach for hours. She often slept on my bed, along with our three cats. She liked to lay in our front yard and watch the day go by. She was also a great swimmer and once jumped off the end of the dock and swam out to our sailboat so that she wouldn't get left behind. She was such a mellow, calm, loving presence in the Brigham house. My brother and I used to try to see which of us she loved best by putting her between us and then calling her desperately with treats. She used to just lay there and look at us like we were crazy. Suey was my big black rock of unconditional love as a kid.

Suey died of cancer when I was eleven. We went abroad when I was twelve and it took me a year after we got back to convince my mom to let us get another dog. We adopted Miya, a one year old sheltie border collie cross from the local animal shelter. She was a bundle of energy. We used to go jogging together, hike along the railroad tracks, and having chewing sessions together (Miya would eat rawhide and I would eat jawbreakers). She had this wonderful curly tail and upright ears, soft fur, and she was super smart. She liked to herd people and had a lot of personal dignity. People who aren't dog people will think I am insane for describing her that way but dog people know what I am talking about. I wrote poems about her, did my dissertation field work with her, and converted a lot of non-dog people to dog people by having them hang out with her. She died of old age at 16.

I made it about 6 months after Miya died before I couldn't stand it any longer and went to the animal shelter and adopted Cleo, our crazy Egyptian Pharoah Hound-German Shepard Mix. Cleo was the best and deserves an entire essay to herself. She was quirky, soulful, loved me the best, and could run faster than a speeding train. She got mast cell cancer and despite chemo and surgery, died at the very young age of nine. I miss her still. She did several interviews for my print version of Boomvang. I will dig them up soon and post them here so you can read them. She was a great family dog and was one of Lucy's favorite beings, ever.

All this to say, that despite a house full of chaos, two small kids, two cats, mess, mess, and more mess, my life just doesn't feel right without a dog. I miss the tail wagging, the crazy enthusiasms, the particularly dog-centric chaos. I miss the good dog therapy petting, the forced dog walking, the tail thumping. I know getting a dog will make life harder in many ways. Who needs one more needy animal in a house full of needy animals? I don't know why, but the answer is me.