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I have said it before and I will say it again; anxiety transmits and amplifies down the length of a leash…even if your beast is not exactly the sensitive type.
I know it. I have seen it. Even with Miss Happy Go Wiggly.
If your dog is the sensitive type then the issue is even worse. It can add to the difficulty of getting through a simple walk in the park. It certainly adds to the difficulty of getting through the tests for both Canine Good Citizen and Therapy Dog International.
Test-day handlers are frequently nervous. And the dogs sense that. Even a confident dog becomes uncertain. A less confident dog can become a real handful. When ” SIT” starts to come out “Oh, please dear lord, let my dog SIT just this once”, then it is no longer a command. It is just the beginning of a long and, probably, very frustrating, negotiation.
I recognize those negotiations. I saw a few of them go down last Saturday; test day. I’ve lost many of those negotiations myself.
I lose fewer, now.
Now, I am more confident…or at least I am better able to fake it. It is a confidence game, a con, that I play with myself; not conning the beast, but conning myself out of my doubts.
My trip to Maine was wonderful. I love the scenery. The home where I stayed is really lovely, my friends are warm and welcoming and the beast was on her best behavior….mostly.
Still there are always small bumps in the road. My drive there was extended a bit by the Thruway closure caused by flooding. Frequent readers have probably heard me extol the virtues of being on the wrong road going the right direction on occasion. In the case of this road trip, though, I found myself driving 40 miles due south on the way from New York to Maine. It doesn’t take a geography major to figure out that due south is dead wrong. Still the weather was perfect, the roads were good and the scenery was beautiful.
I arrived in time to take over canine management from my host’s daughter, my hosts being away on business for a few days. How hard could it be, though? I have, after all, been working as an assistant to my wonderful dog trainer. I only had to feed and mind two dogs; my curious and energetic beast and my hosts’ oldest; well-trained, but occasionally stubborn. Piece of cake…or several dozen pieces of salmon jerky… in a pouch attached to my hip… all day long… just in case the beasts needed a reason to come when called.
At first things were fine. Then the workman arrived.
Wet paint throughout the living room? I took solace in the fact that my beast sheds considerably less than their beast. If there was gong to be hair in the walls I knew which dog I was going to lay that one in.
Paint on the dogs? Well, it was latex ; washable, in theory, and very nearly golden retriever colored.
At one point all four doors to the outside were propped wide open. One dog bolted for the lake; the other for the road. No problem. I had salmon jerky.
And then there was the day they painted the deck. The beasts and I went for a walk. A very long walk.
Through it all I was aware that my curious and energetic beast might wander off on me. I was more worried that she would have one of those “Schiffer moments” and take out the display cabinet of valuable and irreplaceable memorabilia or the ladder the painter was standing on. My biggest fear, though, was of losing the dog that wasn’t mine. In the end, it was the thing I didn’t anticipate that caused major heart trouble on my end.
The beast is a fabulous passenger. Not wanting to leave her alone in a strange home with another dog, when I left the house on errands the beast came with me. As I expected, she waited patiently while I did a little shopping. She did her business and happily hopped back in the car when asked.
She was perfect…until we got to the airport.
We were going to pick up another weekend guest. The airport, being dog-friendly, was the one place I had every intention of bringing her in with me. She was coming along. Woo hoo!! And then she got a little ahead of herself. The beast never jumps out of the car until she is told to…
Never…
Until that day. Out of the car. Out of the parking garage. Out into traffic.
For the record, this is the kind of situation where you learn how fast your brain processes things. You also learn how, even with all that processing going on, that you don’t really listen to your brain sometimes.
My brain said “Don’t chase her. It will only make her run more”. Some other voice inside me said, “Traffic is more likely to notice if there are two obstacles in their way rather than just one…especially if one of them is a crazed and screaming woman.”
My brain told me to stay calm. That other voice said “Nope. This seems like a perfectly reasonably time to freak out to me”.
My brain reminded me that it is Sunday afternoon and traffic will be light. My brain said the airport compound is mostly fenced and she can’t go that far. My brain reminded me that she is collared, tagged, licensed and microchipped. My brain was out-shouted by the other voice that seemed to be locked into a chorus of “f%ck!, f%ck!, f%ck!, f%ck!, f%ck!…”
I just wanted to catch her…and I wanted to kill her.
But you can’t beat a dog for coming back to you…or so my brain says.
(I did, of course, catch her, perfectly unscathed. I, on the other hand, have used up a few more heartbeats than I had budgeted for the month.)
I am a retired military officer. My degrees are in engineering. I have certifications in logistics, program management, and research, development, test and evaluation. My work is in mathematics. OK, well, it is in statistics, which is, admittedly, on the squishier side of the number crunching scale, but still numbers.
My whole life is, seemingly, framed in a left-brain scheme.
Somehow, though, I have found myself in the role of care-giver, writer, web-designer, volunteer. I seem to have derailed twenty years of professional development and gone right-brained. Or maybe I am just exploring a more whole brain approach to life.
Who knows?
It is not completely new territory to me, I suppose. My life growing up was a bit more right-brain than other kids, maybe. I never went to camp. I took summer classes at the art gallery. I used to keep a sketch book. I was the editor of the annual creative works magazine for my high school. Though I never excelled at history, I did well in english classes until the reading load outpaced the glacial pace at which I read.
I would love to defend it as a more balanced approach to life, but as much as I find the contrast interesting, I also find the continual right brain-left brain inner debate a little bit wearing. Finding “the answer” used to be good enough for me. Now, I find myself pondering how I got to “the answer” and whether or not it is universal and timeless, or circumstantial.
Now that I find I can structure my day, and, for that matter, my life, to my choosing though, I seem unable to decide on which half of my brain I would like to use.
I was surfing online today and ran across a familiar sight among a number of images.
For some of you this will be an easy guess, for others something entirely new. Does any one without a designator care to take a stab at what the heck it is?
There are a great many things for which I have no talent. I know this – having tried and failed and tried again…
There are also a number of skills for which I possess insufficient strength.
And there are, of course, some things I simply choose not to do because I have neither the need or the desire for whatever it is that comes from doing those things.
I’ve learned to do laundry out of necessity and to cook out of interest. I learned to sew at my mother’s knee and to knit at my best friend’s house. In school, I learned calculus as a means to solving stress and strain equations for engineering. At work, I learned statistics to manage production variability and quality control.
My first response to home repair is “well, let’s take a look”. I learned that from my father. I didn’t always love getting roped into family projects at the time, but I am grateful now for the skills that resulted from my enforced labor. I take apart my own plumbing, replace electrical outlets, and, before disposal of the old stuff became a moral dilemma, I changed my own oil. I have redone a pair of bathrooms including replacing fixtures and tiling.
Not everyone can or should do it themselves, though. I get that. Not everyone grew up in a house with a mandatory apprenticeship program. I know gifted writers and brilliant lawyers who should neither waste their time nor put the rest of the planet at risk with their own home-repairs.
Yesterday afternoon, though, I caught a glimpse of a project underway in my neighborhood. I watched as the adults struggled with the bulk and weight of some of the materials while a gang of teenagers, presumably associated with the family, lingered nearby. Not helping. Not even watching.
This worries me.
(I know, I know – it is none of my business, and I am sure that my understanding of the situation is imperfect.)
It worries me anyway.
Beyond that, it makes me sad. I have great faith in any number of young people I have met in my life. I am, in general, hopeful.
That said, I am not convinced our school systems is doing everything in its power to provide our youth the skill set it will need. I will go so far as to say that it has crossed my mind that the reason we use “New Home Starts” as a critical measure of the economy is not so much to do with the American Dream of homeownership but more a need to provide employment for those products of our education system that emerge qualified only to swing a hammer.
What do the kids who are home on a random Wednesday in the middle of the day and who have never swung a hammer do?
(Yup – again…It’s none of my business…)
So it has been 24-hours.
Admittedly parts of it have been a bit bumpy, but first nights in new places are hard.
Nights with beasts having first nights somewhere new are hard on everyone. None of us got our beauty sleep. The beasts seem to look no worse for the wear. I, on the other hand, not so much…
But today has gone surprisingly well. The beast and I are getting to know the handsome boy.
And he is getting to know us.
We all have our own monsters lurking behind the closet door; the stuff of which nightmares are made.
For most of us these are not real fears, or at least they are not imminent threats. I am not actually drowning or falling and the beast is alive and well, probably chewing on shoes as I write, despite the number of times I have been startled awake convinced of the worst.
We all cope how we cope; some folks better than others, some days better, some worse. We remind ourselves that the monsters are not real, or at least they are not present, or we arm ourselves against them.
What do we do, though, when we are the monster in the closet; not our own worst enemy, but someone else’s boogeyman? I don’t fully understand how that can be much less have a plan to cope with it.
The thing is; I’d like to think I am nice. When faced with new ideas, I’d like to think that I give them due consideration. In my circle of friends there are those among us who would disagree fiercely on some topic or another. I still believe that it is possible to disagree civilly. I know how to offer a minority opinion with the tact that might allow it to be at least heard. If all else fails, I can be silent rather than cause confrontation, if the situation seems to warrant it.
Now, though, I am faced with a group that quite possibly may find my very existence an affront. I feel that I am the monster in the closet.
So I am hiding.
Who knew monsters were such cowards?
Good to know…
I was reminded in my week in the cadaver lab that I am particularly bad at remembering to duck; not very good at seeing the threat and preventing contact… or maybe I am simply too stupid to know what’s coming.
It happens outside of full-body contact research labs as well. It happens with grief, too. I was completely blind-sided.
I should have seen a relapse coming. I should have taken the return of nightmares as a warning sign. I should have been on full alert given my disrupted sleep, my new aches and pains, my hormonal near-meltdown, and near-panic over the beast being sick.
Instead, I saw those as part of my life’s normal ups and downs.
I blithely stumbled on; going through my “normal” daily routine late last week. My new “normal” has gotten away from settling in to watch tv at night. Instead, I have tried to read more, play more, and relax more in the evenings. If there is a program I feel like watching, I generally watch it online sometime during the following days.
Among the tv shows that routinely shows up in my online queue is Grey’s Anatomy. I used to be pretty well hooked. Lately, not so much, but I didn’t have anything better to do as I sat down to have some lunch last Friday. I clicked on the icon and launched last week’s episode. It was all going so well until I aspirated my soup…
The episode had a story line about whether a woman who had shown some symptoms of dementia would be admitted into a clinical study for a new treatment.
You would think I would be smart enough then to turn it off, fast-forward, something.
I wasn’t.
I found myself even heartened by the fact that there was a clinical Alzheimer’s trial going on….even knowing that the trial was fictional. I am not in agony over the fact that there is this disease out there. I am unperturbed, sometimes even cheered, by the medicine.
I am, however, deeply effected by those who continue to suffer…even if they are fictional.
The woman on the show was denied entry into the clinical trial, her symptoms not having progressed enough to qualify her. At this news, she celebrated; she didn’t have Alzheimer’s; she couldn’t have Alzheimer’s; she had other plans for her life, for her retirement….
I could empathize with her and her family. I was moved by her words….but then I was immobilized by the words that followed.
“I am so afraid,” she admitted.
I was afraid, too, as I sank to the floor with chest pain, unable to breathe, gasping and sobbing.
“What the f*@#??!!” I thought to myself.
It has been months. I have put some effort into letting myself heal. I have been open about my grief. I have talked with many folks about my mom and my grief, and had talked with others about their own family members. I’ve been back to the home where my mother lived and even begun volunteering there. I had been doing fine; was really on a high, in fact.
Only to get run over by the sled.
Never even saw it coming…
I just got off the phone after expressing some concern about the beast.
I had an early start this morning and left the beast at home after feeding her and then launching myself into the pre-dawn darkness. Coming home my friend greeted me at the door, which is to say she wandered downstairs eventually, accepted my invitation to go outside to do a little business then returned upstairs.
Hours later she had not returned to pester me, so I went looking for her. When I sat down on the bed next to her, she stood up, circled three times and laid down with her head in my lap. I got up when my legs fell asleep. The beast did not.
In the hours since then I have been running through conditions and symptoms. She ate fine. She’s drinking plenty. She has no fever; no elevated heart rate. She’s not vomiting and is in no apparent discomfort.
It doesn’t appear that she got into anything while I was gone.
We made a therapy dog visit yesterday evening, but she was full of energy and the nursing home residents did not appear strong enough to survive 50 pounds of enthusiasm if the beast was left to her own devices, so I had strict hold of her the whole time. It seems unlikely that she got into anything there.
In terms of symptoms, there was nothing to really cause worry.
She was just, you know, not bouncing off the walls, so I was just fretting over the phone to a friend and experienced dog-person; trying to determine at what point you call the vet.
I spoke too soon, though.
The beast has come to life. She bounded down the steps a few minutes ago, then in an effort to comply with my direction to go get her Kong, raced back upstairs to throw no less than four different toys down the steps at me. She now sounds like a thundering herd throwing and chasing her Kong around.
With 9 extra hours of sleep today I suspect she will keep it up for quite some time, so if you are awake at 3 am and need to chat, I fear I am your girl…
Since I am going to the Iditarod this year, I thought a little race prep was in order…not that I need do much for training, as I will most likely be sitting at a computer for most of my time as a volunteer.
I already do quite a bit of that already.
I am mostly just reading up. This afternoon I was perusing the race rules; a good read for me. I am a rule-follower.
A great deal of the race rules are the usual administrative stuff about deadlines for race entries and qualification requirements. There a number of details about the selection of the starting order and how the staggered starters make up time later on the course.
There is a list of required equipment for each musher and his team, detailed instructions for food drops and pre-staged gear and strict requirements for getting your four-legged team cleared by vets.
All of that seemed to be pretty mundane stuff to me. It is useful to have a better understanding of the specifics, to be sure, though. Truth be told there were a few things that didn’t quite make sense to me, but not being a musher I can live with a less than perfect understanding, I suppose.
Then I got to Rule #33 describing the requirements for any musher required, in defense of life or property, to kill a game animal. Seriously. There is a rule for what to do in case of caribou attack. This is when it really sunk in for me that these guys are not on a simple trek through the woods.
I mean, I knew that already. I have huge admiration for anyone willing to brave the open trail; camping in sub-zero temps, navigating at night and through blizzards, spending a fair amount of time pushing your own sled on the uphill sections, exposed to the elements and trusted with the care and feeding of 16 animals all the while. It’s one of the things that draws me to this race.
I just hadn’t factored in the risk of running into 2 tons of angry moose to top off an already challenging day.
Not to worry, though. It’s all covered in the rules.
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