Rambling on about my Dog

Thanks to Katherine's post about her devotion to her dogs--"My dogs represent a commitment I made to Life."--I'm in even a bigger funk about the dog. Unlike a lot of people, I don't consider Mrs. Wigglebottom to be like my child. Hell, I've met my nephews. I know what our gene pool is like. My kids would be a lot smarter than Mrs. Wigglebottom, but they'd lack all her loyalty. I don't consider Mrs. Wigglebottom to be anything like a person, though I enjoy anthropomorphizing her. It's because she's so utterly not human that I love her. It's in comparing and contrasting myself and her that I appreciate her engagement of the world and find my own conceptions challenged. I'm a pissy, mopey, uncertain, surly, smart, funny, fucked up hermit. If I were to revert to my natural state, I'd sit on the couch at my parents' house drinking Mountain Dew and eating Oreos until I felt sick while watching hours of TLC and sending snarky emails to my few remaining friends and feeling sorry for myself. My dog is brave and open to new things. She insists we walk every morning. She is the whole reason I go to the park every weekend. Not for my own health, though I've benefited, but for her well-being. It makes her happy. She's utterly un-self-conscious. If she likes you (and who, except for any dog walking too near the car does she not like?), she runs over to you. She gets all up on you. She rolls over on her back and insists "Rub my belly." She says "There's no place we can't go." She says "There's no trouble you can't get me out of." As much as I was her reprieve (come and live with me and learn to behave or die), she is my reprieve (learn to play and live). She came into our lives through nefarious means, as is the way with all the best things we have. The recalcitrant brother acquired her in a drug deal. After it became apparent that he had no intention of doing anything more with her than driving around the Quad Cities looking tough, my parents took her in. This went poorly, as she is a great deal stronger than my mom, and was still poorly trained. She pulled my mom off the front porch, pulled her across a sheet of ice, pulled her here and there, and resulted in a bruised and scraped mom regularly visiting the emergency room. Meanwhile, my dad was training the dog to do all kinds of "tricks," useful tricks like "grab a person's balled up fist in your mouth and clamp down so that when they shake their fist, your head goes back and forth in a fun manner," and "run as hard as you can at someone, leap onto their belly and push yourself off into a backflip," and "box." I hated her. When we'd go to visit, she wanted to be all up in your lap. Once I was trapped for fifteen minutes after church when I pushed back in the recliner and started to doze and she leaped up into the chair and stood straddled over my head and refused to move. She always jumped up on everyone and she had big floppy lips full of drool and she was ugly--with this strange round head and stocky muzzle and big bat-like ears. And then she bit my cousin. He was partially to blame, trying to take her bone out of her mouth, but kids will do that kind of stupid shit. My aunt wanted her put down. And who could blame her? I thought it was the best solution as well. But my dad couldn't stand it. He tried to find someone who would take her, but as I kept pointing out, who but a monster is going to take a full-grown pitbull who's not trained and can't be trusted around children? Someone who wants to fight it. I said, "Your choices are two. You can give her a kind death or leave her to an unimaginably cruel one." And then my crying dad, who I've only ever seen cry once before, when my mom's dad died, said, "You could take her." Though I hated her, I couldn't say no. It was pretty disastrous for a long time. She was afraid of odd things, like trash bags, and would freeze up and fall over whenever she saw one. She'd stand at the edge of the bed like a tiny killer Martian and make weird noises while I was trying to sleep. She jumped on everyone who came over. If we wanted to have guests for dinner, we'd put her out in the car. And when we walked it was more like tug of war than orderly strolling around the neighborhood. But little by little, things got better. We're still not going off-leash around other dogs. But things are better. People can come visit us. We can go to the park. Small children regularly squeeze her neck and pat her head and give her treats without incident. We walk around the neighborhood with ease. But I still don't like the idea of leaving her to go to this wedding. Maybe it means I'm not quite as convinced of the slow, miraculous transformation from terrible to just fine as I pretend to be. I guess I don't trust her to behave herself if I'm not around. But the plan now is--Surprise Professor!--to take the dog and the Professor to the park one or two weekends and let the Professor take her, let her hold the leash and navigate the other dogs, and if that goes okay, to try to talk her into spending the weekend we're gone at our place, so that the dog has a butt to curl up against in the night.