It was a normal
Tuesday, so I was home until mid-afternoon when I went to class. The dogs had
already alerted to a dog running loose past the house. In the last two years
living on this somewhat busy road in an unincorporated section of a large and
mostly rural Louisiana parish, I had become used to seeing dogs running loose
past the house on a regular basis, but it still bothered me greatly and I
always tried calling the dog to see if it was wearing tags. The first dog was
traveling by quickly and had no interest in coming to me, yet when the dogs
informed me of another wayward pooch, I went outside again. This time, I was
surprised to see two dogs—a scruffy black terrier and a tiny white poodle. They
were both dirty and wet and moving at a clip down the road. I whistled anyway,
and the terrier came running to me. The poodle, however, turned up his nose
indignantly and ran off back in the direction from which they had come.
I had no idea
what trials would be brought upon me for calling that little terrier to me.
There was a blood-drawing fight over a ball with Iko, the found owner who told
me to “just let her go” and wouldn’t return my calls to claim her dog, the
threats followed by thanks, a mysterious
and jarring incident in which someone entered our home and released all of the
dogs from their crates and left the front door open, a police report, an almost
adoption, and then Roscoe. That terrier was Toto and just when she had learned to
live with my dogs in peace and harmony, I was asked to take in a different
foster dog, one who “needed me more.” Roscoe, it seemed, had already been in a
couple of different homes, and he was having behavioral issues. The theory was
that he needed to be somewhere where he could run and play and expend the
energy that a young Lab mix naturally has while also learning structure and
manners. No problem. As an experienced fosterer of Labs, that was what I did.
He came home and
destroyed dog toys, jumped on the beds, and chased the cats. All totally
normal, so far. But, soon, we started to notice things that weren’t normal.
There were behaviors we’d never encountered. He was extremely protective of his
neck and would grab your hand with his mouth if you attempted to grab his
collar. He was rough with his mouth and paws and quick to use both. I spent the
first month nursing my scratched and bruised wrists and forearms. He frequently
had an “absent” and distant look and didn’t connect with us or the other dogs. He
didn’t know how to play and would growl and snap at the other dogs when they
did. After a particularly vicious fight that resulted in a deep wound on Iko’s
thigh, my dogs started avoiding him.
He seldom seemed
to be living in the present moment like most dogs, overly concerned with what
he could hear but not see, or with what he could see but not reach. He noticed
everything—the moon, the trails of planes in the sky, a siren miles away, the
closing of car doors at the neighboring houses, children laughing somewhere in
the distance—and much of it upset him. He was highly sensitive to sounds
especially. The 4th of July fireworks turned him into an
unresponsive, erratic mess, running from corner to corner of the yard, angrily
barking at the sky. He wouldn’t come when called, and, one night, after
reacting to something that only he could see, hear or smell, he jumped our
fence right in front of me.
We did what we
normally do. We soon realized that his collar sensitivity was most likely the
result of tenderness of his neck. He had been wearing a tight prong collar when
he came to us, and, based on the look of his neck, it had been used on him more
than it should have been. Using treats and repetition, I soon got him to accept
having his collar touched. We used caution in the yard and put him on a long
lead whenever he got that “lost” look in his eyes. We walked him regularly and
used treats to reinforce good behaviors. We maintained a calm and confident
energy around him and minimized his stress as much as possible.
We saw
improvement, but we didn’t see internalized change. As Mitchell put it, he had
simply adapted to living with us. He no longer chased the cats, and he had
learned that beds were off limits (mostly), but he still seemed distant and
disconnected. And, while those at Petsmart, where he attended adoption events
weekly, said that they noticed good changes, he never had a full day without some
sort of freak out event. For every two steps forward, there was at least one
step back. And, then we had a huge leap backward! In just one day at Petsmart,
he lunged and snapped at two different dogs—one while coming in and one while
leaving. Later that night, he turned quickly and snapped at me, catching the
side of my hand with a tooth. It was scary, painful, and very, very sad. I
struggled with trusting him again. I was afraid of what I knew he was
physically capable of. I didn’t know if I could come back from it.
But then Mitchell,
who is notoriously both more relaxed and optimistic than I am, said the
simplest thing. “He just had a bad day.” I started viewing each day as a new
opportunity. I was no longer obsessed with the overall picture, but instead I
focused on making each day the best that that day could be. I realized that if
Roscoe wasn’t able to live in the moment, I needed to do it for him. Maybe he
could learn from me. Maybe not. But, at least he would no longer be judged by
what he had done in the past. I would model for him the freedom that comes with
being present in the here and now, worrying only about what is in front of you
at any moment.
We did our best
to address each issue he had with as much understanding as possible. Every
intervention was deliberate and directional. When we noticed that he was
sucking on his tail at night, we allowed him to sleep outside of the crate and
saw improvement. Then he started chewing raw spots on his tail when we left the
house. It wasn’t the typical separation anxiety. We tried bitter agents on his
tail, an Elizabethan collar (you know, the cone!), a dog pheromone diffuser, a
calming collar, and ultimately Xanax. We gave him his favorite toys and a Kong
filled with peanut butter and frozen. Still he got to his tail and chewed it
up. We even found him putting himself into his crate just to chew on his tail.
It was so frustrating, but finally, on a whim, I left music playing one day and
came home to find his tail dry.
So, next, we set
about creating a new, positive association for the crate. He was doing better
at home, but we hoped to have him do well in a crate at adoption events. After
a week off, we decided to bring him back to Petsmart and to leave him while we
went to lunch, then to return for him. We brought treats along (as always) and
asked that the volunteers there approach him every 10 minutes or so, ask him to
sit, and give him a treat. We wanted him not only to see the crate as a place
where good things happen, but also to see that other people were a source for
positive rewards and that Petsmart, while loud and scary, could also be good. Unfortunately,
our training attempt didn’t go as planned, and we got a call just minutes after
ordering an appetizer and drinks. Roscoe had “bitten” a child, and he needed to
be picked up.
It turns out
that he didn’t actually bite the child and that the child had been beating on
the crate before sticking his hand inside, but it was still a devastating blow.
Roscoe could no longer return to adoption events at Petsmart. His association
with the crate had been made even worse. He had been stressed past a point for
which he had coping skills. He probably felt scared, confused, and desperate.
Or maybe that was just how I was feeling. At this point, it had become
difficult to separate my own emotions from Roscoe’s. I had tried so hard for so
long to get inside his head to understand him that I could no longer tell if my
thoughts were my own, and I definitely felt that he could read my thoughts. I
was worried that if we couldn’t “fix” Roscoe that there would be no options
left for him. I was angry that people had failed him. I was sad that he was
broken. I was devastated that I couldn’t help.
I struggled for
a solution. I don’t like not having answers. In fact, I don’t like not being
right. I have to be right. I’m not
used to failure, and I don’t tolerate it well. Yet, here I was, failing this
dog. My heart and my mind were committed to him, but I lacked any hope of being
successful on his behalf, and it crushed me. That’s when I did something crazy.
I contacted an animal communicator.
The jury is
still out on the reading that I got from the communicator, but I have felt
better since contacting her. She advised me to trust my intuition, which gave
me the freedom and the confidence to stop taking Roscoe to a group training
class that I felt was causing more anxiety than helping. She affirmed my gut
feeling that Roscoe was afraid of being abandoned and that he needed to feel
love. Mostly, I think that it felt good to talk about how I had been feeling, to
feel less alone.
I don’t know
where things will go with Roscoe and I, and I still have huge concerns about
how he will deal with the change of me returning to a full-time (plus) schedule
at the end of August when the fall semester and my practicum begin. I don’t
know if he will be ok being crated for so long every day. I don’t know if he
will behave for my petsitter. I don’t know if he will ever learn to play with
the other dogs.
But what I do
know is this…growth and healing are not linear; patience is difficult to
practice, but results in great rewards; finding understanding may be more
important than finding answers; and love is, well, you know, love is all you
need.
