Patty - our dog

Last November, on a Sunday, my wife and I took the kids for an innocent hike in the woods. The idea was to run them around for an hour or two and show them nature and have an enjoyable family experience. Bring them home, feed them lunch, put the little kids down for a nap and achieve a few hours of peace in the afternoon. Family bonding and recharging for the coming week. It was a great plan. Instead, we got a dog. 

We did go for the hike and we did have a nice family day in the woods. On the very last section of the trail as it loops around toward the parking lot, you could almost see the truck, the kids ran ahead and then yelled back to us. They had found a dog, and she was just laying there, rolled on her back. If they moved away from her she would get up and take a few steps to get close to them and then roll over again in a spectacular sign of submissiveness. When my wife and I got there she was still upside down, and very very skinny. It was immediately clear that eating had been on her doggy to-do list for a while and she hadn't been able to get to it. She was alone, in the forest, a long way from anywhere, no collar, starving. The intellectual part of me wanted to walk on by, maybe check for her skeleton in a year as an example to the kids that dogs aren't quite like wolves in their survival ability. That's what my brain wanted to do. My wife, who is the greater part of my conscience, wanted to take the poor starving creature home. I met half way and said that if she followed us then we could take her. Nobody was happy with my compromise, especially when she just laid in the path with sad eyes as we faded into the distance. It wasn't clear if she was too weak to walk, or if her spirit was just too broken. I suspect that she had come to accept her fate as being abandoned by humans. She was wrong. We all turned around and my wife picked her up and carried her back to the truck. I tried to stay as grumpy as I could, but I was as willing a party in this as anyone.

At this point in the story I feel like I need to explain that I actually do like dogs. I really like dogs in fact. Dogs are nice and they wag their tails and they snuggle with you and love you unconditionally and can truly make a dark day sunny. I just don't want one. Dogs are great for kids, they teach them responsibility and how to treat animals with respect and to take the care of an animal seriously. I still don't want one. Both of my parents are veterinarians, I grew up with, and taking care of dogs. We always had dogs. I had 'my own' dog when I was a kid. A beagle who was my best friend and who went rabbit hunting with me every chance we had. I've had my fill of the responsibilities and time commitments of dogs. I want to leave for the day, or two days, or a week and not have to worry about either finding someone to take care of them, or taking them with me. I don't want to be on a trip and have to leave someone in the car with it running with the AC on so I can go into the store without the dog dying of heat stroke. I want to be able to go to the beach and not have to pick up poop. I don't want a dog. I know what it takes for me to be the kind of dog owner I feel like I need to be, and I do not want a dog.

So now I have a dog. I'd love it if this was one of those stories where the dog was perfect and we all lived happily every after. She's not perfect, and we continue to live tenuously ever after. At first she only sort of understood not peeing in the house. We sorted that out for the most part in the first few weeks but it took her months more to learn about going pee before bed. She didn't really want to go outside when she thought it was bed time. When you tried to convince her to go out, she got suspicious and then was way too paranoid to pee. Which brings me to her next problem. She has some serious male authority figure issues. If I even talked to her sternly, she'd roll over and pee on herself. Yes, I know this is a sign of submission and it's involuntary on her part, but she still peed all over herself every time I tried to discipline her. This meant that if she had an accident during the day, and I pointed out to her that it was bad, she would compound the issue by flipping over and peeing. Of course she was stuck to the floor and I couldn't get her to stand and walk outside, so I had to pick her up which only terrified her more and she dribbled a trail of pee all the way to the door. It was great.

After a year,  things are pretty well sorted out, she knows to ask to go outside, even if she is subtle and timid about it. She knows to ask to come back in, and she's much more vocal about that. I can talk her into going outside without her peeing all over me in terror and my wife and her have a great evening routine where she goes outside and pees immediately. She's fantastic with the kids and my wife loves her. She and I still have a cautious friendship. She can't entirely trust men. We've concluded that we found her in the woods because someone dumped her there. She had a very bad relationship with whatever male she was living with and will probably never be completely able to get over it. 

I still don't want a dog, even this one. I've tried and tried to give her away, but no takers. I think this is mostly because whenever I try, my kids and my wife all yell "nooooooooooo". So we're pretty much stuck with her. If you have to be stuck with a dog, I guess she's not too bad.