“Looks like he’s got more’n a little pit bull in ‘im!”
The tattooed guy leaning out of his pick-up to admire my dog surely meant well. Not that I actually saw his tattoo, but I know he had one. The problem was, he was talking about my dog, and see: I would never own a pit bull!
My friends told me to get a dog. It had been a hard year, and I’d never felt more alone in my life. It seems I wasn’t alone in this feeling, though, as several of my friends had also been similarly abandoned in various ways (by husbands for instance, or employers, or a little of both.) “Get a dog,” they advised. “It will love you unconditionally, and help plug the holes.”
I was a little skeptical.
I grew up with dogs. (And cats. And birds. Also nice little rodents, chickens, ducks, and a very large goose. A one-winged seagull, for a while. We were one of the weirder families in our subdivision….)
In my house now, we have two cats already, and the nice thing about them is they come already basically trained. But I knew that dogs had to be housebroken, and trained to sit, and that you can’t just leave them alone for a couple of days with a dish of food and a litter box. Also, you never quite know what you’re getting with a dog. I knew that, too. Once upon a time, many years ago, we had Steve. Steve was a pound puppy and there was something wrong with him (besides his name, I mean). I swear we didn’t beat him or anything, but he started biting people. I’m sure it didn’t help that we had one neighbor who teased him with a stick, and another who once tried to shoot him when he got out of our fence (YES. WE’VE MOVED.) We had small kids though, so Steve couldn’t stay. That broke my heart, and shook my confidence as well. So no more dogs.
But last fall we got Jerry (so named by family committee, which should say a lot about committees in general). I thought about getting a real dog this time, from a breeder, but was unable to resist my own inbred preference for lost-cause animals. I told the humane society folks that I wanted a medium-sized, mellow dog. We discussed getting an adult dog, but I was worried about dealing with an unknown history. Besides, our kids wanted a puppy, and there was this wriggling little pile of “boxer-mix” pups that were too hard to resist. Thence came Jerry.
He’s already past the “medium-sized” category, and still growing. He jumps on people. He jumps on everything. He eats everything, too, including the kitchen floor. He’s hard to walk on a leash, even with a prong collar. We’ve consulted with dog trainers. We’ve tried the “gentle leader” collar that people swear by. We’ve tried saying “no” (doesn’t work) kneeing him in the chest (doesn’t work) and ignoring him (doesn’t work either). The dog trainer smiles weakly and tells us she’s sure he’ll get better when he’s older. The vet just laughs.
He’s a boxer mix, though. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
