The Wrong Dog Blog

I did walk my woofus, and it looks like this short (compared to his previous standard) WALKIES!!! thing is here to stay. He did want to go around the larger block, the one we live on rather than the one we face, which is uphill at a steep gradient, but he wanted to go around it most of the way, head halfway up another slope, spend about fifteen minutes grazing, and then back down all of it and go straight home. Of course Sunny’s cow impersonation is generally followed by his cat-with-hairball impersonation, but today it fortunately was not. We just came home.

I did make the mistake of taking him into the basement with me while I looked for videotapes. That is, after all, where the mouslies seem to be based, so he spent the rest of today insisting we return to the basement. I was not keen on doing that because it occurred to me after a few minutes in the basement that my landlord had spoken of putting poison down there for the mice and I didn’t want Sunny to get into it. I need to visit the basement without him next time, but unfortunately he can hear me in the basement and cries continually while I am down there, which is why I took him in the first place.

Anyway, the continuing mess and the trend for lower energy expenditure on Sunny’s part would get me down if I allowed myself to think about it, which I’m not going to tonight. Instead I wind up with what I planned to wind up with yesterday, the account of when I first noticed that Sunny wasn’t a puppy anymore. I quote from the e-mail I sent to friends (with appropriate alias substitution ^_^).

16 January 2007

Today I braved the at-long-last wintry weather to see if there was mail. There wasn’t, which was surprising. Clarence usually hits the place by 1 PM. I forget what I went to the kitchen for when I got back inside, but I wasn’t in there long: two minutes at most. As I was leaving the kitchen, I found a nearly entirely destuffed chipmunk lying across the doorway.

It had not been there when I went into the kitchen. I was sure of it. I picked it up. There was no spaniel in evidence. I suspect it was, to steal a line from the Blackadder saga, a cunning plan to trick Mommy into playing. That’s about as subtle as Sunny plans get, so I would’ve loved to reward him by playing, but there just wasn’t time. I had work to do. I put the chipmunk back where I had found it and went on to the bedroom.

In less than two more minutes, Sunny was standing in the bedroom doorway with the chipmunk dangling out of his mouth. He had his head in that hyperalert mode: straight up, ears perked, clearly saying, “You must have seen the Object of Woofiness, Mommy!”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, Mommy’s gotta work.” I commenced messing with Excel sheets containing sales data from last summer.

“Never take ‘Later’ for an answer!” may well be the spaniel motto. He hopped up on the bed, with the chipmunk still dangling from his mouth. I reached for it, figuring I could throw it for him without really interrupting my work, but no, he dodged. If he thought that was the start of a frolic, he soon discovered he was sadly mistaken. Fine, I thought. Don’t let Mommy throw it for you. I continued working.

About a quarter till three, Sunny started yipping. “What now?” He ran for the door, yipping. Oh, I thought, Clarence is probably here. Back before the postal service forbade it, Clarence would give Sunny a treat whenever he went by, so he’s one of Sunny’s favorite people. It’s like radar: Clarence doesn’t even have to be near the house for Sunny to have a Clarence fit. Clarence says that the postal truck must have a unique sound because Sunny is not the only member of his canine fan club to insist on going out the instant Clarence’s truck makes an appearance in the neighborhood.

So we went out and Sunny acted goofy and I saved Clarence the trouble of going up our stairs, which weren’t too bad at the time, but they’re never good. We went back in. I got back to work. Sunny curled up next to me for some serious napping.

I decided to wrap up work for today at 6 PM and have a good frolic with Sunny, but just as I was about to sleep the computer, I saw some work that I had forgotten about but had to do today (Bianca: the 1/15 postage fees ^_^). Darn it, I thought, but I plowed through them in half an hour.

At long last! Time for quality time with my boy!

“Hey, Sunny, look what Mommy’s got!”

He woke up and looked at me with sleep-filled eyes. I don’t think he even saw the chipmunk.

“It’s the chipmunk!” I informed him, waving it in his face.

His expression slowly moved to quiet puzzlement, as if to say, “Why are you waving a dirty and limp chipmunk in my face?”

“Get the chipmunk, Sunny! It’s going to get away!”

“Let it,” his profound lack of motion said. He finally readjusted so that he could mouth the chipmunk a bit.

“That’s a boy! Get the chipmunk! Get the chipmunk, Sunny!”

He did try. He could see that it was clearly important to me, but he just couldn’t get into the spirit of the thing. I threw it, to see if a fleeing object would trigger the old predatory chase instinct.

He lay on the bed and wagged rather apologetically at me.

When Sunny was one year old, he was running me ragged. Everyone said that he’d slow down at three. When he didn’t, they said he’d slow down at six. Since he didn’t slow down at all at three, some part of me stopped believing that he would slow down. Even though I knew intellectually that Sunny had to cease being Super Spaniel someday, his high-energy level has been his chief characteristic for as long as I’ve known him. I couldn’t quite imagine him without it. It was really astonishing when once during a play session last week, Sunny just stopped playing and sat and breathed heavily. Not in distress, mind you, still smiling a goofy grin, but unquestionably stopping because he’d had enough. For the past five years, I have always been the one to tire out.

My baby boy is starting to get old. . . .

4 December 2005

I’ve been having trouble with the bottom end of my comforter being curled upward. I don’t mean just the edge tilted up; I mean that edge actually being rolled upward at least one revolution. I supposed it was either things my cast was doing while I was sleeping or things it did as I tried to extricate myself. The roll is not easy to undo, the cover being a king-sized one for a full-sized comforter and therefore inclined to do some independent curling of its own.

So I keep smoothing it down again. And again. And again. The other evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed it was curled up again, and muttering to myself, I spent about five minutes detangling and smoothing it down. I went off to get my nightly cup of Kava Stress Relief tea. [This was back before I developed yet another food-allergy, to something in Kava Stress Relief tea. Aspey's First Law of Food Allergies: If I like it, I am or will become allergic to it.]

As I returned, I heard scratching. I came in to find Sunny on the bed, scratching at the bottom edge, carefully creating an upward roll along the end of the bed. He looked my way and gave a rather absent wag of his tail to acknowledge my presence and then went almost fiercely back to his task. The roll reestablished, he turned around once, dropped into a doggie curl next to it, and wagged his tail enthusiastically. “OK, Mommy, I’ve got the bed ready, so you can get in it now.”

I should’ve known. How could I fail to recognize the edge of a doggie bed when I see it?

Another time, back when I was still working at The Evil Place, it was the winter holidays, and business associates were sending mountains of food on a daily basis. I secured some pieces of sausage and ham into one of the plastic bags which (as a dog guardian) I am always supplied with, and put the bag in my coat pocket, to take home to my woofus.

I gave him one piece right when I got home, much to his surprise and doggie delight. Spaniels were originally bred precisely for wiggle (through brush and hedges), and Sunny gave me a demonstration out of sheer glee. I put the baggie in my pocket to take on our walk—in thaws there’s always lots of loathsome stuff revealed that he considers edible, and it’s nice to have something truly edible with which to entice him away. It was too warm out, though, for my gloves, and so I decided to put them in the pocket, too (I only had one pocket at the time—the other had had a hole in it for years). Sunny was the full length of his long leash away and deeply intent on chewing on a stick as I tried to fit my gloves in my pocket. Almost, but not quite. There were a couple baggies in my pocket, one holding lotioned tissues, the other the meat, each of which had a lot of air in them. If I squooshed the air out of both, everything would probably fit.

I removed the air from the packet of tissues, Sunny still engrossed in his DR Chipper impersonation. I had barely opened the baggie with the meat in it to let the air out when Sunny was bouncing at my feet and wagging his tail, now intent on convincing me that he was the cutest woofus ever and deserved all the yummy things in that bag, right now! I didn’t even know he was moving until he was there. He was chewing the stick when I was positioning the meat bag for opening, and less than a heartbeat after it was open, the air in it still in the process of being squooshed, his nose had told him from 26 feet away that there were DEAD ANIMAL parts to be had and he had crossed those 26 feet to have them.

So I have learned, through such events, that Sunny’s trust in his nose is justified. When he tells me that his nose detects Something Important, I believe him and don’t give him lectures on how he is pestering Mommy. The only problem is, of course, that this still leaves me without knowledge of what the Something Important is. Primates are comparatively underendowed with olfactory abilities, and I trail the pack. Most of the time, when someone comments on a smell, I just look at them blankly. For instance, I once asked to be allowed to go home from work because I felt woozy and sick, and my supervisor said that another of my co-workers had already left because of the paint fumes. It was news to me that there were paint fumes around the place; I only felt them, not smelled them.

Sunny, of course, thinks Mommy is all-powerful—he’s sure someday I’ll stop the rain for him if he just asks cutely enough (five years he’s been doing that, and I still haven’t convinced him it’s not in the repertoire). Just as suredly Mommy will Do Something about The Smell that he has been so assiduously studying and reporting to her about for the past few weeks. He now has other sites to show me, in addition to the one in the downstairs lobby and the one in the bathroom. He has taken me to the spot in front of the balcony door. He has taken me to the basement door on the other side of our house. He’s tried to take me around on our side of the house, but the ground’s uneven and I won’t do it. He has taken me to these places with his best “I’m Lassie—follow me to Timmy!” behavior, demonstrated the significance of the location’s smell with ostentatious snuffling and pushing with his nose, and then turned to me, all confident smiles and wags that now, at long last, Mommy will Do Something about It. Proving once again that faith is a bad thing. Based only on his high opinion of me in my capacity as Treat Giver, Tummy Rubber, and Protector from Fearsome BOOM! Monsters, he thinks I can Do Something about a smell I can’t detect.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t given thought to the matter. I thought perhaps that we might have a rodently visitor in the bathroom, and I put down the humane trap that captured all those cute deer mice that got in through a broken window one winter. Not a single mously turned up in the trap. I have consulted my landlord, but the water testing in the basement only took place over a couple of days, and Sunny has been at this weeks now.

There is the possibility that the hog-nosed skunk who took up residence in our building’s basement during the winter of 2005-06 has come back. I haven’t seen, heard, or smelled said skunk, however, and that one was was much less stealthy than I would expect a wild creature to be, being seen, heard, and smelled plenty by me and the neighboring humans on either side of the winter in question. (They were all for killing the skunk, although they could cite no aggressive or harmful actions on the skunk’s part, even the smell apparently not being directed at a human or a cat or a dog. The neighbors were in fact surprised that I didn’t consider merely being a skunk a capital offense.) Also against the skunk theory is that Sunny never acted this way when the skunk was unquestionably in residence; his previous unpleasant experience with a skunk was on a walk, not at home. The only sure way to test the theory, though, would be to take Sunny down and see if he could locate the source of The Smell in the basement, and a positive result would be highly unpleasant to me, Sunny, and the skunk. Sunny would be relieved of his desire to have me Do Something, but that’s a small plus in the face of such disadvantages, and I doubt even Sunny would vote for it if he could have the situation explained to him. Besides which, what’s with the sniffing by the balcony door if it’s the skunk? A skunk couldn’t climb up onto the balcony. Since the landlord cut back the branches of the tree, a raccoon couldn’t climb up onto the balcony.

I am running out of ideas. I’m no longer worried that Sunny smells a crack in the pipe in the bathroom, what with his having added other locations to his list, but I’m no closer to relieving his woofy mind. Perhaps he will eventually become accustomed to The Smell and stop telling me about it. Perhaps The Smell will go away. Although he is less intent on each individual site than he originally was with the first two, he attends them in turn with devoted regularity, declaring to any monkeys who will listen that there is Something Important going on.

If only to assure him that I am listening and taking him seriously, I wish I could figure out what has got him on alert.

Most of the time, however, most humans, on seeing Sunny, think he’s female. It has always struck me as odd: color isn’t sex-linked in dogs, and the long silky hair is standard issue with spaniels, so why is a long-haired blonde cocker necessarily a particular gender? Nonetheless, nearly everyone who speculates before asking calls him “she.” I suppose that it seems unlikely that this would matter to a woofus, but not in this case. Sunny, did he only know, would be deeply offended. All the evidence indicates that Sunny is a sexist.

From the very first, it was evident that Sunny fancied himself a big, tough, macho woofus. When in a group of dogs, he always tries to play with the largest male present. The first time I saw him do this, at an off-leash site, it backfired on him: the largest male, a Bouvier des Flandres with a nanny streak, stood over him protectively and wouldn’t let the other dogs near him. The dog’s caretakers told me that he frequently did that with puppies. Sunny acted offended and kept trying to wrestle with other dogs, but the big dog kept getting in the way to protect Sunny. It didn’t break Sunny of wanting to play with the big boys, though. Once when a dog caretaker said that the “little dog” (meaning Sunny) wasn’t afraid of wrestling with the big dogs, the caretaker of his first friend, Thor, said, “Oh, there’s nothing little about Sunny!” Despite being informed by my sister, Joh, that he was a “fluffy little girlie dog,” Sunny definitely would agree.

More than that, he wouldn’t play with female dogs. Thor was a male Husky–pit bull–other mix about twice Sunny’s size, and therefore Sunny’s favorite being ever (yes, more than me!), but when Thor moved out of the area and Sunny was hard up for playmates, he still wouldn’t deign to play with female dogs. I once saw a very playful Vizsla dance around him, doing all the “Play with me!” canine body language while Sunny just stood there staring at her like he didn’t understand, and she was even bigger than Sunny, so he should’ve been interested. When the other dog was a male, though, it was Sunny who begged for a frolic. It began to be embarrassing, but the gender of the other dog always determined Sunny’s interest in play.

One day Joh and I were at the off-leash park when a very lovely dog ran up. I don’t remember her name anymore, but I’ll call her Gazelle here. She was a little taller than Sunny, but very slender and graceful. She looked like she might have had whippet or Italian greyhound in her; in fact, from her silky feathers I would’ve guessed saluki only she wasn’t anywhere big enough. Gazelle was a little bashful, but plainly she considered Sunny to be playmate material, much to the surprise of her human, who said she was timid around other dogs.

Sunny was not interested in frolics! Had he been a human child, I would have called his behavior rude. Gazelle tried to convince him that they should run together, but Sunny wasn’t having it. He kept trying to get away from her, trying to evade her approach, at increasing speed. Finally he ran flat out away from her. It wasn’t an invitation to race, but Gazelle, still being a pup by a couple months, didn’t seem to understand that. Being of running ancestry of some sort, she rapidly overtook him and ran past him. Suddenly Sunny was very interested in having a race with her! He ran but couldn’t catch her. When he finally gave up, she came back. It had, after all, been a game; she didn’t want to lose him.

Sunny’s behavior made me ashamed to be his guardian. He was pouty. He kept trying to get away from her. It wasn’t the first time he’d been beaten in a race—on his very first trip to the park, he’d led the pack until a whippet showed up and ran circles around the whole bunch—but his behavior was even worse than it had been that time. Then he’d only nipped at the other dog’s heels during the race. This time he kept the grudge going afterward, glaring at her while taking a solid, unplayful stance or turning his back on her, avoiding her now more confident efforts to get him playing. He didn’t go so far as baring his teeth—I don’t think Sunny’s ever actually started a serious skirmish—but his body language was clear. He wanted nothing to do with her. Maybe he decided she must’ve been cheating or something; he tried running away from her again. Once again, she beat him without breaking a sweat.

I forget how long it took him to forgive Gazelle for being a better runner than his masculine self. Maybe it was because he found himself enjoying the races, even if he never won them. He seemed to still be surprised; once he stopped avoiding her, Sunny kept sniffing her over as if checking to make sure he’d smelled her right. One could imagine him saying, “Bu-but you’re a GIRL!”

I love working at home. I don’t have to go in early to avoid the “how are you?” conformist ritual. (With the only socially acceptable answer in any language that I’ve studied being “Fine,” how can humans argue that the question shows any sort of caring?) I don’t have to worry that my phone will ring or someone will knock on my door, scattering my thoughts to the four winds. With everyone forced into the “words only” channel of communication, the playing field is leveled. I could go on (I really love working at home!), but I should be getting to the point about now.

I thought Sunny would love my working at home, too. Out breaks just about any time he wanted them, tummy rubs on a regular basis, fewer of those anxiety-producing Mommy absences—what’s for a woofus not to love? Apparently a great deal: if I am at home, it seems that I am supposed to be paying attention to him and only him. He is very competitive with my laptop. The first one I had, he put deep scratches in when I was out of the apartment. When that one died and I got a new one almostly entirely paid for by my boss, he once raised a paw to claw at it, and I pulled out the top of my correction heirarchy: “BAD DOG!” A few minutes later he came over and began licking the side of the screen, which I suppose is Spaniel for “Oh, Mommy, I am really a good woofus! Please love me again! See how much I like this horrible silver thing you love more than me!”

With both laptops, Sunny relied on a heirarchy of gestures that are all Spaniel for “Notice me,” although at various levels of intensity. The lowest level, which corresponds to a polite “I would like your attention, Mommy,” is a prolonged stare at me with his expectant look on his face. The highest level—”NOW, YOU DAFT MONKEY!”—is crying and bouncing, around me if I have the laptop, on me if not. One day, back when I had the old laptop and in fact during the Year of Living Happily, I was busy. I probably didn’t even notice the politer forms of “Notice me” because it seemed to me that Sunny was suddenly being very pesty, nudging me with his nose and rolling around next to me, not unlike his morning monkey rousting technique. He didn’t paw at me, but he did head-butt the laptop. It must have been the angle he hit the power adapter’s input plug; I can’t imagine he could’ve hit it so very hard without hurting himself. At any rate, the thing broke, with the prong of the plug still in the power jack of the computer.

Catastrophe! How on earth was I supposed to do my work? It was a Thursday, the last day of my week (I work a Sunday–Thursday schedule), and I had to have the thing repaired by Sunday, the busiest day of my week. A whole chain, of which I am one link, was counting on me. None of the service facilities were within walking distance.

I spent the day on the phone, which alone is enough to get me in a foul mood. I ended up learning that if I wanted it done on Friday, assuming the damage was no worse than I described and they didn’t require any parts that weren’t in stock, there was one computer repair service that could pick it up, fix it, and return it on Friday. That would cost me $300, the first $100 of which was just to get it done within one day.

I was furious.

I was not, however, foolish enough to vent my fury on my uncomprehending woofus. Yes, I was thinking that he might make a nice throw rug, but I knew that he could not understand what he had done and even if he could, it was far too remote in time for the woofy mind to make good use of feedback. I was careful to speak to Sunny in a normal voice and make no angry gestures. I would rant to empty air while he was away on his retirement home visit that night.

My boy, however, is a pretty smart blonde, so long as the issue is important to him. Naturally my mood is a matter of deep concern to him because, to steal a line from my favorite dog-training book, “Bad Things Don’t Happen to Dogs when She’s in a Good Mood.” Of course the corollary, that Bad Things May Happen to Dogs When She’s in a Bad Mood, causes woofy anxiety when I’m in a bad mood, and the more likely that I am angry at him, the higher the anxiety because, of course, Bad Things Are More Likely to Happen to Dogs When She’s Angry at the Woofus.

I don’t know what it was about my body language that gave it away, but somehow, despite my efforts, Sunny knew. He knew I was very, very angry at him. And he was one scared little woofus.

His own body language was very apologetic. He smiled, he wagged, but very gently, as if afraid even his apology might cause an attack. Meanwhile, I gathered his stuff for his Outing that evening. Sunny has his own backpack, which I carry when on WALKIES!!! and which I gave to his handlers along with him on evenings he went on visits. It had plastic bags (of course), an open package of treats, an unopened package of treats, his water bottle, a spare collar (in case his broke), a spare leash (ditto), and a pack of pet bath wipes (just in case). I went through it to make sure everything was there and the water bottle full, I got his leash, attached the ID card tag that he needed to wear when on program visits, and took him out the apartment door to the landing.

At least, that was the plan. He didn’t want to go out the door. He stood in place and didn’t move through the door when I did. He refused to cross the threshold. I gave the leash a little tug, nothing violent, just a direction, and he whimpered. “We’re just going to see Lucy, Sunny.” He wasn’t going. I snapped my fingers as I snapped at him, “Out!” Doubtless fearing this was the beginning of Bad Things for the Woofus, the little guy scurried onto the landing, whimpering.

He cried throughout my putting my shoes on. Not loudly, like he had the first time he went away with a handler, but quietly like he didn’t want to make me angry with the whimpers but he was too scared to be silent. Granted my “It’s all right, Sunny” wasn’t comforting, but my understanding is that a matter-of-fact tone is actually more comforting to dogs: a sympathetic one apparently tells the dog that they are going to need sympathy in very short order! At any rate, my tone wasn’t hostile, but it didn’t help at all.

I started walking him to the park where we met Lucy. Usually Sunny would pull very hard toward the park once I started that direction, and would be especially yippy in the evenings, because an evening trip to the park meant a retirement home visit and he knew it. That day, though, he hung back as much as the leash would allow, occasionally stopped moving altogether, and cried continuously. He did not want to go and I couldn’t figure it out. He loves going Out, and he especially loves going on the retirement home visits. I was in the middle of another “Come on, Sunny!” when it occurred to me that he might think I was so angry that I was getting rid of him. That would certainly make Out undesirable. If I could just get him to the park, and we could meet Lucy, that should cheer him up. He loves Lucy, and he knows he goes on fun trips with her.

I didn’t get him to the park; Lucy pulled up along the street as we walked. Sunny did not leap into her car, as usual. Over his plaintive whimpers I had to direct him into the car, while Lucy kept a gentle pressure on the leash and encouraged him to hop in. As much as he didn’t want to do it, I can only suppose he was more afraid still of what the consequences of disobedience might be; my frustration at getting him to go must have seemed to him near-explosion anger. He was still crying when the door shut behind him.

I went back to the park to collect my boy a couple hours later. I hadn’t ranted about my expensively destructive woofus, but I had cooled down. I figured Sunny had probably calmed down away from the Wrath of Mommy.

Lucy and Sunny arrived, and Sunny was thrilled to see me. Sure, he’s my woofus, he’s always thrilled to see me, but there was an “Oh, Mommy, it’s you!” edge to it.

Sure enough, the little woof’ had thought I was getting rid of him. Lucy said that he cried all the way to the retirement home, and he had never done that before, not even the first time they’d gone there together. Once they arrived, though, he must have recognized the place and connected that coming to this place, with Lucy, meant that he would be going home afterward, as he always did. She says he relaxed and became his usual happy self at that point.

I felt terrible. I had tried not to punish my woofus for something he couldn’t understand, not being keen on punishment, beyond not giving him a good thing that he wants, even when he might understand. Nonetheless, I had scared the poor critter out of his woofy wits. We had some intense Aspie-woofus quality time, to reassure the Furry One that he would always be coming home to Mommy.

It did make me wonder about the details of the first time he lost his home—he had lived with Faith’s grandmother before he had lived with Faith, and had been sent away because he had made an enemy of the grandmother’s elderly female cocker when he went through puberty. Were the events sufficiently similar to trigger his panic reaction? Hopefully that he did in fact come home after all would help reinforce his sense of security.

I frequently wish humans would ignore whatever they think they’re seeing in my body language and just listen to my words. I get very frustrated because, damn it, they can understand my words. That was one of the few times when I really felt Sunny’s verbal inadequacy. Generally we live contentedly with my verbalizing all manner of things but his getting what he needs to know from my nonverbals. Not being wired for words (dogs really aren’t, despite human illusions to the contrary), he couldn’t suddenly rely them just because I need to say, “Yes, Mommy is mad at you right now, but it’s OK, she’ll get over it in an hour or so, and you’re still her beloved boy.” All he had had were the nonverbals, and the only message they were sending him was complete rejection.

From the very first, Sunny took his duties as fierce defender of the household very seriously. When a doorbell went off on television, Sunny would race for the door, barking fiercely, which was interesting because none of the apartments in our building have doorbells, so he couldn’t have had a whole lot of experience with them. If there were footsteps on our stairs—that is, the stairs from the first floor to the second, our apartment being the only one on the second floor—he informs the intruder that there is a big, tough woofus in the apartment, so they’d better watch themselves! When the back window is open, he makes the same announcement to whatever lurks in the dark backyard. This isn’t to say he is an excessive barker, though, and when he does bark, it’s easy to handle: rather than yelling at him to be quiet, I say, “Thank you, Sunny,” only occasionally having to add, “That’s enough now.” Sometimes he’ll give another half-bark, as if to say, “OK, I’ll be quiet, but there is DANGER!” At least thanking him works; yelling at him only seemed to make him more anxious, leading to louder and longer barking.

Sunny actually was quite brave—or perhaps foolish; I can’t tell because I never found out what the danger was. Its being the first year I had him, I was, you may recall, in my Super Mom period, and during the winter we often went for WALKIES!!! before or after dark. One evening we were walking along a path that runs between a creek and a road; on the other side of the road are houses. The woods along the creek are fairly dense for being so narrow, and it’s not terribly well lit, so perhaps it was foolish of me to take him there, but one night as we walked there, he just went nuts. He barked very aggressively, with lots of growls, at something ahead of us. I tried to get around him to see what it was, but Sunny was not having it! He moved in front of me to block me off, no matter which way I tried to go around him. No, small-toothed Mommy was not to get anywhere near the DANGER! I decided that because he felt that strongly and because I had no evidence we were definitely not approaching something dangerous, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. I turned turned back. Sunny hung back for a little, snarling what must have been a warning not to follow, and then hustled me back to a better lit area. Another night, forgetting about that incident, I tried to walk him there again, and he gave a repeat performance at about the same point. I decided we wouldn’t go there in the dark anymore. Sunny didn’t need light to assess a situation, he had given his opinion quite clearly, and I would most likely only prove myself a fool if I tried to get pushy about having a bigger brain.

So I knew my boy considered himself equal to my defense when the new phone books arrived. That day, we were coming down our stairs on our way Out. The front door of the building has a window in it, and so Sunny can see if anyone is coming up the front stairs from the top of ours. He saw that there were intruders coming and started warning them off.

As I came out the front door, I said to the two men coming up the cement stairs, “Don’t worry. He’s on a leash.” They smiled while Sunny, now a couple steps lower than me on the wooden porch stairs, continued to tell them what a ferocious woofus he was. I noticed that both men were carrying plastic bags that contained phone books, so I didn’t need to ask if they needed help finding someone.

Understandably not wanting to get within Sunny’s range, the man delivering to my side of the duplex threw the bags a couple stairs below Sunny. They landed with a large “BOOM!” Sunny stopped barking, wheeled around, scurried up the stairs with a startled expression on his face, got behind me at the top of the stairway, and then, poking his head between my feet, resumed his woofy tirade at the retreating (and laughing) men.

I couldn’t help but laugh too. Whatever-they-ares in the dark can be taken head-on, but scary BOOM! monsters in broad daylight were clearly a threat for which Sunny was not prepared and he could only deal with them from behind Mommy. I told him it was OK: cocker spaniels aren’t for protection, so he could stick to being cute and sweet.

He hasn’t, of course. No, he is a fierce woofus and he will protect me even if he needs me to protect him so that he can protect me!

I had heard on a local dog mailing list about a program at the local university, one in which the students and community volunteers would take around pets to living situations where people couldn’t have pets—retirement homes, detention centers, and the like. I looked into it, explaining to the people running the program that what would work best for me and Sunny was if a student could take Sunny while I stayed at home. Apparently there was a dog shortage in the program, and they were more than happy to have a canine volunteer. The rules called for me and Sunny to spend a few hours with the student before he and the student did the obedience test for the program. By that time, it was summer session, but there was a student in the program who was still in town, although she would be studying abroad the first semester of the following year. Samantha could get to know Sunny right away and be ready. I also heard by e-mail from another student who was also to be Sunny’s handler, for the whole year and on different weeks than the first student.

I took Sunny to Sam’s apartment to get acquainted. There were two reasons for this; if she’d had a car, there would’ve been three (the parking situation is nigh near impossible on my street!). First, I’m uncomfortable having humans I don’t know well in my home, just on general principle. My home is my den and sanctuary, I don’t want it invaded, and entering my home qualifies as invading it unless you’re well known to me. Second, as I’ve mentioned, my apartment is a mess. It’s bad enough having a stranger come in, but to have someone come in and pass judgement—after having been allowed into my sanctuary, no less! Given the moral connotation attached to neatness by American culture, the bounds of civility are not respected by visitors: I once had a mental health professional happen to stop by and he commented drily as he looked around that he had learned long ago that a five-pound bag does not hold twenty pounds. I do sometimes wonder if part of the reason it’s a mess is so that I have an excuse not to let people in, but because I never admit the mess aspect as a reason when I’m making other arrangements, I rather doubt it. There are enough other reasons that contribute to the problem, anyway.

Sunny of course was happy to have the WALKIES!!! and happy to meet Sam, who visited a girls’ home during the year and predicted that the girls would have a lot of fun with my energetic boy. She did come and take Sunny for some walks during the summer. The first time was traumatic for Sunny. He didn’t understand that it was just an outing and that Sam would bring him back, so he cried piteously until Sam got him off the street. After the first few minutes, I tried going inside, in the hopes that he’d give up on the crying, but my neighbors came out instead. Sunny, having belonged to Faith and then to me, and with Faith and her family still in the neighborhood, was sort of a neighborhood mascot, and so everyone wanted to know why he was so disraught. I had to reassure them that, no, Sunny wasn’t being stolen or given away; he was just going for WALKIES!!! with someone other than me. After Sam brought him home, though, Sunny seemed to get the concept. He cried with joy the next time Sam showed up.

Things were a little rocky in getting connected with Sunny’s handlers in the fall, but we did manage to meet all three of them for the required number of hours before the testing. Lucy would get him every other Thursday, Sally and Caroline, the opposite Wednesday, giving Sunny an outing every week. Both outings were to retirement homes, and I was a little worried that he would be too exuberant for the setting. The woman in charge of the program was worried that the outings would be too much activity for Sunny, and made sure that the students all knew signs of stress in dogs.

Sunny was, of course, a hit, and he took to it like a swan to water. He was so very social that Lucy was looking into having him at a Sunday afternoon event that was under discussion to be added to the program’s schedule. Lucy also took Sunny out some times just for WALKIES!!!, which of course was OK with Sunny, and handled Sunny at a local dog organization’s dog Halloween party. Sunny wore a tuxedo and was Dog, Sunny Dog, Agent 0049 (what with dog years and all), a role he had already played at the Halloween party of Sally and Caroline’s site. One of the women in the dog organization also was involved in the student program, and she took Sunny for outings related to promoting the dog organization as well as for play sessions with her Sheltie. Sam didn’t return to the program in the spring, but that didn’t hurt Sunny. He hadn’t been so active since the days of Super Mom, and he had never gotten that much socialization. By mid year, the sounds he made while dreaming were happy yips. His tail frequently wagged during those dreams, something he never did before or since. And the whole time, I got to be at home, not being a social butterfly too.

The glorious year of course came to an end. Lucy and Sally were graduated. The next year the program managers had decided not to have pets without their caretakers in the program, so they wanted me to go. I managed to persuade them that I should be allowed a special dispensation on this, given that I am an Aspie, but by the time they were setting me up with a student, I had broken my foot—Sunny had, in his eagerness to greet a friend, pulled me down some of the front stairs, splintering one of the bones in my foot. Given the injury, I was unable to go out; given the state of my apartment, I was unable to have anyone in; and the program still required that the student spend some hours with me and Sunny together. Caroline managed to get rides a couple of times during the following spring semester and took Sunny along when she could, but then she was graduated, too. Sunny fell out of the program.

It’s hard to live with failing my boy that badly. I’ve had a foot injury ever since, however (I acquired a new, longer-term one after the bone had healed), and my apartment, although better, is still unsuitable for visitors. I have come a long way on it, but there still isn’t room for chairs or a couch in the living room, which is sort of the sine qua non of having someone in. And now my boy is starting to stress from understimulation. I tried taking him for walks this past fall, and this past weekend, it being nice weather then, but then I start to feel stressed and frantic for downtime.

I spent two years trying to be Super Mom to Sunny. Getting up earlier to walk him an hour before work, walking him an hour when I got home, walking him at least fifteen minutes in the evening just before bed, with a two-hour walk on Sunday mornings and sometimes on Saturday afternoons. For six months, I left work at lunchtime to take Sunny to another dog’s house for an afternoon of play whenever his caretaker was available, some two or three times a week, and that only ended because the dog moved out of town. I washed Sunny every Saturday, not knowing that that actually wasn’t good for him (never seemed to dry out his skin or fur, though). I developed gallbladder problems because of the high-fat diet I was eating to try to keep ahead of the ravenous hunger his WALKIES!!! schedule inspired.

I was a wreck. I’ve never been keen on the whole living concept, having to live in a society designed for people significantly unlike me, but then the wish for death was the only coherent thought that crossed my conscious mind, and boy, was I having trouble staying conscious. I even offered Sunny to his friend’s caretaker, when they were moving away, thinking that Sunny would be happier with them than he was with me. I didn’t want to give him up to just anybody: it had to be to someone who could—and would—make him happier than I could.

Then I lost my job, the summer before me and Sunny’s second anniversary. I wish I could remember exactly how my therapist phrased it in a letter to another mental-health professional: something to the effect that it was in definitely cruel and possibly illegal circumstances. There is no question that the outcome would have been less brutal if I had not been an Aspie. Suddenly I found myself having to try to find work when the only things available to someone with my education and experience were all in fast-paced, highly dynamic environments and required contact with a wide variety of humans; in short, things that an Aspie just can’t do. I did finally get diagnosed that winter, thanks to my therapist clueing in at our very first meeting, but all that got me was the ability to turn down jobs unsuitable for Aspies without risking the loss of my unemployment benefits. I just couldn’t cope any longer. Super Mom died with my job, and I stopped taking Sunny off the property at all after that autumn. I did get a job the following spring, one I could do at home, but I had had all I could take of trying to be human. I did not renew WALKIES!!! for Sunny.

He didn’t take it without protest. We’d go outside, him on his long retractable lead, the longest that they make, me on the front steps. He’d try to persuade me off the steps, and when that worked, out of the yard. I never did that one, though. Finally, Sunny stopped trying. He’d sniff the wind wistfully and stare longingly off to the streets he used to charge down, but he made no further attempt to resume his former life.

Sunny had one window of my bedroom as his. It’s still his in the winter; in warm weather it holds the air conditioner. The window is next to the bed, with a footlocker in front of it, so Sunny has a window seat, and it overlooks the wooded backyard. Not much goes on there, other than a squirrel who at one time liked to torment Sunny by hanging out in the tree nearest the window; it was obviously malicious on the squirrel’s part because the tree was so thin that there was only one branch just barely big enough for the squirrel to sit on, and it was always nearly falling out of the tree as it tried to balance on that one branch and chatter at my barking dog. Sunny liked to look out the window even when the squirrel wasn’t in evidence, though. I hated this habit back before the air conditioner because the window slams shut if it isn’t propped open, and I was forever afraid that it would slam on Sunny while he was sitting in the window and looking out.

One night late that spring, I was awoken by blood-curdling doggie screams. No, I don’t mean howls or barks. I snapped awake, convinced that the window had mortally injured my beloved boy and that he was putting his last breaths into those screams. I was astonished to see that Sunny was on the bed, not the footlocker, and that the window was wide open, propped on whatever inadequate object I had in there; I don’t remember now what it was. The screams were, however, coming from my baby guy. A quick but reasonably thorough exam revealed that he was completely asleep, but screaming his head off at whatever was hurting him in his dream.

Anyone who has had a dog has seen a canine dream, of course; generally their feet are twitching in a fashion that indicates they’re running along in their mind and there will be woofy yips or growls, as appropriate. Some of Sunny’s dreams had made me wonder if they were nightmares because the yips would seem especially frantic, but I could never be certain. There was no question in this case. In his dream, Sunny was suffering some horrendous injury and was responding as he would in real life. Real, unquestionable screams.

“It’s OK, sweetie,” I whispered as I carefully stroked his head and ears. “It’s just a dream.”

I didn’t wake him up, but apparently he heard me wherever he was. Naturally the words meant nothing to him, but Mommy’s voice in a reassuring tone did. The screams stopped. He sighed deeply and slept on.

The next day I got a cinder block to hold open the window and considered what were my options to keep the screams out of Sunny’s dream life. I couldn’t go back to the out-and-about schedule he had thrived on. I just couldn’t. But clearly he couldn’t live the life we had been living. It was just as much too much for him as the out-and-about life was for me.

This realization did not spawn any action, unfortunately. It was three or four weeks later that I was again woken by woofy screams in the night. This time I remembered instantly what the problem was. I turned to Sunny and said, “It’s all right, doodlebug,” but this time I did wake him.

Actually, he wasn’t really awake. While regaining conscious control of his body, he was still in the dream. He turned and looked up into my face, but obviously he was seeing his dream tormentor: his eyes glared with hatred, he peeled back his upper lip and, with saliva literally dripping off his bared fangs, he growled what was clearly a final warning before an attack.

“Sunny, it’s Mommy!” I gasped.

Just as suddenly he smiled, wagged his tail, and pushed his nose into my hand. He was my woofy darling once again.

I phoned the animal hospital and got their answering service. They’d be open at 8:30, I was told. That was all they could tell me.

Sunny wanted Out, so I took him there. There was another struggle with the collar, but I had learned a lot the night before: I was down to fifteen minutes. I shortly wished it had taken longer: when we got Outside, I discovered that his kids were on their way to school and were accompanied by their mother. Sunny cried with glee on seeing his pack, but Faith surprised me. I thought the whole idea was that Sunny would still be their dog and therefore retain his bond to them, but Faith told the children to say hello but not pat Sunny and walk on by. Both Sunny and I looked after them with more than a little confusion.

Well, that could certainly wait, and the fleas (I was finding it hard to say or think the word without emphasis) could not. I got myself and my stuff together. Then I called the now-open hospital. They did have the modern topical flea repellants; they insisted it was all I needed to deflea the entire house. That wasn’t what I had heard, but at that moment it didn’t matter; what I needed was to get the fleas off the dog. While I had them on the phone I also accomplished the second item on my to-do list: I made an appointment for him to see the vet on Thursday for a complete physical.

To my surprise, Sunny let me put on his collar. He didn’t seem eager about it—in fact he seemed a little uncertain about whether it was a good idea—but he had already learned the word “walkies” and was eager for them. We headed Out to the animal hospital.

The trip took a fairly long time; things look so much different in daylight than they do at night. I got my first requests to pat Sunny, and I had to reluctantly hold him back and explain that he was fighting off fleas. One little blonde girl, as much out of Disney as Sunny, was unimpressed, but her grandfather held her back and was explaining what fleas were as we walked on.

I suppose I should’ve thought that it would be undesirable to take a flea-infested dog with me through the streets and to the vet, but I couldn’t leave him home alone yet and I wanted to deal with the fleas as soon as possible. I had to grant no one said anything to me about it, but I did wonder later how many fleas we may have scattered in our path, especially after I got the flea medicine and put it on the little guy in a park on the way home. The package promised that the fleas would stop biting within the hour and that they’d be dead within twenty-four. It sounded good to me, and I’m sure Sunny would’ve been thrilled and much more cooperative about the dosing if he had known.

We got back, and I picked up the phone again to make an appointment to get Sunny shaved. He looked just fine, but the instant anyone touched him, they discovered that most of his hair was matted. There was just a thin layer covering the mess, like dirt swept under a rug. I didn’t anticipate any difficulties: there was a groomer’s less than a block away.

The groomer asked what breed my dog was.

“Cocker spaniel.”

“Oh, I don’t do spaniels. I don’t know the spaniel cuts.”

“I’m not looking for a cocker cut; I don’t like it, anyway, but that’s beside the point right now. This dog is badly matted and just needs the whole mess shaved off as soon as possible.”

“There’s a woman in Othertown—Dog Coiffure—she does a wonderful job with spaniels. They look, oh, so lovely!”

“I don’t have a car. And as I said, there’s no way to do any cut on this dog. He must be shaved.”

“I can’t do spaniels.”

“He just needs a shave! If you can shave a poodle, you can shave a spaniel!”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to call someone else.”

Click.

I sat for a moment and stared at the receiver in my hand. I was used to being more logical than those around me, but this was a new level of irrationality for someone sane enough to run a business for many years. I didn’t get it.

Later I learned from a co-worker whose sister was a dog groomer somewhere far outside town that many local groomers wouldn’t handle cocker spaniels because of their reputation for biting and her sister knew that that groomer in particular was one of them. I would’ve gladly muzzled Sunny for the local groomer for the sake of getting that mess off of him if she’d told me the real reason, but no, she had to tell a story that was obviously off the wall. The worst part was that forever afterward, whenever I met a fellow dog guardian in the neighborhood and they asked me where I got Sunny groomed, they always seemed deeply offended that I didn’t use the neighborhood groomer. I told them that if they could persuade her to do a cocker spaniel, great! Let me know.

That day, though, I turned with a sigh to the phone book to look for other groomers. I soon discovered there were very few within town and none of them were available that week. One of them told me that it was ridiculous; no one would groom Sunny within the week, and that his health was at stake didn’t phase her. I later heard from a pet-supply shop owner that that groomer was known for shaving the entire dog, even in the dead of winter, if she found even one tiny mat while grooming, and would, on the arrival of the dog’s caretakers, treat them to a lecture on what terrible care they took of their dog. Jimmy, the shop owner, told me he had sold several dog coats to irate guardians seeking to protect their dogs from our severe winter weather.

Finally I gave up and asked a co-worker if she could drive me to Dog Coiffure. May had told me that she was a dog person who currently had a cat, and so she would be glad to help me in the cause of dog care. She agreed that Friday morning would be fine. The woman at Dog Coiffure was very kind and understood exactly what I was talking about. She told me that he would look like a golden beagle when I got him back. I confirmed the time with May and turned to my next problem.

I was going to need to do something about training. I knew nothing about training dogs and knew only that I was not willing to get violent with a creature who seemed as eager to please as Sunny. He nearly died of joy whenever I said, “Good boy!” Later, as the phrase inspired increasingly less joy, I came to understand that the severe joy was the product of fear: he didn’t know anything about me. For all he knew, I intended to turn him into dinner and a stole. Knowing that sooner wouldn’t have changed my mind any, though. Punishment has a poor track record as a method of behavior modification; a serious study of it leads to the conclusion that it’s more about revenge than instruction. Revenge most certainly was not the point, even if it were conceivable for revenge to make sense with a dog. Which it isn’t.

First I called a number on a website recommended by a friend. The site belonged to someone apparently well known in the dog-training community; I had never heard of him before. I was astonished to get the man himself answering the phone, given his resume on the website, but it was only a matter of moments before he had me buying his top-level dog training program, which was $200.

I hung up feeling a little dazed, and then doubt started to creep in. I had called and said that my specific concern was separation anxiety and he had me buying his top-level program, which covered all kinds of canine behavior difficulties? Didn’t that seem like hitting a finishing nail with nuclear warhead? Aspies are easily fooled by humans; and humans enjoy playing their end. They get money, objects, effort, and amusement out of Aspies in no position to see through poorly controlled nonverbals, even when it occurs to an Aspie that a human might be lying. Because Aspies don’t lie themselves, such a realization often happens too late for the Aspie to use whatever skill they’ve got on nonverbals anyway. I debated with myself. I remembered all the times I’d been strung along by humans and then told that it was my own fault because only an idiot would’ve been taken in by whatever the current lie had been. Of course, not knowing when something is a lie also means the reverse: unless there are hard facts involved, I usually don’t know when something is not a lie either. And as I didn’t know anything about dog training, even if the program is over-kill, mightn’t it be useful? The $200 would certainly be useful, though, what with medical and grooming bills. And that guy had been trying to see what he could get out of me, hadn’t he? I may not be able to tell quite a few tones of voice apart, but I have the Aspie IQ and I have been a lifelong unwilling student of the worst in human behavior, and that guy’s behavior felt entirely wrong. Annoyed at yet another human con, I called back and cancelled my order. No, I wasn’t interested in anything of his. Maybe one of his products would’ve helped, but the sheer speed with which he hustled me to the most expensive product made him suspect, and I told him so.

I considered other alternatives. A woman from a cocker rescue whom I had met on the internet had recommended a book, The Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson, which dealt with human-dog relations as a clash of disparate cultures and had a truly positive approach to dog training. I had always had good results approaching bunny-Aspie relations as occurring across a cultural divide; the concept had long been part of the rabbit-care community. I invested my seventeen bucks with high hopes that it would deal with problems that came up with Sunny, but without any on the separation-anxiety issue. That I had to address right away, before the book would arrive. I’d have to do some more searching on the internet for that.

I suddenly realized something. Sunny had not pestered me for quite some time. He had been pretty much at me ever since his arrival: crying for his family, trying to get intimate with my limbs whenever I tried to touch him, yipping and digging at fleas while insisting on sleeping with me. He had barked at the bunny when she came out that morning, and although ceasing at my first furious “BAD!” (which I reserve for the greatest of sins, such as things that might give an elderly bunny a heart attack), he had whimpered in distress every time he saw her. She was less than pleased with his presence and inclined to be indignant about my refusal to pat her, but I figured it was better to have her merely upset than infested and therefore also upset. With the groomer hassle to the bargain, I had serious doubts about the whole dog thing. Once I realized the absentness of him, however, I looked next to me on the couch, and there he was, curled up, sleeping—really sleeping, not the disturbed doze that was the best the fleas had permitted him before. He had the very tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth, something I would soon discover was as usual a part of sleeping for him as sleeping next to someone. It seemed to me that I had never seen anything quite as cute, and bunnies, mind you, are cute.

I was ashamed of myself. Here was this poor little creature who had not had a decent sleep in who knew how long; who had been struggling with a parasitic illness for, again, who knew how long; who had lost everything he knew; and who found himself with a stranger he didn’t know if he could trust. And I was moping about sore muscles, lack of sleep for one night, and a heavier than usual dose of human contact. I at least owed the furry guy a chance to show me who he was when he didn’t feel sick and terrified before I started doubting our ability to get along. Nobody is easy to live with under those conditions.

Being careful not to disturb him, I curled around him on the couch and had a nap myself. Later it became clear that I probably could’ve taken a lot less care: I was awake a couple of hours later, but Sunny slept for eighteen hours straight.