I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship (20 page)

With the dominance at least in check, we had to address her unrequited wanderlust, so that Bridget didn't end up on the wrong end of a hunter's rifle in the plentiful woods surrounding our home (even
I
have mistaken her tan, rust, and black camouflage coat for a fleeing deer amid the autumn woods), or meet a premature end courtesy of a passing car. Used to her freedom since infancy, being contained in an acre-sized yard was practically solitary confinement for Bridget, whom we'd learned was part Blue Heeler, an Australian dingo-canine marriage bred to nip at the heels of wayward cattle to keep them in line. Whenever we take Bridget hiking, she runs loops around us, as if to herd us along according to some mysterious genetic dogma. The irony did not escape us that a dog tasked with corralling other creatures defied corralling herself. She has the speed of a cheetah and can accelerate from zero to sixty faster than a Mustang convertible. So being limited to the confines of a quasi-rural suburbia wasn't exactly to her liking.

We took to calling Bridget the
Pickup Truck Dog Living in the Minivan World
. Poor thing was ill suited to a universe not completely of her own free will. When the standard electric fence failed to restrain her escapist tendencies (I swear she sat there smugly buffing her nails, puffing her breath to polish them up just as she steeled herself for the breakout each time), we knew we had to graduate up to the “stubborn dog collar.”

Powered by a nine-volt battery in a fist-sized pack, the collar issues a plentiful jolt to any border-crossing violator who dares compromise its perimeter. Finally we were able to somewhat confine Lulu to prevent her from being hit by a car (or terrifying elderly passersby and impressionable children with what ultimately became a rather menacing ice blue glare she'd mastered). We still recall the guilt-inducing moment at which Bridget first tried to breach her mother-of-all-dog-fences: She let out a yelp so long and loud that our parrot immediately picked it up and began repeating it, just to make us feel worse (even if it was for her own safety). This fence didn't always keep Lulu in; rather, it gave her pause to consider long and hard whether it was worth the zap. So at least her meanderings dropped from daily to quarterly. Progress, in our estimation.

The barking, however, seemed to defy any and all of our attempts to subdue it. We've been told it's the husky in her, but whatever it is, her barking is the hallmark and bane of our lives. Bridget barks to get in, she barks to go out, she barks to go up, she barks to come down. She barks to get fed, she barks because she doesn't want food. She barks at houseguests, our neighbors' houseguests, probably at houseguests in the neighborhood adjacent to ours. She barks at the mailman, the UPS man, the FedEx man. If we had a gardener, she'd bark at him (or her). She barks at people walking by, dogs walking by, cars driving by, birds flying by, bunnies hopping by, deer gamboling by, squirrels, mice, cats, tumbling leaves, mist, enveloping fog, fear-instilling thunder, jangling telephones, and our wing-flapping parrot. You name it, she barks at it.

Yes, attempts were made to curb the behavior. Clicker training—known to work even on feral cats!—meant to whip Bridget into obedience shape worked basically only when Bridget wanted it to. That would be when she was in the mood for the malodorous liver treats that worked best. Unfortunately, Bridget has always been an eat-to-live dog (unlike our live-to-eat Labrador, who would probably tap dance while whistling “Dixie” if it meant getting more food), and more often than not couldn't care less about a freebie Scooby Snack. Fact is, the only thing we had that she really wanted was her freedom.

And so one night when my husband was away and I was hosting a large gathering of women from the neighborhood for a ladies night out party, Bridget's barking became too much. Despite the deafening din of the chatter of nearly a hundred women, Bridget's shrill, ear-piercing bark each time the doorbell rang was threatening to ruin the party. Now, I know that everyone “in the know” in the dog world sees nothing wrong with crating a dog. Sure, crating has its purposes. But crating Bridget in particular always gave me pause, because despite her love of a good cave to protect her from an abiding fear of impending storms (trust me, she's crashed her way out of all containment vessels, scratched her way out of drywall and even wall-to-wall carpeting when the crack of thunder or fireworks is upon us), she loathed being stuffed in a dog crate. But I knew it might be my only chance at silencing the thing. I tried to placate her with a large beef bone. Bridget had what's called a hard mouth and could chew her way through stainless steel if given enough time, so we'd abandoned cute little puppy toys—which ended in shreds and shards—in favor of the more durable beef shank bones, which I'd boil and stuff with cheese or peanut butter. I'm fairly certain hundreds of years hence, archaeologists will encounter countless cow femurs buried in the myriad holes that Bridget has dug in our once pristine yard and will wonder what kind of legs-only creature once must have roamed this land.

Sure enough, for the duration of the party, Bridget remained quiet in her spacious cage in the darkened mudroom. Somewhere in that reptilian area of my brain that senses impending disaster, I knew that she was stewing. Stewing and scheming. I just felt it in my bones. But a few glasses of wine later, I was sufficiently lubricated into a false level of trust in our little beastie girl.

A few weeks earlier I'd overheard a neighbor at a Christmas party lamenting, “And she just barks and barks and barks.”

Still fairly new to our town, I was especially sensitive to our dog's intrusive ways.

“I hope you're not talking about Bridget,” I said with more than a bit of trepidation.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” she replied, minus any warm smile that would have assured me it was fine.

So when another invited neighbor couldn't attend my party because she had to awaken at four in the morning to catch a flight, I knew I didn't want Bridget to pull her usual shenanigans post-party and sneak out to bark at the moon and various nocturnal creatures when I wasn't looking.

Nearing midnight, as I focused my attention on hauling several leaking and bottle-laden garbage bags out the back door, that opportunistic canine, obscured from my view by the bags, thrust her way past my legs and took off into the night.

Dismayed, I at first stood on our back deck and naively tried kindness to coax Bridget into coming back into the house. Bridget, by then at the bottom of a steep seventy-degree hill that leads to our soccer-field-length backyard, was well beyond reach, and barking nonstop. Chasing the thing through land mines of dog poop and dug holes (her specialty) was not going to yield my prize. So I spoke with the mellifluous voice of a parent to a newborn, hoping cooler heads would prevail.

“Come on, sweetie,” I cajoled.

Nothing.

“I'll give you a tre-at!” I promised, extending the word into two syllables.

If Bridget could have stuck up one paw and extended that middle digit my way, she would have. Instead she resumed her bark-a-thon.

After a good half hour of failed kindness, I tried wile. Maybe not SPCA-endorsed wile, but wile nonetheless. I went inside and picked up our aging, user-friendly calico cat, Hobbes, till then soundly sleeping on the sofa, and carried her out to the deck.

And then I did something I'm particularly not proud of: I held Hobbes aloft in a precursor to Michael Jackson on the balcony in Germany with his baby boy Blanket before his throng of adoring fans, and suspended the cat to tempt Bridget to come in. Okay, so I was tired. And I figured Bridget always loved a good cat bark session, so surely she'd fall for the old kitty-dangling maneuver, right?

But matching my exhausted-mom-of-three-and-four-glasses-of-wine-induced stupor to her perpetually alert wits was useless. Again came the one-finger salute. Figuratively, of course.

I then took to stewing in my
own
juices. By then a good hour had passed. It was after one in the morning; I was exhausted. My bark-averse neighbor was no doubt dialing the police to lodge a complaint. The other one was going to start her vacation exhausted and pissed at me. Since Bridget was nearly as fast as a gazelle, a chase would never land in the win column for me. What I needed, I knew, was a lasso. But I didn't have anything resembling that (nor the skills to use it).

Now understand, my brain was fogged. Logic was not at the forefront. But I remembered from obedience classes that a spray bottle of vinegar water works to stop bad behavior in dogs. Only she was far out of reach of my little spray bottle. But I remembered using a can of wasp spray one time and, damn, that stuff shot far. I picked up the phone, dialing the emergency vet.

“Hi,” I said, warming up for the stupid question. “I was wondering, if I sprayed wasp spray at a dog just to temporarily disable her, would that endanger her?”

“Um, can I please have your name and address?” the vet tech asked.

Realizing that animal services would soon be two steps behind the police who were no doubt heading my way, I hung up. Okay, clearly wasp spray was toxic and a bad idea. But what? What could lure an intractable and deliberately defiant canine at what was then two in the morning? And then it came to me. In the dead of winter, on a frigid January night, while Bridget continued to bark undeterred, I fired up the gas grill and went inside to unearth a package of desiccated hot dogs buried in the bowels of my freezer. With a sharp knife and mallet, I hammered at the slab of rock-hard meat until two hot dogs gave way. And then I slapped those puppies on the grill.

I wondered if any neighbors noticed in their sleep the acute aroma of cooking hot dogs floating across the cold night air (and wonder what insane person was barbecuing at that hour). But I had my plan. And when the smell seemed to overtake even the hint of skunk that often lingers late at night, I knew it was time. I grabbed my frankfurters and proceeded down the steep hill to the flat yard.

“Hey, Bridge,” I cooed.

“Look what I've got for yo-u!” I singsonged, knowing she was bullshit-proof but feeling desperate enough to give it a go anyway.

First she stopped barking for a minute. Then she brazenly made eye contact with me. I tried the “I'm the boss” stare, fixing my gaze upon hers with riveting intensity. Ever so slowly I inched forward, like a cop trying to persuade the bad guy to drop the gun. And I dangled those weenies, closer and closer.
Promise, I'll get the judge to reduce your sentence if you just come willingly
.

And finally,
whomp!
Straight out of the fairy tale in which the fox chomps down on the Gingerbread Man, Bridget made her move, snatching at one of the hot dogs in a front-back pivot attempt to grab and go. But I was pissed, and a defiant dog is no match for an angry, exhausted me in the middle of the night. I reached down, grabbed her collar, and marched her up the hill without benefit of a hot dog reward, which I flung in the woods for some other wild creature to enjoy, while strains from the ebullient victory march in
Peter and the Wolf
played in my mind.

Over the years, Bridget has mellowed. And despite the frustrations with her defiance, we love our girl and appreciate that much of her dominance, at least in her mind, is for our own good: She's got our backs, even if it means she's not exactly in close proximity while she has them.

I've always felt bad that we didn't have the time to channel Bridget's energies by training her with canine agility classes, or even dog Frisbee. She was ready-made for such fun. But the other side of that is she's had a long, happy, and somewhat independent life with us. Had we not rescued her, or had she been adopted by someone who then listened to the advice and got rid of her, Bridget would never have lived to see a decade of life, because she would have been put down.

As she climbs into her twilight years, she can't always run like she used to. Two torn ACLs keep her down occasionally, rendering her a bit like a thoroughbred left to pasture. But sometimes she'll muster up the same eff-you attitude she used to use with the stubborn dog fence and will spring into action to chase some deer or a rabbit. Her hard mouth has become softer; bad dental genes have left her with a tooth deficit. And the older she gets, the more she is hamstrung by impending storms (some internal barometer of hers has always warned her hours beforehand). But Bridget has remained loyal and loving and every day we are so grateful we didn't listen to that well-intended advice to get rid of our adorable little pooch. She's enriched our lives probably more than we hers, and even when she is gone she will be immortalized for the rest of Graycie's life each time the parrot warns our Smoochie girl not to eat her by saying, “Bridget, no! You're a bad, bad girl!”

Are You Smarter Than a Terrier?

Beth Kendrick

I picked out Murphy the way I imagine a socially stunted middle-aged man might select an Eastern European mail-order bride: late at night, hopped up on processed snack foods, guided only by an Internet profile featuring a few grainy photos and a paragraph of personal history.

But I didn't need a bunch of nitty-gritty details. One look and I knew—I'd found my soul mate.

“Look at this one.” I called my husband over to check out the listing on
Petfinder.com
. “Look at that darling little face! And those ears. We were meant to be—I can feel it.”

“Are you sure you wouldn't rather get a goldfish?” He barely glanced at the flickering picture of the scruffy terrier mix who bore a striking resemblance to Max from
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
. “Maybe a nice hermit crab?”

I didn't dignify that with a response. Larry and I had gotten married three months earlier, and before we walked down the aisle, we'd hammered out a verbal prenup: I would start rooting for the New York Jets, and he would agree to adopt the dog of my choosing. (Full disclosure: I'm still a Bears fan. But I didn't tell him that until after we were up to three dogs.)