I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship (5 page)

I grew up with a variety of canine companions and can barely remember my life without a dog in it. My family adopted Samantha, a small, sleek shepherd mix, on my fifth birthday. Although Sam seemed to take pleasure in being around “her people,” her demeanor was decidedly cool and patrician. Sam wasn't the kind of pup who'd try to sneak up on the couch next to me. She eschewed the notion of sleeping curled up on the end of my or my brother's bed, instead opting to sleep downstairs on the braided rug by the back door.

Sam was never a jumper, but not because she wasn't capable. In fact, she mastered the ability to fly over our six-foot fence at will, even at fourteen years of age. Rather, I suspect she never pounced all over visitors because it simply wasn't dignified. Ditto on begging for table scraps. If she'd been human, she'd have the Waspy, detached elegance of Grace Kelly or Lauren Bacall. Her dinner would consist of gin, tonic, and cigarettes, and she'd quietly bemoan how Bar Harbor was starting to attract “not our kind, dear.”

In terms of play, Sam preferred to entertain herself, thank you very much. At the beginning of every summer, we'd dig out her tennis balls and Frisbees. The second we opened our in-ground pool, Sam would spend hours dropping her toy du jour into the serene blue oasis, then pawing at the water to change the current so that her Frisbee or ball would float back to her in the most expedient manner. We'd try to engage her in games of fetch, but as soon as she caught whatever we'd fling, she'd spirit that item back to the water, thus playing her own version of keep-away.

In my teens, my parents adopted an adorable fluff-ball named Juneau. She was a keeshond mix and embodied everything Sam didn't. Juneau was snuggly, sweet, solicitous, and more than a little stupid. All she wanted to do was be near us and, if it wasn't too much trouble, please have a bite or ten of whatever we were eating.

Juneau loved Sam exactly as much as Sam loathed Juneau. Sam went so far as to figure out how to open the doggie gate between the family room and breakfast nook, using her pointed nose to close it behind her in an effort to escape Juneau's unbound enthusiasm. Sam lived longer than any dog we've had since, primarily, we believe, out of spite.

After we lost Sam, my parents wanted a purebred. My father's secretary researched farms in the tristate area and my parents opted to do business with the cheapest possible provider.
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They brought home George, who grew to be a handsome hundred-and-thirty-pound Great Pyrenees . . . with a taste for my mother's blood. Although I secretly commended him for not tolerating my mother's passive aggression, in all fairness they really couldn't have a dog who actively tried to assassinate her. After extensive work with the vet, a trainer, prescription medication, a shock collar, and a self-titled “doggie psychologist,” poor Georgie went the way of the dodo. And Juneau finally grew back all the fur she'd lost on her tail due to stress.

King George's reign of terror was followed by Ted. Ted was a massive purebred Newfoundland who did not want to kill any of my family. In fact, he was so concerned about our safety and well-being that he'd burst through plate glass windows in order to rescue us from the pool. We couldn't curb this behavior, despite our best efforts, and we were terrified he'd hurt himself. Spooked by her experience with George, my mother insisted we return Ted to the breeder. The breeder, in turn, promised Teddy would be sent to a Newfoundland rescue group. But apparently that was too much effort, so the breeder simply put him down for no reason other than the poor dog acting on his instincts.

I've yet to forgive anyone in this scenario.

Because of my limited, terrible experience with breeders who more than likely were actually puppy mills, I pledged to myself that I would only ever adopt dogs. My parents were equally rattled, deciding that the line of Lancaster dogs would end with Juneau.

After I'd been in college awhile, I adopted an enormous malamute-Akita mix. Nixon was both a gentleman and a scholar, friendly to all walks of life. We'd stroll across campus and students would stop in their tracks to bask in his magnificence. Social and particularly affable, Nick enjoyed going to parties with me almost as much as he liked sharing my bed. This was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I'd finally gotten my dream of having a dog that'd sleep beside me. On the other, he was a hundred and twenty pounds and I had a twin mattress.

Nixon knew that as soon as I got up to turn out the overhead light, he could jump onto my bed and claim prize sleeping position, so I tried to outsmart him one night. I flipped the switch, and instead of leisurely picking my way through the dark, I dove straight at my bed. But Nick was one step ahead of me and was already in the air when I leapt. This resulted in a minor concussion on my part. After that, I resigned myself to curling up on a quarter of the mattress.

When I brought Nixon to my parents' house for the first time, Juneau was beside herself. She never realized she could meet another dog who
actually liked her
.

She was smitten.

And yet no one was more smitten than my father. The feeling was mutual. When my dad and Nixon were in a room together, it was like no one else even existed. Whereas I'd adopted Nick as my companion, my father found in him a soul mate.
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The more time we all spent together, the more I saw that Nixon was better suited to life at my parents' house than at my small campus apartment (and bed).

Nick spent a halcyon week with my folks while I was on spring break, after which my dad told me in no uncertain terms, “Nixon lives here now.” I certainly could have argued, but everyone was so happy that it just didn't make sense not to honor the arrangement. Nick lived almost a decade longer than his breed's expected lifespan specifically because he had such a great life full of long walks and daily jaunts into town for sausage biscuits.

My husband's experience with dogs was far more limited. As a child he had a particularly bite-y, highly strung poodle. All he ever wanted was a “proper” dog, like a Doberman or a Rottweiler.
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He loved seeing Nixon and Juneau, and each visit to my parents' house strengthened our resolve to get our own.

However, the timing for adoption was all wrong. We were both putting in crazy hours at our technology jobs, and getting a dog made as much sense as getting a neck tattoo. We'd never be home, and we thought our schedules would be so unfair to the dog. Plus, we lived in a fourth-floor walk-up. To perform the simple act of potty, we'd have to go up and down a hundred steps and then walk a block before we got to any grass. Multiply this by four times a day for an adult dog and that was four hundred stairs. I couldn't even imagine how many steps it would take to housebreak a puppy; I'd have to send off to NASA for that kind of math. Our dream of dog ownership would have to wait until we moved into a bigger place with fewer stairs.

The universe, of course, had other plans.

I lost my high-powered executive position during the dot-com crash of late 2001 and suddenly found myself with an extra sixty hours a week. Try as I might, my job search proved fruitless.
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As I had nothing better to do with my time, I started volunteering at a no-kill dog shelter.

At no point did anyone mention this shelter specialized in pit bull rescue, so that was an unexpected, unwanted surprise on my first day. I'll admit I bought into the media's characterization of the breed . . . that is, until I actually worked with them. I couldn't believe how dogs coming from the most abusive situations could still have enough faith in humanity to let us volunteers touch their sweet, scarred muzzles and pet their emaciated bodies.

I met dogs who'd lived through the worst of everything. They'd been beaten and fought and overbred. They'd been fed gunpowder and had bottle caps sewn under their skin so they'd be more aggressive. Some of them had no ears after having been docked not by a skilled veterinarian, but sliced off by their gangbanger owners. Some had huge pink scabs from where they were burned with acid as a punishment for refusing to fight. Yet the minute I'd approach their cages, they'd wag their entire bodies. These poor creatures weren't angry about the past; rather, they were simply grateful for the present. Within a single volunteering shift, pit bulls won me over with their affable personalities, enormous doggie smiles, and innate desire to make humans happy.

I was smitten.

So when asked to foster a couple of puppies due to shelter overcrowding, I agreed, but only on a very short-term basis. I mean, although the puppies in question were cute, it wasn't like I could keep them or anything. Seriously, do you know how many stairs that'd mean?

I mean, yes, I'd care for them temporarily, but I wasn't quite ready to change my whole life for them. I was still too selfish. I wouldn't stand for the kind of living beings that could destroy a prize pair of Chanel slingbacks in the ten seconds it took to answer a ringing phone. I wasn't someone who'd make the late-night vet run, shelling out three hundred bucks after the dog had an allergic reaction to the Crème de la Mer she consumed. And I certainly wasn't the kind of person who'd get up at the asscrack of dawn, roll out of bed, and throw on a pair of her husband's sweatpants to take dogs on their first of four hundred daily jaunts outside.

Except apparently I was.

What I forgot that fateful day I agreed to foster the puppies is that no needy creature who enters my house ever leaves. Case in point? The six cranky, elderly cats I'd taken in during college.
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So, much like those couples who find themselves pregnant years before they planned, Fletch and I became dog owners.

All his life, Fletch yearned for a dog that was powerful and smart and obedient. He wanted a noble beast with confidence and quiet dignity and strong lines. When pressed for what kind he wanted, he'd simply reply, “I want an ABP.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“Anything But Poodle.”

Our puppy Loki fit the bill nicely in looks and personality. He quickly learned to respond to voice and hand commands and seemed to possess an innate intelligence. He had many classic shepherd features, but due to his black fur (save for white patches on his chest and backside) he was more exotic than the garden-variety shepherd. His legs were longer than the breed standard and his chest slightly more narrow. Fletch explained that Loki's leg and chest shape indicate the kind of dog built to plow through snow, so we speculated he was part husky, too. After watching a program on wolves, we determined that Loki was only a few genes away from his lupine predecessors. Because we enjoyed the contrarian notion of having a dog directly descended from a wild animal, we'd tell people he was part wolf.
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Maisy, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of Loki. We knew she was some kind of pit bull terrier, but assumed she, too, had a mixed parentage. Where Loki was long and lean and snout-y, Maisy was short and stocky with a small underbite. We thought maybe there was a little English bulldog in her recent history.
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Maisy was tan and white and rounded in all the areas where Loki was dark and angular. She was desperate to connect with people, whereas Loki was mostly interested in other dogs. Loki was obedient, yet with Maisy we quickly learned there's nothing more tenacious than a terrier.

The one thing these dogs had in common was they were absolutely going to be best friends for life.

Between all the stairs and the dogs' appetite for designer footwear
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and table legs, the first few months of puppyhood were difficult. We worked hard to instill discipline in the dogs, following all the commands dictated in our training books. We did our best to keep the dogs from jumping on people, to teach them to stay off the furniture, and to discourage any kind of begging at the table. And at night, the dogs slept not with us, but with their backs pressed against each other in their side-by-side crates.

After we'd had the dogs for a while, my husband lost his job, too, as part of the whole dot-com fallout. To save money, we moved to a different apartment. Although we weren't thrilled about the downgrade in lifestyle, we were thankful to live in a building with significantly fewer stairs.

The day we moved was long and stressful and disorganized. Fletch and I were ready to drop when bedtime rolled around and neither of us had the energy to assemble the dogs' crates. “I think they'll be fine for one night,” Fletch assured me. We set up a pile of blankets and pillows in the corner of the room and then fell into our own bed, exhausted.

When I woke up in the morning, I found myself being spooned . . . only not by my husband. At some point in the night, Maisy had not only climbed onto the bed, but worked her way down under the covers, shoving her broad chest up against my back and resting her sweet face on my pillow.

Here's the thing about pit bulls—their will is stronger than yours, period, hard stop. Once they find something they like, they'll spend the rest of their lives attempting to replicate that action. And now that Maisy had a taste of sleeping in the bed, she was not about to ever climb back into that damn crate like a sucker.

And if
Maisy
wasn't sleeping in a crate then
Loki
wasn't, either.

Now this? Right here? Is the exact day the balance of power began to shift in our household.

Sensing our weakness, slowly but surely the dogs began to assert their will. Over time we found that we didn't sit on the couch alone anymore. Sleeping in the bed became a group effort, and eventually we had to upgrade to a king mattress to accommodate everyone. Dinner à deux became a family affair, with dogs casting long and meaningful glances from our plates to forks to mouths, as if to say, “Do you
really
need that last bite of sausage, fatty?” And Maisy, tired of crossing her legs all night to compensate for her unusually small bladder, would occasionally let go on the small braided rug by our back door.
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