Sometimes, when dealing with my large white dog, whose name this week is Zeno for the stoic philosopher, I wonder what exactly I was thinking when I tried to find the most problem ridden dog listed on petfinder. Notice how close wonder and wander are. They frequently occur together i.e. after you have been wandering for awhile, you wonder what hell you were thinking when you came up with what seemed like a grand plan at the time.
So I acquired this beautiful white boy who is old beyond his years. He does things M, his foster mom warned me about, like sitting down abruptly and with no absolutely no ambivalence and refusing to move one step further which he did today, in front of the pet store door. What dog refuses to enter a large edifice filled with the makings of doggie dreams? Mine of course. As I stood on the sidewalk foolishly bargaining and pleading with him to "Just try it", "Check it out", all my cute phrases he does not understand. He sat down in the manner of a great punctuation point as he does, meaning this particular sentence is going no further. So back we went to the car. Why force it? I have quickly learned to let go of pride and the notion of giving in to him as some kind of defeat. Really, if I wanted a being that could speak my language and I could argue with, debate, persuade and encourage with my infallible logic as to why the pet store is a fabulous place to enter, I should have adopted a child, not a dog. So I am left with letting it go and spending no more time agonizing over it than he did.
All parents should have to raise a dog like this before they raise children. In the space of three short weeks, I have learned to control my emotions or at least disguise them from the emotion making machine that Zeno is. I have come to realize, reluctantly, that this is all about him and how far he is capable of progressing, not how far I want him to go. I realize that sometimes I will have to make excuses for my dog instead of being proud of him as in me trotting after him at the dog park today like a manic machine, repeating mindlessly, "Sorry, he's scared of strangers", "Oh yes, just ignore the growling, he won't bite", "Please don't touch my dog, he doesn't like hands".
And yet who can argue with his beauty, his noble bearing and most of all his ability to forgive? Would I have forgiven the human race if what had been done to him was done to me? I think not. As with children, the more difficult it becomes, the more attached and invested one becomes and while the rest of the world nods sympathetically secretly thinking, "Thank god that's not me", I take him home and wonder (there's that word again) if their dog could possibly show the affection and love mine does to the only person in the world he trusts completely. I suspect the people on this website www.fearfuldogs.com know what I mean. And yes, some days I dream of taking him back to the north country from whence he came and returning to my sane, calm, predictable life I had only a month ago. But he and I both know you don't take your children back and how could you, really?
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