Rhymes with Safari

I’ve been waiting to say goodbye to this year since Feb. 2. I might be a little premature in doing so now… something else awful could still happen! But today was my last day at work for the year, and I’m in the mood to do some reflecting.

In a way, 2011 was the worst year of my life. Isis’ death certainly was the low point of my last 25 years.

Something wonderful happened this year too. We found Mia. More precisely, Rob’s sister knew someone who was looking for a home for an apparently abandoned dog. Our Mia.

Never mind how anyone could abandon any dog, we can’t imagine how anyone could abandon Mia. She’s a wonderful dog and obviously was meant to be ours, which she proved by hopping in my car within minutes of meeting us, saying, “All right, let’s do this!” She didn’t even ask us anything like, “How many walks will I go on a week?” “What sort of diet will you be feeding me?” “How many hours will I be left alone each day?”

Rob said the other day, “Can you believe there was a time we weren’t sure if we were going to take Mia?”

She’s done wonders to restore peace, balance and happiness to our home. She’s been an excellent mentor for Leo. Even though I’m pretty sure she’s the one who told him how to escape the yard via the creek. Of course, she would never stray from our property, but Leo’s made a break for it twice, so we’re going to go ahead and fence that side of the yard.

And now we have two dogs, just like I always wanted. (Of course, one of those dogs was supposed to be Isis. We still have Isis-shaped holes in our hearts, as a fellow student in my memoir class described it.) I walked them both this morning on the wooded trail near our house, bundled up in fleece long underwear and a wool hat, admiring the frost growing on broken branches like a glistening white fungus. I meant to walk just Leo, but Mia slipped out the door ahead of us, so I grabbed her leash and took her along.

A few years ago, I had the sad realization that I never would be able to walk Isis safely on that trail. The path is too narrow and winding, so joggers and other dogs came upon us with little warning, triggering Isis’ vicious barking frenzy. I tried walking her during off-hours, but the last straw was having her pull me off my feet and drag me through the mud so she could sink her teeth into a black lab’s butt. The lab was unharmed, but its owner was not amused.

I thought I would never walk that trail again, not foreseeing a time when I would have a different dog, dogs even, who could be trusted on that narrow, winding trail. I used to be jealous of a guy I’d see walking two mellow rottweilers. Now I’m the woman walking the two huge German shepherds. They’re not perfect in public. Leo likes to grab Mia’s leash and at specific points on our route, they devolve into a National Geographic display of wildlife, rearing up on their hind legs and snarling at each other. All in play, of course, but tell that to the passing motorists who just catch the tableau of two entwined dogs with their leashes tangled around me.

Walking them was the highlight of my day.

Leo and Mia are best friends. They chew on each other’s faces and make growly sounds that sound like chanting Tibetan monks. They each take one end of a squeaky toy and tug. When I take Leo for a walk by himself, he stalls on the driveway, as if to say, “Wait, isn’t Mia coming?”

Mia had a tooth pulled and Leo spent hours licking that side of her face, and she let him, even offered her face to him, so he’d keep doing it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to come home and see them sniffing around the front yard, since they were in the fenced yard with Rob when I left. It was quite a mystery at first, because Rob was in the shower, and the front door and side gate were still closed. Later I realized that they’d squeezed through the blackberry bushes on the creek side of the house and escaped to the front yard.

A day or so later, Leo came trotting around that side of the house by himself while I was bringing groceries in from my car. Even though Mia was smart enough to stay in back that time, I realized that she was probably the ring leader, since she is accustomed to a life unrestrained by fences, and Leo’s lived here a year without figuring out he could escape via that side of the house. We put up some chain link to keep them in. They’ve hung out together a few times in the bushes since then, but haven’t been able to get past the chain link.

Other than that, Mia has  been a perfect angel. She has no bad habits at all, and has been a very good influence on Leo. He destroys stuff less often — although when he destroys stuff, he destroys it really bad — he has almost completely stopped attention seeking by attacking Rob’s ankles and legs, and he spends more time curled up peacefully, rather than looking for trouble.

My dentist, a dog aficionado, warned me that rescue dogs are really well-behaved at first, so grateful are they to be in a loving home. After six weeks, though, they realize that you’re going to keep them around and they start showing their true selves. No, no, not my Mia, I thought. Her true self is sweet and mellow. Even the folks at the vet are impressed with her temperament.

But Leo’s demon self might be a more powerful influence than I thought. This morning, Rob found them in the backyard, poised like two zombies over a carcass, ripping out the innards of a lawn chair cushion. Both of them! Not just Leo while Mia watched. She was right there with him, participating in the depravity.

Later, while Rob was working out in the studio, the two dogs waited outside the door, as they usually do. When he came out, he found the shattered remains of a ceramic skull, left on the doorstep like some kind of ominous warning.

Maybe we shouldn’t let them watch The Walking Dead with us anymore.

Last Tuesday, Rob’s mom called me and said, “There’s a four-and-a-half-year-old female German shepherd whose owners moved away and abandoned it.”

Naturally, because Isis was four-and-a-half when she died, she thought we’d want this one. I was stunned, because while I did want to rescue another shepherd someday, I thought Rob’s parents would be the least receptive to the idea, considering it would be more work for them. They’re damn dutiful dog grandparents, not only staying at our house when we’re out of town, but also coming over every day if we ask them, to let the dog(s) out while we’re at work. The situation with Isis and Leo was so stressful, I thought Rob’s parents would say “Noooooooo,” if I told them we were getting another dog.

So this was an unexpected turn. When Rob got home from work, I opened with that same line his mom gave me. He said, “I don’t want to hear about it,” which actually, may have been because he thought I was telling him about a sad tale, rather than a potentially happy opportunity. Or maybe it was just that his first reaction, like mine, was, “Oh, it’s too soon. Leo’s still so much trouble. SO much trouble.” But I’d already told the woman who had the abandoned dog she should text me a photo. Thinking of Isis, I’d decided the first condition was that she be really, really beautiful.

I couldn’t tell much about her face from this picture, but the text that accompanied it said, “This is Mia. She is sweet, but sad. Needs a good home.” I showed it to Rob. He said he’d go with me to meet her. Which was HUGE, because long ago, when I first started pining for a puppy, he wouldn’t even go with me “just to look” at dogs. Then he said he was looking forward to meeting her.

Then we both started getting our hopes up.

We took Leo with us to meet her Saturday. We planned what we would say, how we would know whether the other had decided definitely no. We said we weren’t necessarily bringing her home that day, but it was a possibility.

The people who were fostering her lived on a reservation. I knew there was a strong possibility there would be loose dogs around, which would agitate Leo, but not to the extent it would have agitated Isis. I was right. As soon as we pulled in the driveway, a German shepherd who looked a lot older than four-and-a-half ran up to the car along with several other dogs of all sizes. Leo went berserker. We got out of the car and moved closer to the house to get the dogs out of Leo’s field of vision. A small pitbull mix lifted his leg and peed on my front tire.

My first thought at seeing Mia was, “Oh, she’s too old. Rob’s not going to want her, because Isis was so puppy-like. He wants a dog who will be more like Isis.” The cell phone photo had been framed conveniently to not show how gray Mia’s muzzle is. We introduced ourselves and spent a few minutes watching Mia interact with the other dogs. I asked her foster mom some questions, but I didn’t learn much. Her neighbors got Mia from some people in Mount Vernon. Then they couldn’t take care of her. Leo was barking the whole time.

We decided to see what Leo thought of her so I went to the car to get him. Despite the fact that he did not for one second stop barking the entire time we had been there, and it had been at most 10 minutes, he’d managed to get a hold of the squishy head pillow I’d attached to my headrest. Little white beads were all over the back of my car. “Oh, Leo,” I thought. “You little rascal.” Then I realized that he’d not only torn apart the little pillow, but had taken a huge chunk out of the seat itself! He was so revved up by the other dogs running around outside that he took it out on my car seat! And this is a dog who is not remotely reactive or dog aggressive. Evidently, he was really freaked out.

Rattled, but undeterred, I took Leo over to Mia, and they introduced themselves to each other in what I believe to be the customary way among German shepherds. Some sniffing, a bark or two. They didn’t immediately start romping together, but you could tell they weren’t going to be mortal enemies.

Something about her. She was older than we expected. Gray around the muzzle. Leo didn’t immediately say, “Hey, wanna be my new best friend?” But she wagged her tail when we spoke to her. And she ran around with a soccer ball in her mouth.

Her foster mom clearly did not want to keep her. If we took her home and it wasn’t a perfect fit, neither one of us would be willing to take her back.

We said, let’s do it.

With the windows down on the drive home, we felt like we were inside a snow globe. Those little white beads flew all over the place, getting in our dogs’ eyes, in my Diet Pepsi. Everywhere. (Later I went through two cycles at the car wash vacuum and still didn’t get them all.) At least it distracted me from the more permanent damage to the car seat.

In the two days since, Leo and Mia have been getting to know each other. She does resource-guard food and toys from him, and will lift her upper lip and snarl if she thinks he’s going to take them. But she’ll let me take a toy from her, and walk close to her while she’s eating, and that’s more important anyway. He pestered her a lot that first day, walking up to her and trying to engage her by barking in her face. She’d tell him a harsh word or two, and they seem to be working things out and are doing that less now.

The first night, they fell asleep on our bedroom floor, nose to nose. It made me so happy I could cry.

Mia hasn’t done anything naughty like chew on anything she’s not supposed to. She’s housebroken and even seems to be trained not to get on the furniture, which of course is a habit we hope to break. This morning she jumped on the bed for the first time and rolled on her back happily to let us snuggle with her. We were thrilled.

Leo, who is not Mr. Affectionate, gets jealous when we talk to her and pet her, so I take those opportunities to smother him with kisses, which he allows. Leo’s also been pestering us less. Now he bites Mia’s ankles when he wants to play, not Rob’s.

I took her to the vet today and learned that she is microchipped, but the chip is not registered, which, to me, means she’s ours for good. The vet also thinks she’s closer to seven years old, but that she has the teeth of a younger dog. (German shepherds are like that, because they have normal-shaped mouths, she said.) Everything about her looked healthy…except…she has some kind of mass around the bone of her hind leg.

While she was being X-rayed to see if it was a broken bone healed wrong (it was not) and aspirated to see if it’s a tumor, I thought, “Oh, shit. 2011, you bastard. You’re going to take away another dog and break my heart again.” I’m not going to spend thousands of dollars on MRIs and aggressive treatment for this dog, although we love her already. The best we can do is pay for whatever medical care to make her comfortable and give her a loving home.

The vet came back and said when she aspirated it, only fat tissue came out, so she thinks it’s a lipoma. It’s not causing Mia any noticeable discomfort, but could if it gets bigger. I can deal with that. We’ll keep an eye on it and treat it later if it starts to hurt.

Since we didn’t have to pay an adoption fee, I was perfectly happy to pay the $200 vet bill that included the X-ray and aspiration.

When we pulled back into the driveway, I said, “Welcome home, Mia. You’re going to live here for the rest of your life.”

Last night, Rob left me a message while I was at writing class. He was thinking of going to pick up some dinner, but he had Leo out and was going to play with him for a bit longer.

We were still keeping our dogs separated. Leo gets to go lots of places with me outside the house, but inside the house, he was mostly confined to his play pen in the laundry room, except when we put Isis in her “quiet room” (the library). But Leo still gets into stuff and chews on things, so he can’t be unattended for any length of time.

Rob’s car was not in the driveway when I got home, so I knew probably Isis was loose in the house and Leo was back in the playpen. I could see Isis through the living room window and when I opened the front door, I had a vision of what it would be like to have two dogs greet me. What if Leo came running out to greet me from one side, while Isis came from the other? How wonderful that would be.

The dogs couldn’t be in the same room together, after 7 months. Isis had been treated with acupuncture and a new diet for allergies, which may have been part of the cause of her anxiety. I’ve been feeling for months that something was wrong with Isis. She’s only four and a half, but she moved around sometimes like an old lady, a little bit slow and creaky. Maybe that was from the prozac. But she was still so anxious. We had an appointment Monday to start her on some Chinese herbs. She was scheduled to go see the trainer, by herself, without Leo, on Sunday, to help build confidence and interact with another teacher dog. Last time we did this, she was so proud of herself, it was plain on her face and it made us so happy.

I was feeling so hopeful. I knew all I had to do was believe these dogs could coexist. It was going to be fine. Isis could be calm around Leo, but the problem now was that Leo is an adolescent and talks back to Isis, so first we had to work on making Leo a better teacher dog before we could bring them together.

Rob bought me a screaming flying monkey a few years ago. I kept it at my office and sometimes flung it across the whole place, when I was there alone. A few times I let Isis chase it. Once I let Leo chase it and he crunched the battery and the monkey wouldn’t scream anymore. I bought a replacement monkey last week and had it in my purse on the floor over the weekend. Isis discovered it and kept pulling it out of my purse, making it scream. She never took things out of my purse. We laughed and called her the “monkey stealer.” I brought the broken one home from work and last night I flung him across the room over and over and Isis raced after it, so happy. She held the monkey in her mouth with the legs hanging out like a dead bug. I wished I’d taken a photo.

One of the last things I said to her before bed last night, while she was lying down with her head resting on the monkey was that she was such a monkey stealer. I also said to her, as I do all the time, that I love her so much. So much. More than she can ever understand and that I will always love her the most and she is my most special little girl.

I said this a lot because I worried that she thought we got Leo to replace her, or that she wasn’t enough, even though we so wanted him to be a buddy for her, or at least “therapeutic.” When I said it last night, I knew I would feel that way about her years after she was gone.

Isis died today. Suddenly. We don’t know why. Rob is happy he remembered to kiss her beak before he left for work. I’m glad I remembered to say, “I love you and I’ll see you when I get home.” I’m glad that Grandma was here this afternoon to play with Isis in the backyard. It was her favoritest thing in the world, and Grandma is one of her favoritest people.

When Grandma was inside the house, Isis wandered up to the back of the yard and collapsed. Grandma called for her and found her there when she didn’t come running back with the soccer ball in her mouth. She called me and Rob and we sat with Isis for a while before taking her to the vet. She still felt like Isis. And looked like Isis, but her open mouth upset Rob. He kept saying “Her tongue isn’t supposed to do that.”

The vet thinks there might have been a clot or even a growth on her heart, but that it was hard to tell, because Isis has such a big heart. (Because she’s such a big dog, but I like to think its because she loved us so much.)

We’re totally heartbroken. We have Leo to help us get through this, but Isis was our first love.

I said, "Next year we'll be able to have both dogs in the same picture with our Christmas tree."

It’s often said in a jokey way, “Oh, ha ha, your dogs are like your children,” and yes, that’s pretty much how I feel about them. People sometimes say that dogs are a gateway to having human children, but I have to say at this point that my dogs are enough.

I feel so much guilt and I’m depressed about my inability to meet their needs right now. How can I possibly go away and leave them for eight hours a day, when they need playtime and training? (And they can’t play with each other!) I’m a terrible mother, they’d be better off in more skilled hands, I should give them away…

Seriously, I had that thought the other day. It’s like postpartum psychosis, when women drown their children because they become so distraught over their inability to care for them.

Isis, for some reason, has not warmed up to Leo yet. I’m so ashamed of this that I don’t even status about it on Facebook. I started her on Prozac today – something else you won’t read about on Facebook. Clearly, she is very anxious, and I hope that the drugs help her at least relax enough that she can enjoy her little brother.

The clock is ticking, my trainer says. Leo is 6 months old. If they don’t acclimate by 10 months, it may never happen. She said this a day after saying Isis wasn’t ready for a baby brother and that she would have taken Leo back after that first meeting that didn’t go so well.

Excuse me, what the fuck?

I distinctly remember her saying at Isis’ graduation from level one of aggressive dog rehab that a puppy would be therapeutic for Isis, but I must be very careful about temperament. That was last December. Three days after we got Leo and that first unfortunate meeting with Isis, she said Leo had such a good temperament that eventually he will be very therapeutic for her.

So I felt a little blindsided when she said the above. She apologized for it later, kind of, and I believe that she’s just trying to reconcile with herself why it is that after three months of her method, we haven’t seemed to make progress. So that’s hindsight talking: Isis wasn’t ready.

I love these dogs. Leo started to frustrate me with biting and jumping on our walks, but I am going to make sure he gets more playtime with other dogs. (Hooray dog parks and day care!) Isis is being medicated. We have a plan of action. We’re going to see it through.

Everything is going to be fine.

What did I think? Isis would take one sniff of Leo and they’d play like litter mates?

OK, that’s exactly what I thought.

This is going to be much harder than I expected. And I didn’t really expect it to be easy, did I?

Well, not exactly, but I thought I had all these methods of integrating my new puppy into the household with a reactive dog, and that these methods would be tough to implement, but they would work.

What was my plan B, if upon meeting Leo, Isis pinned him down and snarled at him?

Because, yeah, that’s what happened. And there was no plan B.

We took them to a neutral location and I tried to recreate the scenario where she was calm, interested and friendly to another pup. Unfortunately, that pup was a dud, and Leo was more lively. Or Isis was more stressed because she hadn’t seen me all day. Or I wasn’t paying close enough attention to her body language. Or something else.

I didn’t think I could just bring a new puppy home and keep him separate from her until they were ready to meet. But that’s been the outcome of their unfortunate first meeting.

We baby Isis so much. My primary concern was how my precious little girl would handle the change. I wasn’t prepared for how protective I’d feel of Leo, who really is just a baby. How terrifying for him to be faced with a dog who looks just like his mommy and daddy, and have her attack him. She’s not the baby anymore. She’s the big sister and she cannot act like this.

I don’t even like to say “attack,” because she didn’t “go after him.” They ran up and sniffed each other. She reared her head back, which she does when she’s uncomfortable, and then Leo was on his back and she was a big snarling mess. We separated them really quickly, and he was not hurt. But his cries were heartbreaking.

At 10 weeks, he is in a “fear period,” meaning, Experiences a puppy perceives as traumatic during this time are generalized and may affect him all his life.

This was pretty much the worst case scenario. It’s what Isis started doing to min pins and other small dogs at the dog park, before I stopped taking her to the dog park. But she has played successfully with a Lab puppy, and because her meeting with another German shepherd went well a few weeks ago, I hoped for the best with baby brother Leo.

I had no idea what to do. We brought them home and let Isis play outside while Leo explored inside.

Here’s where Rob and I displayed sides of our True Characters. I am a quitter. I thought to myself, “This is too hard. It was a mistake. We should take Leo back.”

I asked Rob if we should do that and he said, “What???! No!” And he hadn’t even spent the whole day bonding with Leo on the car ride, like I had. It’s too late. Leo is part of our family.

So far, the gradual approach is working. Leo is gated in the laundry room and Isis is not troubled by his presence or his occasional whimpering. She definitely knows there’s a dog in the house. Leo is, naturally, afraid of Isis.

Last night after we got home, I tried some “protected contact,” where they saw each other through the chainlink dog run fence. Too soon. Isis barked and Leo cowered.

But today, it’s been better. Rob played with Isis and her soccer ball on the hill while Leo peed. He showed an interest in what Isis was doing and got braver, moving closer and closer to the fence. She definitely knew he was there, but continued playing.

Later, I had Isis doing her agility course, while Leo was in the dog run. A few times, she noticed him and ran toward the gate. The first time I panicked, and so did Leo — he ran back to the house. But Isis didn’t bark at him and in fact, came right back to me when I called her, and was able to do the agility course a few more times. Leo again moved toward the fence, then backed away when Isis came closer. I thought this was progress. She’s not acting hostile, just curious. And even though he’s afraid of her…he’s learning that she’s not going to bark at him, and getting braver by moving closer to her, also curious about her.

At some point, they’re going to show me through their body language that they’re ready for face-to-face contact. Until then, well, we weren’t planning on leaving them alone in the house together anyway, and it’s been recommended that you keep a puppy “confined” to one room until he is housebroken. Puppies cry and keep you up at night anyway. This is just a little added stress, right?

The good news is, I already planned to take time off from work. What I’m doing for my summer vacation is managing my dogs.