Doggone

            I sometimes wonder if getting a dog was the best thing for my mental state.

            Don’t get me wrong.  Ignoring what seems to be his twice-a-day rowdy period – which we’re hoping will fade as this condition we’ve learned is named ‘dog puberty’ runs its course – he is a great dog.  He gets me out on long walks all around our neighborhood.  I can’t remember the last time in my life I felt more in touch with the seasons, noticing when the trees bloomed or the animals emerged.  Just last week, we almost ran into a wild boar together.  Granted, that wasn’t an experience I’d want to repeat, but it’s also not one I would have had if not for Murphy.  It’s probably very good for my physical health.  Having an animal you can sit with and pet is probably good for my mental health.  There are far more pros than cons on this list.

            And yet…

            He’s an irrational actor, being a dog.  If he sees another dog, his only desire is to get to that dog as soon as possible, leaping and bounding all the way.  There are dogs who are into that.  There are plenty of owners and dogs who want no part of it.  Murphy doesn’t care.  And I’m the one who is losing feeling in my forearm from all the times I’ve had to hold him back.

            Then there is the way he has started to interact with people at times.

            Earlier this month, we were away with friends from our church group.  Maybe it was being away from his normal surroundings, but Murphy expanded his repertoire from lunging at other dogs to lunging at anyone unfamiliar.  He also seemed to develop short-term memory problems, lunging at people with whom he’d made friends minutes before and even people he knows well, like the one neighbor who took him on walks back in February when we were all housebound with Covid-19. 

Then again, I can’t blame the behavior entirely on the weekend, since he had started randomly lunging at people before we left.  A few weeks ago, I forgot the garden gate was open and he chased some poor man down the street, barking his head off and, apparently, snapping at him.  But it’s also not a given that he’ll behave this way.  On some days, he’ll let 10 people walk by without a fuss, but then the 11^th person he’ll make a run at.  Other days it’s the 8^th person.  Or the 14^th. 

He’s always on a leash, so he’s never made contact.  And I don’t know if he just wants to bark or if there is an intent to bite.  I just know that every time we run into another person, it’s begun to feel like we’re defusing a bomb.

            Of course I’m telling him off every time he acts like a little old lady in the woods is a mortal threat to our beings.  But I notice there’s this trigger that’s been switched from our experiences.  I can’t sit back and think “It’s all going to be all right.”  I’ve got the other trigger switched, the one that tells me that the worst possible thing is going to happen.  So, to me, it’s a foregone conclusion that there will come a point at which Murphy bites some stranger and then we’ll end up facing fines and most likely having to put this dog to sleep.  Like, I can’t convince myself we’ll have a dog and we’ll just be happy together.  The worst is going to happen.  Because, why wouldn’t it?

            Let’s be honest.  It’s not as if I was Mr. Optimism before everything went wrong with Colin, but I don’t think I wallowed in pessimism either.  I felt like I was more of a realist.  Now we’ve gone the other direction and, yes, I find myself spending more time focusing on all the things that will go wrong.  Like, it doesn’t take much to convince me that, thanks to Russia’s invasion, we’re only a few months away from food riots and freezing in our own homes.  It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see something going wrong with my job and me suddenly sitting around unemployed (which, conversely, Murphy would benefit hugely from).  And I notice that, having taken on responsibility for this dog, it’s one more life I’m now responsible for and for which I have to worry.  And so I do worry.

            So, I enjoy having Murphy around.  But, as with so many things since Colin’s diagnosis, there’s also a bit of a taste of ash in my mouth.  I’d like to just enjoy the good.  It seems it’s still going to take me a while to get there.