Finally Home-Lessons on Life from a Free-Spirited Dog (17 page)

That was it. That was all I needed
to see
.
I had a flashback to the neighbor
at our old house
who
’d
said
,
“That’s the problem with Vegas
—
the rocks
,
” and I thought I was going to go ballistic on these kids.
I let the dogs in the house, turned off the stove
,
and jumped in
to
my car, driving full speed around the corner to find the parents.

Unleashing anger
to the parents
that really should have been directed at
our
previous neighbor, I started screaming
,
“
A
re those your kids?
Look where they are. Do you know what they are doing?
They threw rocks at my dogs.
Control your kids!”

I’m sure I spit out some other nasty obscenities, sped away like a lunatic
,
and went back home, heart racing and mad as hell.

What was wrong with Las Vegas?
How
wa
s it possible that this ha
d
happened twice in one year?

After brooding for a few hours, I finally calmed down
. As the day progressed, I
somewhat forgot about it,
even
though I was still fuming
every
time
that
I re
called the incident
.

Toward the middle of the next day I
heard
a knock at the door.
Not expect
ing anyone, I answered the door,
and there in front of me was the mom, dad, the two kids
,
and their ten
-
year
-
old, adorable dog.
With tears in her eyes, the mom apologized profusely and told me
that
her kids had something to say
to me
.

I knelt down to an apologetic little girl and boy, who promptly said
,
“
W
e’re sorry we threw rocks at your dogs
.
”
T
he little girl held her hand out.
In it, she had rawhides that she
’d
brought
for
our
dogs and said
,
“
P
lease forgive us.”

I nearly started bawling my eyes out.
The mother and husband apologized and brought their dog to show me that they were not monsters and
that
they had a dog,
too,
so they understood.
They did not intentionally mean to hurt the dogs.

I had so much anger toward
our previous neighbors
; I
had
t
aken
it all out on this poor woman
.
I apologized up and down a
nd explained that I
was not psychotic but just assumed that she was also going to start blaming rocks for all of the world’s problems
.

We
saw
them on walks
after
that day and they
we
re
truly such friendly
people.
I felt so horrible.
I learned not to jump to conclusions and act psychotic from that point on
.
I just could not tolerate anyone being mean to my dogs…especially when the dogs
did
not deserve it.

Living in a new place was definitely something I had to get used to.
I was beginning to think everyone in th
at
town had lost their minds, so I was glad that this second episode
had
ended a little more reasonably than the first.

If it
had
n’t, I think we would have had to endure another road trip
—
right back to New York!

All of us are guilty of having some type of idiosyncrasy that separates us from others and makes us completely unique.
Some…have more than the rest.

After living with Buddy for a number of years, we had accepted the fact that he was different and that every day he would surprise us with something new.

We knew he had some fears, but we just did not realize how drastically they affected him.
While Buddy
wa
s not afraid of rain itself, thunderstorms brought
a whole new meaning to the word “psycho
.
”

It
wa
s quite common and natural for dogs to be afraid of thunder.
To them
,
the harsh, loud banging sound
wa
s amplified
,
and there
wa
s no physical object for them to
observe
where the obtrusive sound
wa
s coming from.
Typical of a lot of dogs, Buddy and thunder
just did
not mix.
He became so frantic that he would seek shelter in
confined places, such as
the bathtub, somehow thinking this was safe.

One day he even
busted into the
closet,
which had been closed. Somehow, he opened the door,
jumped on top of all of the boxes we had on the floor, rummaged through them, and st
omped
on our brand new picture
frames. Shattered
shards of glass
were strewn
all over the place.

When we initially walked into the house
from work
, we knew something was up
.
Buddy was acting weird
and
moping
with his
tail
tucked
between his
wobbly
legs.

The thunderstorm had long subsided, so we did not even take
into consideration
the fact that he
still might be frightened.
As we slowly ascended up the stairs, my heart flip
-
flopped
,
as
at first glance it appeared as if our house had been burglarized
.

P
ieces of glass and
ripped
boxes
were
all over the place.
Miraculously, Buddy did not have so much as a scratch on him
.
I wish I could say the same for what was in those boxes.

After cleaning up
most
of the mess, I transferred everything to a sturdier crate and put them higher where Buddy could not get hurt in the event of another horrifying thunderstorm.

As if thunder were not bad enough, the rain wa
s another story.
Anytime it rained in New York, he
refused to
go outside to take care of business.
It did not matter if
he
was holding it in for ten hours, he
simply
would not go.
Worrying that this
was
inhumane
and un
healthy, Michael decided to walk him in the front yard on a leash, taking shelter under a huge pine tree.

From that day forward, that is where Buddy peed in the event that it rained.
Though Las Vegas d
id
not accumulate much rain, this peculiar habit
continued to hold true
.
On the rare occasion that it
rained
, Buddy g
ot
to pee in the front yard.
We
gave
up understanding why this makes him happy, but like everything else with him, if it work
ed
, we d
id
not question it.
I
was
quite sure our neighbors might question it a little and find it quite odd but there
was
just too much to
explain when it came to
this dog.

Some people
told
us
in the gentlest of ways
that they could never deal with a dog with as many quirks as Buddy.
Especially when
we
sp
oke
with someone who
was
not a dog lover, they just
did
not get it.
To them, it
wa
s “just a dog.”

When you are a dog lover, you get it.
You understand that there is nothing in the world like communicating with a totally different species.
No matter what you look like, sound like
,
or act like, your dog is going to love you unconditionally.
You could buy them a mansion or
live in
a cardboard shack, and your dog will not care either way, as long as they are with you.

This is not because they are stupid as I have he
ard some ignorant people claim. If you t
hink about it, we speak a completely different language than dogs, yet they can understand a wide variety of words.
I cannot even put a number to the amount of words our dogs
have
underst
oo
d.
Yet, by the same token, we have no real clue what they are saying
. A
nd we are supposed to be the smart ones?

In addition, the nonverbal communication is truly amazing
—
and this goes for both human and canine.

As an example,
Buddy and Brandi
knew
when we
we
re
planning to go
for a walk, even if we
we
re still sitting down, but just talking about going.
It
wa
s not because we sa
id
the word “walk” as we so cleverly learned to spell everything out.

It
wa
s not due to routine, as we
would
sometimes break midday
or some random
time out of the norm and take them.
They just kn
ew
our body language and w
ould
get up and walk to the closet
where their leashes were kept
.
This
wa
s before we even put our sneakers on.

They
also
kn
e
w when we
we
re finished eating at the table by listening to our forks hit the plate.
The list
could
go on and on.

Even though Buddy was crazy
, he
was
smart enough to know when it was absolutely necessary to behave.
This happened a few times, but one that st
ood
out was when I was home recovering from a major surgery.

A few years back I awoke in the middle of the night with what felt like an elephant sitting on my chest
,
and I could not catch my breath.
It felt like I had to keep yawning, yet I did not have any pain.
I just could not breathe well.
Of course, I started panicking and that just made it more di
fficult, but I did not pass out. A
t the same time, I could not fall back asleep.