My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs (9 page)

When she came back on the line, the first thing she said was that Trooper loved me very much. (Duh!) Then what she said to me next stunned me into momentary silence. Trooper had told her that there used to be a man and a boy who lived with us who mistreated him because they didn’t like me. They also didn’t like the fact that he liked me so they did things to him to scare him all the time, and because they couldn’t do anything directly to me. Then he told her that the man and the boy didn’t live with us anymore and he was very happy that they were gone.

I hadn’t told her about Marc and Ryan.

Recently when I was relaying this story to my very skeptical brother, he asked whether or not I had given her my name, that perhaps she had researched me as well. I told him that even if she had, all she would have found was perhaps a record of our marriage, but no reference to Ryan because I wasn’t his bio-mom. She also wouldn’t have found anything that would have shown that they didn’t live with me anymore since my divorce had not been final long enough for it to appear in any public records online. The only way she could have gotten that knowledge was straight from … the dog’s mouth.

When I was able to get a grip on the thoughts that were running wild through my mind after her statement I was able to ask her a question. “What can I do to make Trooper less afraid?”

After she consulted with him again, she came back on the line and told me that Trooper wanted to go to school, and he wanted to get a job. “Great,” I thought, “how am I going to manage that?” I asked what kind of school he wanted, and she said he just wanted to be trained to do a job. We talked about options that might work for him considering how skittish he currently was. Tink had been a P.A.W.S. (Pets Are Working Saints) dog for a while and I had taken her to visit patients in nursing homes until her bladder surgeries side-lined her. I wasn’t sure if that would be suitable for Trooper at that point because I knew that the equipment in many of the rooms would scare him, and there would be no way I could convince him to ride in an elevator at one of the centers. I told her I would think on it for a while and figure something out, then asked her if there was anything else he wanted to say or anything else I could do to make him happy. She said he just wanted to tell me that he was very happy with me and that Tink was “his” girl. That brought a smile and a laugh from me.

From the moment Trooper had arrived in the house, Tink had been almost inseparable from him and quickly established herself as the Alpha dog in the house. While he was still the same size as her (even as a nine week old puppy, he was never smaller than her) that seemed to work, but as he grew it became almost comical to see the two of them play or sleep together. Tink could easily run circles under him, and frequently did when they played. She loved to get directly under him and bite his elbows when they were rough-housing. For his part, when we were in the open field near my house, Trooper loved to play-stalk her then run up and roll her in the dirt. She would get so angry at him and would chase him down the road cussing at him. I could almost hear him laughing as he ran at least five lengths ahead of her. As her arthritis caused her more pain I would sometimes see her trying to hide behind a small bunch of weeds when he stopped focusing on bathroom duties, knowing that his attention would then turn to stalking her. If you’ve ever seen a picture of a very large person trying to hide behind a very small tree, you have some idea of what Tink looked like trying to hide behind a few weeds!

Whenever Tink had to spend a night at the vet’s for a test or procedure, Trooper wouldn’t be able to sleep or rest. He would pace the house, going from room to room, door to door trying to figure out where she was. It was touching to see how much he cared for her.

C
HAPTER
8

Positive Affirmations

After our conversation with the animal intuitive, I had to start thinking of what kind of training I could get for Trooper that would help to restore his confidence. Obedience training seemed like a logical option, but really rather redundant since we had such a good rapport that he already knew most of the commands and was pretty good at obeying them. Plus that really wouldn’t get him a job anywhere.

A few years earlier I had seen a news clip one morning about a kennel in Virginia that was sending toys and treats to the Military Working Dogs (MWD) that were deployed for the war. It seemed that the dogs were starting to have neurotic behavioral issues because of the constant stress and negativity of the war, especially those that were used to find bodies. As a result, some of the dogs were being sent home early because they were unable to perform their jobs. The toys and treats gave not only the dogs but their handlers an outlet for their stress. That Halloween, Marc and I threw a costume party and asked everyone to bring a toy or a box of treats to ship over to three units of MWD and their handlers. I had gotten an address for the unit deployed from the local Air Force base, and also addresses sent to me by two friends who were deployed for two Army MWD teams that were on the bases they were at. We had such an outpouring of toys and treats from the party that I was able to ship six large boxes in early November. The next year we had the same themed costume party, and I was able to ship four boxes to the unit deployed from the local Air Force base.

I started thinking about the training the police and military dogs get, and wondered if that might be the right type of training for Trooper. Not to that extent, of course, but just a condensed version. I wanted him to be confident and assertive, but not aggressive. I contacted a local guard dog trainer and arranged for two sessions for Trooper. For the first session, the trainer came to the house and worked with us. I had told Trooper that he would be coming to the house and that this was going to be the training that he wanted. I explained to him that he was going to learn to be a guard dog because his job was going to be to protect Tink and the house.

The trainer tried to come and stand between Trooper and me to see how Trooper reacted. Initially when he came into the house, Trooper did his bark, run, bark, run to the top of the stairs, and bark routine. But when he started to move between Trooper and me, he immediately came downstairs and stood between us. He wasn’t aggressive, but instead was leaning into me, pushing me away from the trainer. Trooper continued to push me farther away from him but did not bark or run. I could tell he was uncomfortable with the situation, but was doing his best to overcome his fears in his desire to protect me.

The next session was done one night at their office in a fenced in yard. I was to walk Trooper on his lead back and forth in the front of the building. The trainer put on a baseball hat, a scarf across his face, protective arm wraps, and came from behind the building cracking a small whip and yelling at us. I didn’t know what to expect from Trooper, but he immediately dropped all of his fears and charged towards the “attacker,” hackles raised and barking in a defensive tone I had never heard before. He was actually scary sounding! It was all I could do to hold him back on the lead. The trainer stayed while he barked for a few seconds, then turned and ran away—I had been told that if Trooper acted aggressively toward him, I was to let the lead slack just enough for Trooper to run forward and feel like he was chasing him off. As soon as he was behind the building and out of eyesight, I was to praise Trooper with treats and hugs.

The difference in Trooper was apparent almost immediately. Every morning I would tell Trooper that it was his job to protect Tink and the house and I trusted him because I knew he was a brave dog and wasn’t afraid of anything. As his confidence grew, his fears began to disappear. In the past a plastic grocery bag left on the floor would prevent him from coming into the kitchen, now he just glances at it and walks by. Rearranged furniture used to cause him to panic; now he just sniffs and ignores it. A piece of trash blowing in the field would cause him to bark and run away. Now he chases to catch it and bring it to me so I can throw it in the dumpster. While a loud noise will still startle him, he does not react in fear like he used to. He used to be so afraid of the dark that he refused to move beyond the range of street lights. Now his favorite game to play is flashlight tag in the dark. When he was challenged at the dog park previously, he had behaved submissively, rolling on his back. The next time the same dog challenged him, he stood his ground and it was instead the other dog that backed down and submitted. Trooper’s confidence was returning.

There are only a few fears that really remain from before. But they are gradually going away as well. One of the strongest and most frustrating is his fear of being on the bed at night when the lights are out. Marc used to kick him viciously when Trooper tried to get on the bed with us at night. Towards the end of our marriage I caught him kicking him as I came in for bed one night and told him if he didn’t want Trooper on the bed, then he needed to tell him to get down—but kicking him from under the covers was not an option. I don’t know how often he had done it before that night, or how many times he did it later that I didn’t know about. But regardless, Trooper will not stay on the bed with me once the lights are out. If I’m watching TV, or we are sleeping late on a Saturday morning after the sun has come up, he will stay for hours. I know that eventually that fear will go away like the others did and so patiently encourage him and wait.

I talk to Trooper all the time and he loves when I talk directly into his ear in a low voice as we are sitting together on the sofa or lying in bed. I tell him that he is the most intelligent dog I have ever had, how proud I am of him and how compassionate he is. I tell him I know that he is a brave dog and isn’t afraid of anything. I tell him how handsome he is and how much I love and appreciate him. What a good job he does protecting me, the house, and all the other pets. I tell him how much I believe in him, and what a wonderful blessing it has been to have him in my life.

Positive affirmations. They should be called “powerful” affirmations. They can have even more power when a person hears them.

For many years I never heard anything positive about myself. I was stupid. I was boring. I was ugly and fat. I would be a horrible mother if I was ever dumb enough to get pregnant. I was a terrible wife who couldn’t cook or clean anywhere near as well as his mother—who not only kept a spotless house with fantastic meals three times a day, but also worked full time, AND raised her three boys practically alone. She apparently walked on water too. I know that sounded sarcastic, but it wasn’t meant to be. Will told me many times during our marriage how lacking I was as wife and a person compared to his mother but I learned later it was far from the truth. My “other” mother and I had—and still have—a great relationship. She let me know early on that she wasn’t nearly as perfect as her son made her sound. We used to joke that I got custody of her in the divorce, something Will didn’t think was as funny as we did. We stay in touch even now and it has been seven years since I divorced her son. I love her as much as if she were my own bio-mom.

It took me a long time to feel that I deserved any happiness because all of the joy had been squashed out of me for so many years. My positive affirmations in the beginning came from strangers who knew nothing of me or my life. Fellow students when I was working on my MBA who would ask me to work on group projects with them because they respected my work; co-workers who came to me for advice or help with a software issue. It wasn’t so much what they said to me or how they said it—it was just the fact that they wanted to include me. They didn’t think I was stupid, they asked my opinion and I was actually allowed to have one. As I began to make more and more friends through work or school, I realized that they didn’t think I was boring either. In fact, most of the time we spent as much time laughing as we did working or studying.