Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself

Copyright © 2013 by Zachary Anderegg

All photos copyright © 2013 by Zachary and Michelle Anderegg

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62636-170-6

eISBN: 978-1-62873-530-7

Printed in the United States of America

T
he names of people who have played a part in this story are simply too numerous to account for. Some people have been directly involved in helping transform this story into a tangible piece of work while others played a crucial role in my past, knowingly or not, giving me life experiences for better or worse that would one day culminate in the total telling of my story.

Certain people stand out as being particularly significant throughout this process. I can only hope that those whose names inevitably fail to receive mention realize that their roles in my life were nevertheless critical in creating the life experiences shared in this book.

Pete S.

Had you not approached me that day up in the weight room, I know in my heart my life would not have been altered for the better, at least not then. Your devotion as a workout partner and decency as a human being are appreciated more than I will ever be able to express. You didn’t just show me how to get my body in shape back then; you helped put me on a track that forever changed who I would become. You may very well have saved my life! I am forever grateful to you.

Cheryl M.

You filled a void in my life when I dearly needed someone I could trust. You withheld judgment and treated me like one of your own. I tried to tell you back then how much that meant to me. I hope you never question the role you’ve played in my life and how much I value our “kitchen table talks” and the times I shared with your family.

Page Animal Hospital staff

I have the utmost respect and gratitude for each and every one of you who played a role in helping me save Riley’s life. From the kind woman who provided me with a cat carrier after hours on Sunday evening to the technicians and doctors who saved my dog’s life, I thank you all! You are special people doing very special work.

Mary M.

You were there, like you always are, when I needed your help. I needed to regroup after dealing with the darkness that surrounded Riley and you didn’t even hesitate when I asked for your help. In those days spent healing, Riley came to trust you. He surely saw the same kind heart and gentle spirit in you that Michelle and I do, and I am honored to have you as a friend. Thank you.

Ellen Degeneres

Riley and his brother eat better than Michelle and I do thanks to you! His health could not be better under the circumstances and I know his diet is a huge part of that. Thank you, Ellen, for your generous donation of Halo dog food to my two boys. And thank you for your personal generosity to Michelle and me.

Alli, George, and Elizabeth

Each of you has played a critical role along this path I find myself on. The timing of your entry into my life almost seems planned. And yes, Alli, I know that’s what you keep telling me. I could not have made the progress that I have or posses the self-awareness I have acquired had it not been for each of you. I didn’t feel like just a “client.” I felt like you truly cared about my well-being and wanted to help me. For that I am forever grateful to each of you!

Carolyn J.

We share a difficult past, that’s for sure. I remember thinking, “How could someone just go and write a book about such personal details?” Well, I can now relate. The writing that led to this book began the day after we had dinner together. Your words hit me just the right way. I struggled to see what it was you were telling me, but in retrospect I don’t know that you could’ve been more right on. Thank you so much for your advice and friendship. I wish you the very best going forward and hope you and B have a long and wonderful life together! Hope to see you again soon.

Madeleine M.

Only fate can explain how I got your number through Carolyn. Funny how things happen sometimes. It is not lost on me that had you not read my draft, had you not stuck with me in spite of my impatience, none of this would have happened. I still owe you dinner, and being privy to your finer tastes in life, your Prada habit coming to mind, I can only hope book sales are strong enough to allow me to fulfill my obligation to you. Any chance Wendy’s would suffice?

Steve Ross

Here’s hoping for a successful project for the two of us.

Pete Nelson

You took my raw material and weaved the story now memorialized in these pages. I hope we are able to touch many lives for the better.

Nicole Frail

It has been a true pleasure working with you, Nicole. From the beginning you have bridged a critical gap between honoring what I want and what is in the best interest of the story. Your consideration and professionalism are both noted and appreciated. You deserve much success and I wish you the best!

Michelle

You have stuck with me through thick and thin. We’ve always been each other’s biggest fans. We walked each other down the aisle at Wind Point. Somehow it just feels like that’s where we belong, always next to each other taking life on, together.

This process has been long and difficult. You know that more than anyone. We’ve come a long way and learned an awful lot, about each other, ourselves, and life itself. Time will tell where we go from here. Had someone told us that my trip south that Saturday morning would lead to a new member of the family and a published book, we would have both laughed. But deep down would we really have been surprised? I don’t know, it just seems to be the way our lives go together.

I cannot thank you enough for your love and support throughout everything. You chose me; therefore, you chose a difficult path. I hope the rewards have been satisfying and the memories worth making. I look forward to the future, to our future, side by side, taking on the world as we always do.

CHARACTER—

Doing what’s right when nobody is watching.

H
ad someone told me that my trip to the desert that Saturday morning would result in my writing a book, I wouldn’t have believed them. I wouldn’t have thought I’d have a story to tell, or that anything would happen worthy of a book. I’d read somewhere that everyone has a book inside them, waiting to be written.
Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself
is mine; it’s the story I had to tell. But that Saturday morning, I couldn’t have known it.

The idea came to me when many of Riley’s fans on Facebook suggested I write something about the rescue. Merely as a dog rescue story, there was some drama to it, but I questioned if there was enough depth for a book. I knew I could write up the technical aspects and tell how I set up my rope system, all the contingencies I had to take into account, and the techniques I improvised to ascend with a dog in tow, but it didn’t seem like enough to fill the pages of a book.

It wasn’t until I was having dinner one night with friends that it occurred to me: I had more to tell than just a wilderness rescue story. One guest that night was my friend, Carolyn, an accomplished bestselling author who said I needed to write an adult memoir about not only the rescue, but also how it was placed in the larger context of my past. She knew enough about me to know that in that respect, there was something worth telling. The following day, I sat down and wrote fifteen pages. Within ten days, I had written more than 150 pages, and the surprising part was that those pages contained not one, but two stories.

What I didn’t know, until I sat down to write, was that writing a book isn’t a process where first you think up a book and then you write it down. Rather, you discover the book as you write it. In a way, it’s almost like exploring a canyon, where you keep going without knowing what’s around the next corner, take each obstacle or technical section as it arrives, come prepared but improvise as you move forward, and, when you reach the end, it somehow all makes sense.

It was a surreal experience. I started typing on my laptop, simply talking about this dog I rescued. The next thing I knew, totally unexpectedly, I found myself digging into my past, as scenes and experiences from my early childhood kept coming forward, begging to be written down. At first it didn’t make sense, but as I wrote, I slowly realized how many parallels existed between what happened to Riley and what had happened to me as I was growing up. I never saw it coming; it just happened. Once I understood this connection, a door opened, presenting an opportunity to understand something important about how people can be cruel to animals—and to each other. Riley and I had both faced adversity and cruelty, and I rescued him, but as I reflected on it, he rescued me, too. Coming to this conclusion was . . . indescribable.

As I wrote, I made a promise to myself to be brutally honest about everything I wanted to discuss. This book is an account of my life, something that would stay on the bookshelves—either real bookshelves in brick and mortar buildings or digital “bookshelves” in some computer server somewhere—long after I’m gone, and I wanted to leave behind the truth as best I could tell it. I knew that some of the events I would include would not be flattering to me or show me in the best light. I knew that some topics I would discuss were so deeply personal that even my wife of thirteen years wasn’t fully aware of the details.

I chose to tell as much truth as I could because, in the end, as therapeutic and revealing as the writing process has been for me, this book is not for
me
. I had to tell the full truth because I want my readers to really understand the effect abuse has on the abused. Bullying is sometimes dismissed as just a normal part of growing up, something that happens and then everybody outgrows it and moves on, when in fact recent studies have shown it can have a lifelong, permanent deleterious effect on the kids who get bullied. In my experience, in its most extreme forms, bullying is nothing short of pure evil. Until we frame it as such, we will continue to dismiss it as a negative but normal part of the maturation process, nothing more than “growing pains,” albeit severe ones, and as long as we dismiss it, kids will continue to suffer. As long as we dismiss it, or underestimate it, the kids who are most traumatized will feel like no one takes them seriously, no one understands, and many of them will, tragically, conclude that the only way to end the anguish is to take their own lives.

This book is not for me. It’s for the kids who’ve been bullied, but it’s also for the abusers—the bullies who find it amusing to torture or torment kids and classmates who seem weak or withdrawn or vulnerable and bullies who abuse either emotionally or physically, unaware of the damage they’re doing. It’s also for the friends of the bullies, or the kids who stand by and witness bullying but say nothing and do nothing about it. I didn’t want to write to condemn anyone as much as to raise awareness, but if I could hope to raise awareness in any one group, it would be for the kids who resort to bullying, many of whom probably don’t understand why they do it and who certainly give little thought to the consequences of their actions. If my story doesn’t resonate with them, perhaps Riley’s will.

It was in that regard that I found the strength to dig deeply into myself by once again experiencing events and thoughts I never would have imagined sharing with the world, even if it meant reopening wounds and revisiting hurts that I’ve been trying my whole life to forget. I’ve written this book with the hope of changing how we treat each other. I would like to change the way we treat each other on as broad a scale as possible, but if I can change the way one bully treats one victim, or the way one victim sees his own life, and if I can make that one victim see that it’s not always going to be so hard, then I will be satisfied.