Hero makes a mess

If there is one thing I have recently learned is that in a blink of an instant all we know to be true, and real, and everlasting, can go up in smoke.  Before we ever see it coming, our entire lives become different.   My aunt, a mother of ten children, lost her home and her husband to a catastrophic house fire. My father’s two cousins drowned in a lake, with their boyfriends. Dear Readers,  you know the list goes on and on because you have all lived through or been touched by something cataclysmic.  Mr. Franklin, who I would love just for being a Francophile,  hit it right on the head when he said,  “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. ”

We live our lives like they will always be the same. We have our rituals, our routines, our beliefs; self limiting and other wise.   We go on like tomorrow we be the same as today and our whole lives are built on this structure. Then; boom.  Something happens.  Our whole lives change.  We can’t help but cling to all those old ways because they have been built into our muscle memory and we didn’t even know it.  Sometimes it takes a dog or two to show us where we are stuck, and nudge us a little toward change.

Why I talk about this, of course, is because huge change came knocking at my door.   I didn’t invite it, I didn’t see it coming, and at first, I didn’t want it.  The will of the universe however, doesn’t ask to come in, it just barges in and insists that you treat it like an honored quest.  My 23 year marriage and family life and all I thought I knew just one day ended.  Faster than it took you to read this sentence.

That’s when I started having dog problems.

Anyone that knows me knows that my dog Athos is perfect. He is the icon of absolute canine perfection. Athos loves people, he’s  great with other dogs, “obedient”, sweet, easy to live with.  I admit, I’m a show off and I love showing off my perfect dog.  All of a sudden though, things started to not be not so perfect.

Athos started to eat things off the counter.  Loafs of bread; with the bag. Ears of corn; with the husk.  Homemade cookies in steel tins (without the tin).  Bananas, apples, carrots, anything.  I had to remember to put every food item away because if I didn’t, he would eat it no matter what.   I found this extremely annoying and a bit of a problem with my whole story of “Athos as perfect”.  I went to square one.  What ever emotions we are in denial of, our dogs will pick up on and bring into physical reality in forms known to us as problem behavior. I figured it was because I wasn’t eating that he all of a sudden had to.  I said to myself, I am hungry, so he is hungry, and because I won’t eat due to trauma, he’s doing it for me. I expected the behavior to stop. It didn’t.  I knew I hadn’t solved it.

Athos has forever been content to stay in a kennel in our back yard if we need to go out, it’s too hot in the house, or whatever need arises. He sits contentedly on his dog house, in total flow with the world, never barking, or working to get out. Imagine my surprise then, when I go to get him from the kennel and he’s not there. The door is still locked, but there is a small hole in the bottom of the chain link and his collars are stuck to the side. You can see that he worked pretty hard at it and moved his head in and out of it several times before he finally “escaped”.  Panic ensued.   Where was my perfect dog? He had never done that.  He has never left the yard and now, he is nowhere.  We call and call and cry and imagine the worst until he comes bulleting up the road.  I am, in a word, flummoxed.

I start keeping him in his crate, but he busts it up and gets out of that too. I leave him in the mud room where he chews through a plastic trash can to get at the cat food and eats it all.  He starts soiling in the house.  In four words, I am loosing it!

All the while Hero was living at Kevin’s house because she easily got out of her puppy yard, which wasn’t built properly.   Kevin saved me when he came over with his son and son in law and built me a brand new secure one.  Two days after peaceful re-entry into the family, and Hero discovers not how to get out of her yard, but how to get into the porch.  This is what she accomplished in ten minutes. Handmade Amish pillow;  shredded. Antique spinning wheel; chewed into pieces.  Front of sweater I was knitting for my son; eaten. Garbage; strewn.  Handmade garbage basket; dismantled.  When I discovered her in her mess making orgy, I didn’t feel mad. I just felt like “What am I not getting?”.  I called a friend to come over and install a door knob, which solved the getting in problem.   I knew, if I didn’t get what was going on inside me, all these problems would continue.

It wasn’t Kevin this time, but his wife Agi that helped me to see what was going on.  Athos’ counter grazing isn’t about hunger, it’s about my food rules. I don’t eat potatoes. I don’t eat sugar. I don’t eat dairy. I don’t eat gluten. I don’t eat nuts. I don’t eat…………you name it. So many restrictions! Athos breaking out of his kennel isn’t about his need to run away; it’s about my need to break out of my own rules. “I don’t do this, I don’t do that, I always do this.” Agi pointed out, even Natural Dog Training comes with it’s list of restrictions. The puppy doesn’t come in the house. Don’t sweet talk the puppy.  Just do nothing.

I realized that I have so many, many rules and restrictions I have put on myself simply to survive.  Now that my life has changed, I must too. I must break out of the kennel of my mind if I am to thrive in the world. I must let go of old rules that no longer serve me. It’s the new me. I can’t stay stuck.  My dogs won’t let me!! The are telling me; “Break out!”.

Ben Franklin also said, “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move“, so here is my new years resolution; to move out of those old rules.  The rules that are like that antique spinning wheel, quaint, but outdated.  I will break some rules that once kept me safe, but now no longer serve me.   It’s been a whole week and not one weird thing has been eaten, no one has broken in or out, and all seems well.  I’m breaking an old rule by not knowing for sure, I’ll just have to wait and see what they do.