Don't Dump The Dog (4 page)

N
othing sends me to Dr. Gupta’s couch faster than the words “we have contacted our attorney,” and after hours of comprehensive cognitive-behavioral therapy and a one-year renewal of my Xanax prescription, he advised me to redact so many sections of my response to Mr. and Mrs. Wrathful, and this is all that’s left:

But to set the record straight, Phoebe was not a “manipulative and vindictive animal” who sought “revenge” every time the Mr. and Mrs. left the house. Rather, Phoebe suffered from separation anxiety, common with many abandoned dogs—which meant that every time her new family left her alone, she went crazy with fear: She defecated in the house, howled, scratched gouges in the doors, and chewed up anything she could get her teeth into (like I do every time I quit smoking).

If your dog displays any of the following behaviors, then she’s probably afflicted with separation anxiety:

• Behavior occurs
  only
  when you aren’t home: defecating, ripping at curtains or blinds, scratching up doors, and chewing on clothes, pillows, blankets, or towels.
  
• Neighbors tell you she howls when you’re gone.
  
• Your dog seems hyper-attached to you when you are home (i.e., she follows you from room to room and begs constantly for attention).
  

In a majority of cases, separation anxiety occurs in dogs who come from pounds or shelters, or who suddenly find themselves, for whatever reason, living with a new family. It also happens sometimes when a dog’s routine changes. If, for instance, you move to a new house, you go from parttime to full-time work, or even when there’s a divorce or death in the family, your dog may go through a short period of freaking out.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with hundreds of dogs who suffer from separation anxiety. I’ve had dogs destroy homes within six hours of adoption, and I’ve paid thousands of dollars for repairs, painters, carpenters, and entire cleaning crews so that strays don’t take a bad rap.

One of my own dogs, Hannah, ate six pairs of shoes and ripped my best suit to shreds the first time I left her alone (I went to buy cigarettes—a
seven-minute
trip). After that, I crated her when I left, but every time I came home, she was still standing outside her crate, surrounded by piles of poop, tornup papers, and something—usually something expensive—still in her mouth.

One evening, after putting Hannah in her crate and securing it with chains, plastic wire, and a bicycle padlock, I attended a party in the park by my house and invited some people over for drinks when it ended. As usual, Hannah had escaped, greeting us at the door with a pair of my shredded underwear in her mouth. Beyond her, in the bowels of the living room, lay the worst of her destruction yet: the rest of my dirty laundry; the contents of the kitchen garbage can, including coffee grounds, eggshells, cigarette butts, and dirty little secrets like Ho Ho wrappers; the feathers of three down pillows; the couch cushions; an unrolled roll of toilet paper; and the dirt from a large potted palm, which had turned to mud after she’d added some water from her water bowl. In addition, she’d overturned a can of lime-green paint in the basement and then tracked it all the way upstairs. To this day, Hannah’s paw prints still grace my living-room floor. People think it’s art.

I never did figure out how Hannah escaped the crate, by the way. There were never any visible signs of how she did it. The first time it happened, I called the police because I thought someone had robbed me and for some reason, maybe to be mean, they’d let Hannah out in the process. I now attribute it to UFOs.

In Phoebe’s case, we found her limping down the middle of a residential road, skeletal, flea-ridden, and practically bald from mange. When I knelt down and called to her, she limped right over to me, which meant she wasn’t a wild or feral dog but a scared and confused pet abandoned by her family, and from the looks of her,
long
abandoned by her family. This in turn meant that she suffered mentally as well as physically, because pack animals who lose their packs lose a part of themselves.

Dogs, like wolves, live for their packs. From the minute mama wolf pops her pups out, the pack dictates every move they make—when they eat, where they sleep, whom they play with, what they think—because the pack structure, fair or not, keeps individual wolves alive. Everything in a wolf pack, from raising pups to hunting food, requires cooperation. For example, when wolf pups are born, the job of the mom, the alpha female of the pack, consists of protecting and feeding the pups in the den, while the job of subordinate members includes bringing food to the mom in the den. When the pups grow old enough to leave the den, they’re “placed” in a rendezvous point by the older wolves who meet there periodically during the day to check on the pups or bring them food. By the time the pups are about six months old, they learn the pack’s hunting techniques, which in and of themselves involve cooperative tracking, signaling, and ambushing among all pack members. If one of the wolves is injured during the hunt, the others usually bring him food until he recovers.

Over the millennia, we’ve managed to cull many of the physical characteristics of wolves from dogs—put a pug in front of a wolf and he’d probably eat it—but we’ve never bred out the pack mentality. It’s instinctive. It’s a need. And for a dog whose pack consists of humans, it’s a matter of survival. Dumping a pet dog in the park is like expelling a wolf from the pack; unless she finds a new pack, she will probably die a lonely death in a relatively short period of time, and will do anything, submit to anything, to belong once again.

In Phoebe’s case, as with any dog abandoned—or in their minds “expelled”—from the pack, the experience is so frightening that even if they find the safety of a new family, they suffer a sort of post-traumatic stress. Dogs like this are so afraid of rejection that they often hyper-attach to their new pack members. As a result, every time they’re left alone, they experience abandonment all over again. Terror grips them. Hoping they’re only temporarily lost, they howl so the pack can find them again. When that doesn’t work, they claw at doors to get out, so they can go and find the pack themselves. When that doesn’t work, they become so afraid that they lose control of their bowels and tear blindly at anything holding the pack’s scent, including pillows, shoes, and blankets.

Whatever you do, DON’T PUNISH THE DOG when you get home. Her behavior isn’t so much destructive as it is desperate, because she feared you abandoned her. Remember always that a dog has about as much chance of surviving all alone as a four-year-old kid. In his book,
The Ecology of Stray Dogs
, Alan Beck noted that the average life span of a family dog is 10.5 years, while the average life span of a stray dog is 2.3 years. I’ve not kept records, but in all of the years I’ve spent tracking feral dogs (those born wild on the streets), I’ve never seen one with arthritis. So when you walk in the door and find your shoes with teeth marks, your coffee table books ripped to shreds, and the legs of your sofa splintered like fireplace kindling, DON’T PUNISH THE DOG. I can’t stress this enough. DO NOT PUNISH THE DOG.

Since the cause of separation anxiety is fear, the cure is security. The problem is that you can’t just lavish your dog with love, hugs, and diamond-studded designer water bowls, hoping she’ll equate this with security. She won’t. She’s addicted to you and will always need more.

Now, I’m no fan of anything that doesn’t bring instant gratification—if a meal doesn’t meet my three-step rule in which step one reads “peel back lid and place in microwave,” and step three says “enjoy,” I don’t buy it—so let’s make this easy on ourselves and think of the cure for separation anxiety as a simple one-step process, which is: FOLLOW DIRECTIONS THAT FOLLOW.

(This exercise may seem a little silly at first, but remember—you can’t convince your dog verbally that you’ll be back. You must communicate with her through actions she can understand and interpret.)

• Start by
  putting on your coat
  in front of the dog (even if it’s hot) and
  grabbing your keys.
  She’ll probably show all kinds of distress like whining, barking in your direction, and circling around you. Ignore her, say nothing to her, and then sit down at a table or any place where she can’t jump up on you. Sit there until she calms down. Then stand up, take off your coat and put the keys away, still ignoring her. Repeat this chicanery several times until she stops acting crazy.
  
• Now,
  put on your coat, grab your keys, walk to the door, and open it.
  Again, she’ll probably get all upset, and when she does, sit back down and wait for her to chill. Repeat until it doesn’t bother her anymore.
  
• Next,
  put on your coat, grab your keys, open the door, and step outside.
  Leave the door open so she can see you, and immediately step back inside and sit down. Repeat as necessary.
  
• This time,
  put on your coat, grab your keys, open the door, step outside, and wait a few seconds.
  Then come back in, sit down, and ignore her. The idea here is to get her used to not seeing you for a few seconds at a time with the full expectation that you will return. Lengthen the time you stay outside from seconds to minutes, and always ignore her when you come back in.
  
• Once she understands that you always come back from the other side of the door, it’s time to teach her the verbal cue. Now, each time you
  put on your coat, grab your keys, open the door, and step outside, you say, “Long live the king.”
  You could also say, “I’ll be back” or something, but I always say, “Long live the king,” because I’m extremely superstitious about my health. Whatever the cue is, always use the same one. Do this several times, always returning within a few minutes and sitting down.
  
• Finally, you’re ready to increase the time you remain on the other side of the door, so
  put on your coat, grab your keys, grab an adult beverage, open the door, step outside, saying, “Long live the king,” and stay outside for longer and longer periods of time.
  Each time, return and sit down.
  
• Now here’s the part I didn’t want to tell you about earlier: You must repeat this whole process every time you leave for at least a week. It’s a headache, I know, but it will eventually work. Think of it as house-training a puppy: It’s time-consuming in the beginning, but well worth the effort in the end. Try to make it fun for yourself; have a friend outside to talk to, enjoy an adult beverage, buy a Game Boy or an MP3 player, and just enjoy being outside. Don’t worry about the fact that your neighbors are watching you walk in and out of the house with your winter coat on in the summer; wave like they are the crazy ones. (It’s also great for dealing with human kids who don’t want to go to daycare.)
  

Once your dog understands that you aren’t abandoning her every time you leave, reinforce her sense of security by leaving her an article of your clothing to smell and the TV or radio on. Better yet, buy a Kong toy at the pet store and leave it with her. This is a hard, plastic toy you stuff with treats, which by design are tough to get out and keep your dog’s mind off the fact that you aren’t around. Hannah enjoys a Kong stuffed with peanut butter (that I froze overnight, like a Popsicle) and now runs to her crate when I grab my keys.

While this training works with 90 percent of all dogs, there are some who have such severe histories of abuse and abandonment that nothing works but drugs. I’m a big believer in better living through chemicals. I myself use ... well, a lot of medication prescribed by Dr. Gupta, who, exasperated with my lack of progress on the couch, said a bunch of heady stuff about the lack of serotonin in my brain and neurotransmitters doing this and that, but ended with what I consider a plausible excuse: “If it works, why not?”

Currently the only two medications for dogs I know of are clomipramine and fluoxetine, which both work well. According to one of my veterinarians, they produce feelings we humans might associate with eating chocolate or falling in love, which tempts me at times to try them myself. Talk to your vet if you want to go this route.

As for poor Phoebe, who suffered abandonment twice, we placed her with a foster family that patiently worked through her problems with her. They tell me that she shows no more signs of anxiety, and that she’ll live with them forever.

(
Note to Self
: Consider writing a book about family relationships, including crating some family members during the holidays with a gingerbread-stuffed Kong.)