You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness (4 page)

I got home and picked Otto up from Barbara, who’d been watching him while I was away. I’d been trying to talk to him from Omega and asked her if he sounded like he’d been listening to me.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Did you tell him to fart a lot?”

Barbara hadn’t grown up with dogs, but she really loved them, especially Otto. This was the first time she’d ever dog-sat and she kept telling me beforehand that she was really going to freak out if she had to pick up his poop on the street. It was unbearably disgusting to her. I understood. Anyone else’s dog’s doo-doo grossed me out, but not Otto’s. When I got back I asked her how it had gone. She said he didn’t “go” the whole weekend. He peed a lot but it was like he knew she didn’t want to pick it up so he didn’t make one. I thought maybe Barbara was psychic, or Otto was. Back in my studio, I worked on the techniques I’d learned over the weekend, sitting quietly and listening for a word or phrase, maybe an “I love you, Julie.” I didn’t hear anything, but I did smell something—something very, very bad. And then I “heard” him say he needed to go out, that the doodying he hadn’t been doing all weekend had caught up to him. I took him out and he “spoke” for a long, long time.

I tried very hard to practice and practice. I read Penelope’s books and sat for extensive periods of time with Otto. He was usually sleeping and when he wasn’t I tried to talk to him. I’d close my eyes and then I’d fall asleep. My brother Matt said he believed all dogs thought the same thing and Otto was no different: “A string of hot dogs, a piece of bacon, a chicken leg, cheese, pizza, a ham sandwich ...” When I first started dating my future husband I would tell him over and over again how smart Otto was, mostly because of the depth of his expressions. “Maybe,” Paul said. “And maybe he’s really, really dumb.”

“Maybe you are!” I came back.

On a blowy, gray autumn day, Otto and I were walking down Columbus Avenue when I saw a familiar face. It was one of the assistants from the Animal Communication workshop. Finally, I’d get a glimpse into Otto’s thoughts and see if I had in fact been reading him correctly. Sweet affirmation! I was excited to introduce her to my amazing canine. She stooped, gently cupping Otto’s face in her hands, and began staring deeply into his walleyes. And . . . he bit her. It was later communicated to me that I needed to pay her medical bills.

As for me, I stopped trying to do ESP with him and started talking out loud to him. On Thursdays, I had therapy at 4:30 followed by group therapy at six. It was just too long a day to leave him in my apartment so I took him to doggie day care. The first place, Canine Country, was a few blocks from my apartment and it was like a ballroom for dogs. I chose it because it was $15 a day instead of the $20 some of the other more high-end places charged. It seemed good. Dogs running all around going to the bathroom on the floor and then a guy in scrubs would come clean it up. I left Otto with a lot of hugs and kisses and promises that I’d be back later. It was gnawing at me the whole day, and I ran to pick him up at 7:30 on the dot. When I walked into the place there were big dogs running all around barking and playing, and in the corner I saw Otto sitting alone with his ears down, looking just like a baby seal. He wasn’t playing with anyone. He probably thought I wasn’t coming back. He saw me and we had a
Love Story
-worthy reunion. The guy in scrubs assured me that Otto had had a great time, that he was just worn-out now. When we got outside, Otto took a pee that lasted several minutes and I realized he was such a good dog, so totally housebroken, that he wouldn’t
go
on their stupid floor. And they didn’t take them outside for walks (which was why it was cheaper). I was infused with guilt, and I wasn’t about to leave him there again. Plus, he stunk like a mall pet store.

The following week I did some research and found a better option, the tonier Yuppie Puppie that was located on the ground floor of a brownstone and had a backyard and a kid-die pool with a slide—plus those dogs did get walked. I felt infinitely better leaving him there and when I picked him up he wasn’t exploding with pee. I now had a solid plan, and I felt very satisfied. The next week Otto started pulling back as soon as we got on the block where the Yuppie Puppie was located. I dragged him to the top of the stairs leading down to the entrance.

“This is the good place, Otto, you liked it!” I pleaded. “It’s not that place with the big smelly floor.” People passed me by giving me a “My dog is more obedient than yours” expression.

“Otto, I am going to be gone for eleven hours! You can’t stay home alone!” I tried again to take him down the stairs, but he would not budge. Anyone with a dog knows about this suction-cup feature that enables a twenty-five-pound dog to render himself immobile. You suddenly find yourself attempting to walk the Great Pyramid of Giza.

“Listen, I have to go to work, and if you’re not willing to go down these stairs you are going to have to go home, where you will be alone all day.” He stared at me with his lips tightly closed. “It’s your choice, buddy. You can stay here and have fun and frolic or be by yourself in the apartment with no one to talk to or play with or run with, no sing-alongs, no pool.” He started gingerly prancing in the direction of home.

“Okay,” I said, “it’s your choice. You chose this. I was willing to pay the twenty bucks, plus this week I was going to pay extra for real bacon treats! Okay. Your decision. Your bed, you can lie in it.” We got back to the door of my apartment and I started arguing again. “Otto, you can’t stay alone in the apartment all day!”

Pause. “Really.”

Pause. “Think about it, huh?”

I looked around as he tried to go up the stairs. I couldn’t leave him there for so long. And before you wonder, yes, I knew it was totally about me and my neuroses. Clearly he’d held his bladder that long at Canine Country, but I knew I’d be too miserable leaving him in the nice cool apartment with the classical radio and plates of food. So I walked him over to my aunt Mattie’s. Otto had fixed it so that instead of being stuck at the Yuppie Puppie he went to Mattie’s Doggy Heaven every Thursday. I’d drop him off before work and pick him up with his newly fattened belly after group. Though it was a half-hour cab ride, it came out monetarily very close to a day in doggie day care.

He had finally, unmistakably, communicated with me. And I understood. But it felt more like common sense than actual animal communication. I knew there was no way I was going to continue in this field; it just wasn’t me. I believed there were people who communicated with animals, like Penelope Smith, but I wasn’t one of them.

There is great value in putting your toe in the water. A good friend of mine always wanted to be a doctor. In her senior year of high school she took a job in a hospital. The smell there made her sick. She threw up every day. It was pretty clear that being a doctor would have to come off the table, but what a fantastic revelation. We all need to find what’s comfortable for us, and sometimes the only way to do it is to find out what doesn’t fit. I was glad I’d taken animal communication, but what became clear to me from the experience was that my favorite part of it was telling the stories. And being with my dog. And it turns out writers
can
bring their dogs to work.

LESSON THREE

How to Keep the Yin from Strangling the Yang

When I was four months pregnant with my daughter, Otto died. It was unexpected and devastating. He wasn’t ill that anyone knew of, and he wasn’t that old. I had planned for him to be a big part of the birth. In my mental rehearsal, I would feel contractions, call Mattie, she’d pick us all up, drop Paul and me off at the hospital, and take Otto back to her apartment so she could dog-sit. When I realized he was gone, I was despondent, breathless, and broken. There was such an immense black hole within me that I worried it would hurt my unborn child. I sat staring into space for long periods of time trying to connect to Otto and find out if he was planning on being reincarnated. I just wanted to get him again. Looking at photos of new puppies online, I calculated the date of their birth to see if it could be him, like his soul might have slipped out of Otto and into Henry. I was trying to get a sign:
“Are you him?”
In the meantime, people were gently suggesting that it wasn’t a good time for a new puppy. Well, not so gently, more like screaming,
“Are you nuts? You’re going to get a puppy right before you have a new baby?”
My brother Brian would call, then his wife, Cheryl, then my parents. If you know me even a little, you would realize that telling me (and Paul) not to do something because you know better ain’t gonna work. We ignored them.

When we ended up getting a new Boston terrier puppy, there was no doubt in my mind. This wasn’t Otto. Otto was like Yoda, but the new pup was a fresh spirit, unencumbered by depth—kind of vapid. She was born to my former vet’s dog in a duplex brownstone on Central Park West. She was hardly a rescue, unless you feel strongly about having a doorman. Beatrice was just herself. And with that new baby on the way, a part of me was relieved that she didn’t have Otto’s breadth of requirements. I decided that the new dog would be just a dog. I lay on the couch on my side and Beatrice lay on my expansive belly. She was under ten pounds, a feather. If Otto had done that, the baby would’ve been crushed. A few months later, I had my daughter and the baby/puppy combo
was
challenging. I would be in the apartment, Bea would be jumping up and down because she had to go out, and there would be Violet sleeping away in her bassinet. You would have thought the act of taking the baby out in her stroller while holding Bea’s leash was like landing a jet on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean at midnight. I was so uncoordinated that if, God forbid, my cell phone rang, I would freeze. Before too long, though, I was able to juggle them all and text a grocery list at the same time.

It didn’t take me long to realize my new baby was not like a dog at all, even apart from the physical differences. I was actually quite pleased that when she had to go to the bathroom, I didn’t have to take her outside. It was easy! Well, maybe not
so
easy. We were living in a one-bedroom at the time, so Bea slept with us and Violet slept right beside us in her bassinet. One night after we’d all gone to sleep we were awoken by a bloodcurdling scream from Violet. We jumped up, turned on the lights, and looked in her crib, expecting to see a snake coiled around her. Nothing. It was nothing. She didn’t even wake up from it. (Damn kids!) We went back to sleep and about an hour later, I was still only half dozing and my leg hit something wet in the bed. I turned the light on and apparently Bea’s dinner didn’t agree with her—she’d thrown up all over the sheets. I woke Paul so I could get everything off and we both fell asleep on the bare mattress for a cool hour and a half. These were not the best of times. When people asked about a second child we both looked at them like they were stark raving lunatics.

There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule about when you’re supposed to spay your female dog—some say to try to do it before the first menstruation. That’s what we were hoping for. It was a bad year for timing, and when I saw the spots of blood all over the house I briefly considered throwing myself out the window. (“Why not Bea?” Paul asked. “You weren’t the one bleeding.”) The one thing we knew was Bea couldn’t sleep in our bed at this time. It was just too gross even for us. So after about fifty phone calls and e-mails throughout the day between Paul and me, we decided she’d sleep in her crate that night. The crate we got when she was born, the one she’d been inside exactly once—to take the biscuit and leave. That night we put her in it with her little plush panda and some beef sticks (her favorite), dusted our hands off, and patted ourselves on the back.

First, she scratched at the front of the crate. Once, twice, eight-hundred-million times. Then she started crying (while still scratching). Crying and scratching. Scratching and crying. Her crate was in our bedroom and slowly it started to hop-hop-hop across the floor. Keep in mind, she was under ten pounds. So Paul, the toughie, picked up her box, put it out in the living room, closed the bedroom door, and we went to sleep . . . in theory. Her cries became more insistent and then changed into a sound I’ve never heard from a dog—it was more like the bleating of a sheep or the crying of a baby (well, a baby with a Mayor of Munchkinland kind of voice). I popped up in bed and stared at Paul, who was fast asleep and snoring. Any new mother is familiar with this scenario, but the baby was asleep. I poked Paul. “Listen to Bea!”

He opened his eyes, wrinkled his face at the sound, and then started dozing again.

“What are we going to do?” I said.

“Just don’t listen,” he answered.

“I can’t not listen, she’s going to hurt herself.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go check on her.”

Paul dutifully went out and Bea flipped upon seeing him. He told her to be quiet and go to sleep and came back to bed and he went back to sleep. I sat up listening as her already keening wails increased in intensity and volume.

“I can’t stand it,” I told Paul. “I’m going to go into the living room and sleep with her.”

I came out and she started screaming at me. I closed our bedroom door and let her out of her crate. I opened up the pullout couch, put on spare sheets and a blanket and pillows, and picked Bea up and put her in the bed with me. After about ten seconds she jumped off the bed and started scratching at our bedroom door.

“Stop it!” I scream-whispered. “Get over here.”

I walked over and put her back and she continued to escape. “What is the problem?” I asked her. “I’m here in a bed. I just came out here for you. I don’t want to sleep out here either!”

She wanted to go in the bedroom—the bedroom was her room, not the living room. At this point, it was two or three in the morning and I’d not been to sleep yet. And I was sleep deprived before I even went to bed. I was starting to get deranged. She wouldn’t stop scratching at the door and if she woke the baby, I would kill her. I had an idea. I’d put one of Violet’s tiny newborn swaddling diapers on Bea and she could come in the bed with us. If you don’t know this already, dogs and babies are not exactly the same shape. Even when babies crawl, it’s a very, very different structure. So I slipped the diaper on Bea . . . and it fell off . . . and I put it on . . . and it fell off. Growing more insane, I took a roll of packing tape out, put the diaper back on her, and started madly taping. Good. I opened the door and let her in the room. Paul was out cold. Bea jumped on the bed and got under the covers, leaving her little tapey diaper on the floor behind her. I started to cry and think that maybe in the morning I’d be able to have myself committed to a mental institution—just for a couple of days, so I could sleep. I went to the hall closet and got a huge beach towel and put it in our bed and woke Paul up to say, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for being very, very crazy; please don’t divorce me.” He said it was okay and everyone finally settled down, and as Paul snored, I wept and told him how much I loved him.