scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

23.2.08

in which i will see your Hills Like White Elephants and raise you a shut your damn piehole already, shut up liz, shut UP, or, apologia

can't. stop. blogging. And also, probably, i am going to do really inappropriate things here, make awful comparisons, say things that aren't funny. This is how i deal. This is my blog, my space, my journal, mine: fuck off. I don't care if it isn't funny for anyone but me. Fair warning. (They killed Kenny: you bastards. Death is not funny. See? Not funny. But how i deal.)

so there are things, i think, that one does, as a responsible member of society. Clean up one's trash. Give proper directions. Don't leave pee on the seat. Park properly. Once i saw a car on fire and called 911; i was terribly excited as they had only just invented cell phones, so there was a possibility that someone had already called, and I asked the operator if she knew there was a car on fire on Highway 81 South or whichever it was, and she said no, and i was eight or nine years old - Responsible member of society. Mention to somebody when they've dropped their keys. Don't walk in the exact damn center of the one-lane street. It's why i vaccinate my kid. It's why i put the ugly kitchen barstool i always broke my toe on in the hallway downstairs with a big sign saying "GRATIS" instead of busting it down to get it to fit in the trash, to see it gone, claimed, in twenty minutes flat. It's why one turns down the stereo late at night. Hold the elevator. Mow the lawn. Don't (feed mogwai or; see also, death, not funny) move furniture after midnight.

And when one's dog bites a person, one puts it down. But that doesn't make it easy.

There's no, but he didn't mean it. There's no, it was situational. There's no, it's redirected this, behavioral - learning - modified - whatever that. The shelter we got him from, the rescue back in texas, they call it a crossed wire in his head. Me, when i am feeling like glossing things over, i call it a persistent anxiety disorder. In the reality-based world, they'd say he bit M, and while M is fine (well, we had to wash his jeans, and it's good that one of us is a girl and knows to do it in cold water, y'know, and if he hadn't been wearing jeans, then it would have been worse, a lot worse, and while it wasn't bad, in the sense that M could walk afterwards, i guess, it was certainly a Real Bite) - well, there it is, it was a Real Bite. You could count his teeth from the holes in M's leg, see where they were crooked, where they were big. Multiple holes. As in, more than one. Holes. In M's leg. Euphemism-euphemism-euphemism, whatever, holes and blood and there it is.

And yes, we knew it would happen eventually. Anxiety disorder. Panic disorder. Hates-walking-on-the-street disorder. (Seriously, what dog doesn't like to go for walks?) Wants-to-attack-dogs-and-bicycles disorder. Will-bite-anything-in-biting-range disorder. Not quite frothing-in-the-face disorder, and while we're home, calm. Cuddly. Sweet, perfect, soft, ideal. (Except when he growls at you for touching his butt, or when he's on your side of the bed and you're sleepy, so he has to move, or ) God, he sounds awful. When we were home he was damn near a perfect dog. And if he never had to leave the apartment - and if it was bigger and there was more than one comfy couch to nurse/watch TV/laze about on, more than one place to nap, a larger kitchen to hang out in, more places to hide when he was feeling antisocial, a larger space between the living room and all the rest of it, oh, christ.

One glass of wine and a little grief, and i get all loquacious. See? Not funny.

i feel like i'm rationalizing it all. I am. Like if i make enough excuses i'll feel better. Nope. This is me and my failure, alone in the corner. There must have been something. If we'd made him go for more walks. If i'd had more energy. More patience. (Thicker jeans. See? Not funny.) If we'd put him on doggie prozac, if we'd had his teeth removed, if we'd let dog no. 1 dominate him a little more as a puppy, if he'd been a little older when we got him, a little younger, if we'd socialized him better instead of letting him hide, if we'd called the behaviorist sooner, a million things. If we hadn't moved to vienna. If we'd stayed in the big house in texas, the big yard, where he was comfortable. If we'd made him wear the muzzle all the time, or kept him crated every second of the day. and, yeah, sure, what kind of life is that for a dog, but then, how do you know if that's not better? Stupid world.

M took him to the vet. I sent them with a big packet of lunch meat - weird, stinky Austrian turkey stuff. Not the spicy kind. They always like the stinky, though.

Little Bird, i'm sorry.

Labels: dogs

scrawled @ 22:20