Thursday, January 26, 2006Who's the Alpha Now, Dog?Just to get us all clear from the start: I won. I prevailed. This fight went to me. The human. The one with opposable thumbs and a credit card.But it wasn't always clear that that would be the outcome. Yesterday morning found me waking up, eager to embrace the new work day, vowing to get to work a full hour before a conference call meeting, show them that I was a diligent worker, an engaged member of the team, that I cared. I wake up early. I have a routine now. I've had Sam for two weeks. My obsessively organized nature has once again created order where there had been chaos, has slowly but inexorably gotten me back on track after the burglary. Yeah, there are some new things to navigate. Like the alarm system. And the fact that I have to remember to open the garage door so I can get into the garage to pull the car out before I close the interior garage door and then lock the back door so I can edge out of the kitchen (with the puppy inside) and then erect the barricade that will keep him in for the day until Spencer comes home, from there picking up the pile of laundry (that I have to have remembered to leave by the front door so I can put it in the washer before I pull out the car) AND my cell phone, blue tooth, bag of paperwork to take care of during the day, my purse and (when I think of it, which I usually don't) my jacket or scarf or whatever. Thus armed with laundry and work and clothing and communication devices, the dog properly barricaded behind the pile of chairs and boxes that serve to keep him safely in place, I then have to remember to CLOSE the front door, ARM the alarm system, and then get me and everything out before the alarm goes off and the SWAT team comes hut-hut-hutting in drop-and-rolls from the sky to mercilessly kill me. I then go into the garage, drop the laundry into the washing machine, put the work in the trunk, holding the cell phone devices in my teeth, and get into my car, ready to navigate traffic and start my day at work. Things like that. Things that I've worked into a smooth, flawless system that really doesn't take that much thinking any more. With kids it gets a bit complicated, but we can manage that too. Until yesterday. The day BEFORE yesterday, Spencer came home to find the dog had gotten out. He had defecated all over Taylor's room, emptied out the bathroom trash, neatly placed all the shoes in a row, and was sitting happily in the living room when Spencer came in. So I knew we had a security breach, but I didn't know how bad it was until yesterday morning. I thought I would fix it by just piling more chairs across the barricade. But when I did one of my first circles between house and garage I came back to find Sam what? Sitting happily in the living room. Damn, dog. That was fast. I put him back in the kitchen, pile up a few more chairs, turn around to get something and WHAM. He's out again. The WHOLE time this is happening he's yapping. Not barking, not doing anything cute. But YAPPING in a way that is incessant, repetitive, shrill and absolutely crazymaking. It's the repetitive part that starts to get to me in very short order, like Chinese water torture. YIP!!! YAPYAP! YIP!!! YAPYAP! YIP!!! YAPYAP! It's making me insane. And then whenever I have to tear through the kitchen, he jumps at me, nips at my clothing, overjoyed with happiness to see me, humping my leg... it's beyond infuriating. I start barricading up the doorway more and more and he gets out within 2 seconds, a happy proud look on his cute little face. I put him back in, build it up more, and out he comes, heading right for Spencer's room where I find him happily eating Spencer's favorite stuffed pig. I start losing it. I throw him outside and assess my barricade. Obviously it sucks. It's too low, I finally decide, so I put a table on its side and put the box on top of it and now we're down to a 6 inch gap for him to get through. He does. I put a wire mesh screen to close the gap, hoping that will deter him. It doesn't. I finally pull out a bulletin board, prop it against the inside of the doorway, block it with a table and my kitchen island (which really works better when moved 180 degrees and the contents of the top rearranged, which I do), prop up the box and two tables and a speaker on the other side of the doorway, and let the little fucker back in. The yapping continues. The humping continues. I squirt myself from head to toe with bitter apple spray, which makes me smell like a fumigation tent. I am face to nose with him, holding his cute little muzzle and I'm SCREAMING at him. I'm YELLING at the top of my fucking lungs. QUIET!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHUUUSSSSH!!!!! NO!!!!!!!!! My eyeballs are popping out of my head, I can feel the blood rushing to form god's own best headache. And of course I can't now get OUT of my kitchen because I have the great wall of China built between it and the living room, so I have to shove the dog inside, lock the back door, go through garage and back into the front door, all the while hearing the frantic YIP!!! YAPYAP! YIP!!! YAPYAP! reverberating through the whole San Gabriel Valley. It holds him. HAH! I yell, trimphantly. I GOT YOU NOW!!! So while he's barking he head off I gather my stuff, go in and out through the garage several times, get it all together, arm the front door, drop in the laundry, dump the work in the trunk, and finally FINALLY pull out of the garage. I am covered with hair and dog spit, I smell like insecticide, and have a really good headache on, but damnit... the house is armed, the dog is secure, my stuff is in the car, and I'm on my way to work. I'm 6 minutes late to the meeting that I was planning on being an hour early for. This is war, I mutter to myself all through the conference call. This aggression will not stand, man. (Thanks to the Big Lebowsky for that quote.) I have superior intelligence (uh, admittedly not in high evidence at the moment I was screaming at a 12 week puppy a few hours earlier), I have... I have opposable thumbs! I can construct something that I can open that the little demon Houdini dog cannot. I can do this. I talk to friends, I look online. I call PetSmart and ask for the biggest expert on gates that they have. I talk to Matthew in the gate department. He reassures me. This is just a phase, what the dog is going through. I need to make sure Sam knows I'm the alpha in the pack. He will settle down when he's "fixed." (A term I'm really fascinated by and would be rather offended by if I were a man.) It will be OK. Right now it's chaos, out of control, hysteria ("Oh, you were there this morning?" I ask). But it will get better. In the meantime, there's a gate. It's pretty good. I can get it for only $109. It will keep him in. I have a dinner party last night with some good friends. Because they're good friends, I make them work for their dinner and they install the gate while the kids and I cook. The gate... well... it's not really a hundred bucks worth of solidity, but it's ... okay. It will probably hold up for another week or so, buying me more time to figure something else out. And then I can sell it on eBay or something. At one point during the evening Sam is doing the yapping jumping humping thing to one of the kids. I lean down and say an emphatic and emotionally dripping NO to him, reminding him in subtext of the armageddon we went through that morning, reminding him in subtext that I am bigger, I have opposable thumbs, I have procured and installed a gate made of METAL that he can not chew out of, jump over or push over (yet). I remind him in subtext that I pay for the food, I control his environment, I am the source of his love, his shelter and his sustenance. With all that NO I tell him all this. And he immediately sits down and shuts up and looks at me. "Whoa," says Spencer, to Sam. "Welcome to MY world." By the end of the night, after playing with two new people and two kids and running around while we barbeque the chicken, after a drive downtown to drop my friends off, after dealing with gates and hysteria... my little dog is tired. By the time we get home, he is happy to slog his tired little paws to Spencer's room where he thunks down on the floor with a little puppy sigh. I hoist the crate over the gate and put it in Spencer's room. Sam goes in without complaint and immediately conks out. I look at him and smile. It's not a nice sweet maternal smile. It the smile of victory. I go into my room, raise my arms to the sky like Rocky Fucking Balboa and I do a little happy dance. I do this for about 10 seconds and then I sink into my bed with a little human sigh and totally pass out. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 11:39 AM  
Comments: Kathy - as always, brilliantly written. You have such a wit. Sadly enough, I've been there and could identify with everything you went through. You said it so perfectly (couched in your wicked humor) for all of the dog owners out there who endured those first few, crazy months of posturing with our beloved canines for role of Alpha Dog. And, YES, I won too. Down boy! # posted by  LoriAnn's Blog : 4:49 PM
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# posted by LoriAnn's Blog : 4:49 PM
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