Tigger the Dog is a rescue and an absolute pain in my butt at 6:30am when I get up to let her out. She has massive panic anxiety attack each morning, all day really, that consists of her pacing in crazy circles and whining a high pitched whine as she looks about for something - preferably a stuffed animal ‘baby’ – to put in her mouth at once. Only a having the baby in her mouth won’t calm her down. It just makes it hard to breathe while she’s panicking and the whine becomes a siren of awfulness punctuated with a snuffle that turns into a Chewbacca gurgle. That joyful noise combined with her out of control 80lbs body and whipping tail can cause quite some damage – to the house and to anyone’s nerves within a ten-foot radius. It’s so bad that when we decided to drive across country during our move, I went and got drugs for her. (I couldn’t justify drugs for me as I was going to be driving part of the trip. Until I got fired as driver, that is. At that point I seriously considered taking some of the dogs pills but was afraid of the side effects. I’m hairy enough as it is.) Anyway, I did a test case the week before we left and it left her so stoned she couldn’t walk. And as funny as that was, we’d just sold the house and having a stoned dog walk through a wall of windows wasn’t really going to be a great punch line to our last day in California. Let alone driving with a stoned dog in a car in Arizona or Texas or any of the many states it took us to get here. That meant no drugs for Tigger the Dog and no drugs for us. She spent the trip in the boot surrounded by babies and whine-shrieking and we spent the trip trying not to listen. It was a joy. We don’t have any history on her aside from her vaccinations so we have been playing detective for the past two years, trying to figure out what has made her such a mess. At first Husband thought her trauma was because she was because she was spayed after having puppies, that her need to carry a baby around in her mouth was her missing them. I wish I had a picture of the Vet’s face when Husband explained his theory. Let me just say, the Vet should not take up acting. The baby really just seems like a pacifier to her anyway and doesn’t really seem to be a nurture thing. Then we had a theory that she might be Chinese. Well Husband did. Totally ignoring the fact that he has a Scottish accent and puts, like eight r’s into the word ‘girrrrrrrrl’, he decided she wasn’t understanding us because she’d been raised in a Chinese household. I’ll let you imagine how we tried out that theory. We were very, very wrong. It turned out she had ear infections in both ears and couldn’t hear anything at all, Chinese or not. So, two weeks after getting her, we had to hold her down and drop goop in her ears twice a day. It did not do much for the honeymoon of her getting to know and love us and it totally didn’t help her anxiety issues. Or mine. Then we decided she had witnessed a murder. Okay, that was really my theory. Loud noises, like a door slamming or a book dropping on the floor make her freak out, grab a baby and run around in circles whine-shrieking and whacking things with her tail. She must have been in the house when her other family all got slaughtered, I said. We're the doggy witness relocation program. Husband just looked at me. I know, there is something wrong in my head. But then we noticed she does the same when the doorbell rings – in real life or on TV. And she does the same thing when the blinds going up. And she does the same thing when the blinds going down. And with the shaking of the bedspread. And when we let her inside. And after she poops. And when she needs to poop. Or pee. Or eat. Or whatever… Pretty much everything brings on the whine-shrieking, pacing, whacking things show. This is my attempt to take a pic of the whine-shrieking, pacing, whacking things, baby in mouth show this morning. These are the only ones that weren't too blurry. And she was totally Chewbacca gurgling, snort-whine-shrieking at the same time. Pure awesomeness. Husband said it’s me, that she’s picking up on my crazy messy energy but even with all the swirling emotions inside me, am not that much of a mess that Tigger the Dog needs to panic all the time. Sometimes my brain is actually at peace.
Which brings me to the realization that THAT is the best thing about Tigger the Dog; whatever she had going on in her past, she is MUCH more of a mess than me.
2 Comments
Jaxon Magnum
1/21/2014 09:49:29 am
http://www.cesarsway.com/channel/dog-whisperer-tv
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ej
1/21/2014 10:14:46 pm
Are you offering to pay for him to come train TTD? If so, I'm all in!
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AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
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