THE HOWLING

Not always a good girl

   I'm going to continue the story in a linear way, and what happened next was meltdown, because ignoring emotional baggage never really works for long.  In this case, it was the howling that started unpacking it for me.  
   You wouldn’t think so, since I love the sound of coyotes, but the the wild noise of a free-roaming pack is very different that the piteous howling of a puppy who doesn’t want to be in a crate. Coyote song invites me to be wild.  Puppy cries call up abandonment and entrappment.
     Our puppy, still unnamed, would go into her crate happily enough with a treat, but as soon as we went to our room and turned off the light, the howling began.  This puppy wasn’t about to suffer in silence.  
     I’v read that the sound of a baby crying is the emotional equivalent of a jackhammer, and I knew that was true.  Once, when my son was an infant, I’d tried to let him ‘cry himself out.’  I lasted about fifteen minutes, and never tried it again.  The sound of the puppy’s distress had the same effect on me, but I didn’t know what to do about it.   
     We were crate training her, which is good for housebreaking, and also would allow Photon to roam freely at night.  He was already ticked off, sticking to the circus room - a no-puppy zone - all day, and glaring at us whenever we approached him.        
   “She’ll be fine,”  Steve told me.  
   “Will she cry all night?”  I demanded.
   “Probably not,”  he said.  He rolled over and went to sleep.  I pressed a pillow over my ears and tried to do the same.
    I don’t know how long the howling lasted.  Twenty minutes?   Twenty hours?   At some point I dissolved into weird dreams about my father.  I was woken by more whining, but Steve got up and took the puppy out, then climbed back into bed.  More howling, more weird dreams, and then more whining. It was not quite six a.m.  Time to take her out again.

     The first three nights of the puppy’s presence were all exactly like that, and with each one I grew more miserable, more acutely disturbed by the noise rather than habituating to it as Steve said I would.  The dreams about my father continued, unpleasant recurrences of his illness and death.  I’d wake more miserable than the night before, and after Steve left for work, I’d bring the puppy out to the yard. 
      I’d take a post with my coffee on one of our many sitting rocks while she rolled about on the grass.   She especially liked the plastic buckets our plants and shrubs came in, and she’d stick her head in them and run around in blind circles, then fall down and wiggle out to chase them again.
     “Buckethead,”  I muttered.  “My puppy is a buckethead.”
      Objectively, I knew she was really, really cute, especially when she ran around with a bucket on her head.  However, her crying, the dreams, all the demands, had unloosed something unpleasant in my emotional drive, and I felt awful about myself for feeling that way. 
     Instead of doing what I knew I should do - lean into the feelings and figure out their origin - I tried to scold myself out of it.  I’d better snap myself out of this, I told myself.  I’m a smart woman who has lots of good things, and no right to feel this way.  None of that got me anywhere, but I kept at it, and kept feeling worse as a result.  
     While the nightly howlings unearthed old grief, the daily round made me petulant.  The puppy, unlike cats or kittens, wanted my attention all the time. When I walked around the yard, she’d stick to my heel, staring up at me as if I was supposed to do something.   My cats had always glided slightly behind or to the side, with interest but no agenda.   
    When I was weeding, she’d leap onto my favorite flowers, crushing them.  If I stood up she ran in circles around my legs, tripping me.  I muttered a lot, spoke sharply to her when she whined to go out while I was writing.  I didn’t want to go out.  Didn’t I ever get what I wanted?   She’d roll around on the floor with limitless delight, as if she was getting all her fun by stealing mine. More anger, more sorrow, wheeled through my veins. I was a feeling machine, unable to stop the wheels of emotion from churning out this crap.
    In spite of all that, I didn’t want to let Steve down.  He was clearly besotted with the puppy and doing everything he could to make it easy for me. And she was good for him, helping him to relax and show his playful, goofy side. I couldn’t mess that up for him. 
    I managed for a few days.  Then, one more piece than I could manage was added to the mix.  
   I’d been keeping Photon inside, afraid he’d run away, but  one morning  he darted out across the yard before I even saw him stalking the door.  The puppy was busy with a bucket and didn’t see him.  I went to the vegetable garden to weed.  
   Soon, Photon came strolling back, and this time the puppy saw him. Suddenly she became a different kind of creature altogether.  She lifted her head, did a classic point position, and went after Photon, charging with purpose.  She’d found her inner predator. 
    Photon took a quick glance, puffed up and was off like a shot, running into the scrubby woods surrounding our yard.  
   I ran after them both, yelling at the puppy to stop, heel, sit, down.  Nightmare scenarios rose in me.  The dog would trap the cat, and hurt him, or even kill him, and I’d lose my cat to the damn thing I never wanted in the first place.  
    “Listen to me you little shit,”  I screamed.  “Leave the cat alone!  Leave him alone!” She paid no attention and that enraged me.  Dogs were supposed to be obedient. 
    I scrambled through the brush in time to see Photon shoot up a tree.  I made a dive and grabbed the puppy by her collar.  She yipped once and twisted around to get out of my grasp.  
     “No,”  I shrieked.  “No.  Don’t eat the cat.  No.”
     I pulled her up and brought her back into the house, put her in her crate and closed the door.   Then, shaking with anger, I went back outside to see about Photon.   Again I pushed through brush to where he sat on a limb, hunched up, his fur puffy and his aspect disgruntled.   
     “You can come down now,”  I told him.  “I put the dog away.”
      He didn’t move.     
     “You want to stay in the tree?”  I asked him.
    He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. I left him there, knowing he could get down when he wanted to, but I felt awful.
     When Steve came home I told him about it.  “Photon’ll get used to it,”  he said reasonably.  “And the puppy will learn not to chase him.”
    “She went after him,” I insisted.  “Not playing.  Like she wanted to kill him.”
   “She’s a puppy,”  Steve said.
   “She’ll be a dog,”  I pointed out. “She’ll get big and kill my cat and I won’t be able to stop her.”   And I burst into tears.  I sat down on the kitchen floor and wept as if my heart was breaking.       
    Steve sat down next to me and silently patted my shoulder, looking worried. His wife was cracking up, over a puppy.  
    But by now he knew it was more than that, and so did I.  As a child, I’d  had the burden of a grandfather who singled me out as his caretaker, and used his neediness to abuse me.  I knew too well what it felt like to be trapped and helpless, to be prey.  The possibility of that happening to my cat was too much for me. 

Don't mess with me

      In case you think that sounds totally bonkers, it's actually pretty common with survivors of any violence.  It's called a trigger event. Just as memories both good and bad recur with the right physical cue, old trauma is sometimes resurrected by triggers, some of them so out of left field you don't immediately connect them to the actual memory.  War veterans report them happening from sounds, smells, certain angles of light.  I had survived the domestic wars, and it seemed my old battle wounds were kicking up.  From a puppy.
     Steve’s response was typical of him.  He made a decision to protect what he loved, and acted on it.   I got up the next morning to find him dismantling the crate.  When I asked what he was doing, he said he was taking the puppy back.
    “Back?” I asked, not getting it.
    “Back to Bill.”
    “But  - you can’t.”
    “Yes, I can.  I’ll tell him you’re allergic.  This can’t go on.”
    “No,”  I protested.  “I’ll get over it.  Just – I’ll get over it.”
     He kept at what he was doing.  When he decides a course of action

, his energy is so positive there’s really no denying it.  In fact, you don’t want to, because what he’s doing seems so right.  
    “The dog is triggering you,”  he said.  “I’m not sure why, but it’s wrong for you to feel so bad. I won't let it happen.  She’s going back.”
     I was stunned.  I believe it was the first time anyone had so consciously considered my well being above their own desires. It was such an unusual experience, I had no idea how to respond, so I said nothing.
     And Steve, looking forlorn but determined, brought the puppy back to Bill.
       
      You can find more of my writing at my website, wildreads.com.

COMFORT FOOD
No recipe today, because this is a sad part of the story, and I can’t eat when I’m sad.   However, if you feel the need of comfort food, let me suggest the following:
Peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich - classic, when it calls up memories of the good parts of childhood.
Peanut Butter and Fluffernutter sandwich - even more classic, and best served on white bread for full effect.  Nobody worried about that kind of thing when I was growing up.
Peanut Butter and Banana slices on toast - the healthy version of PB&J, especially if you use whole wheat bread and organic bananas.  

Chicken noodle soup - Campbells, from a can, with saltine crackers.  Do I need to explain?