I'm Fine...And Other Lies

by Whitney Cummings

  Many people conflate a pit bull’s behavior with the crimes of their abusers. In my experience, if dogs have any tendency toward violence, it is a direct result of human abuse, training the dog to behave in such a way so it sees no choice or having been taken from their mothers too young, which creates maladaptive behaviors. Dogs are extensions and reflections of their owners, which explains why mine are needy attention whores who live for eye contact. That said, like all animals, they’re wired to survive and defend their lives, so I’m the first to say that if a pit bull—or any dog for that matter—feels threatened or has a history of abuse, I’d get out of the way very quickly and contact a professional.

  Statistically, small dogs actually bite more frequently than pit bulls, but a pit bull bite is obviously going to be a bigger news headline given it will leave more damage. When a Chihuahua bites you, it’s not going to do much harm unless you’re made of mayonnaise. I found a dog on the street in Compton, who I think is part shih tzu, part something else—my guess is psycho albino rat. She has a deformed foot from being a product of backyard breeding and God knows what kind of trauma while living on the street, so at first when I picked her up or tried to clean her ears, she’d bite me no less than forty times in a row. She actually cut skin, whereas my pit bulls only hurt me emotionally, like when out of nowhere one of them will just get off the bed and walk into the other room, leaving me momentarily paralyzed with heartbreak.

  Although I love all dogs—and especially mixed alien weirdo street mutts (honestly, the fewer legs, the better)—in the last five years or so, I’ve gravitated toward pit bulls because they remind me of, well, me. They have big teeth, their menacing look tends to belie their mushy insides, and they very frequently break valuable things by accident.

  Pit bulls are the most abused dog in the country. Beagles and greyhounds are also horrifically abused in lab testing and racing, respectively, but bullies at the moment are the most common breed found in shelters and hence the most frequently euthanized, but then again who knows what goes unrecorded. People who run backyard dogfighting rings train the dogs to minimize their need for human contact and of course to fight other dogs to the death. Perhaps I see myself in pit bulls because I feel like I, too, was conditioned for the same things. That said, saying I’m like a pit bull is a huge insult to pit bulls. Every pit bull I’ve met has shown more patience and loyalty than I ever have. They also usually smell way less like a dog than I do.

  I relate to the baggage bred into a pit bull’s brain because I grew up watching family members battle it out, slam doors, and yell at each other about stuff I learned about from Melrose Place. Fighting became my comfort zone because not only was I taught by pros how to do it, but it was a kind of attention that I could understand. I wrongly thought arguing was an expression of love or that it just came with the territory of being “in love.” When there wasn’t some kind of conflict in my relationships, I’d get anxious, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Considering the type of guys I dated, that shoe would be one of those weird finger sneakers that outline every toe.

  In my family of origin, conflict was the primary mode of communication, followed closely by passive aggression. But the key to conflict, I learned, is never backing down from a fight. As a result, I developed a very tough exterior to protect my fragile insides, which to this day I think are made of actual Peeps. I subconsciously wanted to become the scary-looking pit bull people see walking down the street and sheepishly cross to the other side to avoid. Nobody can hurt you if they can’t get close to you.

  But there’s no victory in being scary. In my experience, the scariest people are usually the most scared. They’ve learned to be intimidating as a self-defense mechanism in order to avoid being hurt. When I look back at myself in my twenties, I see a terrified girl fighting wars that had been over for twenty years. I was still living by the now-obsolete rules that had gotten me through life in one piece. I thought being intimidating was going to protect me, when in reality nothing can protect you from the harsh lessons of life. Trust me, I’ve tried everything from vodka to Icy Hot to ointment with weed in it, and annoyingly, the only way out is through.

  As you know, I don’t rescue humans anymore because I’m in therapy for codependence. Also, rescuing humans doesn’t even work. It’s an exhausting waste of time that just makes them hate you. Just look at Batman, he lived alone in a cave.

  I’ve redirected that energy into rescuing animals, beings who actually need and appreciate help. I promote and follow many animal charities on social media. Social media may be the apocalyptic end of society as we know it, but it does help get dogs adopted, so it makes said apocalypse slightly less terrifying. For most people, social media is a fun diversion where they get to read inspirational quotes that are frequently attributed to the wrong person and see photos of disturbingly large butts that are a slipped disk waiting to happen. Since I follow so many animal rescue organizations, social media is not particularly fun for me. Rather, it’s an emotional land mine. In between borderline racist memes and annoying photos of cappuccinos with heart-shaped foam, scrolling through always yields faces of stray, abused dogs in need of a home and often urgent surgeries. Sigh. If only people’s actual hearts were as big as the ones in their Instagram cappuccinos.

  One day I was on Instagram, perusing the feed of an ex-boyfriend, minding my own business, and I saw a post of an angelic pit bull behind rusty metal bars at a shelter notorious for killing dogs very quickly. He was a year-old blue pit, which are the ones that look like tiny gray baby hippos on steroids. He was set to be euthanized in two days, and his eyes seemed to tell me that he somehow knew that. My solar plexus warmed with rage. Over my dead body would I let this dog be a dead body.

  I called a rescue I worked with and arranged to have someone go down and get him from the shelter. When I came home, the dog was already at my house, waiting at my front door with two people from the charity. When I saw this tiny burro, my eyes welled up. It was love at first sight. This was already better than any online date I had ever had: Not only was this guy on time but he was early, well mannered, and even cuter than his photo.

  I know he technically had the genetics of a pit bull, but he looked to me to be part seal, part baby elephant, part Vin Diesel. He had a broken tail and a perma-smile lined with an unnecessary amount of teeth, and his head and neck were strapped with muscles that no dog should ever need to use.

  Usually the first thing I do when I rescue a dog is rename him. Given that I rescue mostly pit bulls, they always come with some testosterone-addled, intimidating name an irresponsible, insecure person gave it that isn’t particularly helpful in trying to change the stereotypes about them. Names like Butch, Gun, or Tank. I mean, to me these sound like very harmless male strippers, but I can see how this could make people more scared if they’re already trepidatious about pit bulls. A dog’s name makes other people feel a certain way about it, the same way human names do. Like when I hear the name Vlad, I think “scary Russian bouncer,” and when I see the name Chad, I swipe left. This blue pit came with the name Fang, which made no sense given how timid and sweet he was. That name did not match his personality. Naming this dog Fang would be like naming me “wife.” After spending some time with him, I decided to call him Billy.

  The first thing I generally do when I meet new dogs with a dubious background of abuse is try and identify their triggers. What scares them? This helps me figure out what may have happened to them in the past and how to proceed with their training, healing, and placement into a forever home. It can be painful to watch them react negatively, but they can’t progress unless I know what wounds I’m dealing with. I’ll raise my hand to see if they cower, which tells me they’ve been hit. I’ll slam doors, try to put them in a crate, throw a fake cat in front of them, anything that could help me glean what they’ve been through and what issues we’ll have to address. I also highly recommend doing these tests with humans on the first
or second date. It saves a lot of time down the line.

  After testing Billy a bit, from what I could tell he hated being left alone, was very scared of people yet had severe abandonment issues, and loved food. We already had more in common than any man I’d ever dated.

  I also related to how socially awkward Billy was. He wasn’t really sure what to do with his balloon arrangement of a body. I later found out that this could be the result of being taken from his mother too early. Puppies should be with their mother for at least eight weeks, but often breeders take them as early as two or three weeks. When removed too early, dogs can get too clingy with their owners, have socialization issues, and even bite, because bite inhibition is learned from their siblings and mother. Puppies need to be with their moms as long as possible, unlike humans, who seem to get weirder the more time they spend with their mothers.

  When I sat in a chair, Billy sat under it, always seeking the place in the room where he’d be the least vulnerable. Once he finally did warm up to me, the poor boy wasn’t even sure how to show his affection. He had absolutely no practice licking humans, and every time he tried to lick me, he did it with the wrong side of his tongue. The jellyfishy underside would slime me first; then he’d chase it with the rough upper part. Getting a kiss from him was sloppier than some of the drunken make-out sessions I had with random strangers during spring break at the Cancún Señor Frog’s.

  Once I felt I had built some trust with Billy, I carefully introduced him to my other dogs. When Billy met my gaggle of clowns, he wasn’t overly charmed by them the way I am, but he was genial. I could tell he was slightly suspicious of their innocent and unconditional kindness. Chances are, he was used to dogs that were trained to attack him, so he stared at them warily, as if he anticipated, but didn’t at all want, a fight.

  “And he’s cynical?” I thought. I beamed with pride. I mean, this dog just went from my soul mate to my offspring. Billy was cute, sweet, and to top it off, very on brand for me.

  Billy had also been neutered only a week before I met him, and it takes about month for the testosterone to subside after the surgery, so I knew he was going to have the energy of a rambunctious teenage boy, something I was used to from dating forty-something guys in L.A. Now, what’s the only thing trickier than the energy and attitude of a teenage boy? A teenage boy composed entirely of muscles and bulletproof tendons, topped off with forty tiny knives embedded in his face.

  In my humble opinion I concluded that Billy needed at least a month of impulse control training, which is normal for a one-year-old dog who has just been neutered and has zero discipline or socialization. As I mentioned before, pit bulls have been bred to have a high arousal rate, and it’s important for their and your safety to make sure they’re able to stop doing whatever they’re doing when you ask them to so they don’t run into traffic or jump on you when you’re in a pair of overpriced white pants that are probably going to get ruined anyway, but you’d rather it not be before you even leave the house.

  By day three, Billy was following me wherever I went. If I was in the shower, his nose was on the glass, ogling me. If I was in the tub, his chin was on the side of the tub. If I was on the toilet, his chin was on my feet, but only because I wouldn’t let him rest his face between my knees because it felt like we were bordering on something illegal.

  That evening I tried to see if Billy could make it through the night in the crate. No dice. He was screaming his head off, so I moved the crate into my bedroom so he’d be able to see me. Even less dice. I finally acquiesced and let Billy sleep in the bed just as I do any man who shows the slightest bit of neediness.

  When I let Billy up on the bed, he plopped his impossibly-heavy-for-its-size block head on my chest. When I looked at a selfie of us (I mean, come on, I had to take one), I was able to see a look of relief on his face. Maybe I was projecting, but the boy finally seemed to believe that he was safe. I tried to push him off me so I could breathe, but he just bounced back, desperate for physical contact. This little dude wasn’t taking any chances.

  The next day I planned to dedicate some time to etiquette training with Billy. But since I myself wasn’t yet trained in etiquette, I spilled coffee all over myself and the floor. The cup shattered all over my bedroom. After yelling about five iterations of the word fuck, I bent over to start cleaning up the mess. One of my dogs, Daisy, the one who looks like a tiny cow made out of ice cream, came over and licked my face. My dogs always know how to calm me down when I’m stressing. Pills make me gag, so dogs are like Xanax but without the almost puking part.

  I had found Daisy on the street a couple months earlier, and she still had a bunch of random bald spots and scrapes, so I started examining them and assuring her of all the things I wished someone would have assured me about when I was a kid. Side note: I’m convinced that when people talk to their dogs, they’re saying things they subconsciously need to hear. You’ve all seen people who meet a new dog and within ten seconds are saying “I love you,” a phrase it could take years to say to a human being. I can always tell a lot about someone based on what they say to their dog. My go-tos are usually “I promise I’ll never leave you” and “Here’s some food,” two phrases I wish someone would say to me on a regular basis.

  Billy came over to join in with some of his backward clumsy eel kisses. I assure you there’s a ton I don’t know about dog psychology, and I’m sure I make training mistakes all the time, but I do know some things about training dogs, or at least what has worked for me and my weirdo pack. It works for me to establish myself as the alpha, which means I have to act like, well, a goddamn alpha bitch. For example, I learned you walk through a dog, not around a dog, even if it means having to slow down and push them out of the way with your legs. This helps them understand that they’re in my house, not vice versa, and that I’m the pack leader. Behaving this way was hard for me at first because I thought it was mean, but the meanest thing you can do with a dog is be unclear and submissive given they’ve evolved to be led by us. Otherwise they feel they have to be the leader, which makes them aggressive, territorial, stressed out, and they start to pee on stuff you care about. This basically means I have to own my space by walking around like Beyoncé, which does not come naturally to me given my genetics.

  To be the alpha I also feed myself before I feed my dogs, I walk through a door before they do, look them in the eye, and so forth. I try not to be on the floor with my dogs too much because they could interpret that as my being submissive or their being equal to me. They’re not equal to me. They’re better than me, but they can’t know that. My dogs are so submissive at this point that my being on the floor with them every now and then doesn’t mess up the power dynamic. Also, I trip and fall a lot, so not ever being on the floor isn’t really an option.

  Even if I’m on the ground, I still enforce the alpha dynamic. If I’m done playing on the floor with them, I push them off me and claim my space to make sure my dogs always understand boundaries. It was hard for me at first, because as you well know, it’s hard for me to tolerate the discomfort of others, but unlike a lot of confusing people, dogs do very well with discipline. Anyway, I was ready to get up, so I pushed Daisy to the side. With my other hand I pushed Billy to my other side.

  Then it happened. What exactly I’ll never completely know, but within seconds my ear was hanging off my head.

  I don’t remember that much, but here’s what I specifically don’t remember: growling, fighting, struggling. I do remember pulling away and Billy getting stuck in my hair. I felt hairs pulling out of my head. I mean, of all the days, the one day in the past ten years I was actually wearing my hair down, it had to be this one. Billy and I were both panicking, and even though we were both bred to fight, neither one of us wanted any part of this sloppy melee. We may have been emotionally entangled, but neither of us wanted to be physically entangled.

  From what I’ve heard, when mammals get injured, a surge of adrenal
ine basically turns them into superheroes. Out of nowhere I was able to stand up without using my hands. I somehow flew from my bedroom floor to my bathroom, guided by core muscles that came out of hibernation. Apparently the sight of my own blood makes me instantly capable of parkour.

  What I saw in the mirror was more confounding than horrifying. My brain was obviously in denial about what had happened because I couldn’t figure out why I was wearing a giant hoop earring. “I don’t wear hoop earrings,” I thought. It dawned on me that it wasn’t an earring. It was an ear. My ear. Dangling by a thread, which I now know are technically called elastin fibers. My neck, my hands, and the right side of my face were covered with blood. It was very clear what I should do next: Call 911 and get an ambulance to come pick me up. So what did I do? Grabbed my keys and got in my car.

  I drove about three miles like I was in Grand Theft Auto before I realized that driving while holding a flaccid, hemorrhaging ear was a very poor decision. I’m already a bad enough driver with both hands and ears available, so with only one of each, this move was borderline homicidal and suicidal.

  I sped onto the infamous Mulholland Drive. Love the movie, hate the street. It’s basically a serpentine hiking trail that’s super congested because it’s on the “star tours” bus route. Mulholland Drive is also a mess because it’s eternally torn up and under construction, much like my personality, or on this particular day, the skin on my head.

  I drove toward a construction site that had been pissing me off for weeks. Every day I had to wait for the construction worker to let me pass through the now-one-lane street. Every morning I pulled up, stopped, resented him, and forced a smile. Little did I know that the man who had been a daily annoyance for the past month was about to be my guardian angel in one of the most traumatic moments of my life.