I'm Listening With a Broken Ear

by Vicky Kaseorg

  CHAPTER 3- Irrevocable, Inconsolable

  Lucky, never the strongest dog psychologically to begin with, now slinks around the house, with a wary eye always on the lookout for the next attack. After a night of wrestling with my sheets, I stare at myself in the mirror, asking myself over and over again why God created me without a brain. From the heights of self-adulation, I now plummet to the depths of self contempt, sticking my tongue out at the dark circles under my eyes, and berating myself out loud. You idiot, you inflated fool. What mind numbing ignorance makes you think you can save that dog? Look at your motives…. Is it any wonder this endeavor has not ended in gold medals and endorsements? You conceited jerk. With these happy thoughts, the computer is again enlisted to help me determine if there is any hope of healing the food aggression. In painful acceptance of my role in the continuing disintegration of normalcy for my dog or my family, I am very careful to keep the dogs apart and safe. Honeybun lowers her ears when I look at her. She and I both feel our inadequacy glaring at us and we do not like it, not one bit. Even when she lowers her head, and lays back her ears, one is off –kilter. What is up with that? After pulling the sideways ear upright and letting go, it flops back to a perpendicular slant. Her ear is broken. My heart is broken. What a pair. As I stroke the silky golden ear, she ducks her head but looks mournfully up at me.

  The internet experts suggest that the easiest solution for food aggression is to always separate the dogs when food is present. Since we have not seen any aggression except in this situation, it is probable that if they are fed in distant opposite corners of the house, the issue will be instantly resolved. Problem solved quickly and easily, in time for dinner the way all troublesome issues should be neatly resolved. My defeat quickly turns to victory. Patience in my book is not a virtue; it is the last resort of incompetents. Perseverance is only necessary to procrastinators. A second coming was only hoisted on Jesus because of the inefficient, ignorant people who didn't get it right the first time.... With self congratulation, this simple cure is implemented.

  For a day or two, an uneasy peace reigns. The dogs are never allowed to roam loose without me nearby though what I hope to accomplish with such vigilance is unclear. It isn’t as though my scrutiny had been able to stop the last fight from escalating. Honeybun occasionally emits a very soft, low growl for no apparent reason as Lucky walks by, to my consternation. Otherwise, they seem largely indifferent to each other. We become more relaxed allowing the dogs together. The term ‘relaxed’ is used loosely. The ‘relaxed’ posture at this stage of Honeybun’s rehabilitation involves me sitting on the edge of my chair, one hand hovering near her collar, the other nervously plucking my eyebrows out.

  No further episodes of obvious aggression return, and my confidence increases. Good deeds are rewarded and I am past ready to collect my richly deserved accolades. Nearly two entire weeks of diligence, and my long suffering solicitude will now reap if not fame and fortune, at least tranquility in our home again. While wisely deciding to hold off news conferences, it is no secret that if we continue on this track, Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer could well be challenged for top honors in dog training. I of course, am not bragging…. much.

  Returning from a party, we open the door as the exuberant dogs come galloping to greet us. We have progressed to the point where we feel safe leaving them alone together as long as no food is in sight. They both come hurtling at us like fuzzy missiles. Wagging and prancing one moment, suddenly there is an explosion of fur and teeth and the dogs are again locked in mortal combat. Once more, it blasts out of nowhere, and we stand there in the midst of gnashing teeth, and growling, murderous demons. Again, the placid, seemingly submissive little dog becomes a cannon, shooting venomous snarls and flashing teeth like artillery into poor Lucky.

  Matt, hearing our screeches bounds from his room. We are all yelling and whacking at the blur of fur. I slam a chair between the dogs and when they are momentarily on opposite sides of the chair, Matt grabs Honeybun. (Poor Matt has recently returned from college expecting a restful summer and discovers he has stepped into "The Wild Kingdom". Not only is he not getting Chicken Wellington with tender asparagus tips; he is being handed manuals on Rehabilitation of Severe Canine Basket Cases, and warned not to leave his room without full body armor.)

  Lucky is hiding in one room, and Honeybun thrown in the sunroom, with the doors slammed shut. This fight has erupted without a morsel of food in sight. It appears that Honeybun is not going to tolerate Lucky sharing the smell of her food or our attention. Lucky, nutty as he is, was there first, and is patiently suffering his displacement with relative equanimity. To reward him for his tolerance, he is getting the snuff beat out of him. He doesn't deserve it. Despair leaks into heavy pools of despondency. I am out of my league in dealing with this wild dog. The captain of my soul is currently ship wrecked. I have been raised to chart my own course and navigate with aplomb. So much for self-reliance. The aggression explodes out of nowhere, completely unprovoked and unexpected. I haven’t the slightest clue how to deal with it. All that is left to do is count my fingers and thank God I can still wear gloves with all five fingers.

  As bombastically inflated as my ego had been before the attack, it now shrivels to dejection. This is beyond my meager capacity to cope with. I love animals but without training in anything beyond the normal mischievous family pet, have not the strength, fortitude, knowledge, or ability to endure the pain and hardship (not to mention potential stitches and puncture wounds) that this untamed beast requires. Sometimes, it is best to fold.

  “We can’t keep her,” I tell Asherel, who tearfully and silently agrees.

  If she would just rant and rave and argue like a normal spoiled brat, I would feel much better.

  Our neighbors have recently lost a dog to old age, and they might possibly be vulnerable enough to shift this rather inconvenient problem to. The issues with Honeybun seem to be completely rival-dog related. If we can find a home for a family without a dog, all will be well, at least in our four walls, which is all that matters. I call the neighbors, Pam and Jim, asking if they would consider taking this sweet, but non-dog-loving creature for their very own. They agree to look at her. I don’t remember to pray. Good thing God knows what we need before we ask for it.

  When the doorbell rings, Honeybun erupts into a cacophony of growls and barks. She stands at the door, hackles raised, teeth bared.

  “Way to impress your potential owners!” I congratulate her.

  This is new behavior. She has seemed submissive and gentle to all human beings up to this point, even when the vet poked and prodded her. What new uninvited demon is occupying her soul? I let the neighbors in, pushing Honeybun back. She snarls, and tries to get around my jabbing foot. Jim has a cane, and I rationalize the door aggression as response to the unfamiliar cane. I clutch her collar and usher my inexplicably reluctant guests inside.

  Pam smiles and asks which dictionary I am using to define “sweet”?

  As we settle in the sunroom, she becomes gentle and docile, letting Pam scritch her belly. She barks at Jim and his cane for a while, but eventually calms and lets him pet her. I sit on the edge of my chair while watching her, my muscles tense and ready to leap up at the first sign of demonic possession. I’m not certain she will not attack. My heart plummets like recent DOW averages. I hope our homeowner insurance covers dismemberment. The neighbors leave; assuring us they will consult and decide by tomorrow.

  Once again, that night, overwhelming sadness invades my sleepless hours. Why has God seemingly planted this dog in our midst if only to sabotage our good intentions? Perhaps He wants us to fix her up, spend money we don’t have, and then break all our hearts for a wonderful reason we just can’t yet see. Asherel has stoically assented to the need to give "her" dog up, but she creeps into her room with wet eyes. My bribe, telling her the vet bill she had covered will be repaid by buying her a new horse statue evokes a weak smile as the tears gather.

  I want to give up. I wan
t to have the doorbell ring and not worry about handing our visitor a stun gun. I want to be able to put food down for our dog and not have trained snipers ready to intercept incoming fangs. I want my life to be simple again. But I can not quite shake the feeling that having put the pot on the flame, it is my fault it has boiled over. I curl up around my copy of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” and sob. In the morning, I call the neighbors and ask them to give us a month, if they would. It is academic though as they had decided not to take Honeybun. What a surprise.

  So we are stuck until Plan B materializes. Since Plan A has not yet been developed, I am in a pinch. We know we have to separate them when we feed them, and separate them when we are gone so upon our return they will not eat each other. After considering my toes dejectedly for an hour, tears occasionally dribbling down my nose, I decide I have little choice but to do my best, bloom where planted, and all that kind of thing that motivates and inspires people. First, look on the bright side since this is what people feigning optimism do. She is housebroken. At least I am not dodging piles of poop while helping Lucky evade her onslaughts. She is also somewhat trained in basic obedience. She knows sit, come, brief stay, and mooch. Not that we have to command her, “Ok, now mooch Honeybun!” She just does that naturally. As soon as we sit down to eat, she sits next to me, alert and poised ready to snap up any tidbit that might fall, one ear straight up, one ear straight sideways. Then, ignored in hopes of discouraging this begging, she lays her silky head on my lap, and looks up at me with slightly moist eyes, gently wagging her tail. It is so endearing that it is very difficult not to give her scraps, particularly given what living hell she must have gone through for the past year.

  During my bouts of depression and remorse, I reminisce about the good old days of relaxing with just one dog and his benign issue of digging through concrete. Sometimes I smack myself in the face and remind myself again to focus on the bright spots. Honeybun and I share a love of walking. Unlike Lucky who finds walks to be a convenient way to find new napping spots, Honeybun loves going on walks. She obviously has never learned to heel obediently on a leash but learns very quickly.

  Cesar Milan- the Dog Whisperer, checked out of the library teaches me that an exhausted dog is a placid dog…. and less likely to be aggressive. We go on “power walks”, three to five miles twice a day, with only brief potty breaks. We are a pack, migrating like in the good old evolutionary past when cavemen and dogs hunted together. We have purpose, and I am establishing myself as pack leader, alpha dog, the sun around which their canine world revolves. They respect me and there will be no more fights. And for a period of time, that is the case.

  Considering our complete lack of competence, things are proceeding well. I begin to crawl out of bed with less of a sense of dread, and a small flutter of something that feels like hope. Of course, constantly on high alert, every time Honeybun fixes a riveting stare towards Lucky, I bellow a reprimand. This redirects her briefly, and Lucky skitters away. The lovely doggie friendship between the two that I envisioned is not happening, but my goals have readjusted. I just want them to both survive. Knee and heel pain is developing from our power walks, but permanent disability seems a small price to pay for intact flesh on humans and dogs. Arvo never mentions that this is not fun, that his stressful life is not being made any easier and it is my fault. While brushing my teeth words like “idiot” and “ill conceived plans” stumble out of the froth.

  Lucky never seems to blame me, though it is his life most in jeopardy. He seems to hold out some hope that even this obstacle will somehow be dug out of. He still sniffs Honeybun, his wiry face beseeching. She does not welcome his interest, and similarly does not seem comfortable with us petting her. She likes to be near us, but edges away if we try to stroke her. This is a sad and troubled little dog who evidently does not regard humans or other dogs as sources of comfort, but at some level, longs for it. We sit in silence, she and I, mutually longing for connection, for joy- settling for now with proximity to it.

  I begin to lose weight, and sleep, rising early enough to get the dogs out quickly to exhaust them before they start plotting how to kill each other. Old friends call, asking to walk with me like in the pre-Honeybun days. I decline as the "dog whisperer" suggests power walking migration with dogs is not at all what most of my friends do with their dogs. Their walks are more leisurely, dog–directed pee and poop fests. According to the experts, my dogs cannot direct anything, or they will see through my fragile alpha status, and they will be using flush toilets while we humans pee on the bushes. My world is closing into managing the two dogs. Despite growing exhaustion, there is no choice but to continue what I have started.

  Meanwhile, Asherel, who is enamored with dog agility contests, begins jumping Honeybun over piles of sticks. Dog Agility is a canine performance sport where the dog navigates a series of jumps and obstacles off leash in timed conditions. We have been watching these contests for years, traveling to see any near enough for us to attend. Asherel wants very much to train Lucky to do agility, but he seems totally uninterested. She finds that the little dog, however, is immensely agile, probably honed from her brief life of fighting to survive. Asherel begins training her, and building an agility course in our back yard. She researches the various types of agility equipment, and then creatively replicates them with what she can find in our yard. She uses logs and stick piles for jumps. To create the "dog walk", she suspends a board across two overturned chairs. She designs an "A-frame" by turning an old Adirondack chair upside down, and has Honeybun march up the seat, and down the back. She makes "weave poles" by sticking twigs in the ground. Both Asherel and Honeybun seem to be having fun, and I am certainly in favor with all the sunshine, fresh air, and exercise involved. Lucky watches woefully from the sidelines, but honestly, lazy Lucky has never been very interested in jumping anything. Rousing from my bouts of self flagellation over the mess I have created, I glance out the window to see Honeybun sprinting across the yard, and flashing over the twig pile jumps. It is the first real spark of excitement she has summoned thus far.

  While a jumping dynamo, Honeybun does not seem to otherwise have a shred of playfulness in her. Starvation has a way of dampening the playful spirit. When we throw the Frisbee, she watches it land, without moving to intercept it. The balls we toss bounce off her nose. She looks at us, somewhat confusedly, and walks in her dainty tiptoe manner in the opposite direction. During one such attempted play session, she suddenly starts growling at us. As we climb down off the table, we realize she is assuming the dog "play position". She isn’t quite sure how to initiate play, but it looks as though a fog is lifting from some primeval swamp of knowledge. Lucky, who loves to play, sees that at long last, she is acting like a dog and he races outside with her. Hooray, he barks, his tail wagging, ears perked. Briefly, they rocket across the yard. Honeybun almost transforms to happy at that moment.

  Inexplicably, as quickly as the exuberant play springs up, she suddenly lunges at him. Playful barks turn to vicious, ear ripping snarls and the worst fight to date spews forth like sun tan lotion in a nudist colony. Honeybun leaps for Lucky’s throat, as he tries to escape. She is oblivious to our cries to stop. She rips huge chunks of long hair from him. It is his hair that is saving him- she seems unable to find his skin. Then she plunges for his underbelly, where the hair is short. Watching from the sunroom window, I then race outside, followed by Asherel and Matt on my heels. Her teeth are snapping, and her upper lip curls back like a shark just before it snaps a victim in half. Mindful of the advice I have read never to reach in to stop a dogfight with my hand; I grab a ladder from against the house and slam it between them. It separates them, but then Honeybun skirts around it to go after Lucky yet again. Oblivious to our shrieks, she repeatedly charges at him. I bash the ladder between them once more, giving Lucky enough time to spurt back inside through the dog door, and Matt leaps in front of it, blocking Honeybun from following with his foot. She is demented, and ignores us, throwing herself
at the door, with fierce, venomous snarling. He kicks at her. She doesn’t attack him, though I fear she might, but continues to try to get around his foot and go after Lucky. No doubt he is shuddering in the bathtub reading a manual on self –defense in one easy lesson.

  Screeching at her, I thrash the ladder again to get her away from the house. She is so crazed and wild that I am sure if I try to grab her, she will be attacking me next. The ladder clanging in front of her with Lucky out of sight finally seems to register through her insanity, and she stops. She stands looking at me as the glazed, wild look begins to melt away, sides heaving. I pant for breath too, doubled over from fear and exertion. Asherel and Matt stand on the deck silently watching us. We are all shaking. Matt is the first to break the silence.

  “When’s dinner?”

  If a dog has remorse, she looks remorseful. Her breath comes rapidly, as she hangs her head and looks at me. She would have killed him; there is no doubt of that. When going for his jugular had not worked, she had gone for his belly. This was a primal attack. Asherel is on the deck, crying.

  “I am calling animal control now,” I croak, “We can’t let her hurt Lucky.”

  Matt looks woebegone, but I suspect it is because he knows this means there are going to be delayed dinner plans.

  Asherel agrees through her tears. This is becoming a common pattern for her usually cheerful character, and I am to blame for thinking my talents could rescue this dog. Worse yet, what kind of arrogance made me believe God had directed me to bring this wretched creature into our home? Honeybun tries to follow me up the stairs.