The Little Bear Dog Blog

…you wonder what on Earth possessed you to get a dog…

A couple of my friends have ‘perfect’ dogs.  In fact, I question whether they’re actually dogs at all – maybe they’re shape-shifting aliens here to covertly monitor human behaviour.  I say this because these dogs are chilled out, easy-going, love everybody, get on with all dogs, adore puppies, rarely bark, travel well….you get the picture.

Now I love LB as if he was a small child – actually, given that small children can be annoyingly whingey on times I’d go as far as to say that I probably love him a wee bit more. But having a dog with issues is a roller coaster.  Some days you’re bursting with pride and then on others….you look at the cat and think ‘why didn’t I stop when I was ahead?’

I’ve lost count of the sleepless nights and the hours I’ve spent worrying about him and replaying scenes from his puppy-hood – Should I have done this? Why didn’t I do that?  And in my darkest moments I’ve balled my eyes out wondering miserably if he’d be better off with somebody else.

Now to ND (non-doggie) people all this angst probably sounds a bit pathetic. I’m a reasonably well-educated professional and here I am losing sleep over the choice of training classes for my Mini Schnauzer in the same way parents battle to get their kids into the right school.  As a work acquaintance guffawed at me the other day ‘It’s only a dog!’ 

But he’s not just a dog.  He’s my dog and I made him a promise the day I picked him up that I’d love him and look after him for the rest of his life.  A promise is a promise no matter who you make it to and I intend to keep it, no matter what.

But we’re all entitled to our bad days. 

Take last Monday. LB completely over-reacted to a Jack Russel we know who had the bad manners to sniff his bum when his back was turned.  My usual distraction techniques went out the window as he growled, snarled and barked fit to bust at the ‘so not bothered’ JR.

After weeks of great progress, here he was being demon dog.

As we abandoned the park for some brisk heal work to calm us both down my mind ran the usual gambit of emotions – embarrassment, anger, frustration, self-pity (oh how attractive) and I mentally beat myself up for being stupid enough to get a dog in the first place.

But having a dog with issues has taught me a lot – one of the main lessons being that I’m allowed to be human.  So it’s okay to feel all of that stuff now and again I can only ever be human just like LB can only ever be a dog. 

So I indulged myself in the negatives for a good ten minutes and even allowed myself to wallow in the ‘why me?’ pool just to get my money’s worth, but then I forced myself  Pollyanna style to try to think of something positive I could take out of it.  Amazingly, I found one!  My new-found ability to stay calm. 

Amidst all the barking, snarling and writhing around on the end of the lead, I realised that I had managed to stay perfectly calm, while keeping the lead loose and completely ignoring the behaviour.  I’d even managed a brief exchange with the Jack Russel’s good-natured owner as they’d passed – and forced a smile!

So we had a ‘bad’ day.  It’s not the end of the world.  The important thing is that we move on from it, we go forward, we learn and improve and as Winston Churchill is famously mis-quoted in saying, we “Never, ever, ever give up.”   After all, I have a promise to keep.