check your sugarcoat at the door

My parents are not really pet people. Correction: My dad is not a pet person, under any circumstances. My mom is more susceptible to an animal’s sweetness and cuteness and she can be coerced into loving a pet.

And yet forever and ever, my family has had dogs. They were mostly mutts, save for the Collie we had when I was toddling around in my parents’ first house (Ralphie), and the Collie we inherited from a relative and quickly returned to said relative when she bit my brother’s face (Valentine) and the miniature Collie we had for many years that was not only the coolest of all the dogs, he was the smartest and the sweetest too (Shasta).

We got Shasta when I was around eight. He was itty bitty precious tiny and he vomited in my lap during the car ride home. It was love. About eight years later, when I was sixteen and scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins for minimum wage, my mom left the house to come pick me up at work and found his small brown body and white mane on Lambert. She took Whittier Blvd home that night and I didn’t found out why she’d re-routed for a long time.

When I was sixteen, my friend Carly gave me a red-eared slider named Jack. I’ve had her for 8.5 years but there’s only so much cuddling her and I are capable of when she is a half water, half land pet.

I moved in with some friends and my boyfriend when Kiddo was two and a half. We got an English bulldog named Moo from my boyfriend’s uncle, a breeder. She was the sweetest, stinking dog you’ve ever met. She wheezed and slobbered and smelled, like an English is wont to do and I adored her. Unfortunately when I moved home she couldn’t come with me and went to live with an animal lover friend of a friend. I never saw her again.

Five years since Moo, I took in Lucy on a whim. My cousin had taken her in when a family was nearly evicted from their apartment for hiding her. She was just a pup and she couldn’t live with my cousin. She sent me a picture and I agreed to keep her having never met her. When she came around late last summer, or early fall, I thought she was ugly. She was annoying because she was so skittish and afraid of the whole world. She wouldn’t potty train and I lacked the skills and patience to properly train her. She resulted in us tearing out our dining room floor and replacing it with vinyl. She resulted in a deep cleaning and dog pee treatment in our living room. She has eaten my $300 prescription sunglasses, my $550 mouth guard and more pairs of work pants than I can count. I have replenished my entire underwear stock more then three times. She got a hold of my keys, the television remote and my ex boyfriend’s glasses. She’s taken down the kitchen trash can and dragged its contents around the house numerous times. When she tires of the kitchen trash, she moves on to the bathroom trash. She tore two holes in the couch, ruined our screen door, and tore a hole in my window screen. The amount of damage and fury caused by this dog had me throwing my hands up and pulling my hair out every single day. My roommate/best friend Ree tried to convince me to give her up. Find a home for her where someone was equipped to train a monster puppy and wasn’t leaving her for nine hours a day. And eventually I did cave in. I couldn’t take the frustration or the cost to replenish my wardrobe any longer and I asked around and sent pictures out. Loveable puppy, needs some training. No takers.

It took several months for me to really grow attached to her. To really feel like she was my dog and it was my responsibility to take good care of her. I had never fully realized the extent of care a dog requires. I was a naïve and stupid pet owner.

As Lucy grew on me, I tried to embrace her faults and work with her, instead of against her. I finally took her to get all of her shots and I put a nametag on her with her name and my cell phone number engraved on a silver bone.

She’s still dumb as all hell. She sits but leaps back up immediately. She charges the screen door and bolts out of the house at every opportunity, playing a game with anyone who tries to snatch her back up. But it’s been a long time since she chewed anything or made a mess. Since we installed a doggy door, she’s only had one accident in the house. She has grown on me like mold, overly and annoyingly and disgustingly. She’s a nuisance when I have company over because she protects the door by barking at you incessantly. Then she wants to cuddle your head. No, really. She hops up on the back of the couch and tries to wrap herself around your neck like a mutt-scarf. She sleeps at the foot of my bed and no matter how much kicking or tossing I do, she will not budge. And I love it. I want her to sleep there every single night, and wrap herself around my head when I’m on the couch, and sit in my lap and press her face against my chest like she always does. She wants constant contact, affection, petting, love. And I probably shouldn’t give it to her as often or as quickly as I do because I’m the master and all the shit. But I am so overwhelmingly in love with her, finally, almost a year later, and I’m painfully aware of what a bad pet owner I was and how much grief my little bitch caused my roommate. I owe them both some serious gratitude and lots and lots of presents for their patience while Lucy and I figured each other out.

-CJ