Dog Medicine

by Julie Barton

  NO WONDER

  EARLY JULY 1996

  At eleven weeks old, Bunker walked like he still hadn’t figured out what legs were for. I watched him for hours, laughing much of the time. Watching him took me out of my mind and into the moment as he so adorably tripped over air or tried but failed to catch a housefly. I observed as Bunker listened, deeply, to the forest behind my parents’ house. He froze at the sound of a cracking branch, or took off on a scent trail like a released spring, blades of grass tickling his round belly. For him, there was no fretting, no worry. Just this moment. This joy. Maybe, I thought, I should try to be more like him.

  I learned to read his expressions. I knew that his ears went back when he was startled. If I wasn’t close by, I could see that his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then darted until they found me. The feeling was mutual. When he saw me, his body curled like an apostrophe in happiness and I knew—he liked me. My confidence in my own likability had always been so shaky. But I knew Bunker had no reason to fool me, no reason to lie or pass judgment. The shedding of that layer of doubt left me feeling so light I imagined I might float right up into the highest branches of the trees and spend the day there.

  Out in the yard one afternoon, when I was failing to teach Bunker to fetch, he stopped mid-stride, pointed his muzzle straight up, and howled, “Hawoooo!!!!!!” I sat in the grass with my mouth wide open in surprise, then began laughing. I’d never heard a dog make such a sound. I howled back. He howled more, and soon we sounded like a pack of two wolves. “You are such a good boy,” I said, when our song was finished, my voice gelatinous. “Such a good, good boy.”

  I’d been with Bunker every minute since I brought him home. The only time I wasn’t with him was when I was with my therapist, and I found myself feeling anxious without him, talking about him in her office, thinking of him every few minutes while I was in session. Without him my thoughts took over again, and I wasn’t aware enough yet to notice. I wanted to ask my therapist if I could bring Bunker with me, but I couldn’t gather the courage.

  I liked this therapist, Mya. She was young. She spoke slowly and deliberately, and I found her manner soothing. Her office was a one-story brick building, not far from my parents’ house, awash with neutral colors and decorated with crisp photographs of barns and fields from the Ohio countryside.

  Mya asked a lot of questions, like “What conclusions did you draw when your friends in New York started to tire of your lovesickness?”

  “That I’d be sick of me too,” I said.

  “But what did that make you think about yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That I was a bad friend. That I put all my self-worth into whether this guy still loved me. Just bad, I guess. I felt bad.”

  “But what were you thinking?”

  “That I sucked,” I said, tiring of her rapid-fire inquiry.

  She put her finger on her nose. I was lost, but she pressed on in this vein. I began to understand that without my realizing it, I perpetually put myself down in my own mind. She called them automatic negative thoughts, and when she said those three words, it was as if a little bell rang in my head. I did do that. I always had. But I had never noticed, never thought to question the truth of the negative conclusions I was constantly making. My thoughts ran unhinged for years until I was barely conscious on the kitchen floor, face down on the couch, suicidal. My thoughts blamed me for every problem, put me down whenever possible, and regularly left me shaken, broken, insecure, and mean.

  As Mya explained to me, “Your brother long ago stopped being part of your life. He left, went to college, graduated, started his own life that had little to do with yours anymore, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “But you have carried on the insults and mistreatment. You now just mistreat yourself.” I looked at her with my brow furrowed. This sounded absurd.

  I’d visited Clay once, by myself, when he was a senior in college. I was eighteen. It was an awkward but mildly friendly weekend of partying and hanging out. This, we thought, was what brothers and sisters were supposed to do at this age. We weren’t exactly close, but he wasn’t hideously mean anymore. The plane I took from Ohio to Minnesota was struck by lightning, and when a white burst of light and a deafening bang erupted in the plane’s aisle, everyone started screaming. But my thought was Oh well. I’m ready to die anyway. I comforted the hysterical eighty-year-old woman next to me but felt startlingly calm. I was eighteen and nonplussed at the idea of dying in a fiery plane crash.

  “So,” my therapist continued. “You go to New York. Fresh start, right? Except what happens?”

  “My boyfriend cheats on me,” I said.

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Then everything goes to shit,” I said.

  “Why do you think that happened?” she said.

  “Because he defined me,” I said.

  “And without him?”

  “I’m nothing.” I looked at the ground. When I said it out loud, it sounded ridiculous. I wore a button on my backpack that said, This Is What a Feminist Looks Like. And yet, I felt as if I disappeared if a man didn’t love me. What a fraud I was. What a fake, I thought.

  “So you ask yourself,” Mya said slowly, “is that true? Are you nothing? Are you worthless?”

  “No,” I said quietly, thinking, Pretty much, yes. I had talked to Will the day before, and he told me again how much he loved me, how beautiful I was, how much he missed me. He said he wished things could have ended differently. I told him I agreed.

  “No,” she echoed. “You are not.”

  Our time was up, and I walked out of her office with one assignment: Catch a few of my negative thoughts and write them down for our discussion upon my next session.

  By the time I got to the car, I had enough material for a few hours’ worth of conversation: Why were you so awkward when you said good-bye? You didn’t close the door all the way. Mya wants the door closed, which is why she shut it completely after you left. You made her get up. Your thighs are rubbing together. You’re getting fat. You’re disgusting. Open the door for that lady, geez. Don’t make her wait. Jesus Christ, did you seriously just step on her foot? Apologize to her now. “Oops! Sorry.” Only you would do something so idiotic. I hope you don’t get into a car accident and die on the way home. Because you could, you know. Pay attention to the road. You are a terrible driver. Look before you back out! You learned that years ago! Jesus! You almost hit that guy. Moron.

  On that drive home, from underneath the negative thoughts, bubbled this: No wonder. No wonder I’ve been so down. No wonder I’ve had a hard time making friends. No wonder New York just about killed me.

  The bad thoughts came and went so fast that I didn’t notice most of them. But the relief I felt at seeing one nasty thought, and catching it mid-flight was a breakthrough. For the first time since I’d collapsed in that apartment I thought I might be able to get better.

  DOG MEDICINE

  MID-JULY 1996

  Bunker had been with me for three days and we’d established a routine. Wake up, pee, poop, eat, walk, play, nap, and repeat. He was already mostly house-trained. He’d had only one accident on the carpet. I taught him to sit and make eye contact and he did so eagerly, wanting to please, ready for the next command.

  Waking up in the morning was getting easier. But something dark still lingered. And on this particular day, for no discernable reason, the darkness reared its ugly head, unannounced, worse than ever, like a thread-thin worm that had covertly dug itself back into my body from underneath a fingernail. It said, Oh no, you don’t. I see you trying to pretend you’re happy, trying to fool people that you’re not a lazy, ugly idiot. I felt punished, as if my captor had caught me trying to escape. Perhaps those awful thoughts had never left but just lay dormant for a while. I wanted to fight; I tried hard to push the negativity away, but it persisted.

/>   Just getting a dog can’t cure me, I thought. I was the problem. I wasn’t strong enough. I was a failure, a crazy person. I was truly unlikeable. I believed this like I believed that the earth was round, something I couldn’t see, but understood to be true because I had been told it was so.

  I walked to the maroon living room couch and sat down, feeling both afraid and comforted by the re-appearing blackness. Comforted because I knew depression so well. Depression was my companion. The seductive descent into the awful depths marked the return of an old, dark friend that I genuinely, honestly missed.

  I had my face in my hands. My body sat small and inert. Breathing became tight, uneven. My parents’ great efforts to help me had failed. I had failed. I was so broken. I would never leave home, never keep a job, never be happy. There was no stopping the cascade of terrible, dark, frightening thoughts. Such is the nature of depression; even the most herculean effort to find light and positivity will be extinguished. There seems to be no such thing as solace.

  My face was still in my hands when I felt warmth on my toes. Bunker had walked over to me and sat down on my feet. I pulled my hands away from my face and saw him sitting, looking up at me, his butt squarely on my toes, his back leaning into my shins. His face held curiosity, his fevered puppy energy completely contained. He glanced away for a few moments, then turned back, as if to ask, “Better?”

  Really? I thought. Really? Could this dog somehow sense when I was sad and comfort me? I had heard of seeing-eye dogs. I’d heard of dogs who could sniff out drugs in suitcases. But a dog who could detect sadness? A dog who could sense a down-tick in mood? I wondered if these new psychiatric drugs were causing me to overly anthropomorphize my dog. But I needed so desperately to be comforted. I needed a companion who had no judgment, with whom I had no history, who would make it known that I was loved, who would never, ever hurt me.

  So I decided in that moment to trust what I was feeling. Then I remembered the approach that my therapist suggested I try the next time I felt down. She told me not to fight the sorrow. “It’s okay to be sad sometimes,” she said. “Everyone is sad sometimes. Let the sad feelings in. Be with them. Then see what happens. It’s not so bad, right? Ask those dark thoughts: Are you true? Are you real?”

  So I decided to be as sad with Bunker as I needed to be, because he didn’t care. He accepted me. He didn’t need me to be happy. He had witnessed my change in mood, and that alone improved it. He didn’t judge me; he simply saw me. So I told myself: Bunker understands. But this was a whole new kind of understanding. It was wordless, and it let me be sad until an amazing thing happened: the sadness began to dissolve. I was safe with this dog, and the near instant effect was that the desperation and darkness disappeared, burst in the air like soap bubbles. So I let more sadness in. I felt it. I really felt it. Then I petted Bunker and the sorrows didn’t seem nearly as big or awful. They even felt untrue. Like, Oh! You’re not really stupid and ugly and lazy. Of course! You’re not really hopeless. Are you? No. You are not.

  I don’t know why it worked. All I can ponder is that this kind of healing required the safety of a true companion, and no resistance. This kind of healing did not want me to fight my sadness. It wanted me to accept it. Welcome it, even. So that the depression could be on its merry fucking way. And Bunker wanted no wrangling of labels to explain my emotional state, my bottomless malaise. He brought only judgment-free listening and wordless faith. When it came to Bunker, I was overflowing with faith. There was something sacred in this dog, connected to the wisdom of nature, but living inside my home. As a child I’d accessed that wordless, wise place so many times during my treks through the woods, and with my beloved dogs Midnight, Blarney, and Cinder. Those places, those dogs had no opinion about themselves, or me, aside from acceptance.

  Bunker was still sitting on my feet, still looking at me. His feather-soft fur tickled my legs, and I picked him up, his puppy legs dangling. I cradled his body. He let his tongue drop out the side of his opened mouth. That sight alone made me smile. I leaned back into the couch and held him to my chest. He curled into me as if he felt as protected as I did.

  I took a deep breath and felt the blackness loosen its grip. Dog medicine. I’d found it, and I swallowed it whole.

  FIRST LESSON

  MID-JULY 1996

  Bunker had a lot to learn. He was mellow for a puppy, but he tugged on the leash, chewed everything in sight, and didn’t exactly come when called.

  The dog-training book said that dogs who know they’re not in charge are relaxed and happy. Their work is only to follow and obey. A dog that is led to believe he’s the alpha dog will act out and can become anxious and even aggressive because he is under the illusion that taking care of the pack is his responsibility. I wanted Bunker to know that I was the boss. I would teach him and keep him safe. So I took him outside for some training that would help him see me as his pack leader.

  Out in the yard, with a fifteen-foot leash, I followed the book’s instructions to walk quietly in a square as big as the yard would allow. I was to hold the leash with two hands at my chest, pay no attention to Bunker, stop at the corners, and just walk in one big, cornered loop. I would use no voice commands and never yank on the leash, just keep walking. If he fell, I would slow down so he could right himself, but otherwise, I was to just walk. The idea was that he would learn, slowly, to stay by my side. I was the alpha. I felt enormously capable of being in charge and taking care of this precious dog.

  When I began walking, Bunker was like a housefly on the end of a fishing line, darting in every direction. Instructions for the lesson included avoiding eye contact, but watching peripherally. He spotted a squirrel and raced into the woods after it, then hit the end of the leash, his back feet flipping under his soft puppy body. A bird hopped through beds of leaves at the edge of the woods and Bunker lunged toward it, tripped, and got dragged a few feet. I slowed to let him catch up but didn’t acknowledge him. I paused, could feel that he’d righted himself and had begun to walk again, so I sped up. Sometimes he disappeared from my line of sight completely and I had to trust that he was walking and okay, until I felt a pull on the leash.

  My mom thought the sight of me dragging my puppy around the yard was funny, so she grabbed the video camera and hid behind a bush, laughing and filming. Bunker caught her scent, and he pulled toward her as I walked in the opposite direction. This resulted in another wipeout and a three-foot dragging through the grass. If my mom thought I’d finally, truly lost my mind, she knew not to say so. She just laughed as I walked, stopped, turned, walked, stopped, turned, and this poor little puppy tried to keep up. I laughed too, at first. But after several rotations, the slow walk became like a meditation. With each turn, I began to realize that Bunker and I were becoming a pack of two. He was learning to trust and follow me, and I was learning that I could lead confidently. When I felt him dragging at the end of the lead, I was terrified I might hurt him, but I began to understand the lesson we were learning: if we were attentive to each other, we would both be okay.

  Within about ten minutes, Bunker understood. He trotted at my side, looking up at me to see which way my eyes were turned. He’d figured out that I looked in the direction I was going to go next. His puppy paws lumbered to keep up with me, but he stayed by my side. He wasn’t tugging at all now, not getting distracted. I could feel that he was happy to follow me, relieved even. His tail twirled straight up and he walked as if he were proud of himself. When we were done, I stopped, took off the leash, and praised him with a little dancing party in the grass. He ran in circles, barking as I twirled.

  When we came inside, he collapsed on the floor with fatigue. I carried him to my room and put him in his crate. I lay on the bed next to him and felt myself drifting off as well. As he fell asleep, he opened his eyes at the slightest noise to make sure I was still close by. “Don’t worry, buddy,” I said. “I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.” At that, we b
oth fell into a deep sleep.

  Those were such important days. The first few weeks with Bunker set the foundation for our life together. The two of us were braiding our energies. We were tying all of our untied strings together. We lay with each other on warm summer afternoons, slumbering side by side, slowly building a promise to travel this life together. I had no reservations about committing to this dog, because his loyalty, I knew, would never waver. His love for me would not wane. He would remind me, with wagging optimism, of his unbridled love for life, how to be in the present moment and let my troubled thoughts melt away. My only job was to protect and care for him, and I felt confident, despite my shaky mental state, that I could keep him safe, healthy, and loved.

  We spent afternoons lying on my bedroom carpet, his shedding puppy hair entwined with my damaged blonde mess. I touched the wet softness of his nose. He licked my finger, then rolled onto his back. When his eyes drooped, I watched his eyelashes flutter long after they closed. I thought of the suicidal plans that used to linger at the edge of my mind. As if a miracle had come, the endless sorrow lost its power with this dog by my side. Something about him began to close that awful chapter of my life.

  The days began to pass by steadily. I would wake in the morning feeling the slightest bit of optimism. On sunny days, Bunker and I would go outside and wander through the woods behind the house, his nose working overtime through piles of decomposing leaves, me just ambling, breathing deeply. The leaves were like little healers—all that photosynthesis sending strength through branches that emerged from the trunks that braved the underground, roots spreading out so far through the dirt, farther than we could ever imagine.

  Once when I sat down at the base of a tree, Bunker watched me, perked his ears at my stopping. When he felt my contentedness, he gave a wag of his puppy tail and went about his business of sniffing, digging his nose deep into the dirt until he found an earthworm. He’d push his cheek into the ground, then his ear, then his neck. Finally he’d flop his whole body down onto the ground, his four legs wiggling wildly skyward, his mouth open and tongue hanging out as he rubbed the slime of that worm onto his skin.