My prior experience with animal suicide was limited. When I was a baby, the family dog chewed all her fur off in a gruesome reaction to her extreme flea allergies. Dinah, hairless and grotesque to behold and still in itchy agony, no doubt, was euthanized soon after. More recently, I returned home to the apartment in Berkeley and found my $2 goldfish, Chubs, lying on my bookcase, his dried-out gills still twitching. I put him back in the water, but he was a floater within minutes. I wouldn’t classify either of these as attempts at suicide, although I guess my fish came much closer than our poor, tormented dog. I couldn’t rightly say what was going through his fishy little mind when he jumped the bowl. Was it an accident? The result of overzealous exercise?
Luckily, Abbie’s leap from the second-story window hadn’t been fatal. Sally spared no detail in recounting Abbie’s fractured rib and a large gash in her left rear haunch from hitting the downspout in the fall.
I was still trying to envision how this would have been possible. Sally’s living room did have floor-to-ceiling windows, and I supposed, with the sash raised, it was of a height for a dog to leap out—screen or no screen. But what an odd sequence of events. I couldn’t really wrap my brain around what Abbie’s frame of mind must have been to do such a thing. It didn’t seem possible that she’d inadvertently fall over the lip of the window and break through the screen. She and Tucker would have had to be playing one hell of a game of chase for her to accidentally catapult herself that hard and that far. I was starting to see the practicality of keeping a nanny cam after all; many a mystery might be solved with the help of a live feed, documenting the events of the dogs’ every day.
“Abbie’s vet upped her Clomicalm and added a prescription for Deramaxx for the pain, as well as a sedative if she goes into panic mode. I’m worried about Tucker as well—being alone in the house is going to be distressing for him as long as Abbie is coming to work with me. Let’s touch base after his walks and stay in communication about his spirits, okay?”
Had I been more conscientious, or more awake, I would have pulled the dogs’ file from my cabinet and recorded Abbie’s medication names and the prescribed amounts, along with her injuries and the implications for healing. For Tucker’s “extra emotional support,” I was making a mental note to give him some additional turkey treats and plenty of vigorous scratches under his collar. I’d worry about Abbie’s pharmacopoeia when the time came. She’d be with Sally for long enough that her regimen of medications would likely change before she came under my care anyway. For now, I was happy to let Sally lead the suicide watch.
Of the two dogs, Tucker was a Border collie mix, where Abbie was of purebred provenance. I attributed Tucker’s slightly reduced levels of crazy to this nuanced difference. He was still arguably hyper, but it didn’t verge on unpredictably neurotic like Abbie’s temperament could. I never imagined she was capable of self-harm, though, and her desperate leap left me not just surprised but also feeling very sorry for the poor girl. She was clearly suffering more than anyone knew.
With the first appointment of the day canceled and my alarm set to go off in over an hour, I flipped my drool-dampened pillow, curled into a ball, and drifted back to sleep.
I was noticing that many of my clients’ dogs seemed to require, and certainly received, an inordinate amount of medical attention. These two were no exception. Just days before, Tucker had chipped a front tooth—how, I couldn’t say—and Sally had it capped.
I hadn’t been present for the chipping or the capping, but, in Sally’s note to me following his dental procedure, she warned me that his anesthetic might not have entirely worn off and that I might keep him on-leash for the walk in case he was woozy. She went on about how impressed she was with the job they’d done, and how affordable it was thanks to Tucker’s dental coverage. I was in awe that Tucker even had dental coverage. I could have used some of that, as I was entirely without health insurance of any kind since graduating from college the year before.
This was one of the very few lies that I had ever told my parents, and I knew it was a biggie. Not just because they wanted me to be well cared for, but because a medical emergency without any kind of insurance could be financially ruinous. I wasn’t just gambling with my health; I was playing fast and loose with their savings. I was learning, too, that working with occasionally aggressive dogs didn’t exactly reduce my chances of having an accident that would require medical attention.
Uneasy as I was with untruths when it came to my parents, who truly deserved nothing but the best and most honest communication from me, I avoided the topic of my health as assiduously as I could. Unfortunately for me, it was one of my mother’s favorite means of checking up on me. She was forever asking how I was feeling and was I coming down with something? Was I sleeping enough? Eating enough? I tried not to clear my throat too often or sniff too loudly lest she jump to the conclusion that I had a cold coming on.
Whether or not this was the cause for my mother’s near-constant concerns about my health, I don’t know, but I’d been on antidepressants since the summer after my sophomore year of college. My nervous breakdown would have been, well, depressing, if the resulting prescription hadn’t made such a miraculous difference in me.
I’d planned to spend the summer months as a counselor at the Quaker farm camp I’d attended as a child. When I arrived and started orientation prior to the campers’ arrival, something about returning as an almost-adult to such a significant place from my easy and innocent youth, and assuming so much responsibility for these contemporary versions of little me, broke the barrier that had held my long-ignored depression at bay.
Instead of spending those long sunny days guiding kids in cow-milking and berry-picking, mud-wrestling and quiet contemplation, I returned home for an alternate summer filled with talk therapy and a new prescription for antianxiety meds. It was my good fortune that the camp director had long suffered from bipolar disorder and was exceedingly understanding in her acceptance of my sudden and inconvenient resignation.
Instead of feeling ashamed about my complete and rather public decompensation that notorious summer, I was more grateful that it was all so infinitely treatable. Everyone’s depression manifests differently; for me, it was characterized by anxiety that was particularly pronounced in social situations. I blushed and sweated profusely, my glasses fogging up and my palms going slimy, making me even more selfconscious than I was to begin with. Loud noises and big crowds set my heart racing, and I was generally jumpy and had a hard time focusing. I always felt like I should be somewhere other than I was, and I generally didn’t want to be seen by anyone.
But with twenty milligrams of an SSRI on my side, I was a completely different person. Though I was still an introvert in every way, I was able to hang out comfortably with humans. I even sought their company. I was only dismayed that the issue had gone untreated for so long; on antidepressants, high school might not have been quite so traumatizing.
Currently, without any insurance to speak of, dental or otherwise, sixty bucks for the off-plan Citalopram prescription was way steeper than I could afford. I needed that money for essentials like gas, and food, and poop bags, and dog treats. When I realized I could no longer spring for the suggested dosage, I’d been careful to wean myself off the meds. I couldn’t imagine what going cold turkey might have been like; even tapering off was harder than I liked to admit. I could tell that my anxiety levels were increasing, the old symptoms quietly blooming.
Working with the dogs was a blessing and a curse when it came to managing my depression. I was relieved to remain in their non-judgmental company; with them, I never felt the urge to flee to the safety of the bathroom or car until the evening was over. Even if I did, they wouldn’t know the difference or care either way. I’d long felt that animals were so much easier to read than my human counterparts, the energy of their temperament seeming to radiate off them with clarity. I could better understand their motivations and needs and was soothed by their easy, unquestioning accept
ance of me.
Spending so much time exclusively with animals was also rendering what social skills I had rather rusty and was allowing me to retreat from the sometime-difficult but very necessary act of socializing and negotiating with my own kind.
If my mom’s favorite inquiry was my health, my dad’s was my finances. Another subject I was happier to stay well away from. When we’d chat, he’d often pepper the conversation with his tried-and-true nuggets of financial wisdom. “Save your money—you’ll always need it.” Or, “Try to put at least a quarter of what you make in savings.” “Don’t replace the air filter every time they suggest it,” and “Change your own oil!”
I’d try as hard as I could to hear him and not get upset by how far behind the curve I felt when it came to being a responsible adult. I was working each month’s earnings down to the penny, scraping and scrounging in every way I could. I was making meals out of the free samples at the Andronico’s by my house, buying gas with quarters pilfered from Ian’s change jar, and paying almost all of my bills late. When he’d ask if I was okay, if I had everything I needed, how was the car, and was I changing the oil regularly but not too regularly, I’d try to play along as best I could. As much as I wanted to succeed on my own sweat for my own gratification, I was equally motivated by a desire not to disappoint him. To prove I could do it all by myself.
When it was really bad—when I was days away from my next payment and dollars from overdrawing on my bank account, which I was doing more and more frequently—I’d occasionally crack and the truth of the situation would come out. And he always helped; he never even thought twice about it, so enthusiastic and proud was he of my entrepreneurial spirit and intrepid choice of career, however temporary it might be. He never minded giving me a hand from time to time. But I minded. I noted every dollar he lent me, even when it was clear that it wasn’t a loan but a bailout. Alongside my ledger of miles traveled for business, gas spent, and supplies purchased, I logged dollars owed back to my parents.
Surely he’d done the math and suspected I wasn’t making enough money to live on my own, with or without a roommate. It was increasingly obvious even to math-challenged me that I’d grossly miscalculated how much adulthood would cost, especially in northern California, and I wasn’t sure how to bridge the gap between what I made and what I needed to be making in order for this to work out. The overnight visits were my biggest moneymaker, yet what I made in a night barely covered what I was paying per day in rent. Even I could see how little sense it made to lease a room I wasn’t occupying, covering the rent by getting paid to sleep elsewhere. This constant and dire lack of funds did nothing to help my stress levels.
No matter how honest I got with my dad about money, and what I could or could not afford, or how well or badly I was maintaining the car, or how neglected or nonexistent my savings account might be, there was no way I’d ever confess that I was off my meds. I was sure that on his and my mom’s parental seismograph, this would signal to them that I was in crisis and needed to pursue a different course. I had no doubt they’d board a plane as soon as possible to be by my side as we figured out what that course might be together.
I suppose I could argue that because I was working with dogs, and my exposure to intense social situations was thus lessened, so, too, should be my need for medication. If only the therapeutic effect of the animals’ companionship was enough to regulate my anxiety levels. But chemical imbalances are rarely so easily addressed, mine included. In the absence of the antidepressants, at least I was getting plenty of exercise and vitamin D. Walking upward of eight miles a day had to help with the distribution of serotonin in my system. If only I were having some healthy, confidence-boosting sex, too. Or any sex at all.
But I could absolutely feel the difference, now that all traces of the fix-it-all pills had disappeared from my system. It didn’t matter whether I was in a room full of people or sitting alone in my room—I was off-balance, easily distracted, often panicky, not myself. It was all I could do to mask any evidence of this when one parent or the other called to check in.
Abbie had been taking a baseline dose of the antianxiety meds—in her case, for separation anxiety—long before her bizarre leap from the living room window, and I’d wondered more than once how much her prescription cost and how the pharmacology of the canine version differed from the human. Could she also tell a difference on the meds? Did she feel more like Abbie than in her pre-pill days?
It would be some trick if I could save money and avoid the encroaching med-free malaise by taking an antidepressant intended for dogs. I already ate Abbie and Tucker’s dog biscuits—the all-natural kind with normal human ingredients made bland enough for dogs. We used to eat them at the pet store, kind of as a joke, but kind of not. They were pretty tasteless, but definitely not bad. And they took the edge off when I was really hungry.
When my phone’s alarm finally went off, trilling a different but equally nerve-shredding tune as the ring tone, I threw the covers back groggily. With my feet flat on the floor, I mentally reviewed my schedule for the day, now minus Abbie and Tucker. I’d work my way up 880 toward Richmond, where I’d visit Morgan the boxer mix, followed by Spence and Doodle in Richmond proper. All my late-afternoon visits—a drop-in visit for two cats, a neighborhood walk for a Lab, as well as one with a pit mix and greyhound—were in the exact opposite direction, back through the MacArthur maze toward Oakland and Alameda.
In the dead of summer, copious sunscreen and repeated applications were a must for me. Even with SPF 55 applied liberally throughout the day, my freckles stood out dramatically against my pale Scottish skin, giving the illusion of a mottled, uneven tan. In coloring, I was my father’s daughter through and through, my reddish blond hair and supernaturally easy-to-burn skin the exact opposite of my mother and sister’s more olive coloring. I wore a hat as well, learning the hard way that my scalp and ears were always the first things to roast.
Even though the canceled appointment freed up my morning significantly, I was sorry to miss the trip up to the top of the El Cerrito hill where Abbie and Tucker lived. We walked a path down the road from their house, an unpaved swath cut through knee-high grasses and gnarled trees on a steep hillside overlooking all of the neighborhoods that stretched toward the bay. The panoramic vista spanned the Bay Bridge over to San Francisco and included the always-majestic Golden Gate and the lush green hills of the North Bay. In the foreground, BART cut through the urban sprawl like an electric model train set. From up so high, the cars seemed to crawl along 880 like little wind-up toys. On that walk at the top of the world, I could see the neighborhoods I’d visit next spread out below us: Richmond Annex and then the city of Richmond just to the north. Here, as anywhere, the neighborhoods got less desirable farther down the hill, and both of those later-in-the-day clients lived in the flats between train tracks and freeway.
Even as I enjoyed that spectacular view from the hillside, the walk itself posed plenty of challenges. In the dry summer, the insidious foxtails were all too plentiful. I lived in constant fear of these barbed seed pods that literally burrowed into dogs—through their nostrils, ears, paws—working their way ever farther into their system, causing excessive pain and requiring surgery to remove. It’s asshole weeds like these that cause pet owners to get health insurance. One foxtail-removal surgery alone would make the policy worth it.
I’d already had to make a foxtail-related emergency vet visit with a dog I was pet-sitting recently. During our evening walk, much of it spent with the dog’s nose to the sidewalk and plants along the verge, my charge started sneezing forcefully and continuously. This went on for the remainder of our walk, and I grew convinced that he’d snorted a barbed little bastard of a foxtail into his nostril. It turned out to be a false alarm, possibly an allergy to something else he inhaled. I apologized to the owners excessively for the unplanned vet visit and subsequent bill. But I—and they—figured it was cheaper to have a foxtail false alarm than to leave the real deal untreated a
nd have to eventually pay for a more complicated extraction.
Beyond the threat of foxtails on this particular trail, there were plenty of deer to distract these already highly distractible dogs, as well as other dog walkers with hordes of off-leash charges. Tucker and Abbie were technically an off-leash walk—only one of two clients of this kind that I took on, given my liability terrors—but I always waited to assess the situation on the path before releasing them to walk free. Though we were up high and could see the surrounding cities without obstruction, the visibility on the twisty, hilly trail itself was tough. I never knew who or what awaited us around the bend, or if something might pique one of the dogs’ interests and cause them to bolt. Abbie was especially inclined to take off for heart-stopping minutes at a time down the path or up an overgrown hill, for no apparent reason. One week with Tucker off-leash would be infinitely more manageable, and not just because the numbers were in my favor. For any off-leash walk, I much preferred the ratio of one me to one dog.
Abbie’s dramatic and unexpected dive prompted me to acknowledge that most of the dogs I took care of were a little nuts. It was a wide spectrum, but I could place almost all of them somewhere along the range of dysfunction. At the least extreme end were dogs like dear Buster, on antidepressants for separation anxiety. Worse were Beano and Discus, two seriously yappy shelties in the Berkeley hills. When I’d arrive to collect them, they’d bark as viciously as if they were trained guard dogs ten times their actual size—and with none of their extreme and highly disarming fluff—and I were a gun-wielding, dog-hating maniac. Treats placated them for long enough to get them leashed up, but then, throughout their walk, they went into sudden and unexplained frenzies in which they both spun in tight circles and barked their tiny heads off. The mania eventually subsided and we could continue on. At this point on the spectrum, the misbehaviors were undeniably annoying and usually inexplicable, but relatively harmless.
Sleeps with Dogs Page 12
