Paws and Reflect_Exploring the Bond Between Gay Men and Their Dogs

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Taken together, are those little reasons enough to stay? Actually, yes. In fact, what made me realize I am in this for good was mouthwash.

  Mike and I get ready for bed at the same time almost every night. When I’m brushing my teeth and taking out my contact lenses, he’s there at the sink doing the same. I gargle my mouthwash from a shot glass I keep on the edge of the sink. I graduated from journalism school, and journalists are known for their drinking ways; it seemed only appropriate. On the rare occasions when I’m lingering downstairs at the TV or my computer, and Mike gets upstairs before me, whenever I follow him, my shot glass is already full.

  My friend Susan was right about a lot when it came to men and dogs, but not everything. There are some things for which you can’t count on a dog. My choice, I realized, was not whether there was enough room in my life for both a dog and a man. My choice was whether I wanted to be patient enough and persistent enough to make both relationships work together.

  The way I see it, being in a relationship is not a choice you make once and then forget, and maybe because as gay men and women who often don’t have access to the traditional rituals that symbolically “seal the deal,” that fluidity is much more apparent to us. It can be unnerving, but it also gives us a greater challenge to rise to our better selves. It’s a choice I make every day. If I’m not choosing it every day, then I’m not really in it. And every day, I choose this house, these dogs, and this man.

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  Michael T. Wallerstein: SOMETIMES YOU GET MORE

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  Mike Wallerstein was determined, as a thirtieth birthday present to himself, to find a dog that would embody all the characteristics of his rugged childhood Dachshund.

  Instead he was charmed by the runt of the litter, a piebald Dachshund with blue eyes and one white ear whom he named Bonnibelle Blue-Eyes. Mike was taken with her aloofness and independent spirit, which seemed to manifest itself in a stubborn unwillingness to learn commands and follow instructions. But there was something more, as Mike learned when a friend decided to try some experiments on her and came up with surprising results.

  The problems Mike Wallerstein encountered with Bonnie are the problems at the center of a controversy in the Dachshund Club of America. One group seeks to revise the breed standard to prevent piebalds, like Bonnie, and dapples, like her sire, from competition, as a way to discourage breeding of piebalds and dapples. The concern among many breeders is that these two color patterns also carry genetic risks. Other breeders assert that responsible breeding can continue the color patterns while minimizing the risk of genetic abnormalities.

  When we asked Mike to write about his relationship with Bonnie, one thing became clear: Whichever side you agree with, loving owners like Mike will not give up their dogs; they find that a dog with special needs can bring even more love into their lives.

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  I GREW UP WITH A standard red Smooth (short-haired) Dachshund named Mitzvah. She was a gift from my mother for the family in honor of my brother’s thirteenth birthday. That dog became one of my best friends. She was with us from when I was six until I was twenty-one. When we put her to sleep, with the whole family there to say their goodbyes to the old girl, she was still wagging her tail. One day I knew that I’d try to get another Dachshund just like Mitzvah in the hope of recreating a little bit of that childhood bond that I’d lost, but it took me nine years to even seriously think about it. What I got was quite a bit less than what I expected, and a great deal more.

  In April 2001, I got caught up in a round of corporate downsizing at my job. It had been a great job for over five years, paying for 100 percent of my M. B. A. along the way, and the new opportunity on the horizon was a silver lining. I received a good-sized severance package, so I knew that I had time to collect my thoughts. I also realized that this would be a fantastic chance to housebreak a puppy.

  If only it was that simple.

  I went to the local animal shelters (with my partner at the time in tow) over the course of a few weekends and came to realize that the cute little dogs, especially the Dachshund-mix pups, were usually the first ones to be adopted. We decided that we’d get a Dachshund pup from a local breeder so that I could have exactly what I wanted. After all, this was going to be my thirtieth birthday present, so we might as well do it right.

  We scoured the newspaper and made a few calls to local breeders. One had mini Dachshund pups that would be weaned and ready for adoption in early July, perfect timing. She had quite a mix of colors and coats but was raving about her two piebald puppies. She said that they were rare and special. I was more interested in her red pups. If I was going to get a mini instead of a standard, it would at least need to be a shorthaired red. Already the “just like Mitzvah” plan was getting altered, but the rush of excitement was still there.

  When we arrived at the breeder’s house, almost two hours away in rural Illinois, she promptly led us to her available litter. I had warned my boyfriend that we needed to be careful when we picked our pup. I still had vivid memories of picking out Mitzvah from back when I was in kindergarten. My mother had a whole list of things to look for, and I would be no different.

  Since I knew our pup would likely spend a lot of time alone after I found a new job, I wanted to pick one that didn’t seem too needy. Imagine that: a non-needy puppy! Our goal was to pick the cutest, friendliest, most independent and confident of the litter. One thing was for sure, I did not want a piddler.

  The pups were all situated under a large shade tree in the breeder’s front yard, and of course they were all adorable. They were romping and playing in the grass and having a good old time in the warm spring country air. But the reds were unexpectedly blotchy instead of solid, and I didn’t really like the way that they looked.

  I was already beginning to regret the two-hour drive when one pup caught our attention. She was partially white, with a splash of tan on her face, in the middle of her back, and across her hindquarters and up her cute little white-tipped tail. She was like nothing I’d ever seen. We were both mesmerized.

  She had one completely white ear that set off her beautiful ice-blue eyes. More importantly, she kept wandering off from the litter and exploring on her own. She didn’t seem to pay any attention to the other pups unless they came over to play with her. That seemed like a very good sign based on our criteria for independence. She was plenty friendly, with her little tail wagging a mile a minute every time we approached her. That reminded me of Mitzvah more than anything.

  The breeder off-handedly remarked that this unique pup carried a price premium due to her special coloring. I planned to hold onto this birthday present for a very long time, so what did I really care about a small price premium for my perfect little dog?

  I later learned that this coloration was called piebald—and that the breeder was right, this pup was special. She was also the runt of the litter. Mitzvah was the runt of her litter. I thought, This is the pup that I have to get. We had to save the runt! Nobody ever picks the runt, but that was their loss and my gain.

  OK, so she peed when we greeted her, and she wasn’t the right color. I was already making my mental concessions when the breeder assured us that the piddling was just a “puppy thing” as a sign of submission and that she’d grow out of it. I would just have people greet her outside on the deck or on the front porch; that would solve everything. The decision was made. None of that mattered by then anyway because I was already in love, so off we went with our prize: the funny-looking, premium-priced runt.

  What should we call her? We had a bunch of cliché gay dog names, like Laverne, Shirley, or Lucy, none of which seemed to fit. She slept the whole way home, so we had two hours to come up with a moniker befitting such a little princess. Our friends Joe and Dan had a black and tan Dachshund pup named Bonnie, and I really liked that name. It seemed like a lame thing to do, but Bonnibelle Blue-Eyes is what finally stuck (Bo
nnie for short). How often would we run into Joe and Dan with their dog anyway?

  When we got home, Bonnie received her first introduction to Boris, my twenty-pound cat. I hadn’t given it any thought, but when we finally saw him side by side with Bonnie, we quickly realized that they were a matched set. He, too, was almost 100 percent white with tan points on his ears and tan stripes on his tail. I’ve been told that he’s some rare breed of Siamese, but to me he’s just the cat that I adopted from my brother.

  The cat has a nervous condition that causes him to pull his hair out, which prompted his sudden departure from my brother’s home at the ripe old age of two. Still, I had to marvel at the fact that I had done such a brilliant job of accessorizing my pets based on matching colors without even realizing it. Boris thought otherwise and promptly bit Bonnie on the head, barely missing her eyes.

  Mental note to self: Next time, read a book about bringing a new pet into the house. Who knew? Having grown up with dogs, I just assumed that Boris would take her in and show her the ropes. Instead he opted to show her his teeth.

  Poor little Bonnie just looked heartbroken and ridiculous with no other dogs or pups to play with. She hunted around every corner of my home looking for her mom, her brothers, or her sisters, but then the reality of the situation set it in. She was out of her league. She was about one-tenth the size of our jealous cat and also too small to play with most of the toys we’d bought.

  That first night, she just moped around and looked genuinely confused. She howled all night in her crate. That broke my heart, and I worried that I’d made a mistake. Maybe we should have gotten one of her litter-mates as a playmate. All sorts of thoughts went through our minds. A howling dog will do that to a person.

  Time passed and she quickly figured out that we were her new family and she grew to love everyone, even the cat. Bonnie was a one-dog comedy show. She was just as silly as could be. She always got lots of attention when we’d go for walks or to the vet because of her unusual coloring. My new buddy had arrived in grand style.

  She even grew to appreciate her little crate, her safe place. She would go there when she was in trouble or if she knew she’d done something wrong. Otherwise, she would have the run of the first floor and was genuinely happy. Nighttime was a different story. Sometimes she would bark for hours, but eventually she would always fall asleep—and then we would sleep, too.

  She learned how to play fetch and was a normal playful pup in every way. She was even reasonably good on a leash. The vet gave her a clean bill of health and she seemed very smart because she would use her paws to play soccer with the little mini tennis balls that we’d bought for her as toys. She was almost perfect.

  However, at four months old, she still hadn’t taken to her potty training. It seemed pretty random whether she would go inside her crate, inside the house, or outside. Nothing seemed to work. My Puppies for Dummies book was failing me. I did everything that they said, including all of their recommended verbal commands for “getting busy” outside and lavishing her with wild praise when she would go in the right place. She mostly just seemed terrified no matter where she did her business. I wasn’t too worried because I knew from experience that Dachshunds tended to be a stubborn breed.

  September 2001 rolled around, and it was time for me to go back to work. Bonnie was still having accidents in her crate and around the house if we didn’t let her out every hour or two. She also continued to piddle when greeting visitors. To help her make it through the day while I was at work, I enlisted the help of my friend Scott to let her out at noon.

  One day he called me at work and bluntly announced, “Your dog is deaf.”

  When it came to her bathroom duty, she seemed to be about as bright as a fence post, but I felt the need to defend my child. I said, “No, she’s not deaf, she’s just stubborn, it’s a Dachshund trait.”

  He informed me that he’d been doing little experiments, like leaving the room and calling her name, or making noises while he was behind her, and she never seemed to respond.

  At this point, I was more than a little concerned about why one of my best friends was experimenting on my dog, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He further explained that something had to be wrong because she would never come back inside after being let out, even when he’d call her name repeatedly.

  I didn’t want it to be true, but I couldn’t deny that she never seemed to hear much of anything that I said, including commands. We agreed that I would take her to the vet just to find out if anything might be wrong.

  The vet’s first response was that Dachshunds don’t have an abnormally high incidence of deafness. He thought she was just fine. When I pushed him for a hearing test, he whistled and made a few other noises at Bonnie, one of which included snapping his fingers, after which he declared, “Yup. She’s deaf.”

  It goes without saying that I was not impressed with his low-tech analysis. He went on to say that he couldn’t be sure whether or not she was completely deaf because dogs respond to so many other things like facial expressions, vibrations, and sense of smell. He mentioned that the University of Missouri-Columbia Veterinary School could do a BAER (Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response) test to confirm her level of deafness.

  Then, as an aside, he went to the back of the clinic and came back with one of his reference books on degenerative diseases. The only time that Dachshunds showed any higher-than-average frequency of deafness was through a dapple-colored sire. Bonnie’s father was a dapple. My heart sank a little.

  I think that I would have rather not known. She behaved quite normally and had even learned a bunch of commands, except for the difficulty in housebreaking. How could she respond to so many of my spoken commands if it was all just random?

  Then I remembered what the vet said about facial expressions and vibrations. I thought, Mystery solved. She always looked so confused when I would reprimand her for going to the bathroom in the house, as if she didn’t even hear me coming at her. At that point, I felt pretty bad. I realized that she would never hear the sound of my voice. That’s just not fair.

  On my way home from the vet’s office, I thought, What in the world do I need with some expensive test to tell me that my dog is deaf? I would have to take time off work, spend more money, only to find out what I already knew. It all suddenly made sense. She wasn’t just stubborn—she was deaf. No amount of screaming her name out the back door would ever get her to come inside.

  Then the thoughts came flooding in. She wasn’t being independent when she had wandered away from her litter-mates back at the breeder’s house; she couldn’t even hear them! We picked her for all the wrong reasons. Here I’d gone to a breeder hoping to get a normal dog, and what I got was a sick and broken animal. I felt like I’d been given a load of damaged goods.

  Of course I called the breeder right away to confront her. I told her that the vet said that Bonnie was deaf and that I wanted our money refunded in line with the health guarantee that we were given. The breeder got very defensive; she was adamant that this had never happened before. She didn’t even apologize. To her, it was just business, a mistake.

  Finally the breeder agreed to refund the money, but only on condition that we return Bonnie so that she could be destroyed. Suddenly all of my disappointment turned to anger. How could I let somebody hurt my deaf little baby girl? I might have been upset to learn that she was deaf, but I didn’t want her to be put down.

  She was so helpless, so dependent on us for everything. I had some friends who said just give her back, and others who outright forbade me from doing so. My own mother, a true dog lover, said, “Take her back before you get attached.”

  Too late.

  Sure, Bonnie was far from a normal dog, but she was worthy of my love and had already earned a place in my heart. The breeder gave me a week to make up my mind. As a concession, she countered her own offer by saying, “Bonnie will still be an otherwise healthy pet, and I guarantee that, so I will refund half of your money if you choo
se to keep her.” Done deal, Bonnie stays.

  From that point forward, I set off on a journey to learn all that I could about how to handle a deaf dog. I found an especially helpful Web site for deaf Dalmatians, which gave me the idea to teach Bonnie dog sign language. She took to it like a fish to water.

  She was thrilled, as was I, to finally have a way to communicate. With little effort, she learned the signs for “sit, ” “stay, ” “down, ” “good girl/I love you!” (her favorite), “bad girl/no” (her least favorite), “Do you want to go for a walk/outside?” “Do you want a treat/food?” (another favorite), “Do you want a drink?” and “Go to your bed/crate.”

  Teaching her the signs was almost effortless. She’d been watching and waiting all along, and finally she could really see what we were saying. We eventually hung a bell by the back door so that she could ring it when she wanted to go out. It all actually worked.

  She would have learned more signs, but I was exhausted and pretty much stopped there. Just knowing that she was visually oriented made life around the house so much easier. As a side effect of learning the hand signs, we could tell when she was turning her head to ignore us. It was cute to see her brain work it out. She was thinking, If I can’t see their hands, they can’t tell me what to do.