John Wise

This is Drake, the dog that resides with Ylva and Dion in Solana Beach, north of San Diego; he’s temporarily under my charge. The reality I anticipated coming over is different than what I’m experiencing, though. You see, Drake is 11 years old and a bit cantankerous. I get it; he has his routines, but what I didn’t anticipate was that he’d be whiny about Ylva and Dion up and disappearing.

Due to a bum knee, he fatigues fairly quickly, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to go out. We go for walks with gusto, though I learned early that as soon as he hits about a half-mile, his enthusiasm comes to a crawl, kind of like his speed. The more time I spend with him the more I’m learning about the nuances of how Drake travels. Once he poops, we are at the halfway mark, and I need to point him in the direction of home lest he overexerts himself. Sometimes, he’s not ready to go home and belligerently pulls me in the opposite direction, so I have to hold my ground until he comes around. Patience is on my side.

Drake normally poops three times a day, but currently only twice as he’s cut back on eating after his depression set in. He’s the master of controlled peeing, maintaining a reserve that ensures he’s able to pee on approximately 30 locations over the course of our half-mile walk. The first two days, Drake pooped in places that allowed easy cleanup of his droppings, but as he must have realized that Ylva and Dion were not coming back anytime soon, he started pooping on bushes and in flowers that required me to nearly scrape his turds out of other people’s plants.

My exercise in being the buddy of a big dog is leaving me wanting my independence back. I don’t just start the day and do what I want; there’s a big dog that requires me to get dressed and go where he wants to go, or he gets stubborn. Our walks take about 20 minutes. By midday, if I’ve been out a while, I feel I owe it to the dog to visit him and let him ease the pressure of his bladder and spend some time with him so he might break out of his sadness. Around dinner time, it’s time for another jaunt around the neighborhood. Finally, around 9:00 or 10:00, he and I go for a walk around the complex where he lives, and if I’m lucky, he’s out of poop by this time.

I’m guessing he’s acting aloof because he’s trying to reject me as his caretaker. When he sits near me, he walks up, looks me right in the face, and just as quickly turns around with his ass pointing at me now and sits down like I should rub his backside. There’s nothing cuddly about this giant white furball that is shedding hair like a sheep being shorn. He loses so much hair that I’m vacuuming the carpet every day.

So, what were my original expectations? My buddy dog and I would go to the beach and coffee shops where he’d just chill with me while I would write, basking in the sun on these cool coastal days in Southern California. Instead, Mr. Unhappy Gimp Dog shows me his ass with a good dose of a bad attitude.

There are moments he seems to be coming around, so there’s that, but in the meantime, I’m at his beck and call working on his schedule so he doesn’t get so angry as to shit on the carpet out of spite.

I’m learning that I’m not a dog person. Cats don’t require people to dedicate an hour a day to their exercise and waste elimination routines. Cats can be left alone for a few days as long as the food, water, and litter supplies are deep enough. Dogs are like children with all of the emotional shenanigans that accompany a toddler. I enjoy owning my spontaneity and being unaccountable to everyone but my wife for as long as I want or need.

I know the argument that dogs are a man’s best friend, but I’m not buying it. The dog is happy towards its caretaker when it wants something. I think the dog has trained humans to respond to its needs by showing it things that make the person jump to obeying the dog’s needs. Then people anthropomorphize the dog, believing the animal is acting in a humanlike way, which only works to endear the person more to obeying their dog. This feeling like a person is gaining the dog’s affection is a bizarre gap being filled by an animal when snuggling and playing with another human is missing. People should learn to love each other.

Growing older, I’ve been fortunate enough to also grow away from anger. The inherited disease was given to me by a father who was never very far away from his own deep-seated rage. Later in life, I learned that he was given the gift by his own father, who likely also inherited it from his own parents.

This is a primitive emotion that has never proven helpful regarding love, but as it has moved into the background, I can honestly say that I do not miss it. Contrary to my father, I did not find this ugliness within a gift, and I would have gladly given it back had I understood early on how toxic it was. I only call it a gift because, apparently others cherish this beast that leaps out of their emotional weak points and have embraced owning it.

Even after discovering through patience how to distance myself from my own worst enemy, I cannot claim it is dead. What I now know about it is just how detrimental it is to my very being. Not only have others suffered when I’m in its grip, but now I see the anguish it leaves me with.

I can go long periods where honest anger is not present, and the minor annoyances should be seen for what they are, but during the now rare moment when I butt into this Goliath of hostility, I am left not only shocked at how profoundly it takes near-total control of me but how raw I feel the next day. The chemical wreckage is felt as though I’m hungover.

If not for my sense of love for my best friend and wife, Caroline, and her ability to stand with me, trying to negotiate the turbulence where uncertainty breeds greater volatility, I may have never escaped the trap that blinds me.

There is no permanent cure for the lurking monster, as it was cultivated for far too many years during times when examples of love, nurturing, and mentoring were supposed to be at the forefront of a developing child’s evolution. When parents show their children raging hatred, how can it be that they are surprised when young adults demonstrate back at society their own raging hatred for not being loved?