Doggone Crazy

Having awoken in a screaming tizzy on deadline day, my regular training and behavior column failed to make its usual appearance in the local paper. Instead of writing like I normally do, I decided to contribute to the buy-your-psychiatrist-a-new-Ferrari fund. When my editor finally contacted me to find out where my missing article was, I tried to explain my baffling predicament.

"It's not always easy to come up with interesting material for a dog story," I said, "To stimulate my creativity, I go through these, uh, little routines that help me think. This time I kind of got carried away, and I, uh, wasn't where I could work. But I did get a good story for the next issue!"...

To people who don't live with a house and kennel full of dogs, I suppose my thought-stimulating routines might appear a bit odd. To get the creative juices flowing, I engage in rituals such as pacing laps around the dog food storage bins, once for every dog hair I find on my outfit or pick out of my food, and so on. At the end of these laps I kneel on the floor with the dogs, close my eyes, nestle my head against their chest between their paws, and begin chanting the opening words to my soon-to-be article. (My chiropractor encourages this practice since it makes me and my dogs some of his most frequent customers.)

If this fails to result in an article, I turn to a greater source of inspiration - my wild imagination and my talking dogs (or should that be my wild dogs and our imaginary conversations?). Sometimes I interview people for my column, but much of the time I get story ideas directly from my dogs. When I can't come up with a topic on my own, I gaze into their eyes and ask them what I should write. They always have a suggestion. Ordinarily these conversations are limited to the unspoken confines of my mind. This week proved to be different.

Laboring under the intensive stress of over-booked training sessions and multiple deadlines, I audibly asked my dogs for their assistance. And thought I heard them clearly respond. To me, this is fairly normal behavior, but to onlookers I was, to put it bluntly, cracking up.

The day of my big breakup with reality would be recorded in the annals of the insurance company's data banks as just another date, but I would forever remember it as the day that went to the dogs. My canine companions had given me an idea for an award-winning but tear-jerker column. Busily at work on my story about rescue, I failed to notice that I had a problem.

I didn't realize anything was seriously wrong until a jolt of electricity shot up my arm and stabbed at the pain centers in my brain. Looking to see what had caused the shock, I discovered that water was running down my fingertips into the keyboard of my computer. Much to my surprise the source of this endless stream was my own eyes. As I touched my face I discovered I was crying enough to make my nose and lips blurble. I had a sufficient quantity of nasty substances stuck to my face that I made the drool coming from a Newfoundland look a mere drop in a bucket.

I looked for something with which to dry myself off. One of the dogs, sensing my need, thoughtfully trotted over to me with what I thought was a small towel but turned out to be the soggy remains of a fleece toy. (Wouldn't that picture make a believable tissue commercial?) I needed to get back to writing, but the water just kept pouring. Even my pajama top was soaked through and plastered to my skin. And, what was I doing still in sleepwear at 2 pm anyway?

Not thinking too logically by now, I wrung out my pj top instead of changing clothes. I decided the amount of time I spent napping with my dogs between articles and classes, was a good enough reason not to get dressed. Next, I securely taped two doggy in-season sani-pads over my eyes to absorb the flow of tears.

Once I had stopped the waterworks, I resumed my pacing. Still clad only in pajamas I started doing laps outdoors, around my doggy-dooly above ground pooper scooper system. I should have taken a good look at myself and asked if I were behaving in a sane manner, but I didn't. As a dog trainer and behaviorist I accept quirky behavior as the norm. And as a writer, a creative person, I'm entitled to have some idiosyncrasies. In fact, being slightly off-the-wall is a prerequisite of my work.

Not everybody would agree with me. When I glanced next door I observed through my sani-pad eyewear that my neighbor was talking excitedly on her phone and pointing towards my house. Soon an ambulance, police car and fire rescue truck tore up my driveway. In their rush to capture a lunatic (that would be me) they drove through the vegetable garden, smashing the beans and carrots I'd planted for my dogs.

The howling of the dogs drowned out the wailing of the sirens. Through the racket I heard someone shout in a crisis-intervention voice, "Don't be alarmed. We're only here to help. Will you let us in?" My immediate reaction was of course alarm. Why should I admit a battalion of uniformed men? What would my dogs say about this uninvited company?

With a herculean effort I began to push crates and grooming tables into a blockade against the door. While I was thus occupied the firemen were busy bribing their way through my kennel office window by offering my traitorous dogs a bunch of biscuits. (How little value they placed on me. They could have at least held out for steak.)

In a last ditch effort to escape the clutches of my would be captors, I crawled through the dogs' agility tunnel and ran across the dog-walk, vaulting into the loft over the stairs. (Rumor has it that I may be chosen as the next AKC national agility champ for my size division.) Unfortunately my ploy didn't work, because I found myself trapped like a fox surrounded by a pack of beagles. A greasy bag smelling faintly of dog kibble was dropped over my head, and my hands and feet were restrained with leashes. I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness.

The sound of a wolf howling eventually roused me from my stupor. When I awoke, I was in what appeared to be an over-sized kennel, complete with pens large enough to contain people. Watching me through the bars of my "pen" was an attendant built like a militant Rottweiler. He opened my door and barked out an order for me to follow him to group exercise therapy. Is that anything like basic obedience class I wondered as I trotted beside him in perfect heel?

Waiting in an empty room was a motley group of people that I quickly compared to some of my former behavior patients: a tiny woman with stringy gray hair quivered like a timid Yorkie; a bulldog of a man waddled around and mumbled complaints; and , a beauty queen type sat aloof and disdainful in the corner, preening like an Afghan Hound.

The demented detainee leading the exercise group looked like a poodle on a bad hair day. Wearing a t-shirt that said, "Bad Dog. Sit. Stay," in flashing electric lights, the woman, who thought she was Barbara Wodehouse, was crooning to us to, "Walkies! Everybody walkies!"

This was too much. I demanded to speak to the head trainer of this group of out of control canine wanna-be's. Once in his office I asked, "Where am I? Why am I here?"
"You're in a hospital for the mentally deranged. You have a serious obsession with dogs," he responded in a Freudian lisp.
"Yes I do and I have no desire to change this condition. Now may I go home and get on with my life?" I asked.

"Are you going to keep talking and listening to dogs?" he queried in return.
Emphatically I replied, "I should hope so! It's very healthy therapy for me. And, well, it's how I earn my living."

"You may leave on one condition. You must keep a journal. I require all my discharged patients to write about what they do. When you re-read your entries, you will find improved mental health," he stated. Suppressing the urge to tell him I thought he must have been a Wirehaired Pointer in a former life, I agreed to his terms, returned home to my kennel and wrote about my experience.

... "So," I finished explaining to my editor, "I have this great story, but don't know whether I should publish it or not."
"Yeah, send it in," he said, "Why not?"
"No one besides dog people would believe it could be true," I answered.
"That's okay. Fiction sells. Maybe you'll crack up again and we could do a series," he suggested.
" Nah. I'm not crazy," I said, "Who needs a shrink when you can talk to dogs?"

The moral of this story:
* Two (or more) dogs in the house is worth one psychiatrist in the hospital;
* Always bark before you write.