It’s amazing how wrapped up in our own troubles we can get. I was moving. I was leaving my home. I was losing my roommate and best friend. My whole life was turning up-side-down. Sure, I knew that it would impact Luke in certain ways, but I also figured that as long as he was with me he would basically be okay. I failed to realize that that was a philosophy for a different dog. That worked for my previous dog, Shaun, who had only endured minor hardship in his life before coming to live in the lap of luxury — literally! He had the confidence to go anywhere as long as we went together. Luke, in sharp contrast, is scared of everything. It took this one day, though, to bring it all into focus.
Luke had a bad night. He slept, but not well. Before my alarm went off, he came in and woke me up to let me know that something was just not right. Neither one of us could put our nose on just what it was that was out of place. Maybe it was a noise, maybe it was a feeling in the atmosphere, or maybe it was the moment that all the change and the emotional upheaval built up on him and just became too much. I’ll never know, really. All I know is that the dog who I have to wake up for our walks in the mornings and who goes almost directly back to bed afterwards, was wide awake and troubled. I worried all day long, as any mom would, that he was sick and I couldn’t be with him.
We went for a walk when I got home to try to set both of our nerves a bit more at ease. Luke was not sick, but he was incredibly twitchy and jumpy — even for Luke. We walked a long way to see if we couldn’t get some of whatever it was out of his system. We played frisbee to try to calm and focus his over-active herding brain. When we got back home, though, Luke was just a nervous wreck again. So I had to do some thinking. Why was he so upset? Why now? What were we going to do about it? How could I help Luke? How could I help Luke help himself?
As soon as I allowed myself a fresh vantage point, the answers began to become so clear. I had to go back to the basic principle that Luke is scared of everything. Caught up in my hurry to get settled in the new place and make it home, I had not taken the time to think about the fact that Luke might need some time to soak in his new environs. These were not the same people that he had inspected from the hillside next to our old apartment building; these were new people with new habits and new sounds and smells. I needed to slow us down. I needed to take time for us.
Luke is so incredibly smart. I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t make him use even half of his intellect most of his life. I think his intelligence is a double-edged sword at times. Of course it’s good to be smart, but he never forgets anything and he comes up with new things to be afraid of all the time. So, that day, it became my challenge to find a way to use his intelligence to dig him out of his hole. If he is as smart as he is supposed to be and has proven himself to be, then he should be able to reason himself out of his fears as well.
So we sat. In the middle of the parking lot, with everyone going about their business around us and giving us strange looks, we sat. For long periods of time while Luke trembled and swung his head in all directions and flickered his ears until it seemed they might fall off, we sat. It was not until Luke stopped trembling and sat with his ears perked forward in a posture of curiosity that we thought about moving towards home, and even then it was only a few steps. The process would start all over again every time he would shake or cower or pin his ears back in fear. I might stay standing, but he would sit and we would wait until he thought everything through. And he was thinking.
He was pondering and considering a few questions. Where do the sounds come from? Who are these people? Are they dangerous? Are they interested in me? What are they doing? Where are they going? It seemed that only after he exhausted these and other questions that only he could know about would he be ready to move forward with the kind of attitude I was looking for out of him. Only then would he sit up straight, perk his ears forward, cast them about in many directions attempting to catch all noises created around him, and walk next to me as the strong and confident boy that he is.
This was by no means a simple, one-time process. We sat a lot. It took us quite some time to cover the distance between our parking space and the breezeway and the three flights of stairs to our door. We continued the process later that night when we went back out for a late night potty-break — a process that I learned included a leash every time, not because he was going to run off anywhere but for his feelings of security. He needed to know that he was linked to me and that I would be there to ward off anything that might potentially cause him harm.
Little by little, we have seen improvement. He hears noises now and wonders where they come from instead of immediately wanting to hit the deck. He sees people and considers staying his course before cowering and vearing. When his old habbits take hold, we sit and we think and we try to come back to center. At the end of the day, we are what the other has so we need to help each other out. He reminds me everyday how to smile and laugh and love and feel extreme joy about simple things like frisbees. The least I can do is try to help him out of the prison of terror he has built for himself. I am coming to understand that time and patience are my best weapons in that fight, and for Luke I have those in infinite supply.