I decided to keep with the theme of friends and abandoned friendships today by providing an update on Molly. Molly’s last appearance here was back in April when I found out she had been getting out of her kennel and onto our new couches. Her lack of inclusion in the blog somewhat mirrors what life at home with her has become; she’s there but not getting the attention she deserves.
I may have mentioned before that Molly was a rescue dog. We don’t know what the few weeks of her life were like before we brought her home, but like many rescued animals she comes with a bit of emotional baggage. She was impossible to house train. We had her for nearly nine months and invested in $600 of obedience training before she finally figured out the living room was not just another yard with couches and a TV.
The day we brought her home, we stopped off at PetSmart for food, food dishes, a leash and the kennel. We decided to feed her right away when we got home, and as we opened the bag of food Molly flipped out. I mean she completely lost it. She leaped upon that 20 lb bag of food and furiously clawed at it. She probably would have jumped in the bag had we let her, because in her mind she had just won the doggie lottery.
Those first couple of days with Molly were interesting. She didn’t want to leave the living room at all. As soon as she lost sight of either Nathan or me she’d start to yelp. I eventually coaxed her into exploring the rest of the house by getting down on my hands an knees and having her follow me. After that, she seemed to get comfortable.
The honeymoon period of having a cute puppy in the house didn’t last long, though. Molly was a digger and her penchant for making holes was not limited to the yard. One evening I received a call at work from Nathan. He had just gotten home to find that Molly had dug a huge crater in our bet mattress all the way down to the springs. We’ve lost countless comforters and sheets to her claws and now have to prohibit her from every piece of furniture we have now because she still can’t be trusted.
We stuck with her through the worst of that behavior and she became a part of our family. Back when I was taking better care of myself, I was taking better care of her, too. I’d take her on long walks throughout the neighborhood and even bought her a set of boots to cover her feet when we went out for walks in the winter.
When Autumn came, however, things changed. We no longer had as much time for walks or throwing the frisbie in the yard. Molly got yelled at more often, not because she was being particularly bad, but because she wasn’t aware of her size in comparison to Autumn’s or that she shouldn’t be so quick to breeze past us on the stairs when we had a baby in our arms.
Lately we’ve been finding ourselves emotionally unequipped to deal with Molly and her various neuroses. If she’s not digging up the carpet or chewing on the banister during a thunderstorm, she’s stalking Autumn for food or getting into the garbage. There’s black hair everywhere and in everything and many days we find ourselves simply doing just what we have to do for her. Autumn’s entrance into the terrible twos has left us drained and it seems we have no patience left for the dog.
Last night as Nathan and I were watching TV, I noticed Molly sitting by the slider that leads out to our patio. She sits there a lot, especially during the summer when the rabbits come out to eat the grass. Last night she probably couldn’t see anything because it was dark, but seeing her camped out there hoping for a glimpse of something exciting made me feel bad for her. We’re her pack, but we’ve somehow become estranged in the way families often do. We do our thing and she does hers and have gotten to a point where we simply coexist. Thankfully Autumn loves to have the dog as her shadow.
I think we need to learn how to be a better pack. That doesn’t have to mean allowing Molly on the bed or taking her for a walk every day, but we do need to consider life from her perspective and how much things have changed for her. She used to be our baby and I’m pretty sure she still thinks of herself that way.
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