some days are better than others

Pearl has always had good days and bad, with the bad days in the past being very bad indeed. What has always made some days difficult is the level of her pitch and the corresponding lack of connection: she’s revved up, insistent, rarely interested in doing what I ask. Since the new training, her bad days are not nearly as bad or as numerous as they once were. But yesterday was a doozy.

It began right away, with Pearl’s clearly needing to burn off some energy first thing in the morning. Though the Tug-a-Jug slows eating breakfast way down and makes her work for it, she was nevertheless on high speed while we tried to eat our own breakfast, pacing around and barking at the door. She didn’t have to go outside, we had already determined; she just wanted to. So eventually, but only after she settled down, (in case you're listening, Nancy), I stopped reading the newspaper and took her out in the yard to chase balls and frisbees. We played for quite a long a time, the first of many such outings throughout the day.

For the rest of the time, she bullied Kosmo, barked and clawed at the window when someone walked by (and before I could get into the room to stop her [hi Nancy!]), barked every time another dog in the neighborhood barked, and managed to behave so badly on a walk that we turned around and came right back after Pearl spent the first half block pulling and lunging at dogs and people. To cap things off, she met my hand with her teeth when I didn’t give her something she wanted, which is different from trying to bite me only if you think small calibrations matter. In short, she was obnoxious from morning til evening in just about every way she knows how to be. Bear in mind that she’s taking calming Chinese herbs, without which she is markedly worse, and wearing a D.A.P collar. And still.

Sadly, when Pearl has a bad day, I do, too. I slump around wondering just how much time and energy I can continue to put into making her reasonable. I get exhausted at the thought of working with her. I consider giving up—and to tell you the truth, I haven’t yet shaken that notion. But I wonder what “giving up” actually means, or can mean. I’ve already let go of any idea I had that Pearl would be a dog I could take on vacation or other outings, walk off leash, take along for company in the car—in short, do all of the things I’ve done with every other dog I’ve ever had. I’m working with her so that perhaps she can eventually be around people without trying to bite somebody and so that she doesn’t make our lives miserable by doing every day all the things she did yesterday.

Maybe I can give up on making her more sociable. She can continue to stay away from people who come into the house as she’s doing now: if you don’t get to be around people, you can’t bite anybody. And we can continue to monitor her so that she never again gets used to barking out windows or through fences.

It’s very hard not to read a bad day as evidence that no matter how much progress we make, real change hasn’t happened and won’t happen. Perhaps instead, I tend to think, everything is just precariously held in check, balancing temporarily on a thin line between the barely acceptable and the completely unacceptable. Some days, the slightest tip lands her back in the bad old days, rocketing around as if she’d never left. And there I am, right there with her, my own emotions tumbling with equal unpredictability into completely familiar territory.