Last summer, when I was still abroad, one of my amazing older lab-mates offered to help me find an apartment in Columbus. She managed to get me an AMAZING space with tons of natural light, a washer-dryer in the basement, off street parking, a bus route 15 steps from my door, and a 12-minute bike ride commute (on Columbus' only 2-way protected bike lane) to school. In my pre-Lucy life, I loved this apartment.... In fact when I was struggling to adjust in the fall, I'd often joke that the only part of my life in Columbus I truly enjoyed was where I lived. That changed quickly, suddenly, and completely when I adopted Lucy.
My awareness of Lucy's anxiety developed right around the time that we started Dog School. I mentioned that the instructor would sometimes make comments like, "Since Lucy is an anxious dog..." to which I aways responded defensively, as if her anxiety was a character flaw that I should defend. It became harder to ignore as I began to understand WHY Lucy had such a hard time walking outside--that she sensed threat everywhere and lived on high alert--and as she became increasingly reactive to the sounds in my apartment. I commented that it was almost as if Lucy "slept with one eye open," and in the evenings, she just couldn't settle down at all.
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| Notice the hair on her neck |
I should mention that my apartment is actually the bottom floor of a big, beautiful, and very old three-story house. I live downstairs and three guys live upstairs. Every evening, just as the sun was going down, something seemed to change within Lucy. It wasn't exactly that she started to become "Outside Lucy" (unaware/unwilling/unable to acknowledge my existence), but rather that the same sounds she'd heard 2 hours before that hadn't induce a reaction, suddenly made her panic.
Early in the evening, she'd start woofing at small sounds, but as the night wore on, her anxiety mounted. The issue was always made worse when one of the three guys came in or out of our shared front door or--worse yet--used the side door to the basement laundry area that is right off my kitchen. To Lucy, these sounds must have seemed like someone was coming
into our apartment (!!!!!!). For her first few weeks, she'd also start howling in the middle of the night, sometimes randomly, but also almost always at around 12:20am. One Friday I was still awake in bed when she started her 12:20am howl, and I realized that she was reacting to the sound of the automatic timer clicking off the living room light. Her hyper-vigilance was exhausting for both of us.
I tried everything I could think of to help her calm down: distracting her with treats, bones, and dog toys; limiting where she could go in the apartment in the evenings; blasting books on tape and classical music, loudly; keeping her on a short leash at my side; taking her to exercise outside for hours each evening to try and tire her out. The thing that worked best was my reassurance. She was super responsive to feedback. If I calmly told her, "Lucy, it's okay. I hear that sound, and it's okay," she'd settle down for at least a couple of minutes until the next time my upstairs neighbors closed a door or the central air turned on. This was, however, and exhausting solution.
Suddenly the space that had once been my sanctuary became somewhere I felt chronically stressed and on edge. I now hated the things I'd once happily accepted as part of the charm of living in an old house (the creaky floors, the back gate that didn't close, the door that cannot close quietly, the shared entryway). I kept reminding myself, "It's still so early in our relationship. I CAN do this. We CAN do this," but early on I was pretty bad an convincing myself. I grew increasingly miserable in my apartment, and I also grew increasingly hopeless about my ability to help Lucy adjust.
One Saturday, I received the following text message from my mom:
Her message (the first one, not the suggestion haha) perfectly encapsulated an internal conflict I was experiencing:
That first month, I often felt like I was drowning--on the edge of a breakdown. I hated feeling so inept at something I cared so much about. I felt panicked, stressed, and frustrated, and during moments that I felt like it was too much, I had fleeting thoughts about whether the right thing to do was to send Lucy back. Mostly this thought was motivated by my fear that I was letting her down, making her worse, couldn't give her what she needed. But, in truth, I also considered this because
I was unhappy and I missed the way things had been before. This added another emotion to the mix: profound guilt.
In some ways, it would have been easier if I'd ONLY felt panicked, stressed, frustrated and guilty because then my solution would have been clear: Find a better-suited, loving home for Lucy. Because I loved her and believed in her and--though I sometimes questioned my soundness of this belief--believed in
us, I felt stuck. I didn't want to give up, to send her back, to admit this had been a mistake. I loved Lucy so much, and I did love certain parts of my life with her. But my life with Lucy looked almost nothing like my pre-Lucy life. And I had really loved my pre-Lucy life, too. Though it was very hard for me to admit, I missed my old life... a LOT.
In my Old Life, my apartment was my sanctuary. It was clean, it was close to campus, it was where I went to relax and unwind. I loved working in my living room. Organizing, cleaning, re-organizing and re-cleaning were my specialties. My daily/weekly chore chart and complicated whiteboard systems could have been the subject of a good psych dissertation!
In my Life with Lucy, my apartment is messier than any living space I've ever occupied. People who know me would be shocked to see the state of disarray. Dog toys, dog beds, bags of treats, a huge air purifier, her towels, and her bowls have make it seemingly impossibly to keep my space organized. Even the things that technically could be neater aren't, and no matter how many times I swiffer, vacuum, and dust, I feel gritty and like I'm full of dander.
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| No more late nights in lab. Maybe not a bad thing?! |
In my Old Life, I valued spontaneity--deciding on a whim to go for a weekend trip to Cincinnati or New York. I could leave my house at 8am and, without a thought, stay out until 10pm, perhaps deciding last minute going to Grad Student Trivia or an evening spin class. I'd take advantage of working in my lab late at night when no one else was there--things that can't happen (or at least, happen without much planning and preparation) in my new Life with Lucy.
In my Old Life, I enjoyed $64 non-stop flights to DC that took me from my apartment in Columbus to my front door in Bethesda in less than 3-hours. In my Life with Lucy, any trip home is now a 6.5-hour+ drive with a car-sick dog (we're working on that!).
In my new life, I have almost no down-time. My savings account is rapidly shrinking. I get up a full hour and a half earlier every day, and collapse exhausted each evening. The productive and fulfilling routine I'd worked so hard to perfect last year is now totally ineffective (and irrelevant).
And yet, I knew I loved this dog, and I wanted to give her adjustment--
our adjustment--a significant, fighting chance. The wisdom of many dog-owning friends was invaluable during this period (see text message with my friend, Becca). Common responses to the question of how long it took to develop a new routine ranged from one to three months. It's now been about 6 weeks, and though it's still very tough and we are still in the adjustment process, here is what I've realized:
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| Which of these things is not like the others? |
Yes, my bed is no longer neatly made with an assortment of pillows, stuffed animals, and multiple layers of colored sheets and quilts, but that is only because Lucy has a love of "nesting" there, so she has easily (and adorably) replaced my need for
stuffed animals. She creates a perch for herself from which to watch me and our room, to keep me safe and be ready for a snuggle at a moment's notice.
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| Morning cuddles = BEST way to start the day |
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My arrival home is celebrated
like a national holiday |
Days in my Life with Lucy certainly begin earlier and end with an increased level of exhaustion, but they begin and end with the deepest, most energizing and fulfilling sense of love and connection. When I turn on the light, Lucy immediately looks to me from the foot of my bed, and when I give my favorite command ("Come for a cuddle!") she bear crawls up and nuzzles herself into the nape of my neck, tail wagging frantically. It's the same way we reunite when I come home from work and the way we end each day. I'll take those early mornings.
Yes, my skin is more broken out and I'm constantly covered in pet dander, but that is only because Lucy is the world's BEST cuddle-er. She is the happiest when she is on my lap or along my side. That's when I'm also the happiest, too.
My apartment is a mess because every morning while I'm making lunch, Lucy goes into the living room and throws her favorite stuffed animals around, jumping off furniture and squeaking them as loudly as she can. She always seems to be having such a good time that I have to join in! It's a new type of spontaneity and fun, one that usually has me laughing hysterically before 8am.
Yes, my savings account is rapidly dwindling, but it's dwindling because it makes me so happy and so proud to be able to take care of this dog who does such a good job of taking care of me. Dog school, her vet bills, grooming, and a million toys/treats are just as much for me as for her. And the upside of those 6+ hour drives to DC (in addition to re-listening to Harry Potter on tape) is that I save my airfare.
My early morning walks and need to get home quickly at the end of the day have changed my commute, since I can't afford the time to take the bus or walk to school. And yet those morning walks help boost my productivity, and our afternoon/evening outings have gotten me to explore SO many new parks and parts of Columbus.
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| Evening trail walk |
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Lucy found the 2 inches of space between
me and the chair to curl up |
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| Road Trip! |
My new life is messier, less flexible, and more chaotic, exhausting and uncertain, but it's also full of more love, cuddles, laughter, play, fun, exploration, and growth. Those who are closest to me would probably tell you that mostly I seem more agitated and irritable, which is probably true at this stage. Both Lucy's and my efforts to change life-long patterns of behavior and routine will take time: Lucy is learning to trust other dogs, to be present and pay attention to me when we are outside, to walk on a leash, to allow herself to turn off her hypervigalence; I'm learning to let go of my need for extreme organization, disdain for spending money, fear of "bothering" other people by making noise. These things aren't easy or comfortable, but big picture, they will help both us to be more balanced, patient, loving, flexible, and relaxed separately and together.
Lucy loves ferociously and without inhibition. She seeks new experiences, plays with abandon, and adventures far off the beaten path (literally). I love her, more and more with each passing day, and I'm learning how together we can create a life we
both love.
