Woman's Best Friend
Oct 31, 2013
Woman’s Best Friend By Maya Christobel
There are days in the life of being a woman when you realize that your best friend has betrayed you or maybe your husband has decided that the neighbor with her new gel implants is sexier than you. Or when you simply tire of the exhausting process of trying to be understood, listened to or loved by a man and you do what any insane woman would do. You get a dog.
Now you thought I was going to say get a shrink, get a face-lift, start an affair of your own, engage in unreasonable amounts of shopping therapy or buy a gun, didn’t you? Well, I tried all of those (except the face lift). Nothing eased the struggle I seemed to create and recreate with the men in my life. My great love affairs landed in some sort of heart breaking ending, shocking disillusionment or with me locked in the bedroom with an oversized box of Puffs, watching “ The Way We Were ” and wondering where the Robert Redford’s in life really were.
In 2004 my epic sized romance of eight years was unraveling and I was surrounded by girl friends with dogs named Tiny, Pumpkin and McQueen. These women seemed truly happy. When their men were beached in front of the TV, clutching their remote control and watching football night after night, these oddly happy women were slipping a rhinestone studded leash around the neck of their perfectly coifed Labra-Doodle and stepping out into the sunny day, jogging down to the dog friendly café who served gluten free dog treats. They were having a play date with other happy dog lovers. There they would sit, sipping steamy cappuccinos with divorced men and their drooling English Bulldogs who quietly sat, loyal by their side, as the pampered pooches sniffed one butt after the other in total bliss. I wanted what these women had.
They say that a dog is man’s best friend, but in no uncertain terms, the real truth is that a dog is a woman’s best friend, her salvation, her unwavering companion and the most loyal to the bone presence in her life who stays constant, affectionate, attentive and only needs a long walk and good food. I can’t say that about any one of my husbands. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would join this in-group, which seemed to know something I didn’t about “dog as therapy”.
I was living in Crested Butte, Colorado at 10,000 breathless feet and married to the mountain man of my dreams who was becoming the man I would not wish on anyone. Matthew and I had been together for seven years and he was my soul-mate, my best friend and my worthy opponent. But, a cliché burned it’s way into my life which goes something like this: “Sometimes the man you love, is not the man you can live with”. I was feeling unloved, unwanted and uninspired. But, most of all, I was just mad as a hatter that I couldn’t get my guy to open his heart, change his mind or learn to love me the way I felt I deserved.
It was a crisp minus 10-degree Monday, but the sun was blazing. In high and dry altitude a frigid day anywhere else could still feel wonderful and it was not unusual to see people in short sleeve T-shirts as they shoveled 6 foot snow drifts which was more like a meditation done regularly at sun-up. Our regular Monday breakfast had devolved in seconds into a familiar brawl over some same ole thing like money, sex or emotional availability while we ate omelets’ stuffed with chorizo. I snapped. I was over it. I was over the struggle, the anger and the hurt. I decided we weren’t working and that the whole thing was his fault.
But inside I knew that no one person is at fault for anything. It always takes two. So, I needed to get my head on straight and packed an overnight bag and headed down the mountain to my best friends house in Denver. I knew that a couple of days of laughing and a half gallon of her margaritas splashed with Grand Marnier would clear my delusional mind and I would know exactly what to do.
I got to Anne’s house with Kleenex clinging to my eyelashes. I looked puffy and red-faced from the five-hour cry down the mountain while listening to the Kenny Loggins new CD, Leap of Faith. I fell into the one embrace in my life I could count on. Anne instantly burst into tears, but not in sympathy for me. Her cat had just died. And that’s what our focus was for the next two days. Not my crashing marriage, but the loss of her beloved Fred.
So, I did what any good friend would do. I projected my need for an animal onto her. I mentioned that we should go to the Humane Society and get her a new kitten to replace dear ole Fred. I’m certain that’s what I secretly wanted to do with Matthew. There was no argument so we were on our way faster than I could slip into my LL Bean Boots.
Well, you may know what I am talking about when I say that the animal shelter puts ones life into perspective. Hundreds of sad eyes who have been lost, abandoned or abused, just like the rest of us, peer into your soul trying to fuse with your pain so that you will reach down, kiss them and then write a check for $125 and adopt a new member or two into your family. It is a painful experience. And Anne, who has the biggest heart of anyone I know, wanted every cat whether it had three legs or was blind. She couldn’t make up her mind and after an hour I decided to leave her to the impasse. Just how many kitties could she reasonably adopt? I left the cat side of the shelter and decided to take a stroll into the dog side, which looked more like the green mile.
I had raised my children on a farm in Maine. We had working dogs, big, bellowing, barking, protect dogs who would take down a moose if need be. But, after seeing the movie Legally Blonde where I was first introduced to the concept of a Purse Dog, I knew that was what I needed, in no uncertain terms. A little toy sized dog that could just fit right into a backpack or I could strap like an infant in the grocery cart, carry onto a plane without effort and buy little winter plaid jackets for. One who would never leave hair in the sink or forget to flush the toilet, who didn’t criticize every innovative idea I ever had or forget my birthday. I wanted someone who would look up at me from my over the shoulder bag and just ooze love for me and me alone. And the bonus feature was that their poop would be negligible.
I stepped into the dog compound that was lined with cages on each side, every one of them full to the brim with barking, yapping, howling dogs. I was on the hunt for a Shitzu, a little bug eyed Chihuahua, a dress up dog who I could take back home that day and show my husband that he was… replaceable.
There was every breed of puppy, dogs jumping, panting and desperate for my attention. I passed several Pit Bulls, an hysterical Boxer, a litter of mixed breed Australian Shepherds, mutts of every size and shape all screaming at me to let them out and take them home. Then, I stopped in front of a cage that had a tiny Jack Russell who was spunky, funny and just what I was looking for. But, before I could even bend down to slip my fingers through to him, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. An apparition. A presence more than anything.
Surrounded by the din of barks, and through the jumping, whirling chaos that was all around me, was this stillness and quiet at the end of the row of cages. There was a dog that had been sequestered alone at the end of the room. It did not move. It did not bark or jump or shake. It simply stared. Several empty cages separated her from the others and she was staring at me with pale eyes and telepathically trying to communicate something. She was casting a spell on me, and my heart started to race.
I have an inner compass that is never wrong. There is this feeling in my body that happens when I stumble on some important truth, when I am inspired to risk my life for a new vision, when I resonate with beauty in nature or when someone or something enters my life and I recognize it as necessary to my evolution as a human being. I never what the outcome will be, but there is unspeakable certainty. When I looked at this dog, I had that feeling.
It was a wolf. At least that is what I thought and what I felt. She wasn’t like one of the others. Not a domestic animal in any way. She seemed wild and drew me in with one long blinkless stare. I had a primal response, as if I were out in the wilderness and a wild animal had stepped into a clearing. The hair on my neck bristled. I was fixed on her eyes and instantly could no longer see my cute little Jack Russell. My purse dog vision went out the window and suddenly I was Daryl Hannah, in Clan of the Cave Bear .
I slowly made my way down to the end of the corridor and stood in front of her cage. She was smaller than a wolf, the tag said Siberian-Malamute-Wolf mix. She was deathly still, her one blue and one brown eye focused on my face. I was stirred in some deep way by her composure. Her regal nature, her “I don’t belong in here can’t you tell”, body language. A feeling I have about my life all too often.
Before I knew it I had asked the attendant to put a leash on her so I could walk her in the outside yard with other dogs to see how she did with socializing. I bent down to speak to this amazing animal and slip my fingers in to greet her. She slowly inched toward me, head low, which I decided was all about submission and then she simply licked my hand, stepped back and watched me. It was much later that I learned that this friendly lick that I took so personally to mean “you are wonderful”, in wolf language really meant, “I won’t kill you now, you have a reprieve”. This was a foreshadowing of the lessons that I would soon learn.
Now, falling in love with a dog is much like falling in love with a man. It usually starts with infatuation. You can argue the meaning of the word, but it eventually boils down to one unique component: Infatuation isn’t about the dog or the man. It is about falling in love with your self-made fantasy about them: Who you think they are or want them to be for you.
As it is with all objects of desire, I fooled myself into believing a myriad of half-truths and a few out and out lies to justify the insane move I was about to make. That is what a projection is. We project onto our friend, our lover, our husband and our animals the characteristics and expectations we have for ourselves, but have not had the ability to realize in ourselves yet. When the truth comes out and the object of those projections can’t help but not live up to those expectations, so we feel cheated, betrayed and utterly let down. But even worse, we stay in the delusion long enough to blame them, as if they purposefully deluded us.
So, I convinced myself that no one would take her if I did not rescue her and protect her wildness. I saw in her the power, the centeredness, the self-assured nature I longed for in myself. I lied to myself and said I could handle anything. How much harder could she be than my marriage was? Maybe she would help me move on, or have the courage to leave and find myself. Maybe she would be someone to love that loved me back unconditionally. I told myself all the lies we tell ourselves when we want something so much we overlook the obvious red flags.
I took her for a walk with the other dogs and passed Anne who was paying for her cats at the front desk. She looked down at the massive animal as it brushed by her leg with a low grunt. And as I passed by in my infatuation and insanity, Anne’s wide eyes burned these words into my mind: “What the hell are you doing?”
Out in the yard were big dogs, aggressive dogs and little mongrels all fixed on this one wild dog I had in tow, who was as pleasant, sniffy, and laid back as any dog I had ever seen. But, it seemed as if all the dogs got one good look at her and teleported themselves to the other side of the enclosure dragging their would be owners with them. Dogs that were barking fell quiet as I proudly walked my almost new dog passed them. Little did I know that I was not walking her at all, but the other way around. She was in total control of me and of every dog around her.
Three hours later my salvation flopped down in the back seat of my Subaru as I kissed Anne goodbye with her new kitties already perched in her window and I started the five-hour drive home. Before I lost reception on my cell phone I began to dial Matthew to tell him the news but suddenly paused. “No, I think I’ll surprise him”. But the real surprise was yet to come.
I tossed “Leap of Faith” onto the floor and played Alanis Morissette all the way home while my new companion completely filled the back seat where she slept for four of the five hours. “Wow she’s a great car dog too”, I thought. “How lucky I am”. As I hit Buena Vista the snow started coming down and I pondered on what I’d say to Matthew when I opened the front door and in prowled a larger than life dog that could strike the fear of god in anyone. The rude, angry, hold a grudge part of myself, that I am not proud of to this day, knew that Matthew simply didn’t like dogs or most animals for that matter. Not only did he not like dogs, but he had said on more than one occasion, “it’s a dog or me, but not both”. I was willing to take that chance or maybe the greater truth was, I wanted him to put his money where his bravado was. I was in a full-blown moment of ‘passive aggression’. And like the laws of the universe promise us “As within, So without” . My fabulous dog was about to teach me what passive aggression was all about.
So, the hours sped by in the car. I hit the snow line just before Monarch Pass and put the car into all wheel drive. As I crawled over the pass with logging trucks and dozens of RV’s barely able to summit, I started to consider what I would name this beautiful creature. For all I knew she could be a Natasha or an Abbey, named after someone’s’ favorite great aunt. But for me, in that moment, I thought of the Goddesses like Athena or Aphrodite. But calling through the neighborhood for Aphrodite seemed an unlikely choice, but Athena worked, strong, majestic, a woman who never took no for an answer and waged war for the sake of justice. The women I wanted to find in myself. But some part of me remembered watching a show with my daughters, Xena, Princess Warrior. Something in me new this might be the real truth about this amazing Dog. Boy was I right.
As I got closer to home I pulled off the road to the only Dairy Queen in miles and shut the car off to ponder the reality of what I was about to do. This dog might make or break my fragile relationship with a man I loved. But, I didn’t ponder for long since Xena suddenly leapt from the back seat to the front seat like my co-pilot. Seeing her sitting there surveying her new surroundings, she seemed far bigger than at the shelter, in fact, way bigger. She was very still and seemed calculated as she looked at me, sizing me up for the first time. Her stare with those different colored eyes caught me off guard. Wasn’t she supposed to be barking at all the people getting in and out of cars or trying to poke her nose out of the crack in the window to sniff her new surroundings and get a bead on the Dalmatian that was in the car right next to us? Nope, all eyes were on me. I was momentarily uncomfortable. “Hey girl! Hey Beauty. Want an ice cream cone?” I went into the Queen and got each of us a vanilla cone. Her stare lingered in my mind.
When I got back Xena was firmly in the drivers seat and in no uncertain terms going to stay there. My first glimpse of what was to come in our relationship. But I swept past the big piece of information, got in the back seat with the cones and coaxed her back to share in our first real bonding experience. This was the fatal mistake I would look back on in months to come and regret: Me getting into the back seat. Something I was familiar with doing in other parts of my life.
Now remember, my wanting a dog was born out of feeling unloved. That is the first and biggest mistake for buying a living creature that you will be responsible to for the rest of its life. Second, I bought a dog out of feeling hurt and rejected. These two reasons cemented a future for me with this amazing animal that I could never have predicted. A future that would change me and change my marriage forever.
Xena and I shared a lovely moment licking cones together and I felt our bond was cemented, her love for me growing with every yummy bite and I was pleased as punch. We drove up Rt. 50 past Gunnison, the snow coming on hard. I pulled off the road and watched Xena, agitated and excited as she looked out her window at the white all around. She was part Siberian Husky, so snow is what they live for . I put her leash on and no sooner had I opened the back car door but she leapt over me, plowing headlong into a snowdrift.
We pulled up to Mount Crested Butte and parked in front of our house. Should I leave her in the car and go and talk to Matthew or just walk right in? No brainer. With Xena on leash I approached the front door. Deep breath. I could see through the glass that Matthew was in the living room waxing his cross-country skis, The Rolling Stones rattling the windows, a pile of books about the crumbling American Dream littered the coffee table. I had hardly opened the door when Xena yanked the leash hard, ran in past me as I tripped on the threshold and nearly fell flat on my face
“Xena!”, I yelled.
Matthew’s ski slipped from his hand as he braced for the huge fur coat moving right for him like a freight train. I no longer had the leash and tried to recapture my own balance as she stopped short of jumping on top of Matthew. Instead she instantly sat right in front of him like he was some long lost friend. No tail wagging, no panting, just the full presence of a wild animal in the living room staring up at Matthew. Alpha female meet her alpha male.
He looked alarmed. “What the hell?” he yelled over Mick Jagger. The dog didn’t move. I rushed in and put her back on leash and pulled her to my side. Xena growled. At me. That was the first peep out of her I had heard. I yanked her collar and said “No!. Sit!”. She did so very reluctantly. “What’s this?”, Matthew said with a kind of ominous control in his voice. He slowly reached for the remote and silenced the music. “This is Xena…..my new dog”, I said matter-of-factly. Matthew turned to stone and set down his wax, his ski and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Your dog? You didn’t find it as a stray or something? You got a dog and didn’t bother to ask me about it?”
I didn’t have to answer that question since the answer was clear. Xena only had eyes for Matthew at that moment and as he slowly stood, starring down disapprovingly at the dog with a scowl that burned, he said in an eerie calm,
“So, this is your new dog? I will never feed it ever, I will not walk it, I will not call it by name. Good luck!”. He didn’t ask any of the questions I was fully prepared for like, “Why Maya, aren’t you happy with me? Did I do something wrong? Or, “oh, if it makes you happy to have a dog I support you entirely, so what can I do to make this go even better?” You could cut through the animosity with a knife.
Matthew quietly gathered his belongings, pushed past Xena like she was a new piece of furniture and slammed the front door behind him with Xena rushing to the door as it closed. I was shell-shocked. What had I expected? I expected exactly what had happened. In fact I set it all in motion. So the die was cast. War had begun.