When A Bad Dog Went Really Bad

Ceri - January, 2007 - March 5, 2012

Even though it happened over a week ago now, I still haven't found a way to talk about it.  It doesn't seem like it should hurt that much, but it really, really does.  So much, in fact, that I've adopted my I-can't-deal-with-this strategy: I stop thinking about it, shove it to the back of my mind-attic, and pile furniture and boxes and old clothes and roller skates and everything else I can think of on top of it, so that it doesn't emerge.

Last week - March 5th, to be precise - my Ceri-dog had to be put down.  My Bad Dog.  Doggie Face.  Monkey Dog.  But mostly my Bad Dog.

Ceri was a bad dog.  Just how bad was something which was continuously being revealed - even though I had her for four years - and the depths of her badness were sometimes pretty amazing.  But last Sunday, March 4th, she became too bad for this world, and on Monday, she had to be put down.

I found Ceri in a blizzard.  No exaggeration.  January 8th, 2008, I was driving home late from work - this was when I lived in Lake Arrowhead, CA, where blizzards actually happen - and was completely focused on just making it home without crashing/sliding/drifting/dying.  Somehow, though, I managed to see this little black speck, sitting patiently (something, I came to learn, which was extraordinary with Ceri), waiting.  I realized it was a dog, and wondered what the hell any living thing would be doing outside and not actively trying to find shelter in a blizzard.  I stopped the car, opened the door, and the dog took off.

I'm ashamed to admit that that was perhaps the one time in my life when I decided not to chase an animal which was clearly in need of help.  I put my own selfish considerations (I was dressed for the office, not animal-hunting in the snow) ahead of the dog's welfare, and continued on home, which was another quarter of a mile (so about 5 minutes in those conditions) away.  I arrived safely, went inside, and thought about the dog all night.

The next morning the snow had stopped, and wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, the plows had actually managed to get out and clear the roads by the time I needed to leave for work.  So I was driving to work, up the same street where I had seen the dog, and who should come trotting out in front of my car?

It was clearly a sign.  So I got out, whistled, and the dog trotted right up to the car, and hopped in, just like she knew who I was, had been waiting for me, and couldn't wait to get started.  (It was always a sure-fire method of capturing Ceri when she would escape, and take off for wondrous parts unknown.  Simply drive by her in the car, whistle or call to her, open the door, and she'd jump right in, dreams of freedom and escape forgotten.)  I took her home, put her in the spare bedroom/my office, gave her food and water, figured I'd deal with the potty damage when I got home, and left for the day.

We named her Cerberus, after the black, three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades.  It never really seemed that appropriate, although she was a fairly good guard dog.  So we called her Ceri for short (soft s, like sari).  But that didn't really matter, either.  She pretty rapidly became Bad Dog.  She even responded to it.

And holy hell, was she bad.  She destroyed over $1,000 worth of shoes, ate blinds, peed on everything, and couldn't hold a poo to save her life.  She jumped fences, killed small creatures if given half a chance, and tried impressions of a mountain goat on our fifty-foot-high back deck railing.  She ate poos straight from the litter box, scattering litter all over the floor, made noises like a horny monkey when excited (my brother still does the best impression I've ever heard), and was a true escape artist.

But, the thing was, she was the sweetest dog I've ever seen.  She would look at you, lick your face (often smelling like cat poo, which was delightful), pant, smile, and you'd forgive her.  She was bad, but it wasn't intentional.  She was just . . . Ceri.  She existed in her own Ceri world.  Which is not to say I didn't get mad at her.  I did.  But I forgave her.  Over and over and over.

When I moved to Virginia, I couldn't take Ceri.  I would be living in an apartment the size of a glorified shoebox (okay, slightly smaller), and didn't have a yard.  I'd be gone who-knew-how-many hours a day, and Ceri would go completely nuts for even a second in such a confined space.  So she stayed with my ex-boyfriend, who eventually took her with him to Arizona.

We thought she'd be happy in Arizona.  A nice big yard, people who loved her, and lots of outside time and attention.

I got a text from my ex the evening of March 4th.  Ceri had gotten out of the yard and killed a neighbor's cat.  Shock mingled with suspicion.  How had that happened?  Had it really been an accident, or was she let out on purpose?  I felt grief for the family, knowing full well what it feels like to lose a pet.  Shock was rapidly compounded by shock.  Ceri was running up and down the street, threatening other animals and people alike.

Ceri?  My Ceri?  My Bad Dog?  Ceri had never threatened another human in her dim little life, unless one counts being drooled on and panted at a threat.  What had happened?

I still don't know.  I don't know what circumstances caused Ceri to change.  Once my ex had caught up with her, and had subdued her, and I heard how she had been changing over the months since they had moved to Arizona, he had already made the decision to have her put down.  Attacking cats was one thing, but attacking people - it wasn't something which could be tolerated.  Even the vet was supportive - it would take months and months of behavior therapy to rehabilitate her, and even that wasn't guaranteed to work.  My ex was living with his girlfriend and her three small children.  It wasn't a risk he could take.

So the morning of March 5th, he took her to the vet.  She was put to sleep.  Just went to sleep.  For the last time.  And now there's a giant Ceri-shaped hole in my heart, and enough guilt to fill an ocean.  What if I had brought her with me?  Would she still have changed, have snapped?  What had happened?

There are some things you can forgive, and some things you can forget.  I'll never forgive myself for leaving Ceri behind, and I'll never forget my sweet doggie-faced Bad Dog.

Writer's Block

"The night was sultry."  And so begins - or ends - one of my all-time favorite movies.  That's right.  Throw Momma from the Train.  It's a fantastic movie, and if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.  It really is hilarious.  The premise behind that line is the whole notion of writer's block, and for the writer who finally manages to craft it, it's a struggle to come up with the perfect word to describe the night.  He's finally indebted to a woman he's been conscripted to kill by one of his writing students for the perfect word, and it's enough to get her thrown from the train.  I don't seem to have that kind of difficulty with my book.  No, my own problem is that I'm drowning in the middle, and can't seem to get beyond the first moments.

The other problem, one which I've recently discovered, is that I don't like how my book begins.  It starts off very slowly, and tries to explain entirely too much.  I think, and I'm not sure how I feel about this, because it literally means throwing away almost five years of work, but I think that what I really need to do is to start the book with a climactic moment, and then tell the rest of the story in flashback.  I can see so many dangers inherent in that, but I know that I'm not happy with how the book currently takes three chapters to build up momentum, that I'm willing to take the risk, and dive right in.  I remember having this conversation with a professor awhile ago, and he cited William Gibson's Neuromancer as a stellar example of a book which just plunks you down in the middle of a situation, and leaves you to figure it out.  That was, of course, just what I objected to in the book, and I consciously strove to avoid that kind of thing in my own book.  The downside of that conscious striving, though, is that despite the prologue's violence, and an interweave of similarly violent moments, the first three chapters proceed so slowly that I feel I'm dragging the entire book down into a morass of sludgy time.  There is an urgency which is lacking, and which is so necessary to the book's successful telling of the story, that I'm willing to attempt a Gibson-esque style.

Of course, a further, not inconsequential, problem with the book is that I've been writing it over the last five years, and that the original premise on which the book was based has shifted and changed substantially enough that I'm not sure I'm still writing the same story.  I began it as an undergrad, and my disgust with the systemization of education in a way I found problematic was the catalyst for a book where higher education as it now exists is destroyed (along with organized religion, yay!).  Since then, I've sort of drifted from that premise, and I began to think a few years ago (while I was out of higher education as a student) that the way in which education was systematized wasn't really that problematic.  It's ironic that now that I'm once again well indoctrinated into it ("it" being higher education) - as a grad student - I'm once again seeing the things that irritated, frustrated, and catalyzed me as an undergrad, and they are irritating, frustrating, and catalyzing me anew.  I think, though, that I'll be able to write a more balanced book, one which acknowledges the virtues (few as they are) of systemization, while still destroying education as it currently exists.  (Another benefit of writing the book from a middle-point is that I'll be able to avoid all those beginning moments where any resemblance to Harry Potter might potentially exist, simply because the book is about institutions of magical learning.  I'm not venerating or celebrating them, people, I'm fucking destroying them.  If I go into the story with a few of those institutions already destroyed, I'm fairly certain no one can accuse me of aping good old Harry Butthole Pussy Potter (thanks, Cartman).)

Writing has again become something I want, but in a much more focused and substantial way.  I've been thinking quite a bit recently about where my life is going, and what I'm doing with my time, and I realized that - for the first time in my entire life - I'm truly free.  Absolutely, completely, and thoroughly free.  And the words of a song by Powerman 5000 - "Free" - have been haunting me lately: "Living so free is a tragedy, when you can't be what you want to be."  I am free, in a way that I've never before been, and if I'm free, why am I still hanging on to an ideal of living to which I no longer truly subscribe?  More Powerman 5000: "All the time wasted, stolen back, innocent,/ You won't get a second more, so move it along."  Why not risk everything I have for what I truly want, when I have nothing to hold me back?  (Side note: if I were to ever get a tattoo with words (an idea which I've been against), then it would be either that line about living free, or a line from Seal's "Crazy": "We're never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy."  (And another side note: while I do like the original, I prefer Mushroomhead's cover.)  But those are just side thoughts.)

The thing is, graduate school, professorship, the quintessentially safe route - it no longer really appeals to me.  While part of me still craves stability, and security, and all that other biologically-driven crap, I'm beginning to feel again.  Really feel.  Actually feel.  Of course, feeling for me can be a very dangerous thing - it has the potential to lead to very stupid decisions - and I have to question the impulses that feeling creates.  But at the same time, I have to wonder - now that I've intellectually validated myself (which, let's be honest, is in large part what grad school has been for me), what am I doing?  I won't argue that it might be a very stupid thing to throw away security on a risk so great that it has almost no redemptive value, but . . . well . . . why the hell not?

I'm 31.  I'm not getting younger.  I remember thinking that I'd definitely be published by now.  And not in some musty academic journal that will only be read by a handful of scholars, but published in proper books, sharing bookshelf space with Terry Pratchett and A. Lee Martinez and Raymond Feist.  And I'm not even close to being there.  All of my time is being spent on a pursuit which is becoming, daily, less palatable to me.  Do I really want to spend the rest of my life thinking about what might have been, or should I just chuck it all in, and really go for it?  Especially since, and this is incredibly important to me, no one can be hurt by this decision except me.  If I fail, then the only person that I take down is me.

Of course, I'm terrified.  The thought of chucking it all in, of getting rid of safety and security and a clear professional path with tiered levels of income and a degree of freedom and intellectual appeal, and of stepping off the path into the wilds, without a map or even a compass, is truly terrifying enough to send me scurrying back to the path gratefully and obsequiously, willing to lick the boots of even the most arrogant, god-complexed professor (don't get me started).  But then I look at what I'd accomplish on that path, and balance that against the possibility of fulfilling a dream in the wilds, and the path's accomplishments pale in comparison.  Just the knowledge that I'd be doing what I truly love, even if I'll never be as successful as I could be in academia, is enough to push me further into the wilds.

So now I'm balancing terror against safety, of a dream against what is my current reality, of only potential success against actual success.

Of course, all that potentiality depends on me getting past my sultry night.