Contemplating A Dog's Life

Barbara: The post the other day about wee Bairn making her precious way into our lives made me contemplate the other side of a dog’s life. The side where things gets a bit harder. Well, I guess I also got to thinking about this other side because times are a bit … twisted at the moment, for me and pretty much all those around me. And when life gets twisted, we all get a bit dark and twisted with it, don’t we?

Chaplin

My dog, Chaplin, is my own dear, sweet pooch and, as much as I resisted getting a dog, I don’t regret finally making this decision. Not one bit. He, like Bairn, also started off with no fears in the world. Everything was exciting and wonderful. Every person. Every dog. Especially every dog. If you have one, you know that look dogs get when they spot each other—they’re out for their morning walk and suddenly a fellow-species member trots by and the world stops for both of them, like they’re the only two beings alive on this earth. You half-expect some sappy love-song strains to start up, say “Lady in Red”, as they strain to nuzzle and sniff each other. I always used to say, Chaplin is a people-dog, but he’s even more of a dog-dog.

But that all changed one day when I was walking Chaplin and we passed a large white (leashed) dog who, apropos of nothing, suddenly clamped its jaw around Chaplin’s neck. The master reacted in seconds and all finished okay. But Chaplin was a changed pooch. He was, well, gobsmacked seems the best word. It was like he’d just discovered his best friend was cheating on him.

Now he never looks at dogs the same way, with that innocent joy and heart-bursting love. No, now he growls or retreats shaking behind my legs, or sometimes he even lunges. For what purpose, I don’t know, I hardly see him as the jaws-around-a-neck type. And if the dog is large and white, all the more difficult to soothe him down.

Anyway, all this to say that it makes me wonder if we all aren’t a little doggy in our lives. We too start off sweet and innocent. But if one white dog clamps its steely jaw around our neck, life can change forever after. Yes, it teaches us a valuable lesson that some dogs bite, but it often just ruins dogs for us completely. Suddenly, for no better reason than something bad happened to us one day in the past, we now tend to cower or retreat or lunge out in angry self-defense at even the whiff of large-white-dog-breath.

But should one mean-spirited (or misguided) dog affect everything we try to do from now on? If one person or event or challenge or shock sideswipes us, should we lie in wait every day after for the same thing to happen again? Or can we somehow start fresh, reprogram our brains, and learn to not assume every dog will bite even if we know some certainly will? And in so doing, will we become more accepting, more courageous, and much more present in the moment?

All I know is that for me most, if not all, of my fears and anxieties grip me because of the sheer force of this habit. Ironically, there’s nothing more mundane than a habit, especially a bad one. And habit is a very difficult habit to break. Just ask Chaplin.

Deb: I guess that’s why when I am in a room full of people that love me, I will navigate to the one who doesn’t. Cause I have to sell them on me. Have to make them get the Deb.

I relate to Chaplin on this, but because my brain is bigger (YES, I AM SMARTER THAN THE DOG!), I have found my way around this one. I have really started to succeed in not letting the big dog bully me. I have found more and more that I am making small steps in that direction. My issue is the pendulum. I find myself struggling with the two extremes. I go from “Carpet Girl”––walk all over me––to FUCKYOUYAMEANSPIRITEDBULLYBETTYTHINKYOURPOODOESNTSTINK!

This is my issue. I need to find the middle ground and I am working on it. I can tell you this––and I stand by it 100%––if someone is not worthy of my love and friendship, I move on with no bitterness and no regret. My world and the world at large are too full of sweet pups to choose a bully. I am officially over them.

Chaplin, are you listening? Good dog. Smart Dog.

Fight Or Flight?

Barbara: If the suspense was killing you since Monday’s post (a little self-aggrandizement, anyone?), here’s the story about when I kicked a car-jacker’s balls. But wait, before I elaborate, I have to add that this is a very handy tale. I can pull it out at get-togethers during awkward moments or to get things rolling. It’s a kind of party-trick.

My story happened several years ago. I had spent the day on the set of a little indie film I was shooting—the film where I met Deb, actually—and I was feeling giddy and excited, but also tired and spent. My husband was out of town and my daughters were still young enough to need a babysitter. As much as I love my girls, I was thinking it might be nice to wait to go home till after they were tucked into bed. Selfish, yes, but I was shooting a movie! It was all about ME for a whole 13 days. It was a glorious time…. But I digress.

I decided to go to the mall and maybe buy myself some sweet something. Yes, lingerie, if you must know, but I would wear it under my costume! I could write it off! So, after shopping and whiling away the time until I was sure the girls would be snug in bed, I headed for my car in the parking lot. And when I say my car, I actually mean my husband’s. And naturally, for the sake of a good story, hubby is a car enthusiast who works in the automotive industry. Suffice it to say, the car was very nice. And, as luck would have it, the producers on the little indie film I was shooting wanted to use his nice car in a scene that day, hence the reason I was driving his car.

It was late—9:00—and dark. My husband’s beautiful car was virtually alone in the vast lot. I approached and noticed that a window was smashed. I was beside myself. Hubby’s beautiful car! My precious me-time ruined! I got on the phone to hubby right away and told him the bad news. We commiserated for a while—bad luck, crappy news, poor me (he was very sympathetic to my ruined me-time), yadda yadda (yadda, yadda). All this to say that I spent a good ten (apparently very vulnerable) minutes surveying the damage and reporting it to him over the phone. I finally got into the driver’s side, left the door open, and (stupidly!) threw my keys on the passenger seat to survey the damage to the interior.

Then through the eerie dark, I hear a low voice: “Give me the car.” I turn to see a masked guy, about 6 feet tall, standing at my open driver’s door. He has one hand on the roof of the car, one on the door, and he’s blocking me in. He didn’t look very old, maybe 18. Nice eyes. I swear, I remember that—eyes like a baby. I stare up into his baby-eyes and he says again, low, deep, like a man: “Give me the car.”

And I lose it. I scream like a banshee on crack. Fight or flight? I guess I got my answer that night. Right or wrong, I am fight. I throw the cell phone down (oh yeah, hubby gets to listen to me screaming insanely while he sits 380 kilometers away in a restaurant with his work colleagues), and I start to kick at this guy’s balls with everything I’ve got. I have this Marx Brother’s image in my mind of me kicking and screaming while this hapless thug bitch-slaps my feet away from his crotch. Felt like hours of terrifying slapstick.

Finally, he looks behind him—and this is the really scary part because he’s looking at someone ELSE—and making his decision for reasons I can only guess at, he turns and leaves. I fumble for the keys—which are somewhere in a pile of broken glass on the passenger’s seat, remember?—and I get the car started and I drive away. But I drive only to the other side of the mall so I can call the police and maybe still catch the fucker.

Long story short, the cops arrive in minutes, the perps are gone (never to be caught), I make my statement, the very nice and helpful cop lectures me on fighting the guy (“It’s just a car, ma’am. Next time, give it to him.” I nodded obediently, knowing all the while that my instincts would be hard-pressed to let me do it.), I drive my broken car home, I assure my panic-stricken husband that I am alive and well, he drives the 380 km in 2 ½ hours (yes, that requires significant speeding), and I get a great story out of a potentially harrowing experience.

I might balk at an open water swim, but when push comes to shove in the right circumstances, I guess I got me some cojones I can jangle.

Deb: I will say that hearing this story again in detail––that I have never really heard fully––made my blood run cold. We were all aghast when Barb showed up on set the next day with frayed nerves and this tale to tell. The part that Barb has forgotten is that the first day on our set was September 11th, 2001. This is the way our film and friendship started. I will not go into details of what we were feeling on that day as I am sure that all of you can share equally the fear and confusion we felt, especially our New York friends. But I do remember, embedded in my brain, the story of Barb trying to fluff off what had happened in that way she has of not taking full credit for her bravery. I also remember the sickening feeling in my stomach when I thought of her beloved husband hearing this happening in real time and yet being powerless to do anything about it. And I remember––and forgive me if I am wrong, Barb––but I do remember you saying that we all felt like such victims on September 11th, and that none of us in the big cities knew what or who would be hit next. And that you said that it was because of just that feeling that you refused to be a victim. You said that you did not know if you may have done quite the same thing otherwise. Am I remembering that correctly? I was so impressed by Barb in this scenario. She went in that moment from being the stunning sweet actress I was getting to know and laugh with to a woman of huge substance. She has not disappointed me since.

Barbara: Deb, I’d totally forgotten that feeling about not wanting to be victimized. Thanks for reminding me of that. Honestly, I have no lingering sense of fear around this event, just a sense of wonder. It made me realize that no matter how well we think we know ourselves, we can’t know how we’ll react in any given moment until we do.

Are There No Limits To My Limits?

Barbara: I am a chicken-shit. Simple as that. At least that’s how I feel more often than not. If I find myself facing a bit of a physical challenge, something most of you would shrug at, I start to, oh my god, hyperventilate. It’s frickin’ ridiculous.

Let me give you a few examples: Every year I go to my sister’s cottage. It is a little piece of heaven with a beautiful lake. Both my sisters are strong and enthusiastic swimmers and they love the chance to get their exercise out on the water, swimming for miles from one side of the lake to the other and then back again. Now, I love the water and I love swimming, but put me in the open water and my heart starts pounding and my breathing starts to accelerate. I am strong, I know it. When I’m at the gym I can fake-row for 30 minutes without breaking too much of a sweat. I can bike for much longer. I workout; I have some upper-body strength (my husband may mock this claim). But still the open water is freaky for me. It’s not a fear of under-water creatures or even of drowning. But it is this strange hopelessness. It comes over me, taunts me, maligns me: “You can’t do it. You can’t do it.” I’m the Little Engine That Couldn’t.

Last summer, I visited very good friends out in B.C. and one of them offered to take me on what’s called the “Grouse Grind”. The Grind is a famous 3-kilometer hike straight up a mountain near Vancouver. I love hiking and being out in the wilds. The Grind is something I always wanted to do. I was really excited. But as we drove there, my (very fit) friend––who had done the hike many times––described the trail: it is literally thousands of steps straight up. Not a winding, steep trail as I had imagined. But friggin’ stairs. Thousands of them. (Did I say that already?). The maligning voice started taunting with a vengeance: “What are you thinking?” “You’re going to make a fool of yourself.” “Everyone will have to wait for you.” “You’ll be the whiny baby who couldn’t do it.” And sure enough, we hit the trail and my anxiety kicks in and my breath jars and my heart races. It’s hard enough climbing stairs that never end, never mind doing it with a bad ‘tude.

My husband really wanted me to share his passion for scuba diving. So, despite my absolute terror, I finally tried it. I panicked so badly, the instructor had to hold my hand the whole way. The whole way!!

I’m a pretty good downhill skier, but my husband and girls are kick-ass. One year, they challenged me to ski an extreme bowl. I gulped hard and agreed. The bowl started on a 75 degree vertical, then got less steep but more treed. The run is 6 kilometers of pure torture. I cried for the first 3 k. That’s, like, an hour of crying. During which, mind you, I am skiing. I’m succeeding, but not appreciating the fact, get my point?

So what happened? I crossed the lake with my sisters, no problem. Zen happiness. I made it up to the top of Grouse Grind (1 ½ hours of climbing stairs). Pure cathartic adrenalin. I made it to the bottom of the ski hill in one piece. Absolute euphoria. I challenged myself to try scuba diving one more time. Did it, didn’t panic, loved it in fact. My husband was elated. I was elated.

But I still found myself clasping my husband’s face between my hands and very gently but firmly informing him that I would never, ever, ever scuba-dive or extreme ski again. The Grind? Maybe. Swimming my sister’s lake? Quite probably, hyperventilation and all.

What’s the point of this post? Um … I don’t actually know. I’m a wimp and I know it. Not proud of it. But I’m also realizing that I underestimate my own strength and power way too often. And that’s not a good thing.

Well, they do say that knowing your weakness is half the battle, right? And I did once kick a car-jacker in the balls. But that’s for another post….

Deb: First of all, Barb is an excellent downhill skier with beautiful style, but did not learn to ski in the cradle as her husband and kids did and I think that is part of the thing. When it is taught from early childhood, it is like walking or breathing, but when the lesson is learned later it comes with the manual of what could happen “if”. I once told Barb that instead of feeling badly about not doing the extreme ski again, she should be proud as punch that she did it once––and knocked it off her list. After all, is it worth the sickening worry?

I am also a scaredy-cat I am ashamed to say. I have always been a fit, healthy girl and I work out five or six times a week. I just registered for two types of dance classes today. But anything that seems “extreme” to me makes my blood run cold. I don’t even swim in open water of any kind. I figure you know where you stand with a pool. At this point in my life, I want to live as healthily and well as I can, taking no chances. I guess it all depends on what you think is “taking a risk” in your life. If you know in your heart that the fear is healthy then I say GO! But if it is debilitating then maybe you should stay. Risk isn’t always facing mortal danger. I have seen Barb take risks in the most ordinary everyday ways and I have been amazed and in awe of her!

Barbara: Aw, Deb, thanks. Back at ya, by the way. And you’re right, there are lots of ways of “taking chances”. I just wish I could apply that courage a bit more often and with a bit more gusto.