A dog and her woman in healing

We found her on a Mississippi country road.

Her story began the same way as many country dogs’: one of a litter born of free-range, roaming mutts.

My fiance and I were driving back to town from the place where we would soon be married when I saw a scrappy, red-skinned creature in the middle of the road. We passed by it, and I turned around to try to discern what kind of life form it was.

“Is that a puppy?” I exclaimed. “That’s a puppy!”

“Yep,” Lloyd said, driving on. He grew up driving these roads and was used to seeing strays.

I stared at him.

“Do you want me to turn around?” he asked.

“Yes!” I blurted.

Lloyd spent the next two hours crawling through the largest pile of thorns and bramble I’ve ever seen, following puppy whimpers and always a tail away. Just when we’d given up and started walking toward our car, we saw a little body clumsily loping across the lawn of the old white house near the bramble.

Lloyd sprinted behind her and caught her. She snarled and whipped her head back and forth, biting him on the forearm. I never expected such ferocity from a sickly little puppy, and seeing her up close was alarming. She had very sparse white fur with scaly, sunburned skin freckled with brown scabs. Her skin hung loose on her bones with the exception of her bulging belly. She looked deranged. Out of her mind. Her eyes were like those of a wild animal.

“What if she has rabies?!” I said.

“Too late now. We’ve got her. What do you want to do with her?” he responded urgently as the puppy still thrashed in his hands.

I happened to have a little box in my car that we used to contain her as we drove straight to a vet clinic.

We didn’t say it, but she was ours from that moment. When you pull a puppy from her littermates and mama–even a malnourished, deranged, mangy one–you feel a responsibility for her life. You feel like she damn well better have a good one.

Epicurus Gray. Eppie. We wanted her to relish in a happy, peaceful life with plenty of food, an abundance of friends, and many delights. Our girl.

Something changed in me.

The next year I became a teacher in an extremely intense, demanding atmosphere. My life felt like chaos–loud, crowded with bodies and emotions, covered in hot chip dust. Scattered, smothered, and covered. When I came home, I didn’t want noses in my crotch, living obstacles tripping me in the hall. I didn’t want constant company. After a day responding to so many needs, always more needs, I didn’t want more eyes looking at me, pleading, “Walk?” “Food?” “A little rub?”

I wasn’t ready to face this truth. The first identity I think I placed on myself as a human was the fact that I was an animal person. The answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was always “A veterinarian”. I loved animals. They didn’t care what my sentences sounded like. They didn’t try to manipulate me. I didn’t have to figure them out to keep from getting hurt. And animals loved me, too. I had a quiet, unassuming, inviting presence. We were drawn to each other.

In the Mississippi Teacher Corps, though, I was teetering. I felt like I was always one chewed-up scarf away from a meltdown. We soon learned not to leave Eppie alone with…anything.

She’s stolen a fresh tray of lemon squares off Grandma’s counter. She’s eaten our deli sandwiches packed for lunch, plastic bag and all. She’s polished off a pan of cooling cornish hens. She’s ingested entire rotisserie chicken carcasses without leaving a trace. Laptop cords, heirloom books off the bookshelf in the night, favorite sandals bought in France. Nothing is safe. Even though she has such bad hip dysplasia that she won’t jump into a car to go to the dog park, she manages to get on her hind legs to swipe food in three shakes of a lamb’s tail. She recently busted through the screen on our porch to eat a container full of rabbit food and a bag of hay. She found some dried beans while she was at it. 

Living with Eppie is like a state of the rapture. You never know when one thing will be taken and one will be left. So you keep awake. Because just when you get a little too comfortable, something vanishes. 

Eppie is seven now, and she recently completed her biggest masterpiece to date. When we bought our first house a couple years ago, our backdoor came with a dog door. For various reasons, we decided recently that the dog door wasn’t working for us anymore. Lloyd hammered a large board over the dog door so that she could no longer enter at will. That wasn’t going to stop this labrador. She tore off the dog door from the outside, leaving a gaping hole. Lloyd screwed a piece of plexiglass over the hole. This barred her temporarily…until she busted through our screen door and stared at me through the porch window. 

The next day I was sitting on the toilet when I heard the jingling of dog tags. Did Eppie get out of the fence and go to the front yard? I stood up and looked out the window. Nope. No dog. But I still heard the jingling. Under me. She was under me. I went outside and saw the door to the crawl space open. She had found me. She found a way to get to me. It was both touching and unnerving. I had a stalker. She found me in the one spot mamas can sometimes get some peace: the bathroom.

Within 24 hours that plexiglass was in shards on the ground. The next step was tearing off a piece of METAL secured to the door. Once the metal was out of her way, she started eating away at the wood underneath. Soon the whole bottom half of the door was no more.

This was the same week that Elizabeth Warren persisted on the Senate floor. This dog. She persisted. She was warned and given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted. We need her in the Movement. She fought for her people.

This dog. She started sleeping on my side of the bed when I was pregnant. She knew. She wouldn’t leave my side. When we brought Guider home from the hospital, she gave me a full inspection. She looked worried, like, “What the hell happened to you, Mom?” Then she sniffed Guider for the first time and licked his head. She knew. He was one of us now. He belonged to us.

She triggers me.

When I send her out into our park-like backyard to get just a little more peace for myself, she won’t just run around digging holes, chasing squirrels, and living her doggy life. She scratches at the door. She moans. She destroys property. She literally wears down the barrier between us.

She makes being in the house alone while she’s outside a gauntlet of guilt and frustration. I know that all that she wants is to be with us, with her humans. It’s such a pure and sweet desire. I know this logically, but my reptilian brain is like, “Leave me alone! Let me do my thing! Stop hassling me!”

I feel like I’m back in an emotionally abusive relationship, phone lighting up from texts and calls. Who are you with? What are you doing? When are you coming home? I miss you. I need you. Where are you? Are you coming home yet? Don’t you care about me? I need you. If you really cared about me, you would be here. Now I’m really getting pissed. You’re so selfish. Fuck you. I feel like I’m dying. Why do you do this to me? Why? Why? Why?

And I’m like, SHIT. Can I just eat a sushi roll without a state of emergency being declared?

Eppie brings it all back. I hear her moaning and gnashing at the door with her teeth. I start to panic and feel claustrophobic, like there is nowhere I can go where those voices won’t reach me. When I feel like someone is being needy or possessive of me, I get triggered. I pull away. I pull away hard. I shut down.

Here’s the thing. My dog is not spitting names at me or accusing me of anything. She’s not calling me selfish, callous, inhumane, mean. Those are my words; that’s my voice. That’s not Eppie talking to me. That’s me talking to myself. The condemning voices of the people who hurt me have become MY voice. It’s a lot more difficult to reckon with that voice when you discover it’s your own.  All that anger you directed at the people who hurt you suddenly has nowhere to go; it meets a dead end. Your anger and shame circle around and around in a cul-de-sac, with you at the center. 

The accident woke me up. 

I had just fallen asleep when I felt Lloyd’s presence standing beside me. I awoke in confusion. “Cas, Eppie is here. I think she was hit by a car…I know she was hit by a car. I heard it.”

“What?” His words didn’t make sense to me. Hit by a car? She was just here next to me.

“I think she’s ok, but she’s hurt. Her skin on her hip is hanging. I can see it hanging. I need you to come help me clean her up.” What? Her skin is hanging? I felt like I was living a dream, when images don’t match up with what makes sense. In my mind I pictured some strangely droopy skin, like skin melting. No blood.

What I had imagined was the equivalent of a fender bender for a dog. My husband has a talent for staying very calm. What I saw when I entered the living room was my soaking wet dog, shaking, eyes searching for help and reassurance. She was afraid. What I saw next was her hind leg with skin gaping open, inches of flesh revealed. As I looked her over further, I saw more and more points of trauma. She had a puncture wound on her head.

Oh my God. What if she has internal injuries? What if the damage is too great? What if she dies?

“I can’t do anything for this,” I said. “She needs to go to the emergency clinic.”

My mind went a million places. I felt blame rising up toward my husband. Why did he let her out front in the first place, leash-less in a downpour at night? I felt blame towards myself. I had heard him say he was going to let her go to the bathroom out front. I could have told him that was a bad idea. What if she’s not ok? And what if we can’t afford to treat her?

We had rescued her from one road only to release her to another to be hit by a car. I felt such responsibility. Of course she was hit by a car. I had not given her life and her being the honor they deserved. I was reckless with and ungrateful for this gentle creature sharing life so graciously with me. I had pushed her so far away that I may as well have pushed her into the road to be hit by that car. 

All day I’ve been playing in my mind the image of her getting hit by that car.

I see her running freely and with abandon. Looking forward at some wonder drawing her nearer. Then struck out of nowhere with a brute force. I can hear the thud of impact crescendo into the yelp. I hear it over and over. It haunts me. Her vulnerability haunts me. 

She is me as a 16-year-old, running headlong into love. Met with a crushing blow. Hobbling home. And now she is stretched out on a pallet of towels on the floor, eyes distant, in muted pain. Stitched up in four places. We wonder what her quality of life will be like after the superficial wounds heal; she already had so much hurt deep in her bones before. She and I are on parallel journeys. 

I am the dog, and I am the car. The damage the car did…it’s like the physical manifestation of a wound I gave her long ago when I stopped accepting her love. All that rejection finally split her open and broke her.

All I can do is run my hand along the top of her head, look her in the eyes, and say, “I’m sorry, girl. I’m so so sorry.”

She doesn’t need to forgive me. She’s not waiting for an apology. She’s never had a moment without love for me. She’s never held anything against me. I only need my own forgiveness. To forgive myself for continuing the harm that other people started. For giving life to anger and blame.

When I think of the distance at which I’ve held her, I see my husband, my son, and my friends.  I’m aware of my fear that I cannot share my joy and that I cannot accept their love. She is a reminder that the people who matter are all still here loving me where I am. No matter how much space I put between their love and myself. She reveals the self-love I didn’t know I needed.

She will wake up with more wag in her tail tomorrow. She will love all over again. Life will be new. We get to try again. I don’t know how many lives we get, but I think we’re both on our third by now. Thank you for teaching me, Eppie. Thank you for loving me so well. I will try harder, girl. Keep showing me the way.