Why I Kick Dogs

I dated a guy last summer who taught me the real value of my internal filing system.  Everyone has one – it's the thing you use when you start picking up on things about other people and filing them away. It's the system that your intuition uses to guide you toward good energy and away from trouble. 

We'll call this guy Mr. Husky.  He had three dogs.  Huskies.  Mr. Husky was a real charmer.  He was a pharmaceutical sales rep.  I had never really dated a salesman of any kind.  He was excellent at selling, including selling himself.  He had many awards around his house for meeting and exceeding sales goals.  In person, he was a good listener. He was good at telling me what I thought I wanted to hear, he was a good storyteller and hobnobber.  We laughed together.  He drove a fancy car and liked to pick me up in it.  He knew about fine wines, good food, and liked to take me to good restaurants. He lived in a big house in a nice neighborhood.  What's not to like, right? 

The First Sign

We became close quickly.  We had fun in bed, he was attentive, I wasn't complaining.  Except there was this time that he asked me “Am I the best lover you ever had?”  and I thought that was a bit of an odd question.  I thought to myself, why do you care about past lovers of mine if you are here now, you can see the smile on my face, you can see the sparkle in my eye, and you can see that I'm happy?  I'm not thinking of my past lovers, why are you?  So when he asked me again “Am I the best lover you ever had? Tell me,”  I replied “yes” because what the heck else am I going to say?  I'm not going to say (out loud anyway), “yes, you're the best lover - this week” or “hell no, Charlie from three years ago will always rank number one!”  A small sliver of doubt entered my mind that I began to have trouble ignoring.  Why did he need to hear that?  Why was he thinking of something or someone else when I was right there next to him?  I started to pick up on little things he'd say. I'd store them away in a back corner of my brain, where they would collect and congeal. 

The House

Before I went to his house the first time, he described to me how he and his former wife had “upgraded” the house with an extra ten feet so that he could have a three car garage for his three sportscars.  He described in detail how none of his neighbors had the same layout as his house because of this upgrade and how it made his house seem that much more spacious.  When I got there I played along and made sure to ooh and ahh over the extra ten feet, and expressed how I could tell that it made a big difference in the spaciousness, airiness of the house.  Except that he only lived in pretty much two of the rooms of this spacious, big airy house. 

He had three dogs and the dogs were not allowed to go into 80% of the house, so as a result, neither did he.  He rearranged his big house for his dogs.  He blockaded much of the house from any traffic.  He even moved a bed into the formal living room so that he could sleep with the dogs at night.  He explained that the dogs were old and he may not hear them needing to go outside at night if he were upstairs in his huge four-poster king-sized bed.  My brain automatically filed all this away as well.  The guy liked his stuff, number one.  Three car garage full of cars, big screen TVs, etc etc. Number two, he caters to his dogs.  Okay, I told myself, different strokes for different folks.  If he wants to sleep with the dogs when I'm not there, that's fine. When I'm there, I'm sleeping in the four-poster king-sized bed, and if he chooses the dogs over me, that's the first and last time that will happen.  In the meantime, these mental notes get tossed into the back of my brain, out of the current moment, because we're eating out, we're having fun, we're going places, so everything's good.

The Dogs

One night he invited me over for steaks and corn on the grill.  Dee-lish!  Sure I'll come over!  I guess you could say I had a “knee-jerk” reaction when we sat down to dinner at his kitchen table.  One of his dogs came right up and pushed me at the elbow wanting a piece of steak.  I kneed the dog away from me because, frankly, that's inappropriate behavior for a dog during dinnertime.  The dog tried one more time, got another knee in the chest, and that was the end of it. The dog moved on to his master, and bothered him until he got a little snack.  The dog looked at me and I could read its mind as it smirked at me, “Works every time, lady.”

After dinner and a bottle of fine wine, he told me a story about how one of his dogs relieved itself on him in the middle of the night.   I choked on my fine wine and blurted “excuse me?”  He relayed a story about how he was sleeping on the bed in the formal living room one night, and woke up to the dog lifting its leg over his head.  The dog had jumped onto the bed and  peed on his head.  And pillow.  And comforter.  I was so torn. I thought to myself, wow, this is great he feels so comfortable telling me this because it is ridiculously embarrasing (although this isn't exactly the kind of intimate information I'd hoped we'd be sharing).  The other part of me had my mouth hanging open, thinking, that's messed up, how do you let your own dog pee on your head?  How does that even happen?  I couldn't help myself after the bottle of wine, I said something that probably led to our breakup.  I said “You don't own these dogs, they own you, and they own this house.”  Note to self:  no man likes to hear that they are not the master of their own home, ever.  

It was shortly after that that the dogs starting playing a bigger and bigger role in his life.  He would neglect to return my call at a regular interval, and when he did, he would explain that one of the dogs got sick all over the carpet or one of the dogs had an accident in the house, again.  He seemed exasperated and embarrased but didn't really know what to do to stop it because 'they were old dogs.'  I admit I didn't really have a lot of sympathy for him and didn't fake it.  I started to wonder, why do you bother to sleep downstairs when the dogs are going to crap all over the house whether you are down there or not?  Why do you barricade most of your spacious airy house if the dogs are just going to push through the barricades to use your formal dining room as their doggie litter box? You should at least be enjoying the huge four-poster king-sized bed if the dogs are going to run wild anyway.   I kept that thought to myself, but I started to see a pattern here, a pattern of insecurity blanketed by stuff.  Insecurity covered up by a big house, three fast cars, three un-housebroken purebred dogs, and lots of cash and flash.  A lack of self esteem that becomes accentuated, not broken down, in times of intimacy.

The Breakup

Mr. Husky went away on business for a week, and ladies, if you are in the first few months of a relationship, one of three things is going to happen when either of you has to be away for a period of time.  Perhaps the both of you are going to miss eachother and the distance really will make you closer.  Or, you're going to realize that you finally have time for your girlfriends.  You do a ladies night out, flirt with some guy at the bar, maybe even get a phone number and think, hmmm, I don't feel one bit bad about this, maybe my relationship with Mr. Wonderful isn't so wonderful.  Or, while he's away, he's going to freak out, realize he can't handle the relationship and has to break it off as soon as he gets back.  Mr. Husky chose door number three.

I still thought things were OK when he got back from his trip.  Despite the little file I had in the back of my head that was whispering to me “danger, danger,” the whisper was out-shouted by his charm and charisma.  He could put on a good show, he was a salesman! I was sold!

I got a call from him as I was drying my hair, getting ready to head down to his house for our first date  after his trip.  He kept saying he was really tired.  My internal filing system started to go off, warning me something's up.  So I let him hem and haw and stammer and then finally it comes out that he's breaking up with me.  Over the phone.  Half an hour before we are supposed to get together.  I stay calm.  I ask what happened.  He says nothing really.  Except this one thing. “I'm afraid if I ever left you alone with my dogs that you would kick them.”  Again, I choke.  Why is this guy always making me choke?  I recover enough to stammer “Are you kidding me?”  This is what he's been thinking about on his business trip?  He's imagining we're at his house watching football, he goes to take the garbage out and while he's in the garage, I jump up from the couch, go on a rampage and attack his dogs with my pointy high heels?  Really?  That's the best he's got?  How about something simple like we don't share the same values and goals in life?  Or, go ahead and call a spade a spade - that he doesn't like the fact that I call him out on how he raised his dogs?  That it's none of my business and I'm being a bad houseguest?   But this is what he comes up with - that I would kick his dog.  That's just dumb.  And offensive.

I look back now and wonder why I was so devastated by our breakup.  I can remember feeling completely surprised and bewildered by his abrupt one-eighty, but I cannot remember why I felt that way.  My instincts were telling me that we had little in common, that I needed someone more real to others and to themselves.  I knew deep down that I really could see through his superficial facade but, like him, wasn't willing to face what was underneath.  It was his charm, his wine-ing and dining, his showmanship, that kept me on the hook.  Unfortunately that showmanship masked a darker inside, one that lashed out at others when he felt threatened and exposed.  Like a scared dog.