Herbert von King Dog Run

really, nothing is personal

This weekend, P was out of town without me for the first time, which meant that it was just me and the dog. We have a complicated relationship. Our trainer, one of the two that we talk to, has suggested that she has mixed emotions about me. On the one hand, she’s intensely bonded to me and sees me as part of our family, and protects me. On the other hand, she’s even more intensely bonded to P — he had her before I came along — and so when the three of us are together there’s a constant negotiation between her guarding him, her guarding us, her growling at me if I get between the two of them, her growling at me when I pet her, her growling at me when I put her leash on. A few months ago I joined a Facebook group called I Love My Red Heeler and posted a question about this, asking if anyone else could relate. I was feeling so demoralized about loving this thirty-pound creature more than almost anything, and how it seemed that she just didn’t like me. 

The suggestions I got were all things I was already doing: take her to the track by myself! play fetch! make myself the person who feeds her! give her treats! associate positive things! But this weekend, I thought, could be a chance to really enforce bonding (dependence?) by being literally the only human she had access to for three nights and four days. 

The first day after P left, she was quiet and listless. I thought maybe the CBD we’d given her the night before had finally kicked in and texted him as much, but he thought maybe it was a mild depression, the temporary (do dogs understand temporary?) loss of her entire world. I took her for a walk and to the track around the corner where we play fetch with a bright-pink soccer ball, but she was still quiet and listless at the track. So I took her to the dog run. 

When she and I first met, she was eight months old, and I would hear a lot about how sweet she’d been as a puppy. On one of our first dates, we took her to the dog run at McCarren, where she attacked a poodle whose owners completely flipped their shit. The experience was enough to prevent P from ever wanting to take her to a dog park again, which saddened him, because he remembered how nicely she’d played with dogs when she was a baby. Maybe she just won’t be a dog park dog, he would say every so often, trying it on for size. That being true meant two things. One, she might remain forever unsocialized around other animals, which could make life slightly more difficult. Two, we would have to play fetch with her forever. 

We talked to our trainer who thought maybe I could take her to the dog park. After all, she wasn’t as intensely bonded with me; maybe her attacking the poodle had been a sign of wanting to guard P. So I started taking her, in the freezing cold of last winter. I remember getting a coffee at the kolache place and then with frozen hands walking her over to Herbert von King, on the corner of Marcy and Lafayette, taking her into the dog park, and watching her just nervously bark. She didn’t really know how to play with others, or how to enter a group. You and me both, girl, I thought, much of the time. 

Slowly, she started learning how to play. She made one friend, another herding dog named Lennie, who she chased around and around the park but made sure to never quite catch. Sometimes she tried to attack a giant pit, and that was fine because the pit didn’t care and neither did the pit’s owner. We relished the moments when it seemed like she was put in her place a bit; she’s the toughest living being I have ever known, and is fine taking care of herself. I took her week after week as the weather got warmer, and each week she got a little bit better, understood the rules a little more. 

This past weekend we spent hours at the dog run. I took videos to send to P so that when he got back into cell range he would have days of dog content. I took videos of her nipping at the air right next to another dog’s face but never quite making contact with the face. I took videos of her chasing another herding dog around and around and around. I watched for signs of distress, a stiffness in her body, an actual snarl, but I saw only the performances that dogs do with each other. I saw her bark and then roll onto her back and put her tail between her legs. Was it possible that this tyrant, whose needs and schedule dictate so much of our lives, was secretly a docile little puppy? I loved seeing her run, seeing the way that her ears went down until they popped up at the last minute, loved seeing her try to navigate a group of other dogs and then try and herd them as though they were cattle. I loved seeing her learn to play with another new friend, whose name I don’t know because the owners are a little less chatty now that we’re seeing other humans all the time. 

I wanted a dog for a long time and this is not the dog I would have chosen. I wanted an old dog that just wanted to hang out and liked to cuddle and instead I have a very dysregulated high-intensity herding dog who likes to lick my mouth in the morning starting at 5am and ending only when I wake up and try and stop her, but if I have learned anything in this relationship it’s that really, nothing is personal. She is the best cattle dog at being a cattle dog that I have ever known, and she lives her instinct every day. She, unlike me, does not constantly try to go against her nature. She is maniacal and constantly unsatisfied and fickle, easily manipulated by tiny pieces of dried liver or the prospect of doing some chores down the hall. She has forty-seven nicknames and she’s most of what I think about and almost all of what P and I talk about. She glues us together and glues me to a better version of myself. She is sitting at my feet as I type.