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Download in PDF format Have you ever heard
of a dog that gives you the middle finger, snubs
you when you call, believes that you exist to
please her and that she doesn’t have to please
you (unless she feels like it)—and channels the
worst parts of your mother to boot? A dog that
intentionally tries to trip you when you walk
downstairs and in the middle of all of your hard
work, intentionally shuts off your computer by
sitting on the outlet? A dog that laughed at you
when you yelled and screamed for obedience? Well
that was my dog, Maud, who owned my partner and
me for 12 years. In August, 1995 my partner,
Mike, and I purchased a Welsh terrier. At the
time, we’d been together for two years and lived
together for seven months. As we were nesting,
we thought a dog would be a good way to start a
family together. Mike is allergic to dogs with
dander, so we had to stick with breeds that have
no dander, and terriers were one of those.
Mike was raised with Schnauzers, and I was
raised with a Sheltie named Taffy, the most
obedient and loving dog who got me through a lot
of hard times in my childhood by sitting next to
me with a worried look on his face, as so many
Shelties do. He wanted to please and I wanted to
please him back. I wasn’t keen on terriers
because I thought they were dominant and
temperamental. Ultimately, after researching all
terriers, we learned the Welsh terrier was
supposed to be sweet, friendly and good with
children. That was important to me, since as I
knew my sister would start having children, and
I wanted them to feel welcome in my home.
We agreed to name our terrier Maud for two
reasons: I liked the lead character from the
popular television series Maud, and Mike liked
the name after running across it in English
literature. This was a preview of how our
differences would surface as a result of this
dog—for better and for worse!
If you’ve attended my lectures, classes or
workshops on relationships, you may already know
that I used Maud as part of my shtick on how
relationships can focus on the wrong things.
During any conflict, what a couple is arguing
about is never their real issue. But I didn’t
know this in 1995, and Maud became part of the
power struggle between Mike and me.
We purchased Maud as an eight-week old puppy.
When I called her in from outside, and she
defiantly ignored me, I knew this wasn’t going
to be the right a dog for me. After the third
time she did this to me, I stormed into the
house and told Mike she was dominant,
hyperactive, and disobedient. Being a
psychotherapist, I diagnosed her as having an
attention deficit, along with hyperactivity and
Oppositional Defiant Disorder, according to the
DSM- IV. But Mike would not hear of sending her
back. It was as if she was his own flesh and
blood. To me, she was simply an animal that
needed to be medicated—and I knew I couldn’t
live with her! But after I saw how attached to
her Mike was, and after turning to others who
had quickly attached to their pets,I agreed to
keep her. What a mistake that was . . .or so I
thought! Over the years, Mike and I would
fight over the dog. He would gaze out the window
into our backyard and see Kimba the white lion,
and I would see a four-legged Nazi who was out
to get me. Maud became the centerpiece of our
arguments and became Exhibit A of how we viewed
things differently. We took her to dog-training
classes. She flunked both Level One and Level
Two—and required a two-month stay at a dog
retreat so she could be trained to listen.
Now, of course I knew she was just a dog. But
many times, in my reactivity around her bad
behaviors, I thought she was out to get me. Just
because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re
wrong—isn’t that so?
What pushed me over the edge was an issue I
had with Mike: He wasn’t as emotive and
affectionate to me as I’d have liked. He would
tell me he “did not know how,” and hadn’t been
raised to be that way. But when we brought Maud
home, Mike was instantly affectionate, calling
her cutesy names, rubbing noses with her, and
giving her everything that I wanted from him. I
remember asking Mike, “If I wet my nose and wag
my tail, will you treat me that way?” This was
before I learned about how couples operate in
terms of their power struggle. After nine
months of fighting over Maud, we entered Imago
Relationship Therapy (or IRT). In due course, I
discovered that I was projecting onto this dog
the traits of the adults who raised me, who did
ignore me and said and did things to hurt me.
Even though I had done a lot of therapy around
this issue—not to mention even being a therapist
myself! This dog found a way to pull out my
reactions from my past.
In therapy, we learned that Maud was simply a
metaphor for how different Mike and I were from
each other. He would react to her by staying
calm and acting the Alpha Male, and she would
often (not always) respond by obeying him. But
when she snubbed me and disobeyed me, I would
scream and yell and stomp my feet, which she
viewed as an invitation to a playful sparring
match. This was truly the acting out of the
turtle and the hailstorm behaviors, which I
learned about in IRT.
Maud was also very sweet and friendly. She loved
people and loved to play—and we enjoyed playing
hard with one another. I would always get tired
out before she did, with her standing over me
with a paw on my chest, begging for more, while
I huffed and puffed, begging for mercy. Maud
had a big personality and always let you know
she was in the room. If you didn’t pay
attention, she would sit and stare at you. And
if you did not respond to that, she would whine;
and if that didn’t bring you around, she would
pace back and fourth staring at you. This
behavior was particularly annoying to me on days
I needed to write. I would curse her for making
me get up to play with her, let her out when she
insisted on going out even when I was in the
midst of a thought. If she wanted to go for a
walk, she would make it be clear by pacing and
whining until I gave in. To get a break, I tried
shutting her in another room, but she would have
none of that. She would whine, scratch on the
door, and bark louder and louder until I let her
out to sit or sleep right next to me.
“I have to write!” I would scream. “I can’t be
disturbed.” But she would just look at me with
that terrier frown, which I knew was really a
smile turned upside down. I joked that I
marked off on the calendar every day she was
with us, as if I was serving time in prison.
Mike joked that Maud had a calendar too; marking
off each day she had to be with me. “I will
never get another terrier,” I would repeat—over
and over.
As she grew older, something shifted in me
with her that I did not grasp at first. I
learned that her need for play were a sign that
I needed to play more. Her need to go outside
made me aware that I needed a break from the
computer, after hours of writing. Her demands
for walks (and I do mean demands!) increased my
awareness of my own need for exercise. I
realized that if I did not become more of an
Alpha Male with her, she would dominate me every
day. I learned how to show her that I was in
charge while still being willing meet her needs
too. And best of all Mike and I stopped fighting
over her and got down to our real issues.
Maud died Saturday, June 30, 2007, ten days
after her 12th birthday. When she turned 12, I
joked that I looked forward to her Bark Mitzvah
the following year, when she turned 13. Now that
will never be. But now I realize how much I
loved her, in all my anger and outrage. I see
now that she was here to teach me something I’d
been resisting fought. She was my teacher, and
led me kicking and screaming into her classroom.
But I did learn from her, as I now know. I miss
her terribly and have wept every day since. Our
house is not the same.
And the biggest surprise, we went to buy
another dog—a Welsh terrier. She’ll arrive in
September when she’s three months old. I’ll make
sure I listen to this dog. |
