Dog Medicine (11 page)

J
UNE
27, 1996

Bunker's first night was restless. I followed the book's emphatic instruction and locked him in the crate next to my bed for the night. He whined at first but quieted when I lay down next to him. I pushed my hand through the crate's bars to pet him. He licked my fingers, gnawed on them a bit, then circled twice and lay down with a thud.

In the middle of the night, he began to whimper. I pulled myself out of bed and took him outside to pee, craning my neck to study the night sky. The sky in summer darkness pulsed with stars, the chorus of crickets an echoing beat. I was drowsy, but also aware that I was happy at that moment to be awake, to actually witness the sparkling light of stars in all the blackness.

I returned to my room in a sleepy daze. I led Bunker back to the crate and talked to him in a low, soothing voice. “It's okay, buddy. It's okay.” He pulled back when he saw the crate, not wanting to re-enter, so I crawled in as far as I could go, my legs still hanging out, and patted the bottom of the crate. He followed me inside, licked my face and sniffed my ears, giving me chills.

Finally he curled up with his warm back against my chest. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, tucking his nose further into the fluffy towels that lined the crate. It occurred to me as I gently stroked his side that this was the first time in recent memory that
I
was reassuring another living thing. And, miraculously, I knew in that moment that I was more than capable of caring for him. I felt enormously driven to create a space for Bunker that
felt safe, free of all worry, fear, and anxiety. For the first time in a long time, I felt as if I had a purpose.

I couldn't imagine treating myself kindly, with gentle understanding. But I could, without question, do that for my dog. Perhaps part of what began to save me was that I started creating this sacred, safe space where he and I met. In this space, there was no ridicule. There was no doubt or loneliness. There was no sorrow or anger. It was just pure, beautiful being. It was us looking at the world with wide-eyed, forever hopeful puppy wonder.

I put my nose near his back, smelled his fur, tried to memorize the curve of his spine, the rise and fall of his breath. After a while, when he was limp with deep sleep, I scooted out, then locked the crate as quietly as I could and fell back into bed, asleep in seconds.

Since leaving New York, I'd slept until noon most days. There was no reason to wake up. Sleep was one of the only ways to dampen the sadness. It was 6:45 a.m. when I heard several high-pitched barks emanating from the crate. I opened my eyes and saw Bunker's face, felt his breath on my cheek. As soon as he saw me stir, he stood up, wagging his tail so hard that the metal crate rocked back and forth, jangling with sound. He poked his nose out of the crate's wires, his eyes locked on mine. I laughed, smiled, and said a slow, sleepy “Hi, Bunk.”

I stretched, pointing my toes, which dangled off the too-small twin bed. Every morning of my life, I had woken up longing to sleep more, wanting to disappear. I sat up. The sun shone bright through my bedroom's blinds and I pulled them up slightly to let some of the light flood the room. Then this thought:
I want to get out of bed.

It struck me that this must be how not-depressed people feel when they wake up: They feel okay, no dread, ready to start the day. It wasn't until the awful waking dread was gone that I realized that it had been there as long as I could remember. The fact that it had lifted meant that there was a chance I could get better.

I opened Bunker's crate and led him outside to the yard, standing in my bare feet and pajamas, telling him to go potty. When he did, I bent down, praised him, and let him lick my cheek before he ran back into the yard, his paws wet with morning dew. I watched him play, the warm orange summer sun rising, shining through the trunks of the trees. He sniffed a spot, then flipped over to roll in it. I walked over to him to see what he was rolling in—hopefully not a dead rodent. He stood up and sniffed again and I noticed an earthworm writhing above the soil. “You like worms, huh?” I asked, and he flopped down, neck first, on the slimy little creature. I smiled and walked back to the patio.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my mom at the family room window, watching me. Not only was I awake, I was in the back yard laughing and smiling. She didn't wave or acknowledge me, just grinned and turned back into the family room, coffee clutched in her hand.

E
ARLY
J
ULY
1996

At eleven weeks old, Bunker walked like he still hadn't figured out what legs were for. I watched him for hours, laughing much of the time. Watching him took me out of my mind and into the moment as he so adorably tripped over air or tried but failed to catch a housefly. I observed as Bunker listened, deeply, to the forest behind my parents' house. He froze at the sound of a cracking branch, or took off on a scent trail like a released spring, blades of grass tickling his round belly. For him, there was no fretting, no worry. Just this moment. This joy. Maybe, I thought, I should try to be more like him.

I learned to read his expressions. I knew that his ears went back when he was startled. If I wasn't close by, I could see that his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then darted until they found me. The feeling was mutual. When he saw me, his body curled like an apostrophe in happiness and I knew—he liked me. My confidence in my own likability had always been so shaky. But I knew Bunker had no reason to fool me, no reason to lie or pass judgment. The shedding of that layer of doubt left me feeling so light I imagined I might float right up into the highest branches of the trees and spend the day there.

Out in the yard one afternoon, when I was failing to teach Bunker to fetch, he stopped mid-stride, pointed his muzzle straight up, and howled, “Hawoooo!!!!!!” I sat in the grass with my mouth wide open in surprise, then began laughing. I'd never heard a dog make such a sound. I howled back. He howled more,
and soon we sounded like a pack of two wolves. “You are such a good boy,” I said, when our song was finished, my voice gelatinous. “Such a good, good boy.”

I'd been with Bunker every minute since I brought him home. The only time I wasn't with him was when I was with my therapist, and I found myself feeling anxious without him, talking about him in her office, thinking of him every few minutes while I was in session. Without him my thoughts took over again, and I wasn't aware enough yet to notice. I wanted to ask my therapist if I could bring Bunker with me, but I couldn't gather the courage.

I liked this therapist, Mya. She was young. She spoke slowly and deliberately, and I found her manner soothing. Her office was a one-story brick building, not far from my parents' house, awash with neutral colors and decorated with crisp photographs of barns and fields from the Ohio countryside.

Mya asked a lot of questions, like “What conclusions did you draw when your friends in New York started to tire of your lovesickness?”

“That I'd be sick of me too,” I said.

“But what did that make you think about yourself?”

“I don't know,” I said. “That I was a bad friend. That I put all my self-worth into whether this guy still loved me. Just bad, I guess. I felt bad.”

“But what were you thinking?”

“That I sucked,” I said, tiring of her rapid-fire inquiry.

She put her finger on her nose. I was lost, but she pressed on in this vein. I began to understand that without my realizing it, I perpetually put myself down in my own mind. She called them automatic negative thoughts, and when she said those three words, it was as if a little bell rang in my head. I
did
do that. I always had. But I had never noticed, never thought to question the truth of the negative conclusions I was constantly making. My thoughts ran unhinged for years until I was barely conscious on the kitchen floor,
face down on the couch, suicidal. My thoughts blamed me for every problem, put me down whenever possible, and regularly left me shaken, broken, insecure, and mean.

As Mya explained to me, “Your brother long ago stopped being part of your life. He left, went to college, graduated, started his own life that had little to do with yours anymore, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“But you have carried on the insults and mistreatment. You now just mistreat yourself.” I looked at her with my brow furrowed. This sounded absurd.

I'd visited Clay once, by myself, when he was a senior in college. I was eighteen. It was an awkward but mildly friendly weekend of partying and hanging out. This, we thought, was what brothers and sisters were supposed to do at this age. We weren't exactly close, but he wasn't hideously mean anymore. The plane I took from Ohio to Minnesota was struck by lightning, and when a white burst of light and a deafening bang erupted in the plane's aisle, everyone started screaming. But my thought was
Oh well. I'm ready to die anyway.
I comforted the hysterical eighty-year-old woman next to me but felt startlingly calm. I was eighteen and nonplussed at the idea of dying in a fiery plane crash.

“So,” my therapist continued. “You go to New York. Fresh start, right? Except what happens?”

“My boyfriend cheats on me,” I said.

“Then what?” she asked.

“Then everything goes to shit,” I said.

“Why do you think that happened?” she said.

“Because he defined me,” I said.

“And without him?”

“I'm nothing.” I looked at the ground. When I said it out loud, it sounded ridiculous. I wore a button on my backpack that said,
This Is What a Feminist Looks Like
. And yet, I felt as if I disappeared if a man didn't love me. What a fraud I was. What a fake, I thought.

“So you ask yourself,” Mya said slowly, “is that true? Are you nothing? Are you worthless?”

“No,” I said quietly, thinking,
Pretty much, yes.
I had talked to Will the day before, and he told me again how much he loved me, how beautiful I was, how much he missed me. He said he wished things could have ended differently. I told him I agreed.

“No,” she echoed. “You are not.”

Our time was up, and I walked out of her office with one assignment: Catch a few of my negative thoughts and write them down for our discussion upon my next session.

By the time I got to the car, I had enough material for a few hours' worth of conversation:
Why were you so awkward when you said good-bye? You didn't close the door all the way. Mya wants the door closed, which is why she shut it completely after you left. You made her get up. Your thighs are rubbing together. You're getting fat. You're disgusting. Open the door for that lady, geez. Don't make her wait. Jesus Christ, did you seriously just step on her foot?
Apologize to her now.
“Oops! Sorry.”
Only you would do something so idiotic. I hope you don't get into a car accident and die on the way home. Because you could, you know. Pay attention to the road. You are a terrible driver. Look before you back out! You learned that years ago! Jesus! You almost hit that guy. Moron
.

On that drive home, from underneath the negative thoughts, bubbled this:
No wonder
. No wonder I've been so down. No wonder I've had a hard time making friends. No wonder New York just about killed me.

The bad thoughts came and went so fast that I didn't notice most of them. But the relief I felt at seeing one nasty thought, and catching it mid-flight was a breakthrough. For the first time since I'd collapsed in that apartment I thought I might be able to get better.

M
ID-
J
ULY
1996

Bunker had been with me for three days and we'd established a routine. Wake up, pee, poop, eat, walk, play, nap, and repeat. He was already mostly house-trained. He'd had only one accident on the carpet. I taught him to sit and make eye contact and he did so eagerly, wanting to please, ready for the next command.

Waking up in the morning was getting easier. But something dark still lingered. And on this particular day, for no discernable reason, the darkness reared its ugly head, unannounced, worse than ever, like a thread-thin worm that had covertly dug itself back into my body from underneath a fingernail. It said,
Oh no, you don't. I see you trying to pretend you're happy, trying to fool people that you're not a lazy, ugly idiot.
I felt punished, as if my captor had caught me trying to escape. Perhaps those awful thoughts had never left but just lay dormant for a while. I wanted to fight; I tried hard to push the negativity away, but it persisted.

Just getting a dog can't cure me,
I thought. I was the problem. I wasn't strong enough. I was a failure, a crazy person. I was truly unlikeable. I believed this like I believed that the earth was round, something I couldn't see, but understood to be true because I had been told it was so.

I walked to the maroon living room couch and sat down, feeling both afraid and comforted by the re-appearing blackness. Comforted because I knew depression so well. Depression
was my companion. The seductive descent into the awful depths marked the return of an old, dark friend that I genuinely, honestly missed.

I had my face in my hands. My body sat small and inert. Breathing became tight, uneven. My parents' great efforts to help me had failed. I had failed. I was so broken. I would never leave home, never keep a job, never be happy. There was no stopping the cascade of terrible, dark, frightening thoughts. Such is the nature of depression; even the most herculean effort to find light and positivity will be extinguished. There seems to be no such thing as solace.

My face was still in my hands when I felt warmth on my toes. Bunker had walked over to me and sat down on my feet. I pulled my hands away from my face and saw him sitting, looking up at me, his butt squarely on my toes, his back leaning into my shins. His face held curiosity, his fevered puppy energy completely contained. He glanced away for a few moments, then turned back, as if to ask, “Better?”

Really
? I thought.
Really?
Could this dog somehow sense when I was sad and comfort me? I had heard of seeing-eye dogs. I'd heard of dogs who could sniff out drugs in suitcases. But a dog who could detect sadness? A dog who could sense a down-tick in mood? I wondered if these new psychiatric drugs were causing me to overly anthropomorphize my dog. But I needed so desperately to be comforted. I needed a companion who had no judgment, with whom I had no history, who would make it known that I was loved, who would never, ever hurt me.

So I decided in that moment to trust what I was feeling. Then I remembered the approach that my therapist suggested I try the next time I felt down. She told me not to fight the sorrow. “It's okay to be sad sometimes,” she said. “Everyone is sad sometimes. Let the sad feelings in. Be with them. Then see what happens. It's
not so bad, right? Ask those dark thoughts: Are you true? Are you real?”

So I decided to be as sad with Bunker as I needed to be, because he didn't care. He accepted me. He didn't need me to be happy. He had witnessed my change in mood, and that alone improved it. He didn't judge me; he simply saw me. So I told myself:
Bunker understands.
But this was a whole new kind of understanding. It was wordless, and it let me be sad until an amazing thing happened: the sadness began to dissolve. I was safe with this dog, and the near instant effect was that the desperation and darkness disappeared, burst in the air like soap bubbles. So I let more sadness in. I felt it. I
really
felt it. Then I petted Bunker and the sorrows didn't seem nearly as big or awful. They even felt untrue. Like, Oh! You're not
really
stupid and ugly and lazy. Of course! You're not
really
hopeless. Are you? No. You are not.

I don't know why it worked. All I can ponder is that this kind of healing required the safety of a true companion, and no resistance. This kind of healing did not want me to fight my sadness. It wanted me to accept it. Welcome it, even. So that the depression could be on its merry fucking way. And Bunker wanted no wrangling of labels to explain my emotional state, my bottomless malaise. He brought only judgment-free listening and wordless faith. When it came to Bunker, I was overflowing with faith. There was something sacred in this dog, connected to the wisdom of nature, but living inside my home. As a child I'd accessed that wordless, wise place so many times during my treks through the woods, and with my beloved dogs Midnight, Blarney, and Cinder. Those places, those dogs had no opinion about themselves, or me, aside from acceptance.

Bunker was still sitting on my feet, still looking at me. His feather-soft fur tickled my legs, and I picked him up, his puppy legs dangling. I cradled his body. He let his tongue drop out the
side of his opened mouth. That sight alone made me smile. I leaned back into the couch and held him to my chest. He curled into me as if he felt as protected as I did.

I took a deep breath and felt the blackness loosen its grip. Dog medicine. I'd found it, and I swallowed it whole.