Help!

“Let’s go clean you up.”

I walked with Purvasha to the bathroom, and was relieved to have real first aid supplies and more than just Band-Aids in my closet. I sprayed saline on her wound to clean it, and got out some Neosporin. She stayed calm through all of it, as if we weren’t both wondering why Diego would just bite her hand when he hadn’t seemed to have a problem with her earlier in the week.

Plenty of people might disagree with me here, but it didn’t seem like a time to get in his face and yell “bad dog.” We didn’t want to make the situation worse. My fears kept amplifying with Dr. A’s voice in my head. He’s unpredictable. Purvasha decided she would give him space and not pet him for awhile, and we both went back to work.

That night I started spiraling. “Maybe the vet’s right! I can’t keep a dog that would bite my roommate. I can’t expect you to live in that type of environment, Purvasha. There are kids on this street. What if something happened? It would be all my fault. He can’t even be in the same house as Brittany and Benny. How much of this is decompressing? Will it stop? But I chose him! Will the rescue take him back? Will someone adopt a dog who has bitten? What happens to him? How did they not see any of this? They had to have known something!”

One thing to know about Purvasha, she was definitely a roommate sent to me from God. I couldn’t have asked for a better random stranger, someone more understanding and willing to be in my corner. She told me not to let this situation influence my decision on keeping him, and she still cared for him. We decided to report the incident to the rescue as a way to make note of what happened and decipher if this was normal, and what to do next. I mean, Purvasha was cool with living with Diego, but she was still afraid to work from home alone if I was going into the office that next week.

Saturday morning, I took him for a walk to the lake. On the way back home, we were passing by a hillside and I felt a gust of wind from behind. Suddenly, Diego’s energy changed. He serpentined in front of me on the path, and then started circling. Some of my friends would probably refer to this as the zoomies with their dogs, but it was a bit more frightening in this scenario. He launched into the air at me repeatedly, and I felt his teeth through my sweatshirt graze below my armpit. I tried pulling him up the hill to get some sort of leverage and kept my arms high, since trying to gain control of his leash wasn’t working as I was yanked back and forth.

I clawed out my phone and called Brittany in a panic, asking if her and Mitch could pick me up on the side of the road. It seemed like the longest 15 minutes, whatever it was. They pulled up with a crate in the back of Mitch’s car. I popped open the door and Diego’s attention shifted and he hopped inside. I closed the door, exasperated, and said I would meet them at home. Brittany looked at me and told me to squeeze into the remaining space on the other side of the backseat so that Diego would do better when we drove away.

They dropped me off and I walked inside defeated. This is impossible. I can’t believe I would even think the word…surrender. I couldn’t have a repeat of that night with Brittany. I had to control my response more than before. He followed me around the house, just looking at me with soft eyes as I tried to hold in what I could, emotions oozing out of the cracks. It was confusing, but seemed like I was supposed to have a clear answer all at the same time.

I remember this moment where Purvasha and I sat on couch with fancy whiskey cocktails garnished with orange slices in our copper cups that she had made for us to just take a beat. The way Diego stared, we felt like we shouldn’t move. We were both afraid to pass him and we sat there laughing about our situation, just waiting to have the guts to get up and go to another room.

It’s amazing how many people are dog experts. Did you ever realize that? Wink. Wink.

Covid created a lot of strange space in friendships, and I had one friend call me after months and dive into the reasons why I should keep working with my dog and how to work with him. The problem was, I didn’t feel like she actually cared about how keeping him would influence my life. It was just about him, even though she really didn’t know our scenario yet. Personally, hearing that she could move past getting bitten by a dog wasn’t comforting at the time. I was going through an extremely difficult situation and I needed less unsolicited advice.

Another friend called, and it seemed like I was being told by the dog lovers of the world that I needed to be strong enough. They hadn’t even met him. Don’t get me wrong. They had good intentions, and even offered to watch him for me to give me a break, but I didn’t know how to be open to that situation when I had been told to let him decompress and not expose him to so much newness. I didn’t want someone’s overconfidence with their ability to be good with dogs to turn dangerous and for them to get hurt.

On the other side, I had family asking my parents about when I was going to get rid of that dog; not exactly a great feeling. Except for grandpa, he called and said it might be good to have a dog like that living in the cities. I just need to train him right, haha. Diego was more than a bite. He was a dog that was clean and didn’t chew so much as a sock in my house. He was the pet that I stayed up with all night. Diego was smart and knew several commands. He was the big smile that made my heart leap when I was about to take him on a walk. He was my shadow, following me from room to room in the house, content to just watch me. He was my responsibility, and regardless of what happened, I had chosen to love him.

Diego had been good with my brother, and despite what happened, my sister came through for me and told me what I needed to hear. She wasn’t going to push me one way or another, but just would be there to support me. If I surrendered him, it wouldn’t be my fault or make me a bad person and she would be there. If I decided to keep him and work through it, she would support me too. I didn’t expect that, but being given the option to decide myself and be supported either way was huge.

I decided to take him to my parents’ farm that Sunday so that they could at least meet him and I could let him run freely. I walked him around on a leash at first as my they met me outside. Mom came out with treats and dad came out in long sleeves, pants, and gloves. He let Diego sniff around and talked to him. He leaned down a little with his hands reaching slightly over Diego’s head and was met with growls. Diego nipped at his gloves, but dad just stood there, prepared. “He’s cute. I wonder what happened to him. He must have been abused. What matters is if you’re afraid of him. If you’re not afraid, you can work with him.” It’s moments like that where mom and dad have really come through for me.

I let him off the leash to roam and he paced around the house, sniffing all the trees. Then he got the zoomies. He had never had so much freedom around me, and he was fast! He raced past my feet and I thought I felt something by my ankle. He skid forward and then pivoted, coming back towards me and I realized that he was biting my shoelace each time and pulling it, as if taunting me to play, intensely accurate about where he would nip. Covered in fall clothes, I held my ground, and eventually he slowed down. We finished the day talking inside the house as he laid tired on the floor. I left them—still sad, still confused, but comforted. I guess the only thing to do is wait to hear back from the rescue…