sweet and cuddly except sometimes not (not an autobiography)

My housemate went to Maine to work on a farm this summer, allowing me to wallow just a little bit more in the fantasy that The Dog actually belongs to me. And perhaps letting me gain a little bit of perspective just in time to soften the blow of the upcoming massive separation anxiety I am sure to feel starting next weekend, when I no longer live here and can't live in that fantasy world anymore (nor, because of the rules of my new apartment, can I turn the fantasy into reality by getting a dog of my own, darn it).

While he doesn't hesitate to wake me up in the middle of the night to remind me that I'm a lousy human who continuously fails to do things like stop the thunderstorms or pet him 24 hours a day, we've generally been getting along very well. We go for walks once or twice a day, aka "who will attack us this time?" excursions that are getting a little old, in my opinion, though they do keep us on our toes.

See, The Dog is one of those Very Large breeds, or mix of breeds more accurately, that look scary to people and intimidating to other animals. Little do they know that all he really wants in life is people to pet him and walk him and generally love him ALL THE TIME. That almost any time you hear him growl or bark in our house, it's his way of saying "Hey! Remember how you were going to pay attention to me now?" He is a young adult male pit bull/boxer mix, and those are breeds that love their people (sometimes more than we can handle). And like to dominate other dogs, particularly male dogs.

And we live in a town where there are a LOT of other dogs, including a lot of other large dogs. For reasons that confound me - maybe they watched Lassie too much as kids - a lot of my neighbors seem to dislike keeping their dog on a leash, even when walking down the sidewalk on my street, one of the busiest in town. This is very sweet and happy-go-lucky and all, until my pit bull decides to eat your chihuahua because he thought it was a one of those organic fair trade dog treats they sell at the Co-op.

I admit that this is somewhat hypocritical of me, because The Dog can somewhat regularly be found wandering innocently around the front of our house with no leash, though he knows perfectly well he's not supposed to (oh, don't give me that anthropomorphizing stuff; look into his eyes - he knows). See, we let him out back to pee, and since we live on a hill that's at approximately a 90-degree angle from the road, there's no possibility of building a fence to keep him out there. He knows he's supposed to bark from the back door, but sometimes he wanders around and waits at the front door instead. My biggest fear is that he'll run into the street, followed closely by the fear that someone will get nervous about seeing a pit bull wandering around and call the cops.

Which is what I feel a bit like doing every time we're out walking and we go by a house with a dog running free, and I have to hold my breath and pray that they don't take an interest each other (after all, the other dog might try to defend its rightful territory while The Dog would counter with the old "But I peed on your lawn just this morning" argument, and then the gloves are off). The same applies when we're walking the paths through the woods nearby and pass by people walking their dogs off-leash. I'm guilty of it too, especially on the mountain trails where keeping him on the leash is a recipe for me to get pulled down a mountain much more quickly than I'd like to go (though I am clearly capable of falling on my ass without his help, too). But in the last four days we've gone on five walks, and on each of those walks we have had nerve-wracking encounters with other dogs.

I don't want to give you the wrong impression here. Most of the time he's fine. Most smaller dogs are afraid of him, and he usually just sort of looks over their heads with a facial expression that says "I would almost notice you, if only you weren't such a tiny, insignificant speck." I have to wonder about the little dogs (like the one we met tonight) that jump right at him; either they have a very over-inflated sense of self-importance, or they're actually just flinging themselves toward his mouth on the assumption that that's where they're about to end up anyway, so might as well make it quick.

Many larger dogs aren't a problem either. He likes a friendly butt-sniff as much as the next guy, and likes the ladies enough to make me wonder sometimes if his neuterer did a complete job. But then there's the shepherd trotting along after its owner's bicycle on the opposite side of the street yesterday who merrily jogged out into traffic to come meet us (I think it was going to be a friendly meeting, actually, but I'd rather you not get hit by a car for it, thank you). And the collie we met in the woods the other day, where I could tell things were not looking good just from the way their tails sprung higher and higher up into the air the closer we got. Luckily I had him on a leash and the collie's owner grabbed his dog around the neck and pulled him away as they lunged at each other's faces.

Of course, ten seconds later you'd have never known that he'd just tried to bite another dog's head off. Lunge-chomp-done. Maybe that's better than current human methods of conflict resolution. Our species does things much more slowly, and with far more expensive and complicated weaponry. And we hold grudges much longer. But I don't have the option of putting Dick Cheney on a leash (believe me, I'd take it), so I have to do what I can to help keep order in the little corner of the world that I have some say in. All I ask is that others do the same.