Today I got home after a long day out with Alice finishing up Christmas shopping and visiting friends. There was a note taped up on my door. The note said that Anabel had escaped our yard and was found running around the neighborhood, but she was captured and is now safe and warm at my neighbor's house. Ah Anabel always in the center of the storm.
Long before there was the movie Marley & Me, there was Anabel. I haven't seen the movie Marley & Me, nor have I read the book, but I don't have to, I have one upped Marley...I have lived with Anabel.
My sweet Anabel is a 7 year old
Bichon Frise, (pronounced Bee-
shawn Free-say). Dave and I met Anabel when we were walking through a dirty rundown Pet Smart store in West
Roxbury. Dave and I had somewhat discussed the idea of perhaps one day in the undetermined future buying a dog. At the time my biological clock was starting to tick and I was craving a baby of any species. That faithful night Dave and I walked by the window of a pet store and I saw this little white coconut ball with sad eyes. She was tiny and ratty looking puppy. She was curled up quietly in a pen of rambunctious puppies fighting and barking around her.
My biological clock had unearthed a avalanche of hormones that made me instantly fall head over tail in love with this little four legged ragamuffin. She obviously needed a good home and a good bath. I scooped her up and held her in my arms. She snuggled up to me and I refused to let her go until she was mine.
To Dave's horror we went home that night with a dog. Mind you we had no dog bed, leash, food, collar, and on my end not one iota of dog knowledge of any kind.
Hey, but I did have a cat growing up. How different could a dog be? Fast forward 50 accidents, 14 nights of disrupted sleep and 7 days of dog antibiotics later. When we got dear Anabel she was light a cuddly little kitten because she was suffering from phenomena and she was tiny because the pet store was starving her so she'd stay little so they could pass her off as younger. Once I took her to the vet and got her medication it was like putting batteries in a child's toy. She came to life and she was louder and much more annoying than I could have ever imagined. Unfortunately she was not a child's toy so the batteries were never going to run out again. Anabel made up for lost time she spent the next 4 years pooping, playing, jumping, barking, running, climbing, licking, and eat everything in sight.
In the first few nights Anabel had to sleep in bed with us, but she was too small to jump up on the bed. She could jump off just fine. Usually she would jump off 5 or 6 times a night to go pee on our carpet. Then she would come back into the bedroom and cry and scratch until she woke Dave and I up to pick her up and put her back on the bed. Then this would continue for the first 6 months. Once she was in bed with us she would cuddle up right between us creating a little ravine, the bedspread would be her hammock. Hence being a dead weight and keeping both of us from getting enough of the covers. We like our covers so we tried keeping her on the floor but she barked and whined and kept us up all night. We tried kicking her out of room, but she scratched at the door and barked and cried all night. I really wanted to just lock her in the basement, but Dave the kinder gentler parent, wouldn't do it. Like with every thing Anabel won and has been sleeping with us ever since.
Not sleeping at night made me less patient when Anabel relieved herself on our rugs and hard wood floors. Dave and I tried and tried, and tried to potty train this dog. We tried crate training only to come home from work and find that she had pooped in the crate. That is not fun to wash and I was always home first. We tried paper training. She would tare up the paper and spread it all over the house and then pee on the rugs the same with puppy pads. We tried leaving her in our bath room...she trashed the whole room! We tried to block off the kitchen, she always escaped. We took classes, we bought books, finally we talked to vet. The vet said that the main problem was that Anabel was abused and kept in her crate too long in the pet store. I had a potty training disabled dog and no one offered Special Ed classes for dogs. Damn inclusion!
We could have lived with potty issues, but Anabel also had barking issues, and chewing issues, and an eating disorder. I know that you hear of dogs chewing on shoes. Have you heard of dogs eating their weight in bread? This little puppy would eat her weight in food! Or eat a pound of chocolate and live to bark the tale. Our little baby puppy would use complex problem solving skills to extract food from our counters, cupboards, briefcases and pocket books. I would often come home from work and find a loaf of bread canoed by the dog, crumbs covering the living room. Dog owners know, dogs do not eat bread from side to side, they eat on the top and hollow the bread out making sure to ruin every single piece. Anabel also ate a whole bag of pound bag Hersey's kisses, plastic bag, wrappers and all. She also ate my prenatal vitamins (and the tamper proof bottle) a disposable razor, and countless juice boxes.
Normal dogs would just eat the food where it drops, not our princess, she liked to eat her prizes in the living room on our white striped couch. That way she could look out the window. I know this because she would always leave a puddle of puppy puke containing evidence of the days catch. Like bits of colored foil wrappers, pieces of disposable razor blades and plastic bits, or a foamy red pond.
Anabel's prizes weren't always food. Anabel seemed to have a great affection for smelly things, all kinds of smelly things, especially trash, bathroom trash. I will stop there, but I am a girl over the age of 13 so you know what I mean...and yuck! I mean YUCK are you KIDDING ME, GROSS!
Anabel's other great talent is barking. She barks at great volume and with great stamina. She can bark for hours in a pitch, I named "Nails on a chalkboard". When she is very upset she almost sounds like a bird, well if you hit a small bird with a big hammer. The sound is quite startling, especially when you are quietly watching TV, many a beverage or bowl of popcorn has sent flying. I still think that Dave and I suffer from post barking stress disorder.
As you can guess in those early puppy days friend's and family were not fond of our little girl. In fact my best friends, my work friends, and even my mother told me straight out that they hated the dog. Some people even asked if it wasn't too late to simply return the dog all together. I was so horrified! How could people hate a sweet little white fluffy dog? So she jumped on them and humped their legs. So what if she sniffed their privates, knocked over their drinks, and ate the food off of their plates? Couldn't they just adapt? Because I knew for damn sure that Anabel wasn't going to.
Well that was 7 years ago we have had two real babies, one of whom I have successively crate trained. Anabel is still sleeping
in between us, and she has matured and calmed down some. Yesterday she did eat a whole loaf of apple bread. She climbed on a chair left next to the counter by one of the kids and canoed the loaf, ruining the whole thing. Anabel is less nervous and
barky now that she isn't left alone in an empty house. In fact we take Anabel everywhere we go, she rides shot gun in the Subaru. Anabel has quite a fan club at each of the kid's schools and all around Franklin. My friends still hate her and my mother has fondly refers to her as "That Damn Dog". Grandma Alice obviously still hates that damn dog, but my Alice, who I fondly refer to as "Alice
jr." loves Anabel to pieces. Alice Jr. loves to play baby with Anabel and dress her up in clothing. She also likes to hug Anabel in vice grip head locks, and color
Anabel with markers and most recently red
calligraphy paint.
I am sure that Anabel has wondered if we can just return Alice to the hospital for a refund?
My family and I are in church on Christmas Eve. We are dressed in our finest, Dave in chinos and sweater, Dylan in chinos and dress shirt, me in dress pants and dress shirt, and Alice in her ratty Wiggle pajamas and Dress coat. Yes I did write ratty, one size too small stained Wiggles pajamas. The beautiful velvet dress embroidered with holly and fur trimmed red sweater were balled up on the floor of our living room. After screaming, biting, scratching, and head banging over the dress, Alice stripped herself naked and ran up stairs. Later she came down dressed in her nasty old pajamas. since we were already late for church we just threw on her dress coat, shoved sneakers on her and jumped in the car.
