How to Tell if Your Pets are Codependent: How Quickly Things Change

A line from the TV show, Frasier, leapt out at me when I was binge-watching eleven seasons in a depressed state of "My life will never be exciting again." Frasier was going through a similar phase of being stuck in a rut while his brother, Niles, was married to Daphne and expecting a child, and Marty was dating beautiful, younger Wendie Malik, having the time of his life. Marty gave him some fatherly advice with, "Take it from me. Just when you think nothing exciting will ever happen to you again, that's when it does."

And I have to say, he sure said a mouthful.

Status quo for me for the longest time was go to work, come home, veg out in front of the TV or read a book, repeat. I shook things up when I adopted Joy, but my life revolved around her for several months as I got her into a routine and tried to keep her from eating the house. While she's not as destructive as some dogs, (I know someone with a pit bull puppy the same age who tore the dryer door off. I mean, just ripped it off. And someone else with a lab puppy about the same age who was so totally out of control they had to rehome him) the list of things she's chewed are as follows:

Two mugo pines
A tree sapling
A dog bowl
Piles of mulch
One of the outdoor water bins
Two planters
Multiple dog toys and bones
The lawn chair the Cowboy made for me a few years ago
The corners off the doghouse

But I have to say, she has never eaten a shoe, she never got into underwear, she leaves my stuffed animals alone (Tess was obsessed with stuffed animals when she was younger), and she has never chewed the furniture.

Spencer makes up for that by scratching the furniture, but I digress.

It is a full time job caring for a puppy.

Joy is nine months old now, and she is a holy terror. She is deep in her teenaged rebellious phase to the point where she no longer listens to me or Tess. She has regressed to jumping on the door and me, barking, throwing a tantrum whenever her paws get wiped, not waiting for her release word to eat, and generally ignoring me and my commands as if I'm just the annoying mother who doesn't understand what it's like to be her age.

She's right, I probably don't. I don't remember what it's like to be in my twenties.

Thank God for that.

Joy goes to puppy class, she gets regular walks, she has rules and discipline as Cesar Millan suggests, and Tess has been showing her teeth an awful lot lately. Nothing works at the moment.

Needless to say life is very exciting again.

I came home for lunch the other day, and went outside to check on the dogs. I am now used to the piles of mugo pine branches littering the yard. The harsh winter destroyed them anyway, so I'm going to dig them up and replace them with rose bushes. Meanwhile they are Joy's favorite chew toys. This particular day she had somehow managed to drag one of the large water bins (filled with water) across the yard, and stuffed it in the dog house. I actually stood in the yard, looking for the bin, turned around and saw it just sitting in the dog house. It took a minute for my brain to register, "The water bin is in the dog house. What the hell? How did it get there?" It is wider than the doorway to the dog house. I have to say I'm impressed with the determination and problem solving skills it takes to shove a large heavy duty plastic bin into a dog house.

Then there was the weeklong phase of eating straight up cat litter out of the box. Now, every dog I've ever owned has gotten in the cat litter at least once to eat cat poop. That's just what dogs do. Joy, however, didn't care if there was poop or not. I walked in the bedroom one evening (I keep an extra box there for Willow, Miss Fussypants), and the entire box had been sucked clean of litter. Joy trotted out of the bedroom and immediately barfed it all back up again on her dog bed. Piles of it. Just clumps of straight up litter. That could not have felt good coming back up. She spent the rest of the night hacking and wheezing because my cat litter is made of grass seed. It's not as dusty as some, but it's coarse and I'm sure it couldn't have felt good.

So what did she do two days later? The exact same thing. Hoovered the box, and immediately, not even thirty seconds later, barfed it all back up again. Second time's the charm. She stopped after that. Hasn't bothered the box since.

Her new favorite thing to do is trap Spencer between her paws and chew on his head. This isn't as bad as it sounds. She doesn't hurt him, and there is no blood or yowling. He eventually has enough and escapes, hiding under the bed. And what does he do five minutes later? Comes back out and lets her trap him again. It is a little disconcerting to walk into a room and see a German shepherd with a small black cat between her paws just going to town on his head. If one didn't know any better one would think she was killing him.

It's like Tess and Percy reincarnated. Spencer is almost identical to Percy. He looks like him, minus the fangs. Instead he has a kink in his tail. He plays with Joy the way Percy used to play with Tess. And he's such a little asshole. Scratches the furniture, flings litter everywhere, plays with his food and leaves a trail of kibble all over the kitchen floor, poops in the box as soon as I've cleaned it, lies in wait for Willow and pounces on her when she walks by. The difference is that Willow isn't afraid of Spencer like she was Percy, and gives back as good as she gets. Then he races through the house like a herd of stampeding elephants, chirping and trilling. He is absolutely the cutest thing in the world.

I feel like maybe they've opened the door to allow new and different things to come into my life. I'm baking and making chocolates again, and while it's not going very smoothly, I will be selling some at a craft fair. I'm working on my novel like a fiend. I've started drawing and painting again. I've even started dating again, but that's a story for the next blog, as it's kind of a fun little story on its own.

This morning, my new friend walked into the hallway and said, "You locked that cat in the kennel with Joy last night. They're both just staring at me." I started to laugh. Spencer likes to slip through the small hole in the dog kennel and sleep in there periodically, but he's never gone in there at night with Joy before. The two of them just sitting there staring out of the kennel was just so funny, and it confirmed that adopting Spencer was the right thing to do. I adopted him for Joy and they are clearly starting to bond.

And yes, everyone is as codependent as ever. Last night I had two cats on the bed, one under the bed, Joy on the dog bed at the foot of the bed, and Tess sacked out beside it.

Things really can change in a blink of an eye.