My Life with Shelby the Dog

The funny this was is that it wasn't my idea to get the dog. No, that fell to the woman who was on her way to becoming my ex-wife. She was going through a phase when she was constantly wanting something to cuddle with her. Apparently a husband wasn't going to cut the mustard at this point. No, she wanted a furry animal. She wanted something that was going to be excited when she was home and cuddle up with her.

We had two cats already, but you know how they are. Cats love you and snuggle with you when they are kittens. They cling to your shirt and they lay on your back or stomach for about six months to maybe a year. The angry teenage years tend to come very fast in the cat world. Before you know it you have this furry animal who looks at you like something it just coughed up or founds in its litterbox while it takes a great interest in clawing up your couch or your curtains. The last thing any of these animals want is to be cuddly with you or anything. As far as they are concerned you are some thing living in their territory that feeds them which give you at least some purpose.

If you can get past those years cats usually come back around again. Just like humans ultimately become more childlike as they get older, eventually cats become more like their kitten-y selves and they start getting cuddly then. My ex-wife was not the type to be patient about animals or people or anything else. This was the woman who told me she didn't foresee me being able to provide for her the life she felt she was entitled to. Sure, I had just graduated college and was still trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do. She wanted a man who knew and who had money and who could afford to buy her eighteen billion pairs of shoes.

Anyway, she decided she wanted a dog. I gave her the speech that countless parents had given their children when they had asked for the same thing. I told her that dogs were not like cats and required a lot more responsibility. I told her that dogs needed training and patience, things that she did not have in spades. She gave me all of the standard assurances that kids have given back to parents when they want dogs. She would train the dog. She would house train the dog. She would get the dog fixed. She would do all of the things you are supposed to do with dogs.

We didn't have a lot of money so this eliminated going to places like shelters or buying any sort of pure-bred dog. So, she looked through the newspapers and found an ad for someone giving away puppies. I remember her giving me a call at work and telling me where I was supposed to be meeting her to pick out the dog.

They were all little white wriggly things and there seemed like dozens of them. They were like cottonballs with feet and little black noses. There were girls and there were males and they wriggled and barked and looked cute the way puppies are supposed to. For some reason there was one, a female, that seemed to stand out from the rest of them. The kids of the house had already given them all names, which made picking one a lovely exercise in guilt on top of the pressure of picking an animal you could end up living with for upwards of sixteen years. The one we seemed to like was named Chloe.

"Well, she's sure not keeping that name," my wife said with a snarl on her face. "No way am I calling my dog Chloe."

So, I suggested the name Shelby. My wife's favorite movie, at least at that time, was "Steel Magnolias." Shelby was the character played by Julia Roberts as Sally Field's diabetic daughter. She is doomed from the start as we see her slowly having fits and eventually dying from giving birth. Despite the tragedy, it was a name that I knew my ex would go for. Sure enough, she did.

So, my wife bonded with the dog. Even as she eventually moved into the spare bedroom and we become more roommates than husband and wife, Shelby was in there with her. Shelby followed her around and slept in my wife's room. I remember accidentally stepping on the paw of the little puppy when she came running up to meet me as I was trying to carry in a huge amount of laundry. She held her head back and howled again and again and again as if not understanding why I had decided to hurt her so much when all she wanted to do was show how much she loved me.

For the most part Shelby was a relatively normal dog up until that point. She even seemed to like other people. She got along well with the two cats. She sat in the front windows with the cats and watched people come and go. We could have people come over and she would run up to them and sit in their laps.

Then came the day when my wife decided she was leaving. She told me she was over the phone. I had discovered the business trip she was going on one weekend was actually to visit her lover that she had met online. I had even given her a ride to the airport. We spent weeks slowly dividing up our lives. We split the number of place settings. We worked out whose parents had given us what and divided those things that way. She always loved Christmas more than I did and I gave her the Christmas tree and the decorations.

She told me she didn't want to take Shelby. She said she would have a new job and wouldn't be able to give her the attention she needed. She told me I wouldn't be able to give her the attention she needed either and encouraged me to get rid of her as well. She was going to leave the cats with me too.

The night before she left I walked into the kitchen and got something to drink. As I stood near the sink I looked at the boxes around me. Inside were pots and pans and plates and all of the things that, tomorrow, would be packed up by some man who was taking away my wife and all of it would be gone. She would be gone. It hit me then and I slowly sank down to the floor, my back against the sink and the hard linoleum beneath me. I had one leg out in front of me and the other bent at the knee and I just wept. I cried softly, not wanting her to hear me as she continued to pack in her bedroom.

As I wept I heard the soft sound of nails on the linoleum. Shelby came padding in. She looked at me a moment and then came right up to me. She licked my face and let me pet her as I let the tears dry on my face. I think that was the moment I truly bonded with the dog.

The next day my ex-wife tossed Shelby into the master bedroom (my room) and then kept her locked in there as her and her new main-squeeze slowly loaded up their truck with stuff. I was at work and I was trying hard to focus on processing crap and doing things while she was packing up half of my life and moving away. Shelby was trapped in the room, clawing at the door, trying desperately to get out to the woman she had bonded with for nearly a year.

When I came home I came home to little piles of dirt and junk left on the floor and a hysterical dog clawing and crying in the room where she had been left like I had been and the life I had hoped for. She had clawed up the carpet, right down to the concrete floor, in an attempt to get under the door. The paint on the inside of the door was nearly clawed completely off. Pieces of carpeting and padding clotted her face and were scattered about the room.

Shelby and I were a duo from that point forward. She was different from that point. She had serious separation anxiety. When I would leave for work I never knew how she would decide to punish me for leaving her. Sometimes I would come home and find all of my White Sox hats had been chewed up. Sometimes I would come home and the books on the lower bookshelves would be scattered about the floor and covered with holes or missing their covers or destroyed in some way.

Eventually Shelby and I moved back to Chicago. I lived with my parents for a while and she never did get used to my dad. She kind of got used to my mom. It became her life to protect me from the rest of the world. Small animals were her enemies. Other dogs were her enemies. Other people were enemies. As far as Shelby was concerned, I was the only living thing on this planet that should be allowed to continue living. The rest she had to attack and destroy and shake and rip to pieces.

Little did I know that this kind of love and protection was exactly what I was needing. It was nice to come home to an excited animal. She never cared if I was messy or if I had had a bad day. She never cared if I had screwed up at work or insulted someone I shouldn't have. She didn't care if I said something stupid or embarrassed myself. She didn't care if I was alone. Heck, she preferred me alone.

Yes, she would sometimes get locked in a room and tear apart the carpet, still trying to burrow under the doors that were locked to prevent her from getting somewhere. She would never get used to being locked up whenever my parents had company and there was that one holiday when my uncle couldn't seem to get away from our house fast enough as my dog sat upstairs in her cage barking over and over again, faintly, in the background but still piercing enough for you to hear it.

She was with me when I fell in love with the Canadian girl named Amanda and spent two years of my life convincing myself I was going to become Canadian myself and eventually spend the rest of my life with her. I tried practicing saying "eh" a lot and wondered if I would eventually start using the word "aboot" after years of living in Toronto. I took a job at a company that had offices in Toronto in hopes that I could eventually transfer there when Amanda was ready.

She was there when Amanda told me, over the phone, that things were over with us and my world collapsed. Shelby was right there next to me on the nights when I held a pillow in front of my face and screamed into it. She was right there to lick my face when I wanted to jump in front of a train.

I knew she wouldn't survive without me. She was to anti-social to be adopted by anyone else. If I died, what would happen to her? She would have been put to sleep and I felt you don't just kill something because it doesn't fit in with your idea of what ideal is.

She has knocked over things and she has torn up important papers. She has attacked potential girlfriends and sent them running from my house with vows that they would never spend another night there with me as long as she was there. She has put holes in the jeans of people I invited over in the hopes of spending a quiet evening. I have held her back from attacking baby raccoons, cats, smaller and larger dogs and even children. She is a little thing and she is the kind of dog that small children want to run up and pet. I have to keep them away and tell them that she'll bite.

Other men have big burly dogs that attract women. I have a dog that will bite any woman who might want to approach me because of my bet on the back of her calf. She is not a particularly good guard dog. She does not fetch things for me. She does nothing but greet me at the door and sometimes drive her paw and head into my crotch with the force of a small cannonball.

Despite all of this, the one true constant for much of my life has been Shelby. I know a lot of people who would have given her up. I know a lot of people who would have put her in a shelter or had her put down. I can't imagine doing that.

She's thirteen now. She moves slower than she used to. She's crazier and crankier than ever. It's still me and her against the world. I can't imagine being anything else.