I Admit It, My Dog Drives Me Crazy

These inconveniences, along with the vet bills, constant shedding and potty training accidents, seemed like a fair price to pay, though. I had expected these things. Others I never saw coming.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, my partner’s mental health took a sudden downward turn, and he started self-medicating. After I discovered the liquor and pill bottles, I gave him an ultimatum, and he chose the option that wasn’t us. I never believed he’d stay gone, in part because he loved that dog so damn much. But he declined visitation, or to even look at photos of her once he’d left.

I was in shock, left alone with a mortgage, kid and a dog just out of puppyhood to handle all on my own. All my careful plans and patience had been for nothing. The big yard was useless because it wasn’t fenced in, but the dog needed to walk, so we walked, endlessly. She seemed thrilled with this arrangement, while I trailed, more often than not sobbing in broad daylight. 

Between walks, I’d cry at the kitchen table, and Embrey would run over from wherever she was in the house and crawl into my lap to comfort me. My stepdaughter had moved out, and my son would travel back and forth to his father’s, so it was often just me and her for days on end. As soon as my ex left, I said screw crate training and let her sleep with me. Knowing she needed to be fed and walked was the only thing getting me out of bed most mornings.

Rather than be grateful for that, I resented her. I resented having to shoulder the burden of another living thing on my own when that wasn’t in my plan, and I resented her very existence because it reminded me of my ex. One day, a car identical to his drove down the block as we were walking, and she started after it, and I could only watch pitifully as she realized it wasn’t stopping. It was just her and me now, and I didn’t love her like he had.

Truthfully, Embrey hasn’t exactly made it easy on me. She demands walks in any kind of weather, so I’ve been caught in thunderstorms and dragged over ice while she chases the local wildlife. Even though we live in the suburbs of a pretty major city, she’s come nose to nose with a fawn, beaver and one dark day decimated a nest of baby bunnies. As a solo dog owner, I alone deal with her unruliness at vet visits, an ongoing feud with a pair of greyhounds in my neighborhood, runaway romps in the woods and mystery illnesses including, to my great horror, what turned out to be worms.

This was never how I envisioned life as a dog owner, and I certainly never expected violence. Embrey has been attacked twice by other dogs. She has a scar on her neck from the first time; I have a scar on my thigh from the second. Almost losing her terrified me, and now I’m a helicopter dog mom who carries a canister of mace around my neck at all times.

Embrey is approaching her fifth birthday, and the latest in her campaign to drive me crazy is something called spay incontinence; i.e., she has started peeing all over the house, something I didn’t anticipate being an issue for another five years or so. It affects around 20 percent of female dogs, though I have never known any. Unless I want to keep up this cycle of endless laundry, she will likely need medication. At this point, her medical care exceeds my own by a good margin. And I know the worst is yet to come because adopting a dog is like investing in heartbreak. In the end, they all destroy us, and the more you love them the harder it is.

In retrospect, though, a part of me is glad I didn’t know everything that goes into caring for a dog or that I’d be doing it on my own. Because if I had, there are so many moments I would have missed out on, moments my ex will never get to enjoy. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, like seeing Embrey’s excited wiggle dance when my son gets home from school or the two of them curled up together on the couch. Watching her experience snow for the first time was magical, and we plan our Halloween costumes around her (she was a sandworm the year we went with a Beetlejuice theme). No holiday or celebration would be as fun; heck, even taking her to the ball field for a walk usually has people fawning all over her, asking if they can pet her and paying her compliments. In those moments, I feel like my original vision of owning a dog has been realized. I get to take her home and pet her as much as I want. She’s my dog.

That kind of love is worth the hardships, the bills and even the doggy diapers. Despite it all, I know I was right when I adopted her. She completes the family. 

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.