Carter’s Story, Part III

The day after I returned home from the mental ward, I went to my house. No one was home, so I crept inside feeling afraid and ashamed, needing to see how the house and my animal family—Carter and Dinky the cat—had fared. I stepped into a mess of papers, empty plates, and clothes on the floor. Carter was curled under the table. I expected an exuberant greeting, but instead I had to call him over to me. He walked slowly, and sniffed my hands, while I ran my hands over his body telling him what a good boy he was. My fingers found fat over what had once been muscle. He hung his head, avoiding my eyes. And there was no light in those eyes, and no life in his face. He turned away and crept back underneath the table, collapsing with a sigh.

I walked to my bedroom where I knew Dinky would be with his food and his litter box. Dinky was resting on my pillow. The cat box was filthy, with piles of dried cat poop mounding on the rug. Dinky welcomed me with his familiar “Maahhh,” and rubbed against my belly. There was no evidence my husband’s son had been there at all.  Shattered, I grabbed an armful of my clothes and my box of medications and bolted out of the house. Was I running away from my problems, or running for my life? Yes to both.

Grace is something undeserved and unbidden, a goodness that can gently blanket a soul in any unexpected moment. For reasons I’ll never know, Grace found me and kept me in her arms for days, then months. Grace is with me still. I felt like Indiana Jones stepping off the cliff to find safety on an unseen ledge below him. My friend and her husband invited me into their home and gave me their basement apartment, encouraging me to stay for as long as I wanted. Every time I share this, I can hardly believe it. Dinky came along. But Carter remained in limbo as my husband and I cautiously decided to try and “share” him. I got Carter for two days and one night each week. My husband claimed him the rest of the time.

When I came and picked up Carter for his first visit with me, his red tail swished back and forth more in curiosity than excitement, but when I brought him to my friends’ house and introduced him to Benny, their white standard poodle, I watched Carter’s face come back life. Instantly, he flopped into a play-bow. Benny ran forward and happily bowled him over. It was the start of a very fine bromance. The dogs roughhoused wildly for hours that day, and Carter collapsed on my bed that night with a happy sigh. All night, I slept to the comfort of his deep breaths and wuffling snores. Dinky kept up the rhythm curled on my shoulder where he would sleep each night until the day he died. Peace like a tender embrace enfolded us in the dark that night and for  many nights to come.

Upstairs the next morning, all of us relaxed by the pellet stove while the winter rains drummed outside. My friend remarked, “Carter is very needy, isn’t he?” Carter was balanced on my lap, watching the birds and squirrels outside the window.

“He’s been through a lot,” Was my short answer. I never liked thinking of him as needy although I feared my friend was right. As soon as I could, I found a free treadmill and set it up in my studio apartment. I began making a homemade diet for Carter to encourage some weight loss. I tried to make this life Carter’s new normal in every way I could. He so needed it. I so needed it.

Carter bonded quickly and strongly with Benny. They went on forest walks together, and Carter taught Benny how to swim. Benny became Carter’s safe place. Carter had little reason to trust in me: I kept leaving. I had left when ambulances carted me or my husband away, sometimes in the middle of the night. I left him for three long turns in the mental wards. And now, I left him every week for days on end, shuffling him from one home to another. Needy? Carter? How could he not be so? He became even more attached to my hip, his nose-bumps leaving smudges on my pants, letting me know he had no intention of letting me out of his sight, lest I leave him again…and again and again.

Grace showed us a lovely forest within easy walking distance of my new home. The paths were strewn with thick quilts of wet autumn leaves: Yellow, brown, tinges of red, all shiny with rain water. When I unsnapped Carter’s leash, he flew off into the woods, returning as he always had to check on me every few moments. We could walk there for as long as we wanted, exploring mushroom beds, hollowed tree trunks, and even a small stream. Day by day, my strength was being restored, and my vitality for life began returning. One day, we turned a sharp corner and without warning,  I fell into a miracle that fused past with present. Because there she was again. This large and beautiful doe with dark, ageless eyes. Again, Carter sat back on his heels. Again, the doe stood a moment with us in silence and then hurried off into the brush. “Thank you,” I whispered. It was the phrase on my lips nearly every moment of every day.

Our new home had no fencing on most of the large property. No matter. Carter seemed to intuit a boundary that worked. He snuck across the street a few times, and then stopped doing it when I screamed bloody murder. Each morning, we continued our old ritual with the with the treadmill and coffee, and Carter easily regained his fitness.

One worrisome afternoon when I returned Carter back to my husband’s house, he balked at the entrance gate. I took him by his collar to the house steps but he pulled away and hurried back to the gate, looking to me, then to the car, then to me. My heart died a little when I left him there in the yard that afternoon. He pushed his nose through the slats in the gate while I called back to him, “I’ll be back, Buddy. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

That summer, my husband and I started divorce proceedings. We had agreed on a distribution of assets my husband had suggested, but when it came to sign the paperwork, he upended the whole agreement, demanding concessions that were actually not even humanly possible for me to fulfill. I was stunned first, then enraged. I threw out the settlement proposal and advised my husband we would let the courts decide on the settlement. My husband, a retired attorney, quickly called to negotiate, asking me agree to the original settlement proposal. Believing nothing he said, I answered a flat no. Bitter words flowed from both of us. When he finally asked what it would take to reinstate the proposal agreement, I heard myself say, “Carter.”

In the original proposal, we had agreed to share Carter, although since the day our dog had balked at going “home,” I knew it wasn’t right. My husband flatly refused to give up our dog—my dog— and at that time in my life, I was utterly incapable of standing up to atomic-sized anger. But in that moment the anger was mine.

“No” my husband growled, “Carter is not on the negotiating table. Never.”
“Fine. Then I’ll see you in court,” I spat back, and began to hang up the phone.“Wait!” he shouted. “Just wait a minute.” A short silence ensued. “I’ll let you have him for twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“Agreed,” I said. A small price to pay for having Carter full time and forever.

Carter turned seven years old last month. So much has happened in these ensuing years. I married again, and our family moved to a cozy round dome house on two-and-a-half acres of mostly forest. Carter again set his perimeters on our unfenced property and lives his life off-lead and happy. There is a nearby lake where he swims in the warm months, and a treadmill in the main room.

Recently, I stumbled across an online program called “The Aussie Academy,” and am only now learning to unlock the secret gifts and challenges that are embedded in the herding breeds. How I wish I had known these things when Carter was a tiny, wiggling pup!

It turns out that dogs like Carter have far more needs than intense exercise. Perhaps even more, they need to feel they have a job, and they need engagement—and lots of it—with their people. They need stability, too. Without these things, these dogs can easily become anxious and needy, or suspicious and fearful. Living in ordinary households, herding breeds can become overwhelmed with intense sensory overload. They need tools to learn self-calming, and steady routines so that they can trust their world. Carter didn’t have these things in his younger years, and we have now begun working on calming, and learning engagement games to stimulate his Einstein mind.

For now, I still get the nose pressed to my thigh, the worrisome frown when new things enter our world—like kittens. Kittens! My precious companion continues to retreat under the table now and then when life gets overwhelming. I’m sure I will never go to the bathroom alone ever again. And my lap is still one of his favorite cuddling places. We have learned so much from each other and like many others who love their dogs beyond all reason, we have become a part of each other in a way that defies language. Was Carter a mistake? Yup…and one I would gladly make all over again.