The Giant Ogre

Introduction by Zuzu:

OMG, he’s a giant ogre who feeds us and seems to be friendly, but he also picks up small dogs without first satisfying all of the necessary prerequisites, none of which can be described or satisfied, of course.

He won’t pick me up, though. Not again. I won’t allow it.

I used to hate it when he picked Petal up, but now I kind of like it. He usually carries her outside, and whenever she tries to run back to the house, I get to try to stop her with my PIT-maneuver herding technique. She’s slow, but I’m fast!

When she’s not being picked up, Petal just lies in her chair all day. I, on the other hand, spend a lot of time in the back yard and in the house—our little sunroom exists between the two—and that naturally puts me in charge of reconnaissance and watch guard duty.

And Petal never barks, so I have to do the barking for both of us. Fortunately, I’m good at it!

***

Confession: During the first few weeks after we adopted ZaP, I had to train myself to stop using male pronouns for Zuzu. I still slip occasionally. Every day (all day), I tell Zuzu she’s a good girl (not a good boy), and that’s part of me training myself. And retraining myself.

Our biggest looming challenge is getting Zuzu to the vet (which means touching her and picking her up) without triggering another setback. She has been on prozac for more than two weeks, and it seems to be lowering the frequency and duration of her barking sessions, but she is still maintaining distance and vigilance.  Loss of appetite was apparently temporary.

I’m still the scariest thing in Zuzu’s new home environment, so I can hold her attention simply by looking at her. Whenever I do, I encounter the gaze of a unique and exotic creature who has captured my heart in spite of her fear and her strict rules regarding social distancing.

Petal is the prettiest of little girl dogs, which breaks my heart because she doesn’t have any of the reference points that might have allowed her to believe in her own cuteness. Her sense of self-worth is all wrong, but as I’ve said before, she has strength. Her emotional healing is happening at a snail’s pace, but it’s happening, and I suspect the ultimate result will be a new kind of Petal, a happy dog who still craves solitude at times (with TV), who is most comfortable when there are healthy social distances, and who knows who she is. And that she is loved. Sounds to me like a good house cat.

Even to this day, I have never heard Petal make any kind of sound, but she sometimes looks at me with what I imagine to be an expression of mild appreciation (still mixed in with too much fear). When she stares at me, she seems to be trying to steal my thoughts. My thoughts about her should cause her to relax, so apparently the mind-meld is not working.

I love talking to both of them, trying to help them hear my words as not to be feared, as sounds that carry love and affection. Sometimes I sing-talk to them. It’s all very silly, but they are my little girls, after all.

I doubt we will ever attain the best-case scenario, which (in my mind) would be a family life in which little girl dogs exist only to have fun, and in which everybody loves everybody else, without fear or condition.

But is that really the best-case scenario? It sounds more like a fairy tale. I have been trying to stop thinking of ZaP as dogs that need to be fixed. We are simply a family of four. Each of us is messed up in different ways, but we are all learning to live with one another. All four of us (not just ZaP) will change in the coming years. All four of us will learn, and all four of us will grow, ’til death do us part. That’s family. That’s life. That’s the world in which we live. That’s the best-case scenario.