Doggie Shrink Puts Molly on the couch
/The Boston Herald
It's official. She suffers from separation anxiety, which is why she eats socks and scarves and those cloth-covered scrunchies you put in your hair. She loves us and can't stand to be separated from us and by devouring what is ours she is, in a very real way, keeping us with her always.
Welcome to Doggy Psychology 101. Or man's relentless effort to find a rational explanation for irrational behavior.
My dog is a mental case. That's the bottom line. She is 8 years old and hasn't yet learned that one of these days a tube sock is going to kill her. She's had four abdominal surgeries, the most recent a few weeks ago. If she were a child, we'd be behind bars, our faces plastered on posters depicting what good parenting is not. For when we're not looking (And how can we be looking all the time, Your Honor?), our otherwise relatively semi-normal, sometimes almost-good dog sneaks into the trash and retrieves whatever was close to us that we've thrown away: tissues, napkins, paper towels, because she loves us.
These are harmless, more or less digestible items, which she swallows in the name of devotion. It's disgusting, yes, but to each his own. It's when she goes after more substantial things like ties. ("She ate my Save the Children tie? That's where it went?" my husband groaned.) Or the socks that she stole from his gym bag ("I don't know how she got the zipper open") that we run into big problems.
But she doesn't seem to get it, the if-I-do-this, that-will-happen chain of events, at least as it applies to items of clothing. With dog food it's a different thing. Every day when the clock chimes four, she gets crazy because she knows that four, means it's time to EAT! The clock chimes three and she just lies where she is, gazing adoringly at me. It chimes every hour but it's only at 4 p.m. that she leaps up, jumps on me, then runs around in circles moaning until I feed her.
Which means she understands some logic some of the time.
After her third surgery last year (we'd left her to go on vacation), the vet suggested we get a muzzle and keep all items of clothing smaller than a sweatshirt locked up. We tried, but she kept getting her muzzle off, so we gave up on it and went back to constant vigilance and not leaving anything around.
It worked for a year and then a few weeks ago we went to Connecticut for a day. When we returned Molly was sick and the socks in the gym bag were gone.
Which brings us to Clomicalm, the recommended next step for aberrant doggie behavior. The vet, who still can't get over the fact that Molly ate the intravenous tube, needle and all just hours after her surgery, while under his care, has prescribed it. He says she needs it. I don't disagree.
However, I'm a little worried about the effects of this drug, which doctors prescribe to people who compulsively wash their hands or who can't leave the house without going back a dozen times to check that the stove is off. Side effects include spinning and self-mutilation by licking, which I hope are effects evidenced only in dogs. Sedation and reduced appetite are the more commonly documented behaviors, by-products, which, in Molly's case, we would welcome.
Without drugs, Molly will continue to seek out socks and other worn-close-to-the-skin sundries as a substitute for love. With drugs, Molly may well spin her way to China. The vet says behavior modification might help. He didn't specify whose behavior should be modified, Molly's or ours.
