There's No Way to Avoid Being a Molly Coddler

The Boston Herald

Here's what happens when I don't pay attention to my dog, Molly. She crawls under the kitchen table and eats paper. Constant attention is what she needs and constant attention is what she demands and since I am only human, I falter sometimes. And she makes me pay for it.

Just now, for example, I was at the table reading the paper and thereby ignoring her. So she skulked over to the trash, grabbed a paper towel, made a bee line for safety among the rungs of the table and chairs, where she proceeded to tear the towel into pieces and stuff them halfway down her throat, forcing me to leap from my chair and extricate what little I could from her mouth.

She gets what she wants this way. She tried the good-girl thing. She did sweet and cajoling, nudging me, whimpering a little, to get me to put down the news of the day and get on the floor with her. You could almost hear her say, "Scratch my belly. Rub behind my ears. You know how much I love to have my ears rubbed."

But I rebuffed her. "No, Molly. Go lie down. Later. We'll play later." Then I turned my back and the page, sipped coffee and proceeded to shut her out of my life.

What choice does a self-respecting, slightly demented dog have? What do I think I'm doing anyway, paying attention to something that lies inert at the door every morning, that doesn't come running, tail wagging, drooling for crying out loud, unabashedly thrilled to see me?

"Look at me," my dog seems to be saying. "See how cute I am, big brown eyes looking just at you." And to get me to look back she does exactly what she needs to, exactly what I tell her not to do every day.

And it works! Look where she has me. The sun has yet to come up and here I am in her lair, my fingers down her throat, talking only to her, "Why do you continually do this? What is wrong with you? Bad dog! Bad!" My voice, no matter what its tone, is music to her fluffy little ears.

I retrieve what she hasn't swallowed, tap her on the nose, look her in the eyes and say, "Bad girl." And OK, I know that dogs can't smile, but Molly does.

She has reason to. This eating paper thing works for her. If I put the trash where she can't reach it, she simply tiptoes into the bathroom and pulls out trash from there. If I keep the bathroom door closed, thereby making it as cold as a Canadian outhouse, she wanders into my office. She ate a phone number the other day - an unlisted one. This got my attention big-time.

It used to be worse. Before she went on her behavior-altering drug (Why does she gulp down everything except this little blue pill, which has to be hidden in peanut butter or stuck into a banana?) she ate cloth as well as paper: dish towels, sponges, socks and other things we won't get into. After surgery to remove one of these things, she actually ate her IV tube.

It got her the reward she wanted: the doctor incredulous, saying, "I've never seen a dog quite like you."

The staff pointing at her, shaking their heads and smiling. "You're one crazy dog, you know that?"

And me sitting outside her cage, saying, "What are we going to do with you, puppy?" Yes, Molly, it seems, is "psychologically disturbed." Then again, maybe she has simply found a foolproof way of getting exactly what she wants when she wants it: a human pal to hang out with under the kitchen table, a pal whose attention, however attained, is entirely focused on her.