How the Lord taught me compassion by training a dog with a serious case of Separation Anxiety.
A little bug-eyed monster with terrible behavioral problems, teaches me christ like behavior.
Without going into too much detail and providing fodder for anyone attempting to Dox me, I will only say that I have a background in training Dogs.
I love dogs, I’ve always loved and been fascinated with dogs my entire life. As a young boy we always had dogs around the house (but not in the house. My Asian father would not let them live inside.)
Around the age of 16, with my first paycheck from my first job, I bought a working line german shepherd. That dog was an incredible and amazing dog. I trained that dog myself, and looking back it’s amazing I got the results I did b/c my training approach was not great - and probably a little over the top. But he listened attentively, protected the family when needed, and when my oldest son had just stared to walk, he was a protector and playmate. (Yes, I was married/had kids early.)
Looking back now, after all of these years, I think one of the reasons I love dogs so much is that I naturally got along with them. Communicating with Dogs was always easier than people. As I have gotten older, I see most dogs I train, like I see a 3 year old toddler. A perpetual child that needs help, direction, love, attention and nurturing.
The strange little freak
My affinity for dogs probably has something to do with my high functioning autism (Aspergers.) I didn’t find that out I has Aspergers until I was about 20 (at college.) When I was growing up in the 80’s I don’t think people really knew what that was. My parents certainly didn’t have any awareness of it and (elementary/secondary) school councillors were oblivious, so it was not identified or addressed early. The right kind of support could probably have made my school experience much better.
Needless to say, I was bullied mercilessly at school, particularly in elementary school (K-7.) I was an odd kid and my very presence brought out the inner school yard bully in every other boy that was around me.
If you’ve ever watched the show Young Sheldon, then you may have a good idea of what I was like as a child. I was extremely socially awkward, probably too smart for my own good, a fantasy and sci-fi bookworm, I loved star-trek the next generation, idolized Captain Picard and Thomas Edison, was a mama’s boy, had zero people or social skills, challenged any rules that didn’t make sense (or seemed arbitrary) and mercilessly, pretentiously, and without tact, readily confronted what I considered to be stupidity. I also tended to be obsessive about things I was passionate about. To top it off, I had (what were considered in the early 80’s) extremely nerdy/dorky interests like anime, dungeons and dragons, and liked building things like catapults, and boats that probably never could have floated.1
While the other kids wanted to be firefighters, policemen, soldiers, pilots or astronauts, I wanted to grow up to be a scientist (and yes in high-school my favorite subject was physics, I’m still proud to report that I got over 100% in each of my high-school physics classes b/c I did all the bonus assignments and correctly finished bonus questions on exams. I used to shoot rubber projectiles from a toy gun and bow in the living room, calculate the trajectory, predict where they would land, and use physics to work out the forces applied to the projectile from the toy that was used. Yes, I was a huge nerd!) I also used to take everything apart to see how it worked. (and yes, I grew up to be an engineer.)
In my defense, I never wore a bowtie (but I did wear plenty of other dorky hand me down clothes from the 70’s that my mother obtained from my cousins.) I also, unfortunately, wore glasses, which for an Asian kid was par for the course, but as 1/2 Asian, was still enough to get you beat up. And of course the Asian kids would not claim a guai-lo bastard like me, I was too honkey for them. It also didn’t help that the office assistant, any time they I got called to the office, called me “Wee” instead of “Lee.” “Can Mr. Wee please come to the principle’s office?” That always set off episodes of laughter, finger pointing (at me) and episodes of mockery and bullying that would last all day. I remember thinking to myself, Damn, are these trailer trash guai-lo2 bastards really this inbred? (I grew up in a low income ghetto area - yes they have those in Canada. Education and intelligence were both in short supply. I think, the office assistant was either mentally handicapped or a racist. Probably both. I corrected here every time, and then she kept on doing it - for years.) At this time, just being a foreigner was enough to get you picked on, being a 1/2 breed was far far worse.
If it wasn’t for my brother, I would have gotten beaten up on a regular basis. Any time a kid came after me, my brother would throw down without hesitation and wade into the bully fists flying. He was always completely fearless and I still remember this and am grateful, to this day.
This was the 80’s before anyone cared about bullying. I also had 0 friends; - well, not entirely true, I had 1 friend who was the second most unpopular boy in the school (I was the most unpopular.) One year, a Jamaican kid showed up at our school and we became friends. He was popular because he was cool, and extremely athletic. He won every track and field competition. During that time, I got a bit of a reprieve from the bullying due to his willingness to risk his reputation by being my friend. Sadly, at the end of the year, during summer break, he had cardiac arrest while at a high jump competition and died. I was in the hospital at the time having my second open heart surgery. My mother was so concerned about the effect it might have on me that she didn’t tell me until the next school year started and I couldn’t find him. I didn’t get to attend the funeral or say goodbye.
During recesses or lunch breaks, I would walk around the school daydreaming or sit on a concrete barrier and write short stories or draw out future inventions in a notebook. The other kids absolutely refused to invite me to play with them, even the girls. I was radioactive. I can still see the sneers of disdain on their faces, I can still hear them calling me a freak behind my back or when I approached them during recess. Not going to lie, that treatment hurt, even as an ASD person that didn’t understand was emotions were until his late 40’s. I remember feeling the pain of their sneers, mocking, name calling, and physical bullying pretty strongly as a kid.
At home, however, I didn’t need the approval of other kids, the dogs were my friends. They liked me no matter what, they didn’t judge me, they didn’t bully me, they didn’t attack me3, they didn’t sneer at me or call me names, they weren’t assholes, and they seemed to appreciate my desire to not want to talk to them (many dogs find meaningless human prattling annoying and irritating.) Instead of avoiding me, they followed me around and wanted my attention. Their body language was also much easier for me to read. For obvious reasons, I think I always got on better with the dogs than with people.
Being that this was the reality of my childhood (at least until I was 13, but to be honest, high school wasn’t much better), it left me with a need, as an adult, to be needed and to be accepted, and to be loved. My therapist says that I need to learn to love myself, or at least start with compassion for myself. As an ASD person who still doesn’t really grok4 emotions, it’s something I admit that I absolutely do not know how to do. I’ve been thinking about it, but all I can see are my flaws and brokenness. On some level, I can still only see the broken little freak.
The troubled bug-eyed monster
Last month, a little Boston terrier I nicknamed Bug (because of her bug eyes) came to me for obedience training. The owners said she was a little whiny sometimes but generally settled down. Unbeknown to us, Bug had a severe case of separation anxiety. The first week she was with me, was hellish to say the least. I couldn’t leave her sight without her having a melt down. That made it hard to work, eat, or do anything
productive. I once left the house to go to a dentist appointment. On the way home I figured I’d check on how Bug was doing. I opened my ring app and looked at the camera I had pointed at her kennel. The housekeeper had finished her work, left the house and there were no people at home, Bug was in a full on meltdown and in obvious emotional distress. Barking, wailing, snorting, and doing the bucking bronco routine in her kennel while urinating and defecating everywhere (and then stepping in it and smearing it all over herself.) She would punctuate that by short stints of trying to chew through the kennel door before going back to the meltdown behavior. To make it worse, Bug’s wailing sounded like she was being abused - it sounded like how you might imagine an animal would sound if you were dismembering it while it was still alive. It was so horrific that my wife was concerned someone would hear her and call the police. That was when I realized the full extent of her issue.
I knew I had to address this problem because there would be no way I’d be able to train this dog while she was in an almost constant state of emotional distress, and I certainly could not afford to return the training fees I had collected. I also felt that left unaddressed, I wouldn’t be able to get through the next few weeks with my sanity intact. Besides, what quality of life could this dog have if this problem were allowed to remain?
I have dealt with separation anxiety this bad before, but only once before and it wasn’t fun. On the advice of the person who trained me, I don’t take serious cases of separation anxiety. It is typically best addressed at the owners home with the owners present as they are almost always the cause and trigger. I also knew that even if I fixed it for me in my home, as soon as the dog goes back home with her owners, the problem will come right back and you’ll have to start the entire process over.
My first attempt (based on some bad advice from another trainer) was a bark collar (yes with the electric stimulation - but on a low level; vibration or tone had 0 effect.) The theory was that by making the barking and howling uncomfortable that this would force her to start learning some impulse control and emotional regulation. As I suspected, it only made the problem worse. So, I took a deep breath, and mentally prepared for and committed to a long and extremely tedious course of gradual, gentle counter conditioning. I started extra sessions with her for the entire week. On Saturday I put in at least 8 hours of work with her and after all of this, I could only go to the kitchen or walk to the front door; but I couldn’t open it. That would require another 6 hours the following day. By the next Monday, I was exhausted, frustrated, the problem still wasn’t fixed, and I was hating this dog (believe me, I was none too happy with the owners either.)
Now, this is all going on smack in the middle of Orthodox lent and the 40 day Lenten fast. For those of you who have never experienced the Orthodox approach to Lent, I can only say that it’s *next level.* Roman Catholics (at least according to my RC father) will often choose one thing to give up, a couple days a week (wed/fri) for Lent. Orthodox only eat one full meal a day, and cut out meat, dairy, eggs, fish and olive oil for the entire 40 days! I had never done this before and that list of things we give up basically comprises 99% of my normal diet, but I’d had a year’s worth of practise doing intermittent fasting so in my pridefulness I figured I could tackle this at 100%. I wanted to go whole hog and obtain the spiritual formation I believed I would obtain from the practise. Our spiritual fathers mentioned to us as catechumens many times to approach it with moderation. They specifically warned us that if this if your first time, do not try to do everything at 100%. Work up to it, start with what is realistic and increase your discipline over time as you get stronger. Bahhh…. what do they know, that advice is for normies, not me, right? I’m all in!
With the fasting, still being in recovery from a serious stroke, and then many nights of only a few hours sleep at a time due to a hook worm infection that went through all my dogs (and resulted in cleaning out kennels and bathing dogs at 3am: for a couple of weeks I had no more than 2 hours of sleep a night.) Eventually I hit a wall of fatigue, depression and despair and had a day where I literally just gave up trying to do anything. It was during that day, after praying for help, that the following insights came to me.
I was working with Bug, and looked down at her big bulging bug eyes. I felt resentment and dislike for her. Not only did she have major emotional and behavioral problems, but I felt that she was ugly and unloveable. Like a kind of freak. (On top of all her issues, she was also dog aggressive. Once while my dog walked past, without any warning or signs at all - very unusual for a dog - she dashed over and bit my dog before I could stop her.) I remember thinking at the time. “Bug, you’re such a hideous little creature.”
So I’m looking down at her as some odd, bug-eyed freakish monster with a ton of problems, and the thought came to me, What if this is how God sees me? As some hideous little broken freak with all these problems, totally unlovable and a sinner. What would Christ do for me even if he saw me as some freakish little monster?
Then the following text from the Creed and my prayer book quickly followed in my mind:
Yet, whom for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, he suffered and was buried.
Yea, my Lord, my Comfort, Who for my miserable sake wast clothed in corruptible flesh, draw me out of misery, and grant comfort to my miserable soul.
These thoughts stopped me in my tracks. I paused and looked down at Bug again. Instead of seeing an ugly bug-eyed freak of a dog, I saw a scared and anxious little girl, who was in an almost constant state of emotional distress through no fault of her own. Then I thought back to my childhood and saw that little boy who was called a freak by so many, that didn’t know any better, who was also lonely, scared, anxious, and in pain. I realized that I’m Bug. I’m no different. I’m even more broken with issues even more severe than hers.
I instantly changed my attitude and perspective. My heart softened and I began to love and feel compassion for her. Thank you Saint Nektarios for helping me think, feel and act like a Saint, instead of a sinful prideful man. Which called to mind something I recently heard in a YouTube video interview I think with Coptic Priest Fr. Lazarus.
Knowledge puffs up, Love edifies.
I pray that I can always think and act like a Saint. Like my Saint Nektarios, a humble and loving man who approached first with love and compassion instead of judgement or irritation for being inconvenienced.
Thankfully, Bug proved to be a smart little cookie and the obedience training went quickly as she picked things up much faster than your average dog. The time I spent addressing her separation anxiety was not extra time added on to her training stay.
By the end of her training, the dog that was my most difficult case, that dog that I initially disliked the most, was the dog I loved the most and had the most difficult time sending home. Truly, this change of heart is the miracle of the Orthodox church.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me…. a broken little freak (and a Sinner.)
(I apologize for the above, it seemed fitting.)
Love you Bug!
Imagine my sense of irony that now anime, manga and dungeons and dragons are all Cool. Indeed as Elon Musk (another guy with Asperger) has opined. The most ironic outcome is the most likely.
Guai-lo is a derogatory cantonese term for white people. It literally means ghost man. I didn’t hesitate to use it because the people I grew up around were overtly racist as hell. If I had been and looked 100% Asian it would have been better, but being bi-racial, I got it from both sides. The white kids would call me a Chink, and the Chinese kids would call me a Guai-lo. Their parents (or any other older chinese people) would often say to my father…. “You stained the white shirt.” Where the “White Shirt” here meant racial purity, and they wouldn’t let their children associate with my brothers or I. So, gen-z you think you had it hard bitches? Try growing up bi-racial in the 70’s and 80’s. It certainly didn’t help that at church, the LDS attitude was that interracial marriage was a sin. I’ve seen general authorities, and I swear a book by Neal A. Maxwell, where he says that directly and attempts to make scriptural case for this racist opinion.
ok, not completely true. Once while walking though a wooden gate my other little brother closed the gate on my dog’s tail and he turned and redirected on me and bit my foot so hard that his tooth went clean through my shoe and my big toe. That was the only time one of my dogs ever bit me.
Nerd speak for ‘understand or comprehend completely’ The term comes from a 1961 sci-fi novel “Stranger in a Strange Land) by Robert Heinlein. The story is about a human who was raised by Marians and tries to adapt to Earth society. The term has since been adopted by in software engineering culture, hacker (programmer) communities, and other technology related Geekdoms to describe an intuitive of wholistic understanding of complex systems or concepts.