Alice 3.0
Our beloved dog faces her biggest challenges yet.
In the penultimate fourth-season episode of the great show Better Call Saul, the title character, often-crooked lawyer Jimmy McGill (he becomes Saul later—long story) is arguing with his partner in cohabitation and sometimes law-slash-crime, Kim Wexler. He’s being petty and selfish and accusatory after losing his bar reinstatement hearing, and Kim calls him on it.
“Jimmy! I have been on your side since the day we met! Who comes running when you call? Who cleans up your messes? … You confess to a felony on tape, I’m there. You have a bar hearing, I represent you. Over and over and over again! If you need me, I’m there.”
As the last episode of the season comes to a close, Jimmy is up for a hearing to reverse the decision denying the reinstatement of his law license. Before they go in to the hearing room, Kim tells him: “Jimmy, no matter what happens in there: I’m with you.”
It’s a pointed callback to their earlier conversation. It’s an important dramatic moment in the sense that we’re seeing Jimmy not really listening and not really appreciating what Kim is trying to tell him: that not everybody in the world is looking down on him because he got his law degree from a correspondence school, and worked in the mailroom, and got bailed out of trouble repeatedly in the past by his much-more-accomplished old brother, who happened to be one of the most brilliant attorneys of his generation.
Anyway, the bigger themes aren’t that important. What this brings to mind, for me, is how I approach life with our dog, Alice. I want Alice to know what, in effect, Kim was trying to get through Jimmy’s thick skull:
Alice, you don’t ever need to fight the world, and all of your anxieties, by yourself.
I’m here for you. I’m here by your side. Always.
This dynamic is a little different these days, now that Alice is less a nervous wreck and more a bundle of energy demanding multiple walks a day (or at least trips outside to the backyard). My spouse Julie and I have been living in our new house for a couple of years now.
Is Alice used to the staircase, which she didn’t have to deal with at our old house? Yes, she loves bounding up and down the stairs and likes chilling on the landing. She peeks her head around the corner from the top of the stairs to see what I’m up to below.
Does she like the new neighborhood? Yes. It’s an excellent walking neighborhood.
Does she like the new backyard? Mixed reviews. She loves running out when the sliding door opens, leaping off the deck (who needs stairs?), barking and occasionally chasing a bunny (none caught here yet, thankfully). She rolls around in the grass for fun, and relaxes in the warmth of the lawn when the sun’s out. She does miss the bushes and overgrowth of our old yard; here, there’s nowhere to hide and dig. And no squirrels—yet, anyway.
Is she 100 percent well-adjusted? Well, not quite, but who is?
Other than our yellow Lab, Nell, Alice’s little (adopted) sis. Nell is the picture of well-adjusted.
Alice is still a little bit of a work in progress. Last December, Julie and I were cleaning the whole house at once because we had someone coming over. That made Alice anxious enough that she started throwing up. And when Alice throws up, it can go on for hours. She thinks she’s sick, and so she tries to lick surfaces and eat grass so she throws up some more. The worst thing about it is it’s really tough to get her to calm down.
She does have some legit stomach issues that prescription dog food have really helped with (she also takes a few regular medications). And fortunately these bouts of anxiety-leading-to-hurling have been very rare in the past year and a half or so since we moved.
Alice has some separation anxiety when Julie travels. Getting out the suitcase gets Alice revved up. She doesn’t get sick, but she’ll pace the house in a semi-panic. Once Julie leaves and Alice realizes I’m still here (and Nell, too), she chills out.
Alice will still eat long grass on walks, and tries to eat other stuff on occasion if she can find it (that is, and sorry to get gross: she will eat poo).
Thunderstorms and heavy rain bother her some (but not enough to get sick over it, thankfully).
She’s mostly a regular dog.
Her assertiveness is most evident when it comes to yours truly. Julie has more dog experience than I do. She’s also more authoritative in general than I am (as a scholar and professor she’s an accomplished pro at presenting material in front of large audiences of students and peers, to offer one example). I think I’m a pretty good dog owner in the sense that I make the dogs adhere to established rules (bed is OK but not couches; no human food; no begging), but I’ll admit on the finer points I’m not as consistent as Julie is.
Alice sees me as an easy mark. Easier than Julie, anyway. If she wants to go out she’ll nudge me with her body. She’ll playfully (?) snap at me from far enough away that I’d have to launch myself directly into her jaws in order to actually get bitten. She’ll murmur and grumble (we call it a “pre-bark”).
And yeah, she’ll bark at me.
Do I give in? It depends on the circumstances. (I can picture Julie cringing at this lack of consistency when she reads this.) If I just took her out or there’s no walk coming anytime soon, I’ll tell her to cut it out. If it’s been a while since they were out or I sense some sort of potential distress, I’ll acquiesce.
When she tries to eat something on a walk, I’ll scold her, but we’ve been unable to train that out of her.
When she pretends not to hear me when it’s time to come in, I don’t drag her by the collar. I talk to her and herd her toward the door, and eventually she decides to hear me and complies.
She’s still afraid of random weird things, like our ceiling fans. Afraid doesn’t mean she avoids it, like the vacuum. Afraid means legs shaking, terrified, fleeing the scene. So we don’t use our ceiling fans. Maybe we could train her to tolerate ceiling fans. Maybe we could make her do certain things she hates so many times that she puts up with them. But our strategy, for the most part, has been to avoid those things she hates, when possible.
Who knows how she got this way? She was abandoned and found in a shelter. She was transported from South U.S. to East, and eventually wound up in foster care, with a volunteer for a Maryland rescue organization. We don’t know what she went through in those days, but she’s become a much calmer and happier dog over the past few years.
For Alice, living well is the best revenge.
I wouldn’t even call her a “rescue” these days. She’s a Lab mix with a few quirks, a health issue or two, and seemingly endless energy. And she loves to run.
I wrote all of the above several months ago, back in early 2019. I was expecting to finish with a recap of our latest two 5K races. We did run two 5Ks last year, the Metro Vet/MVA 5K for the third time, and the Providence Animal Center Bark in the Park for the first time in October.
A few weeks after the October race, we noticed Alice was limping a bit. After a trip to the veterinarian and some activity restriction (which Alice of course hated), it was determined that she needed surgery to clear out what we thought was a non-major shoulder issue.
Turns out, Alice’s problem was much worse than we first thought. She needed a front-leg amputation, and our related fears were confirmed when testing revealed that she has a serious form of bone cancer.
Her leg surgery took place in mid-December. As of this writing, a month later, Alice is amazingly just about back to normal in terms of her ability to get around.
Taking her home right after the surgery was rough. She was on pain meds and clearly wasn’t herself. Almost as bad, her sis Nell hardly recognized her and avoided her for days like she had a contagious disease.
We read that dogs tend to recover quickly from this surgery, but even knowing that, Alice’s bounce-back has been remarkable. Just a couple of weeks after losing her front leg, she can do pretty much everything she did before, and seems nearly as fast running from point A to B.
The long-term prognosis for Alice’s cancer isn’t great. With chemotherapy, which she just started, the average length of survival is one year, with 20 percent of dogs reaching at least two years living with this disease. Alice has defeated the odds many, many times, but personally, I’m afraid to get my hopes up.
Julie and I always like to talk about New Alice and New New Alice, marveling at the way she’s changed and grown. Now we like to call her Alice 3.0, the fastest, most energetic, most pedal-to-the-metal three-legged dog around.
