Obsessive Wilson Disorder

I’m about to give Somewhere a rawhide bone. Not because she’s a good dog and deserves one, but because she’s driving me crazy and I want her still.

She’s a crazy puppy right now because I didn’t take her to her beloved new dog park today. I didn’t take her anywhere, in fact. Not even Kwik Trip.

Instead, I took her out of the kennel for a while in the morning while we got ready for our day. Then I put her back in the box and went on Holly’s field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum, where parking costs are outrageous. Paying for it is my own fault, as I refuse to ride on a school bus. It breaks too many of my rules regarding space and noise. I gladly paid the eleven dollars for parking to not have to ride on that bus.

I let Somewhere out as soon as we got home at three, but I didn’t take her anywhere because we had to leave right away for gymnastics. I left her with Georgia, who was unhappily but dutifully cleaning out whatever died in her room.

Somewhere is not always a spaz. She has days, weeks even where she is so ridiculously well behaved that I can’t believe how lucky I am. Then a day or two goes by where I don’t take her to exercise and she eats a whole bag of bathroom garbage. She spends the night throwing it up all over my bed, my hallway, my stairs and my house. She even has the decency to look up at me with extra wide brown eyes, as if she’s sorry for the inconvenience.

As long as I chuck a tennis ball for her for a half an hour nearly every day, she’s a reasonable puppy. She still tears up Kleenex and occasionally harasses Football the cat, but she’s more than tolerable. The Kleenex doesn’t bother me as much as her chasing Football, as I am completely convinced that he is one of the nicest guys on the planet, cat or not.

I’ve heard of the term “ball obsessed” before, but I guess I never understood it or gave it much thought until now. At first, I thought that she was just especially attached to her ball. She treated it more like a friend than an inanimate object. If we lost one in the ditch or the lake, she’d whimper as we drove away. Obviously Somewhere is of the leave-no-man-behind philosophy, and so we started calling the ball “Wilson.” The name stuck, and now, at the dog park, we yell “Where’s Wilson?” every time she loses the ball. It’s a good conversation starter. And since we’re in the business of naming things around here, we’ve named Somewhere’s ball issues: Obsessive Wilson Disorder

I thought that once we started going to a park with other dogs, she’d want to play with them and not just Wilson. But so far the only interest she has in the other dogs is to give them the ball a time or two, and then give up and bring it back to me. I think she assumes that they can throw it for her, but won’t.

Somewhere loves to swim, but will only swim with Wilson. If he doesn’t go in, she sits in the water up to her neck just off shore with only her head sticking out of the water. She resembles a little Loch Ness monster with a long pink tongue hanging out the side of its mouth.

I’m lying in bed with Holly, rubbing her back like I’d promised, and Somewhere repeatedly takes Wilson and places him on my back, where he rolls down my body leaving a long damp trail, and then falls to the floor with a dull wet thud. She isn’t going to give up.

I suppose that I could go around the house and collect all the Wilsons, but then she’ll just sit and pant at the spot where I’ve hidden them, or the empty spot where they used to be. She’s stubborn with a one track mind.

So now, in the name of sanity, Somewhere is eating a rawhide bone on my bed. It reminds me of my position on television for the girls when they were small. There were moments when it was necessary to just turn it on as an electronic babysitter in the interest of peace and quiet, and the possibility for me to get something done.

Basically, I caved.