Man’s Best Friend (Or how the windows in my home were replaced), by Brian Segal

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Man’s Best Friend (Or how the windows in my home were replaced)

by Brian Segal

I’m not really sure where to start this story so I guess I’ll take the advice of the king in Lewis Carroll’s story Alice in Wonderland and “Begin at the Beginning and go on till you come to the End.”

For as long as I can remember I have always had a dog. After our last dog died at the ripe old age of 16 we went out looking for a puppy that would suit our specific needs. I know that sounds somewhat cold, but we needed to get a dog that would be able to spend a great deal of time in the winter outdoors. After some searching, we heard through the grapevine that there were puppies at the local SPCA. When we got there, sure enough, there were three puppies lying in a small concrete kennel. Low and behold all three of them looked like huskies, exactly what we were looking for.

We had decided that we wanted to get a male dog. I’m not sure why we had made that decision. My wife picked up one of the puppies, turned it on over, and said it was a male. She held it in her arms for the half an hour to 45 minutes that it took to complete the paperwork. We had to promise that we would get the dog neutered. For the entire time that she held the puppy it lay quietly in her arms. Everything seemed perfectly normal. We had borrowed a kennel from a friend to use when my wife and I both went out. We figured the dog was a little too young to be left tied up to a runner outdoors. The only problem with that was when we tried to put the dog in the kennel she would do a great imitation of a Linda Blair scene from the Exorcist. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, the puppy turned out to be a female not a male (a case of mistaken gender identity). We told the vet that our dog went berserk when we had her in the kennel—he said that some dogs suffer from claustrophobia just as some humans do. We managed to solve that problem by keeping her in our screen porch when we went out. She did not take too long getting house trained. She was fairly timid with people initially but once she got to know you she was very friendly. She barked a lot when people came over, but never showed any signs of aggression. That was all that we wanted, a dog that would let us know when people were coming over without having to worry about someone getting bitten. She is gentle with young children and has a great time playing with other dogs. Being a husky breed she loves the winter and all the snow that accompanies it. She burrows down into the snow banks and roll around snowdrifts.

The only thing we noticed was that when we left her alone at home she had a tendency to at times do some minor damage in the basement. Nothing serious, but even still, we decided to leave her locked upstairs whenever we went out. For some reason she would never chew on anything upstairs. Over the years [she is now 4 1/2 years old] quirks in her personality began to come out.

Since I spend a great deal of time at home alone, Shadow (that is our dog’s name) became a fairly constant companion. The name Shadow suits her perfectly, because as the saying goes, “she seems to be often scared of her own shadow.” Even our vet calls her a little chicken. As I said before, she seemed to have her own eccentricities. If the doorbell rings downstairs, she sometimes ends up running upstairs barking at the door. It is almost as if she has trouble locating the source of the sounds.

Most importantly through all her eccentricities, at least for me, she became a source of comfort when I needed it the most. Dogs, at least those that are family pets, demand very little. Food, water, and a little affection are all that they seem to need. Dogs do not hold grudges and seem to readily forget the times when they were yelled at for one reason or another.

As I said before, we used to keep Shadow upstairs whenever we went out. That seemed to prevent any damage being done. A couple of weeks ago, though, I came back from one of my exercise classes to find my wife waiting at the basement door and Shadow tied to her runner. I found that a little odd, because normally my wife would put the dog inside the house so that Shadow would not get in the way of the driver getting me out of the adapted van. The first words my wife said when I got inside were, “Shadow has destroyed the upstairs.” I didn’t know exactly what she meant until I got upstairs and saw that the dog had shredded all the blinds in the house, chewed the moldings around the large windows in our living room and main bedroom. She had also put her paws through one of the panes of glass and left bloody footprints around much of the upstairs.

The blinds had been wooden ones so the upstairs of the house looked as if someone had scattered thousands of toothpicks all over the floors. Both my wife and I were in a state of shock. I have to admit that at that moment, I was ready to take the dog to the vet to have her euthanized. We thought that perhaps someone had tried to break in the house but there was nothing missing. It took hours to clean the house, which, as it turns out, was probably a good thing since it gave us a little time to calm down. We decided to call the vet and ask him why this might have happened. Basically, all he could tell us was that perhaps Shadow had had a panic attack! He suggested that perhaps she could use the canine version of Prozac. I found it all quite bizarre until I thought that perhaps some dogs, like some humans, can have their mentally interesting moments. We agreed to give the Prozac a try. [When I told the people who I take my MS exercise class with this story they could not stop laughing.]

At the same time, I decided I might as well call the insurance company to see if we were covered for this kind of damage. Amazingly enough, when I called the adjuster, she said it was not the first time she had heard this kind of story. Using the parlance of insurance companies, “movables” such as blinds were not covered but the windows were since they were part of the structure of the house.

After all was said and done, we will be having brand-new windows, far better than the original ones, installed. Shadow was only on the medication for about a week. We decided the simplest solution would be to simply leave her outside when we were not home.  She is tied to a runner about 100 feet long so it’s not as if she is shackled to a 6 foot leash. All is forgiven. I’ve even thought about renting her out to people who want to do renovations to their home, but can’t really afford it. All you would have to do is leave her inside the house for a predetermined amount of time and then call your insurance company.

Needless to say, Shadow is still with us. Probably we will never know what triggered her rampage but I must say the new windows look great.

Brian Segal is living in the country north of Montréal. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about 16 years ago and, when asked, tells people he is retired (It sounds a lot better than telling people you are on disability insurance). He is happily married, no children, but one very friendly husky cross. He also has the good fortune of living in his own home, not a home.

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