The Dogs of Emotions
      by Jay


       Friday, July 11, 2003 - 1:27 AM 

 
    Every now and then I like to be completely serious with my writings and hit topics that are personal to me. This past week has thrown my humor skills out the window and I need to discuss the reason with someone before I explode.  So if you are looking for something to brighten your and make you laugh, then feel free to read any of the other posts or comics, for this rant is going to be as serious as possible.  On the plus side, these rants do let you understand a little more about me as a person and not as an entertainer...

   I'm not the type of person who displays their emotions in public.  Okay, that's not totally true.  When I'm around others I am usually either in  happy mode, over-the-top mode, bitterly sarcastic mode, overwhelmed-with-work mode, or  a combination of any of these.  You'll notice that I am never angry around others (bitterly sarcastic comes close though), but that's not to say I'm never angry. I've been known to put a few fists through walls, but I usually do that away from innocent bystanders so not very many have seen that side of me.  Now don't get me wrong here, it's not that I'm emotionally shallow or anything, I just choose to be this way for many reasons.  In truth the only people I open up to are my close friends and my serious girlfriends.  All of my serious girlfriends have started out as my friend first, and as our relationship progressed I opened up more to them until we were at the point that I could tell them anything  Unfortunately, not too long after I did this with my last girlfriend I made a big mistake which to this day I regret and it ended up breaking the relationship.  But that's a whole 'nother story.  After going through the pain involved that particular breakup I really haven't fully opened up to anyone since then.  I guess I want to be totally sure with someone before fully committing to that point. Not that I haven't had fun during my past few dates, because I totally have. And I still have awesome conversations with alot of my gal friends (as in "just friends"). And once again I'm way off my intended topic. Would you believe this entire paragraph is just the background information you need to know before I actually rant?  So I'm going to just skip ahead to the point of this entire paragraph:  For the past few months I've been holding back a few of my serious emotions due to the lack of someone to talk to. And now recent events have brought about philosophical and emotional questions about myself that I need to answer. Hopefully, by rhetorically asking them here I can come to terms with what's going on in my life and learn a little more about myself in the process.  Please note that I don't actually need anyone to answer my questions, they are just put there as a means to an end (in other words, please don't e-mail a response to me).  Hopefully by the end of this "rant" you will understand.  So let us begin, shall we?

    On July 4th, I came home from a 13 hour work day only to find out that one of my closest friends and confidants had disappeared. She's gone, missing, disappeared, vanished, and quite possibly forever.  Most of the time when something like this happens to someone you hear about it immediately, so I'm sure a few of you are wondering why you never heard me talk about this.   What most people don't realize is that this special friend of mine that is missing isn't actually a person, she's my dog.   That's right, "man's best friend", the friend who has been there at my side during the best of time and the worst times. The friend who can always cheer me up and who will never judge me on anything I do.  All she has ever asked of me is for me to scratch her back and throw her frisbee to her over and over. 

 And now she's gone, and for some reason I'm indifferent. 

   Personally, I believe a family losing a pet is is just that: a family incident. It's meant to bring the family closer together and it's not something other outsiders would fully understand.  Every family is different in this respect and each death is handled differently.  When someone loses an actual family member such as a mother or a father, a brother or a sister, or even grandparents, then that's when the friends and family come together to cope with the tragedy and work together to move past it.  Everyone understands what it is like to lose a close non-animal family member and so they can help each other through. That's why when you hear someone has lost their mother you call them up and talk to them and offer your condolences and try to help them in whatever way you can.  We are all the same in this respect.  But with animals it is different.  If a friend called you and said that their mother died, would you feel the same sorrow as that if they were to call you saying their pet cat died?  True, you would (or at least should) feel emotional for each, but the emotional level of each event would be way different. And why is that?
    Pets are seen as family only to those who own them.  We see our own pets as a members of our family, while others see them as just our pets.  So when our pet dies it feels like we've lost a sister or brother, while other people see it as us losing an animal.  It's easier to connect with someone who has lost a mother than it is to someone who has lost a pet because the emotions involved with losing a mother are pretty much the same for everyone.  We all understand what it feels like to lose a person we love, but everyone treats their pets differently so it harder to understand what others go through when their pets die.  Also, one of the main parts to owning pets is knowing you will outlive them. Whenever you buy a pet, deep down you know that sooner or later it will die and you will have to cope with that.  That's why it's tragic for someone to lose a sister, brother, mother or a father: it's unexpected and shouldn't happen.  True, none of us expect our parents to outlive us but we at least know they aren't going to die until their octogenarian years or later, which for most us isn't going to happen for another few decades.  When a parent dies before they turn seventy-five we call it "tragic" and say it was "before their time".  But with animals it is different. They can die at any time and we have no way of knowing whether they will live one year or fifteen.  Everyday we subconsciously prepare ourselves for their deaths. Plus you can replace a pet, but not a family member.  Basically, pets deaths are expected and they are replaceable while family members deaths are unexpected and they are irreplaceable.   Which is exactly why you feel differently when a friend loses a mother than when they lose a pet.  But to that friend, their pet's death was like that of a family member and to them that pet seems irreplaceable.  Thus, when my Sady disappeared I felt like it was something to keep within my family and not advertise it to the rest of the world. 
    Maybe I'm totally wrong in that respect, but personally I view other people's loss of pets differently than their loss of family members. When someone messages me and tells me their dog died, I always feel weird because I don't know how to reply to that other than to say "I'm sorry". I choose not to put other people in that odd situation by keeping my family loss to only myself and my family.  

   But now let us get to the problem at hand.

   What bothers me is my emotional indifference to this loss of a member of my family, or more specifically, the loss of my best friend and confidant.  Have I really become so hardened and emotionally distant that the loss of my best friend means nothing to me?  Have I created an emotional firewall so tight that now something that used hit me like a ton of bricks is nothing more than a whimper in the wind?  The answer is no!  At first I was worried that the answer was yes (which is just me being paranoid), but then I realized how ironic that would be.  If I truly was devoid of emotions then I wouldn't be worried about not feeling sorrow for the loss of my beloved dog.  Instead I would be indifferent about it all and go one with my life as if nothing happened.  By showing concern for my own lack of feeling I have proven I can still feel and my problem isn't my emotional restraint.  And thank god for that, because for a moment there I was thought I was going to be like one of the pitiless people of Equilibrium.  To be more precise, I'm not worried that I am devoid of all emotions. I will always be able to feel happy, sarcastic, or any of those other emotions I normally practice in public. I'm worried that because I refuse to show my pain of sorrow to anyone that soon that I will be incapable of actually feeling sorrow about anything. Which in a sense is why I am writing this entire rant.  For one, I am going to prove to myself that I do feel sorry for my loss and that I am an emotionally well-rounded person. And in the process I will expose a little more of myself to those around me which will also help to further that goal.

    So now I need to decide why it seems like I feel nothing for the loss of my dog.  To do that I need to look at circumstances surrounding this loss.

     When I came home from an extremely long and strenuous day of work on Friday, July 4th, I did the same thing I've been doing for the past week: I sat at my computer and submerged myself into many a game of Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. The sad fact is I didn't even realize my dog was missing until my parents came home and asked me where she was. While I was playing my game I did notice my other dog, Cally, was barking more than usual. I just never realized she was trying to tell me something was wrong.  When my family searched our yard for Sady, we found nothing out of ordinary.  There were no holes that she dug, and none of the fence gates were open. We found nothing that told us how she escaped. To this day I still have no idea how she left and it bothers me.  The only explanations are that she jumped over the fence (not impossible, but highly unlikely) or someone took her from our yard. Part of me hopes its the former, just because there is a chance she could come back if that's how she escaped.  And the latter seems statistically impossible. Okay, time for a run-on sentence from hell: What are the chances some random people would be driving in my neighborhood, which is not even a heavily trafficked area, and out of an estimated fifteen other dogs living on our street they see our Sady, who also happens to be totally black and almost invisible at night, and upon seeing this non-full-blood dog they decide they want to take her for some odd reason but decide to leave my full-blooded beagle (aka "the pillow") behind (maybe she was too fat), all the while not knowing whether my family was home or not since our cars were sitting outside of the house (whew!)? There are too many improbable chances for me to believe that is what happened.
     The first night she disappeared I drove around the neighborhood calling for her and going to every house that I heard emanating excessive dog barks. But of course I found nothing. At this point I wasn't really worried about her, because for as long as I can remember I've had dogs that ran away and they always end up coming back.  It was not uncommon during my childhood for our beagles to disappear on a Friday night only to turn up again a few days later.  Something in the beagle's natural instinct tells them to dig holes and run off, but eventually they always come back to their homes.  Due to this, I have grown accustomed to losing a dog for a weekend and when Sady disappeared I just assumed she would come back by the end of the weekend.  But then again, deep down I knew Sady had never been freed from from us before and she hates being alone.  Whenever we take her for walks we let her run free because she never strays too far from us. Plus she is a great aerobic training dog because when you go jogging with her she will run ahead and the stop and look at you as if to say "hurry up".  If you don't go as fast as she wants you to she will run back to you and "push" you from behind into you are running back to the speed she demands.  So I knew she isn't the type to leave our yard by herself, thus I have two conflicting theories which are both highly improbable. 
   But why have I felt little emotion about her disappearance?  As I mentioned earlier, we all subconsciously prepare ourselves for a our pets deaths the instant we get them.  If I had to lose a dog, I would prefer to lose her in this fashion (as in running away). Why?  Because there is always hope that she is alive and happy.  If I had actually seen her lifeless body I don't think I could handle it and I would probably be very emotional about it for the longest time. As they say, ignorance is bliss, and if my dog is really dead then I would prefer not to know about it.  One of the worst experiences of my life occurred with the death of a dog. During my lifetime I've owned around ten dogs, and yet I've never seen any of them die. Most of them ran away and just didn't come back, which again, always leaves me the hope of them living a wonderful life with some other loving family.  Of course now I know that they all can't be alive today since some of my dogs would be around 140 in dog years by now, but at least I never witnessed any of their deaths. Well, all save one but one.
     I have the fortunate (or unfortunate?) luck of having all of my relatives still alive. I have never actually suffered through the loss of a loved family member.  In fact, I have known very few people who have actually died, and I was close to none of them (most of them were barely even acquaintances).  I don't think I have ever been to a funeral in my life. So the only experience with death is that of my previous dog Poco.  It happened on my first day of work at my first job ever.  I came home happy that I had finally accomplished something with my life only to find my beloved Dalmatian at the bottom of our pool.  I buried her myself, but the entire time all I could think about was "Why did I have to get a job and leave her alone? If only I had been at home this wouldn't have happened".  It was my first experience with death, and I'm still affected by it today. Thus when given a choice about losing a dog, I would much rather have them run away than actually find them dead.  Plus if they run away, there is still a chance they will come back. We once had two beagles who ran away and only one came back. Six months later that beagle ran away again and while we were searching for her we found the first beagle scavenging in garbage a few blocks from our house. She had survived six months on her own and in the process lost twenty pounds. Even if Sady doesn't come back today or tomorrow, there is still a chance she will be back someday.  Thus it doesn't feel like I've lost a dog, but have been temporarily deprived of her company.  Luckily, over the past few years I have taken multiple pictures of Sady doing her many hobbies, so in a way I will never be without her company. I know I will always have a part of her within me, so I don't need to be full of sorrow for her disappearance. Instead I shall look back at all the good times we had together and be happy I was lucky enough to share those with here, all the while maintaining the constant hope she will someday return to me.

  In case you hadn't noticed, this entire ordeal has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me.  Recently, I have felt rather bad due to me withholding information from the rest of you.  Even though I asked not to be contacted concerning the topic this rant, some people still messaged me and gave me their deepest sympathy and the such (I guess some people really do care).  And yet I probably received it awkwardly or at the least tried to change the subject on them when they tried to talk to me.  As usual, there is a good reason for this: I'm an insouciant prick who is uncomfortable his emotions. Hehe, okay that's a joke and it's not (totally) true, here is the real reason: This entire rant has taken me nearly four days to write, and during that time one could say I have come to terms with my emotions and what has happened.  But there is also a little resolution to the story that happened while I was writing this rant.  At 4 AM on Wednesday, my last and only dog started scratching on her door begging to be let out.  Most of the time my family sleeps through this because if we were to let her out all she would do is howl and wake everyone up.  Yet this time she refused to shut up and keep pestering us to let her out of her night room.  When we finally gave in and opened her door to free her she just sat there looking at us and refused to move.  Instead she motioned towards the garage door and just sat there looking at it.  That's when it dawned on us that she might be trying to tell us something about Sady, so we went to the front door and opened it to check the darkened neighborhood.  The instant the door opened a black blur whizzed past us flew into the living room.  Our Sady had returned to us, and was as hyper as ever.  Cally had heard her through the garage doors and was trying to tell us about her sitting outside.  At this point I knew my I had solved my emotional problems for good because I did something I hadn't done in a long time: I cried.  I was happy for my dog, and she was happy for me.  I got little sleep that night, and after that my life has seemingly returned to normal.  To this day I still do not know how she got out or what she did for the six days she was missing, but I don't care anymore because my friend has returned to me.  Of course I had already posted a part of this rant, so I had the uncomfortable task of finishing it with the full knowledge that my dog was safe in my home.  Every time I mentioned that she was "missing" or "possibly dead" I knew I was lying because she was sitting there next to my leg waiting for me to play frisbee with her. But I couldn't ruin the point of my rant by giving away the resolution at the beginning of this rant, so I had to maintain the illusion that she was still missing. This rant probably wouldn't be as touching to you if you knew my dog was still with me from the start, so I decided to wait until now before giving you that information. And again, this rant might be better if you didn't know at all.  Sometimes ending a story on a sad note is the best way to make an impact with an audience. Stories like "Old Yeller" and "Where the Red Fern Grows" would not be as emotionally impacting if the dogs lived, so I considered not mentioning that my dog returned to me.  In the end, I felt guilty talking to my sympathetic friends who were trying to help me while at the same time playing with the very dog who my friends thought to be dead. Regardless if she returned to me or not, I still learned something from this entire ordeal and believe I'm a better person because of it. Plus I've displayed a emotional piece of myself to the rest of the world and feel good about doing it.  But I have rambled on long enough, and there is a certain family member holding a frisbee next to my leg who looks like she wants to go swimming in the pool. I think it's time I thought about her needs for once..

     - J, who keeps trying to throw that frisbee far into the yard but it is somehow returned to him each time a little more moist

Currently watching: Wolf's Rain 18, Punk'd
Currently playing: Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne
Currently listening to: Eternal by Evanescence
Currently reading: Crossroads of Twilight