My life companion is a rusty brown miniature poodle named Rudley. He does not know that his human has a history of living with bipolar depression.
He is a shaggy guy with a soft puppy face and a dreadlocked tail that grazes the ground. That tail is a conversation starter which both Rudley and I enjoy when we are out walking – Rudley because he almost always welcomes a stranger’s affection, me because friendly chit chat warms my day. One of the unexpected joys of caring for a dog is that friendliness is always just around the corner.
At home Rudley and I carry on conversations in our respective languages. I coo all sorts of pet names at him that just pop off the top of my head – “Pupsicle”, “Ruddlebug”, “Pipster”, “Love button”. He cocks his head and with the utmost earnestness he strains to understand what I am saying. And then as if to say “Nevermind, I get it,” he’ll jump onto the bed and paw at the covers. “I want to come under with you,” he says with his paw. I raise the sheet and let him crawl under head first and he plops down with authority, pressing his body tightly against mine as if there is no limit to what “close enough” means to a poodle. Both of us find this deeply satisfying. We know each other to be sensitive beings and we make ourselves available to each other as best we possibly can, dog and human.
As good as life is for both me and Rudley, we share a serious behavioral issue that trainers call “resource guarding”. It began early on when Rudley was a puppy. While I was aware of how important consistency and stability are to a puppy’s growing sense of security, I was not always able to give him the security he needed. I was living in recovery from depression and I was often transitioning from one form of therapy or medication to another, trying to find some stability myself. Rudley danced circles around me trying to figure out who I would be in any given moment. He became very protective of me, and in his young puppy mind felt he needed to guard me and, for his own safety, take care never to lose me. If a person entered our space who he felt was a threatening intruder he might charge at them and even take a bite at their ankle or leg. Thankfully it hasn’t happened often over the ten years that we have been together but I can never underestimate the possibility that it may happen again.
We have worked with many trainers because I hoped that this behavior was trainable and that we could end it once and for all. Rudley, on the other hand, knows himself and knows me. He has taught me that after 10 years of my trying to “train us” to stop this behavior there will still be some times when he just feels really anxious and wants to have that behavior in his tool box as a safety guard. Of course it is me who is anxious in those moments and he senses my anxiousness more keenly than I do. The only way to stop him from taking a nip or a bite is for me to just plain hold him tightly and let him know I’ve got him. This means on all those walks when I allow him to meet and greet other people and dogs, I have had to assess every single one of those encounters to understand Rudley’s comfort level. It’s gotten easier over the years, but I can’t ever assume that we are in the clear.
There are times when this has saddened me and even given rise to feelings of resentment that my dog requires so much vigilance from me. I lament that relationships in general are challenging enough, given that I live with bipolar depression. What I really needed was a chill dog! When my mind goes there I try and put myself in Rudley’s shoes and ask him what he needs. Sometimes it’s obvious, he wants to engage others happily and there is no threat. But other times it’s not so obvious. I may not personally feel anxious but Rudley is acting sheepish, not his usual confident and friendly self. Then I have only one choice, to know that if he could speak he would be saying, “Hold Me Tight!”. I shorten my hold on his leash and do as he asks.
I wasn’t all that different from Rudley when I was a child. I needed to be held tight and given a lot of reassurance that I wasn’t given. I lost both my parents when my father took his life. My mother simply didn’t know how to console a child about suicide and disappeared into her own grief and all the other feelings that can overwhelm one after a suicide. As a child I couldn’t reason with the hard truth that my mother had also experienced a loss and could only manage it the best way she knew how. She gave me what she could, a roof over my head, a good education, a quick remarriage to a new father which, to her, would make me forget. It did not. She could not give me security. I would have to find that some other way.
Rudley has lived through me finding my way.
He knows that most of the time I am strong and steady and a good human to him. He also knows that sometimes he feels a little more protective of me and that there is no shame in me taking a firm hold on his leash and keeping him from doing what he does to protect. His non verbal empathy heals with an uncomplicated purity that I experience as a Divine gift.
I still wish I could have asked my mother to hold me tight. As a child I was too afraid to ask for that. Suicide silences us. It’s a loss we cannot comfortably share, if we can share it at all. I talk freely now about what I experienced as a child surviving a parent’s suicide but I risk making people feel uncomfortable. I don’t like that, but it’s a risk that I have decided is important to take. It would be devastating if Rudley bit someone. I know we live with that risk and I do not take it lightly. There will always be risks for me in a culture that stigmatizes a non-typical brain.
In dog years Rudley is older than I am now and he still has to tell me sometimes “Hold Me Tight!”. I am proud of him. Proud of us. One day at a time, we work this through.
Diana Hoguet is a member of the INMI Board of Directors who advocates for the elimination of stigma around mental illnesses and neurodiversity through storytelling, playwriting, and public speaking.
