GIMME MY CHILI!

We moved into our new home towards the end of August. Almost immediately, our dog Chili decided he would absolutely humiliate me in front of our new neighbors.

I already know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “ohhhh, but hims is just a widdow doggie! Hims is a GOOD BOY!”

Is he, though? Is he really? As you shall see, he and I are both kind of a disaster.

Anyway, this is the way the whole thing started….

Several of my new neighbors have extremely well-behaved dogs.  We’re not talking one dog per house here, by the way. We’re talking matching pairs of dogs. There’s the white golden retriever pair, and then a few doors away there’s a pair of yellow - looking goldens. Then there’s the pair of springer spaniels who hop gracefully into my neighbor’s car like obedient little children to accompany him on his daily errands.

These dogs sit upon their own lawns like two little shoes that were casually tossed outside. They lay with their tongues hanging out of their mouths like happy statues and they wag their furry tails and make eye contact with you as you drive by. Sometimes they even stand up politely to acknowledge you. And they grin at you - wholesome grins that leave you feeling seen and known.

NO ONE IS WATCHING THEM OR TELLING THEM TO DO THESE THINGS. They just do them because it’s who they are.

Here they lay, as content as can be, for literal hours. They can be trusted implicitly to be their best selves, and you come to rely on their presence as you make your way down the street each day. 

When you don’t see them, you feel a little sad and you go “awww where’s my little doggy friend?” because now you’re a forty- something-year-old loser who needs to be acknowledged and emotionally validated by a dog you don’t even know personally.  

You can’t help it, though. Those dogs know how to break down every barrier in a weary, embattled human heart. They are lovable and they are perfect. 

Then we have my dog.

My dog is tiny, cute, weighs 12 pounds, has two different colored eyes, but most of all,  he is an absolute fucking maniac. 

Twice in the past few months, we’ve had to hire people to do work in our home. The first was an air duct cleaning service to rid our home of whatever filth was left in the vents by the previous owner, which prevented us from breathing properly. The second was a door repairman. Upon finishing their jobs, each of the guys took me aside specifically in regards to my dog. 

“I’ve been to a lot of houses with dogs, but yours barks the worst,” the door guy, a man well over 6 feet tall, confided with a shaken look. “I had trouble concentrating while installing your lock.” He turned his head and spat on my lawn, a blood-curdling habit that I’d noticed throughout his many days of working on our doors - but never had the stomach to comment on. He took a deep breath. “You gotta do something,” he said.

The air duct dude emerged from our basement at the end of a long afternoon, during which our dog paced back and forth from behind the windowed doors of our sunroom,  barking and howling at the team of duct cleaners for literal hours.

“Listen,” he said. “I have a 7-pound chihuahua with more anxiety than you can shake a stick at, and nothing worked. Not the pills, not the treats, not even the shock collar.” I tried my best not to imagine a 7-pound dog wearing a shock collar. “The only thing that works is CBD oil.”

“Go get the CBD oil,” he pleaded with an intense stare.  

Chili was not always like this. Or was he? I don’t know. I mean, the pandemic started when he was still being trained, for God’s sake. Not much opportunity for socialization, unfortunately. Then we lost our older dog, who was a rather stabilizing force in Chili’s life. Shortly after that, we moved. So I guess my dog is a lot like me: rattled and anxious after big changes, and truthfully just rattled and anxious in general. 

Chili seems to have two modes reserved for two different occasions: having visitors and not having visitors.  

When we do not have visitors, he tends toward Perfect Angel Baby Who Sleeps on Your Lap like Jesus in the Manger.  Except for when he steals socks and underwear and other random things and furiously chews them up under the kitchen table like satan’s helper, but that’s a story for another day. 

When we have visitors, he tends toward Constant State of Unmitigated Chaos.

In his Lord Baby Jesus mode, Chili will sleep for hours, snuggling up on our laps like the most perfectly calm and happy pet. He is docile. He is kind. He works miracles from a state of rest, because his rest brings US  rest - a calm pause from the noise of the world. He is the Lord made dog.

But let that damn fool hear one distant squeak from a stroller wheel out on the street, and he will  immediately dive into a deranged fit of unnerving, nonstop, high-pitched barking.

Now, sometimes I have ideas that feel charming and whimsical, but are not grounded in reality. And so it happened that on a pleasant August evening, while the rest of my family was out for a bike ride. I was going to tend the garden. I thought of all the statue dogs and how they lay upon their lawns like lambs while their owners’ landscape to their heart’s content and thought, “Hey, I bet my dog would do that!”

These ideas appear out of nowhere, like a bird flying into a window. One minute I’m minding my own business, and the next minute - THUD! The idea is here, and even though it’s literally dead upon arrival, it’s still such an exciting break in the day that I feel compelled to embrace it.

So yes, at that moment, I truly believed that I could simply will my dog’s good behavior into being.

Never mind the fact that there was not a single, solitary grain of evidence to support this theory or that I had done literally nothing to prepare for this moment. Never mind that most of the neighbors clearly have this little thing called invisible fences, which prevent their dogs from leaving the confines of their lawns. No. Rather than lay out a solid dog training plan (let’s face it, hard drugs may be our only option at this point) and set a goal, I decided to put the cart right before the horse and work out of my typical “let’s just see what happens!” playbook.

I really don’t know why I assumed for one damn minute that anything other than a total Godforsaken shit show would take place, but that’s what happens when you have a woman with ADHD at the helm of the ship.

And so, on that fateful August evening, I invited my dog outside with the dead bird idea that he would lay demurely beside me like a lamb in the manger and watch me garden. 

“I’m so excited to hang out with my well-behaved dog on my own front lawn!” I thought to myself excitedly, with all the hope and naïveté of a passenger boarding the Titanic, carrying a full month’s worth of clothing in her bag.

As soon as he walked off the porch and onto the grass, I knew. He looked at me with that look he gives whenever he is about to do something horrible. This is where he locks eyes with me in a taunting way, like he’s daring me to move. His eyes clearly communicated the words, “Hey Lane Bryant, you’re about to get a workout.”

He started running around the lawn, never once breaking eye contact with me. That son of a bitch was enjoying himself. He began circling faster and faster, and though he is practically the size of a rabbit, his presence began to feel more like a wolf moving in for the kill. 

I tried to act calm and natural as if this was an everyday occurrence instead of letting on that I was on the very cusp of a panic attack. Unfortunately, my laughter sounded frantic and maniacal, so of course, he was able to sense my terror.

My optimism was now like the Titanic on April 15th at about 2:19 a.m. - careening down towards the bottom of the ocean at breakneck speed. Inwardly, I flailed around for some kind of emotional raft. Outwardly, I laughed like a fucking hyena. 

Things were spiraling quickly and I was losing control and that little bastard knew it.  And you know what else? He was SMILING. HE WAS ACTUALLY SMILING AT ME.

Suddenly he took off, bolting towards a neighbor’s yard. I began chasing him. 

Now I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this in any of my Instagram posts before, but now seems like an appropriate time. I’m pretty overweight. I mean, I’m starting to get control over it now, but in August I was in the 200’s and I’m 5’1”, so I wasn’t exactly Olympic material.

You can imagine, then, how that helped the situation. Here was my dog, darting around like an arrow at the speed of lightning, and then there was me - chasing him at the speed of a sleeper sofa being shoved across a cement floor.

It was what Dr Phil would call a Defining Moment. I learned that day that my fitness level was a lot more dire than I had suspected, because I couldn’t even chase my dog after two houses.

I also learned very quickly that naming our dog after a dinner item had probably not been the best choice. Nothing says “Here is a lady obsessed with food who is possibly a danger to the community” like a greying, plus-sized woman in her 40’s, staggering forward in slow motion and panting out the words “CHILI! CHILI!” as if she’s chasing her next meal down the street.

This is how I wound up meeting my neighbor Christa. I have only met Christa twice, and both were crisis situations, so I’m sure I’ve left a lasting impression. 

The second time I met her was after my youngest daughter fell off her bike in front of her house. Christa and her husband very kindly brought my daughter some napkins for her skinned knees and tears, helped clean her wounds, and even gave her a juice box. 

But the first time I met Christa was after chasing Chili for that whole two-house stretch, and I looked like I had just catapulted myself from a moving train. This is what happens when you’re overweight and out of shape and life throws you a surprise. I was sweating profusely, completely out of breath, and in the throes of despair. But I couldn’t yell out what I was thinking, which was, “I’m too fat to chase my dog!” because I didn’t even know this person, and what kind of thing was that to announce to a stranger, anyway? 

Christa offered to help me, and she seemed to be in great shape, but Chili was now feeling the full effects of freedom and there was no stopping him. His ears were blowing in the wind and his joy was fucking palpable.

A few other neighbors tried to join in the chase as Chili made his way through their yards, but he outran us all. During the chase, I remember yelling “We just moved in!” to one surprised looking man, and I believe that was the full extent of our introduction. 

By now I had called Dan, who had told the kids, and they were cruising towards me on their bikes, freaking out about our dog’s escape and fearing for his life. They tried chasing him but with no luck. He rounded the corner and headed onto the street behind us with his head held high, as if he were a pageant winner gliding by us in a parade. He was too high on prestige to mingle with his own family, a family which he now regarded as a group of lowly peasants.  Dan and the kids followed close behind him. 

Me? I couldn’t do it. I was about to die of running.

Some of the neighbors were congregating and discussing the situation while I stood around uselessly a few doors down, panting alone in my driveway. I decided to try and make myself look as though I  were doing something helpful by pacing aimlessly with my hands on my hips, but I wasn’t fooling a soul. The neighbors and I waved to each other and I croaked out a thank you in between jagged gasps, but no further attempt was made to get to know each other.  I couldn’t blame them. 

Luckily our 15-year-old son is very athletic and a fast runner and in the end, he caught our dog  and saved him from sudden death, but not before Chili took the whole family on a meeting spree throughout the neighborhood.

Personally, I was so embarrassed, I wanted to pack our stuff back up and move back to our old house, but that was no longer an option. 

When everyone was back home, they asked me how this had even happened. 

I “Well,” I began in a small voice. I paused. Everyone looked at me. They all knew what that kind of response meant, and they knew some bullshit was coming.  

“I just …. I wanted him to sit with me on the front lawn like the other dogs do.” 

They just stared at me.

“What.” Dan said in a flat voice. My husband is used to my brain and my brain’s antics, but even he was slightly shocked. 

“WHAT?” My 13-year-old daughter said. “You WHAT?” 

One by one, my other children began to chime in. They voiced their horror, their shock, their utter disapproval. 

“WHAT in the WORLD would make you THINK THAT?!” 

“Are you even SERIOUS RIGHT NOW??”

“BROOOOO…..”

You’d have thought I’d set the house on fire. 

“I don’t know! I just…the other dogs…they sit so nicely outside.. so I....opened the door and invited him to…” I trailed off. There was no use. No use in explaining myself in the face of all this shame. I could see the error of my ways. 

Everyone could see the error of my ways. 

Dead bird ideas, man. Dead bird ideas. 

I’m slowly learning more about what it means to have a neurodivergent brain and getting the help I need, and ohh what a delightful little journey it’s been. And I mean that truthfully, but also sarcastically, because having an ADHD brain is awesome and sometimes funny but also hard and exhausting.

And that’s why you gotta have a fun little adventure every now and then.