Men Have Called Her Dog Crazy
Thoughts on aging pets, THAT memoir, and appreciation
CW: pet loss, addiction, AA, parasocial relationships, comedians, that one Ram Dass quote, tetanus shots, judging celebrities
Last night, I finished Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler. I’ve been looking forward to it for the same reasons all of us have - we want the hot goss on John Mulaney, the tea on their divorce, we want to feel vindicated for the anger we all felt when a parasocial relationship that was seemingly beautiful and perfect crumbled before our eyes. We knew about the addiction issues, and assumed he was in the wrong because of his rehab stay, his immediate moving on to another woman and having a baby with her within his first year of sobriety (a no-no for those of us familiar with addiction programs, and more on that later). We wanted a Page Seven breakdown of the relationship, damnit!
Alas, we didn’t get it. Tendler, in my opinion, gracefully and kindly and lovingly and respectfully avoided almost all mention of her divorce and anything about the breakdown. This, to me, was deeply powerful - she used her memoir to tell HER story, and those of us who purchased the book solely to hear about HIS part in that were left a bit shell shocked. I won’t lie and say I didn’t want Mulaney goss - I was also jarred and angry about their divorce but I have watched his standup specials lately and it brought some dueling emotions up - he seems to be doing genuinely well and is happy, so when I picked up the book I was thrilled to have something that would make me hate him again. Like hating on someone who will never know my name is helpful or vindicating the Wronged Woman in any way. I was denied that luxury, AS I SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
I have no business reading a memoir - a raw, emotional, gorgeous, authentic one at that - solely to get the deets on a broken woman’s divorce. By not getting into it, she essentially told us that we likely will never be getting that and I respect the hell out of her for it. It made me love the memoir a thousand times more than I originally thought I would, for many different reasons.
A lot of the narrative focused around Tendler’s dog, Petunia. Petunia - the adorable little Frenchie who just had to be perfect because god damn those photos show the perfect dog. WRONG. Petunia was lowkey a nightmare - resource guarding literally anything, reactive and protective over her mom who, by all accounts, needed protection but maybe not from a 20 pound animal who was guarding her from a dropped tube of Chapstick. Petunia, the tiny monster, who would have snapped at anyone who looked like they were going to even hurt her mom’s feelings, because her job in life was to make sure that mom was okay.
I got Cheese in November 2018. She was rescued at around 2 years old from the streets of Qatar (a sand pit to be exact) assumingly when they were clearing the way for the World Cup. She bopped through three different foster homes in a month and found her way to me - when the foster brought her over to meet me she immediately laid her head on my knee and fell asleep, pictured below. I don’t know how she knew I was the one adopting her, but she understood immediately that I was her mom and I was safe.
Her behavioral issues started two days later. I remember it very clearly - I took her on our first walk together, I had her decked out in her winter coat (at that time I was still under the impression that she was a greyhound and needed to be warm - she is a Qatari Street Dog/Saluki mix who has more than enough muscle to keep her toasty in the winter but still has multiple sweaters for cold months) and we were a mere minute into the walk when a man and his dog were walking toward us on the sidewalk and she freaked out. She was lunging, growling, barking, everything - I had never seen a dog do this and had no idea what to do. It became the new norm.
To condense three years of training, research, and tears into one paragraph is difficult but suffice to say it has been a long journey to get to the point we’re at now. Thousands of dollars, midnight walks in the park to avoid people or dogs that would trigger her, muzzles, constant training exercises, bites, bruises, tetanus shots, potato chips and hot dogs as high reward treats, crying every night for weeks on end feeling like I absolutely failed this dog, crying during the day when the understanding dawns on me that she would not be alive today had I not had the privilege and means that I do to devote to her. That’s the end of it - I made a commitment to this dog and it has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but she would have been euthanized if any other person’s PetFinder application had been accepted instead of mine. I related so deeply to Tendler’s experience with her own difficult dog.
I was jarred to realize that the relationship with a dog is what I took out of a memoir I planned to read simply to dunk on a man who had over a decade of issues with addiction. This reflected my own experience - anyone who knows me has my one year sober date in their calendar and is well aware that I’m a few days shy of 11 months sober as I write this. My attempts at sobriety go back almost as long as I’ve had Cheese; nothing makes you realize you have a problem like coming home after a twelve hour binge to your dog sitting there, needing to pee, needing to eat dinner, looking at you with big brown concerned eyes as you stumble walk drunk around the block with her. Or worse - pass out when you get home and leave her to wonder if you’re safe. I got sober for many, many reasons - all of which I am proud of and endlessly thankful for - but I would be remiss not to note that my difficult, reactive dog was not in the top three.
AA (which I have not actively been a part of for a few reasons that aren’t necessary to mention here) states that individuals in the first year of the program should not enter new romantic relationships. It’s kind of an unspoken rule that you definitely shouldn’t have a baby in the first year of your sobriety. I held this against Mulaney - how dare he leave Tendler heartbroken then go to rehab and galavant off with another woman AND bring a baby into a life that had pretty recently just been voided of drugs and alcohol?! He was setting himself up for failure! How dare he do that to a baby! Looking back here, I realize my own sobriety experience is complex, layered, and rich in its own way and I was not affording that luxury to someone else because the little slice of their life that I saw didn’t seem “right” based on a set of rules I also had no experience with. This is the crux of parasocial relationships - everyone else is a person who could fill thousands of pages with their own story, who are we to judge them for the things they do when we’ve seen one paragraph of their life’s novel?
When I walked into my bedroom last night, I saw tiny indents on my bed that were undoubtedly made from little paw prints on the blanket. I took a picture and thought how cute it was - they were so tiny and brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t imagine these were from Cheese and thought they must have been from Bird (the cat with her own myriad of very normal behaviors).
Cheese, who follows me around like a shadow, walked in right after me and jumped on the bed. I saw the paw prints were from her and realized that while I was not in my bedroom that day it had, in fact, been her who jumped up on the bed and snuggled up with my pillow. I will treasure this photo for the rest of my days.
MHCHC’s last few chapters tell the story of Tendler saying goodbye to Petunia. She wrote earlier in the book that the day she adopted Petunia she was struck with a fear knowing that one day she would have to say goodbye to her and while readers knew it was coming, it still hurt. I think anyone who has a reactive dog thinks about this frequently - it’s those painful feelings of “It will be nice to get a dog that isn’t so much work and so stressful to own” right alongside those feelings of “I cannot believe that one day I will have to hold this dog as they take their final breaths" and we feel that concern of what kind of dog owner could possibly think those things and whether or not we’re doing the right thing that we feel every single day. I feel it when I look at the white hairs that are beginning to own more real estate on Cheese’s nose and when she is a little slower on walks, and I let her linger a few minutes longer every day to sniff the zinnias around the corner that she loves so much.
From one reactive dog owner to another - you’re doing the right thing simply by caring and loving your dog and meeting them exactly where they are. From one sober woman to another - you’re doing the right thing simply by taking it one day at a time. To quote Ram Dass, “we’re all just walking each other home” - the person guiding the leash that day doesn’t matter.
If you’re struggling with alcohol abuse, or know someone who is, I’ve included some of my favorite resources below.
Congrats on (almost) 11 months and so great to hear the positive impact you've made on Cheese's life and vice versa 🙂