It's just a phase

Woody's criminal career

I’ve been avoiding talking about this. I don’t want the lectures about dogs. I don’t want training advice. I don’t want to hear about it at all really. Then I remembered this isn’t twitter. And I’m thinking, maybe I can just write this and you’ll read it and think it’s funny or think it’s awful but it won’t go viral and end with someone doxing the wrong Lauren Hough. Let’s try it. Maybe under a paywall.

When you have a pitbull mix, even one who doesn’t look like what people who are afraid of pitbulls imagine a pit looks like, eventually you have to have the talk with your dog. Son, you have to behave better than those other dogs. You’re going to get blamed even if you didn’t start it, even if you were just playing. It’s going to be your fault, every time. Woody doesn’t understand many words though. And he doesn’t always listen. So maybe that’s why he’s been breaking into houses.

I live in a pretty dog-friendly building. It’s why I chose this apartment, despite having rented from this company before and knowing there’ll be light switches that connect to nothing, a light switch that connects the dishwasher, one working stove burner, and a pool that gets cleaned only once it’s fully green. They don’t have breed or weight restrictions. I don’t even know if they know I have a dog. A guy at the office said he’d send me the dog addendum then quit the same day. I’ve never followed up. But everyone here has a dog, at least one. And since the office is across town, we’re pretty lax about dog rules. Any given night, there are dogs hanging out at the pool, a couple dogs running around the courtyard, and a dog in a laundry basket supervising towel folding.

Woody and I figured out that when I come home, he needs NEEDS to run off the anxiety. I’ll walk in, set my shit down, and he’s fucking vibrating like he’s on his 5th espresso. So we wait until he’s got permission, and when I said okay, he races down the steps. He waits there until I catch up and I’ll check the parking lot then say okay again and he starts his laps. Then he races me back inside for his snack. I didn’t train this asking for permission shit. But I appreciate. it. And it’s great. No one in my building cares. Half the time, there’s already another dog out there to play with.

Another thing I love about this place—he has friends in the building. There’s a husky named Silver who might as well be his long lost brother. They fucking adore each other. There’s a pitbull named Philly (Cheesesteak) who loves Woody but cannot keep up with him. He gives it his best shot though. And there are a couple Westies named Ruby and Bentley. They’re not allowed out of the courtyard but if they’re out, Woody always runs over to say hi before heading back to my apartment.

This worked so well and I’m a deeply lazy person so I started letting him out off leash for his bedtime pee break. Most nights, the Westies are out at the same time. Which might be where the problem started. They became part of the routine. Then one night, they weren’t outside. I was late or their dad was late. Who knows. I said, sorry buddy. Let’s go in, thinking, I don’t know what. That we had a goddamn agreement? Woody looked me dead in the eye, then ran over to their door. He looked at me again. I said, no. And the motherfucker scratched at their door. I said no again, and I shit you not, he jumped up like he’d been studying doorknobs since he moved in, which… probably. And he opened the motherfucking door.

I didn’t really know what to do for a second. What if they were asleep. What if they had a gun. This is goddamn Texas, Woody. Jesus. The Westie’s owner came outside, with Woody in tow, laughing his ass off saying Woody was trying to fight his robot vacuum. I thought that was it. Lesson learned. Not mine. I don’t learn lessons. But a few nights passed without incident. Then he broke into the husky’s house. So I stopped letting him off leash at night. I thought his criminal days were over, thank fuck without incident. Maybe we all needed a lesson in locking our doors.

But as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a field near the apartments that we, the dog owners of my neighborhood tend to use as our private dog park. It’s great. There’s a filthy creek the dogs fucking love. A dense cluster of trees at one end with plenty of squirrels to chase. It’s mostly fenced. Mostly. And Woody had solid recall, mostly.

If I take him on a trail, and there are lots of off leash trails around Austin, some of them legal, he sticks right by me. He doesn’t know for sure where I’m going next. He’ll run off into the woods, never out of sight and right back to check on me. Perfect. The problem is, in that field, he knows where I am and he knows I’m not going anywhere. He trusts me. He’s getting more confident. Terrible combination. And he’s started venturing a little far. He always comes back. But he’s staying gone a little longer and I don’t like it. So we’ll stop going to the field. We’ll go to a trail. Do some long walks. Work on recall. I’ll think okay, we’ve got him listening again. We’ll go to the field. He’ll play with his friends. Listen. Play some more. Then a few trips in, he’ll convince his friends to go up creek where there’s a solid chance of garbage, or too far into the woods where there’s a solid chance of finding a way around the fence.

Why do I keep taking him? I don’t know. He doesn’t have a yard. He fucking loves running and playing with other dogs. These dogs are cool and social, and the dogs’ owners and I have become friends. It’s what we’ve got.

Over the holiday weekend, most of the neighbors were out of town. It was just Woody and me in the field. We worked on recall. Hunted squirrels. Worked on recall some more. I felt like we were getting past that wandering off thing. So when I took him last night, we were both thrilled to see his friends were back in town. Boa the husky mix who he dearly loves. Calliope, the poodle who’s the reason I know how to say Calliope. They roughhoused. They chased. I’d call him during a lull in the play and he’d rush over to get his cheese bite. Calliope went home. Boa’s mom and I were talking about cameras. She’s a photographer. Boa and Woody went into the creek. Boa came back.

Motherfucker. I waited a while. Sometimes he reappears from the other end of the field, all confused why I’d worry. He knew where I was the whole time. The hard things is, you have to act all fucking happy he came back even though you kind of understand why your mom lost her shit when you stayed out too late. But you can’t scare him or punish him for coming back. And he doesn’t know the difference. He did not come back. I checked his usual spots and it got dark and I was starting to worry. This was it. He’d been kidnapped. He was stuck in a coyote trap. He was… we won’t go there.

Then my phone rang. It was Calliope’s owner, three blocks away. Woody had let himself in. I guess we’ll work on recall some more on the way to Massachusetts. God help us if he makes a friend.

Woody and his friend Boa having a blast in sewage creek