One thing we didn’t consider when we adopted Hazel was the fact that, as a black dog, her nails are also black. I don’t think I had ever considered a dog’s nails in my life, even after having grown up with three of them, but Hazel, as always, is an outlier in everything she does. Her nails grow at the speed of an F1 car, so she so she sounds like someone typing on a mechanical keyboard when walking on a hardwood floor. Her nails can get so long that when she stands up normally, they twist her toes in weird directions. In normal circumstances, the length of her nails are kept in check by daily walks and her guiding instinct to pull on the leash like a sled dog, but with the frigid snow conditions of the last two weeks, she has only gone outside to do her business and come back inside as quickly as possible, retiring to the couch to wait until warmer weather appears. So they’ve gotten very long.

She’s been to the vet to have them clipped before, and they’ve given us drugs to administer two hours before the appointment. The last time we did this, it didn’t go well, and the vet tech seemed to be pissed at us. We followed your directions, dude. I made an appointment yesterday to bring her in to get them trimmed again, and they upped her dose at our request. She seemed a little spacey on the way there, and was a bit out of sorts in the waiting room. Thankfully, it only took them ten minutes to actually do the work, and she came back out to the waiting room, anxious to leave. When she got home, she was even more gloopy and passed out under Jen’s desk as we worked, her pupils as big as dinnerplates. Overnight, she splayed out in the middle of the bed like a pile of wet towels and lay in the same position all night, forcing me to teeter at the edge of the bed. This morning, she went outside for her customary walk, came back inside and immediately laid on the couch, completely uninterested in driving to school with the girls—an integral part of her normal routine. As a creature of habit, it’s very strange for her not to want to take a ride. But when it came time to meet our neighbor for the first dog walk in two weeks, she was happy to get outside, back to her normal self.

We’ve been on the road since Wednesday, moving from rented minivan to hotel to restaurant at a pace that has us all pretty exhausted. Someone who has been an absolute rock through this whole anxiety-ridden trip is this goofball, who has weathered the new environments like a veteran traveler. She’s a ball of energy, an expensive pharmacological experiment, a confused mixture of competing instincts, and a bedhog, but she’s also the best dog in the world.

I spent three and a half hours at a vet ER with Hazel Monday night, who was pacing the house with her tail between her legs whining. by the time we were all ready to go to bed, she was getting more and more frantic, so I put my shoes back on and headed out to Elicott City to get her checked out. We sat in a cold exam room for a while and they took her in back to get checked out. I explained why she was wearing the headscarf and the symptoms we were seeing, as well as the fact that we haven’t seen her poop in several days. They presented a me with an expensive estimate which I approved, and they took her back for some invasive and embarrassing treatment. Poor girl. We then waited in the exam room for another half an hour of constant whining until they got the bill and meds together and cut us loose. We crashed out at 3AM and the girls mercifully let us sleep in as late as possible. Hazel is still uncomfortable; hopefully the medicine will get things moving for her soon, and the pressure will be relieved. 

Hazel has always been a vocal dog. Around the house, among family, she whines, bays, cries, howls, and sometimes barks—the barks are reserved for anyone knocking on the door or delivering mail—but she really comes into her own when she’s out on the lead in the backyard. The neighbors off to our left have a big golden of some kind whose staccato woof will often get the other neighborhood dogs going; he and Hazel will trade gossip until we drag her back inside. There’s a fluffy dog two doors down who likes to prance around her yard and send Hazel into fits of jealousy. The neighbors two doors to the right have a boxer and a French bulldog who run around the yard together; this prompts fits of spastic barking that sounds like an emo band from the early 2000’s. I get it. This is what dogs do: it’s the Evening Barking from the original 1001 Dalmations.

All of this is no good. We can’t be the neighbors who have That Dog, and we kind of are. We’re up at 7AM and she goes out and screams her head off as soon as she’s downstairs: she can’t be outside waking everybody up. She’s been getting worse lately too—there’s a fox who likes to stroll through the neighbor’s yard and stop to gawk at her as she goes completely mental, desperately trying to get off her lead to give chase, barking and crying and whining and yowling like no other dog I’ve ever heard. It’s out of control.

So with a lot of hesitation and a shitty feeling, I strapped a bark collar onto her neck this morning, set to the lowest voltage, and let her outside. She gave one good bark, one quiet yip, and then wanted to come right the fuck back inside. I want her to bark at strangers when they come to the door, so it only goes on when she’s outside. She stands at the door as I strap it on nervously licking her lips. She’s not stupid; she knows exactly what the collar means even if she doesn’t understand why she has to wear it. I’m hoping that after a few weeks I can use it without turning it on, and eventually she won’t need to wear it anymore. But for now I feel like an absolute shitheel when she wants to go outside and I reach for that thing.

We say a lot of things about Hazel. She’s a good girl; she’s out of control. She’s a smart dog; She’s a moron. She’s a sharp as a tack; she’s a mess. All of it is true. She’s a mixture of very intelligent breeds that have combined in her brain to create a lovable schizophrenic who is a slave to her own conflicting instincts. She is desperate to be put to work: She wants to hunt for game but is continually sidetracked by the scent of rodentia. She can be passed out cold but the faint bark of a horny fox will send her into convulsions. We take her to the Farmer’s Market every chance we get, but the presence of other dogs means I’ve got to hand off my coffee and choke up on the leash to make sure she doesn’t get tangled up in the crowd. To her credit, she’s never the dog to bark or growl; I’m usually able to get her away from the other dog quick enough to avoid that.

Her smell has been getting pretty foul lately, and the frito smell from her paws has been strong, so I got her to follow me up to the bathtub to get ready for a bath. She knows what the bathroom is all about and doesn’t really enjoy being in there, but she followed me in and sat on the rug, waiting for me to prepare. I realized I’d forgotten the baking soda, so I gave her the WAIT command and ran downstairs to grab it. It took a little longer than I was expecting to find it, but I also grabbed the marshmallows and ran back up. As I reached the top of the stairs, I was happily surprised to see her sitting quietly where I’d left her, clearly aware I was about to give her a bath, but resigned to her fate. I gave her a handful of marshmallows.

She is a beautiful, maddening mess of a dog, but I love her very much.