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Dad has 2 dogs, a brother and sister. Both black Labrador retrievers named Duke and Duchess (roll eyes). Duke is so totally out of control, it's amazing... he jumps on people and knocks them down, he bites people if they try to feed him something by hand, and he barks incessantly. Not just bored barking, but loud, booming, constant frantic-sounding barking. They've sent him to doggie 'boot camp' but it didn't help much. I'd totally blame Dad, but Duchess is not like that at all so I think it's at least partially due to temperament. The sucky think is, Dad seems to hate this dog. He totally lost his temper with Duke several times, and usually proceeded to hit him repeatedly with his baseball cap, turning red-faced and cursing angrily. Elaine said she has seen him hit the dog with his hand repeatedly as well- hit him hard. I spent most of the time I was with them trying to talk them into getting rid of Duke; certainly there is some family that would be happy to have a purebred Lab and would spend the time to mellow him out or whatever, but Dad seems to think that the dogs provide home security, and stubbornly refuses.
We stopped outside of Sonoma to walk the dogs. After extricating myself from the cat car, I got out in time to help walk Duchess. Dad was shoving Duke back in, who was barking non-stop and Dad was once again going ballistic. I ignored it, walked Duchess (she dragged me is more like it; those people have no right owning such big dogs that they didn't bother to train at all). Anyway, seeing Dad so angry used to terrify me; but when we got back on the road, I was just irritated. He's such an AA freak; whatever happened to the Serenity Prayer? Why on Earth is he getting so pissed off out of all proportion to what's going on? Minor setbacks, leaving a little late (not that we had to be there by any specific time, as long as we were there by 8am the next morning), etc... I was just frustrated. My dear husband is the same way sometimes (armchair Freudians, have a field day), and I just want to yell "get over it! If you can't do anything about it, or it's minor (doesn't cost substantial money, time, serenity), then just let it go already! (or at least get angry in proportion to what's wrong)" But I seldom do, because my assessment of whether it's worth getting upset over is not going to be the same as someone elses'.
But I digress; the point was that I overcame a major personal hurdle with Dad- he's lost a lot of his capacity to frighten me.
The happy ending is this- when they took the dogs to be boarded with the vet while the move-in occurred, Duke growled at the vet. This started a discussion about his behavior, and they are going to put him on Prozac in hopes of mellowing him out. I don't think this is the best solution, and I'd suggest the same for Dad if I didn't already know that he's on Wellbutrin, but it's an improvement at least.
We stopped outside of Sonoma to walk the dogs. After extricating myself from the cat car, I got out in time to help walk Duchess. Dad was shoving Duke back in, who was barking non-stop and Dad was once again going ballistic. I ignored it, walked Duchess (she dragged me is more like it; those people have no right owning such big dogs that they didn't bother to train at all). Anyway, seeing Dad so angry used to terrify me; but when we got back on the road, I was just irritated. He's such an AA freak; whatever happened to the Serenity Prayer? Why on Earth is he getting so pissed off out of all proportion to what's going on? Minor setbacks, leaving a little late (not that we had to be there by any specific time, as long as we were there by 8am the next morning), etc... I was just frustrated. My dear husband is the same way sometimes (armchair Freudians, have a field day), and I just want to yell "get over it! If you can't do anything about it, or it's minor (doesn't cost substantial money, time, serenity), then just let it go already! (or at least get angry in proportion to what's wrong)" But I seldom do, because my assessment of whether it's worth getting upset over is not going to be the same as someone elses'.
But I digress; the point was that I overcame a major personal hurdle with Dad- he's lost a lot of his capacity to frighten me.
The happy ending is this- when they took the dogs to be boarded with the vet while the move-in occurred, Duke growled at the vet. This started a discussion about his behavior, and they are going to put him on Prozac in hopes of mellowing him out. I don't think this is the best solution, and I'd suggest the same for Dad if I didn't already know that he's on Wellbutrin, but it's an improvement at least.
