We got a puppy this week. I have been a bit too occupied following him around and taking him outside, so much so that I was a little worried that I wouldn’t get a blog post in this week. People tell me that this is the burden of “parenthood,” though not being a parent, I have no personal experience against which to test such an assertion. And, let me assure you, this is not the first puppy I have ever had, either, so I know the drill. Given my recent life experience, however, though I can’t vouch for the circumstances of parenting, I do feel a bit as though I’m a kind of prison guard. I’m trying not to be a bad prison guard because, after all, I would rather not raise a fucked up dog, but I’m still doing a lot of surveillance and laying down of “policy” for the puppy. It’s quite a job.
The new puppy is an Australian Shepherd. People often say, “Well, wow, that’s a lot of work” when it comes to that breed. They also proffer advice about, “You know that they need a job to do to be happy.” Of course I’m fully aware of that; the other dog we have is a Border Collie, and the Aussie replaces the other Border Collie we had who died 90 days before I got out of prison. The loss of BC #1 was pretty hard to take, being that he was my favorite dog I have ever had in a good 50 years of dog owning. And here’s the other thing about Border and Aussies: it’s not that you have a lot of work to do as their human or that they have a job they need to do. Rather, it’s that you and the dogs have to work together in the search for mutual satisfaction. When they herd — and their happy place always involved some sort of herding — they herd for the pack, not for themselves alone, and they damn well expect you to be part of the pack. Otherwise, what’s the point. They go out and fetch those sheep back for you, so you can’t just ignore their gift. You have to DO something with it. As long as you work with them, as the pack, they are also perfectly pleased to give you your gift exactly as you want it. Perfect each and every time. I think the idea of the perfectionist canine is what also gives many people trepidations about these breeds. Seeing how perfectionism is perhaps my own greatest downfall, however, I find a charming kinship in it.
I was also utterly unastonished to learn recently, that Tiger Woods’s dogs are a Border Collie and an Australian Shepherd. I have always been more than a Tiger fan; I have felt a Tiger kinship. The dogs seem a superficial marker of it, but there is, I think, something beyond a surface coincidence. Take a look at Tiger and his dogs by checking out this clip from Golf Digest. Putting as a pack. Practice making perfect for everyone. Tiger isn’t going to be a pug guy or a Pekingese booster, as charming (to some) as those breeds may be. You can watch him admire how these dogs work, so to speak, on their game, how they (and he) turn something that most people consider a leisure activity into something far more serious.
The older Tiger gets, the more he goes through, the more I understand something about myself, the more I grasp why I have a sensation of connection. I never approached the professional height that Tiger did. I never won anything equivalent to a major in my own field, but I did, in that analogy, play on the PGA tour. I understand what it means to have a parents who recognize in you a special kind of gift at a young age and attempt to nurture it, and the sense of obligation that creates in you, even if that is for from your family’s intent. I recognize what it means to do professionally what most people think of as a pastime. As a literature professor, people would frequently ask me, “Well, what do you read for fun?” To which the basic response is, “I don’t.” This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy my work or that I find no tremendous pleasure in reading. Rather, it’s that every page that comes before my eyes is taken in with some modicum of professional scrutiny. Do you think if you played a round with Tiger he would just get there are start hacking away? That if you went to the batting cages with A-Rod that he wouldn’t try to direct every single ball in exactly the direction he pleased? That if you went skiing with Bode Miller that he wouldn’t simply crush every slope in any kind of condition? It wouldn’t be somehow less fun for them to do these things with you, it’s just that they enjoy doing them in a very particular way that’s “odd” to the rest of us. So this is a just a long-winded way of saying that work/pleasure gets to be a complex concept, as it is for many of us. I might be wrong, but I kind of assume that customer service managers don’t have quite the same mix-up.
I also recall that when Tiger won his first Masters, I got into an argument with a colleague about the significance of that. My colleague felt that now he would soar on the winds of great success, which in fact Tiger did, but my first inclination was to worry about the realm of crushing pressure he had just entered. As a young (as I was at that time) person of color I couldn’t help but have a certain kind of ominous feeling what lay in store for Tiger as another young person of color. My colleague thought I was making a big deal out of nothing. I think Tiger would probably have embraced my point, but that, really, is just another example of the kind of pressure he was under. I felt the weight of many expectations, my own and others’, in my life. I didn’t always handle them well even when it appeared that my life was sailing merrily along.
Turns out that pressure and perfectionism lead Tiger and me to another commonality. We are both sexual compulsives. In my own journey of self-discovery I have learned that many people who are pressured perfectionists are sexual compulsives. In my 12-step recovery group it’s not uncommon to hear people talk about the curse perfectionism and the attempt to use sex as a way to try to cope with it. If we just think about some notable people who were/are also very likely sex addicts, we can turn up a few fascinating names: Bill Clinton, JFK, JBJ, MLK and Vivien Leigh. Nothing I ever achieved role to their level, but we may have all tried to self-medicate in similar ways. It seems quite clear to me that each of them also had an almost hyper-disciplined approach to his/her work, and that linked to a self-perception of never being or doing enough. One of the great insights on my 12-step journey has been, “Compulsive sex became a drug, which we used to escape from feelings such as anxiety, loneliness, anger and self-hatred, as well as joy.” Speaking for myself, that is all true. Projecting onto Tiger, that all seems very likely. I recently had the chance to watch the HBO documentary on TIger Woods, and when I watch that film through the lens of addiction and compulsion, a lens which seems weirdly distorting to the filmmakers and most of the audience, a get a palpable sense of anxious sympathy for Tiger.
But back to the dogs. This is all to say, I grasp his choice of dogs. I see his admiration for breeds that many people feel are, themselves, quite compulsive. Indeed, I have frequently called our Border Collies “Obsessive Collies.” And one of the reason the puppy almost ate my blog post is that I was compulsively watching a potentially compulsive dog, which brings me some sort of perverse joy that I wouldn’t have any other way. If, in the words of my 12 step fellowship, “we found that the desperate quality of our need made true intimacy with anyone impossible,” then the intimacy of the dog pack offers some kind of “simpler” and tangible connection to the living world. Perhaps Tiger and I just feel better displacing our feelings onto the pack. Frankly, I have no idea how “most” people deal with their difficult feelings, so it’s difficult for me to know when I’ve avoiding or embracing emotion. But just maybe the feelings of the pack are also a kind of small, therapeutic step in moving toward the human.