Thread by @Delafina777

Speaking of the dog, I may have slipped up and introduced a term into my mother's vocabulary that I'm worried she's going to start using without fully grokking what it means and that was a fuckup on my part... hang on, let me backup and explain.

So, I grew up with cats. We were very much not a dog family. My family liked quiet pets, and I think my parents thought raising kids with animals who were very clear about setting and enforcing boundaries was a valuable lesson.

But when I was in college, and immediately after when I moved back in with my family while looking for my first job, my mom decided she loved dogs.

Like, we'd be in the car and she'd slam on the brakes and be like "OMG LOOK AT THAT DOG ISN'T IT CUTE" and I'd be like "...that one? I guess...?"

So one weekend, I'm off visiting my sister (who was in college at the time) and I come home and my parents are in the backyard with this dog on a leash.

Me: Whose dog is that?
Them: Ours.
Me: Hahahah no seriously, whose dog is that?
Them: Ours. We got a dog.

So I'm like, "okay, this is your house and you can do whatever you want, obviously, but since I wasn't warned about the obtaining of the dog, I take no responsibility for the dog."

And they're a bit sheepish and are like, "ok, that's fair."

But now look at it from the dog's point of view:

Her first glimpse of our family dynamics is me being sort of assertive/accusatory and my parents being sort of meek/conciliatory.

So in her doggie brain, she was apparently like, AHA. THE PACK LEADER.

Most of my experience w dogs was with the next door neighbor's giant poorly trained sheepdog knocking me over multiple times and trampling me when I was little, and a friend's giant, jumpy, nippy, drooly boxer. I had only recently graduated from being terrified to being annoyed.

So now I have this dog who follows me everywhere, hides behind me whenever there's a loud noise, and in the morning, when I come down the stairs, crawls across the floor to lay at my feet and expose her throat. And I'm like, "get up, dog, I'm not going to kill you today."

So, when you have an animal that looks to you for permission for EVERYTHING, you start feeling responsible for them, you know?

And my parents have NO IDEA how to deal with a dog. So I end up being the one that takes her to obedience classes. Then clicker training. Then agility. (I moved out to the West Coast just as she was ready to compete, so my mom got to be the one to have the fun of winning ribbons)

And they didn't tell me until later, but the Humane Society had told my parents that she'd been abused and abandoned. So she was SO NERVOUS and SO SUBMISSIVE and SO EAGER TO PLEASE. And I didn't realize why for a while.

But eventually they tell me and I feel bad for her and so I start telling her she's a good dog a lot more often. But here's the thing:

The dog is also super smart, and SLY.

Like, at obedience classes, when another dog would screw up, she'd... dog-laugh. And she'd delicately pickpocket the bag of treats out of my back pocket.

And after we'd had her for YEARS, if you asked her to do a trick she didn't feel like doing, she'd start shaking and act scared. So basically after I moved away, my parents stopped giving her any commands she didn't seem to like.

And every time I come back and visit, well, she's a good dog and very gentle so it's not THAT much of an issue, but basically, she gets everything she wants and doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do.

So, I'm home visiting my parents, and my mom says something to the effect of "she acts scared and submissive but she really just does it to get us to do what she wants." And I mutter, forgetting I'm not with my snarky-ass queer friends, "yeah, the dog's a power bottom."

My mother has now adopted that term to describe the dog. And at some point, she's going to use it in front of my sister's friends or something and it is going to be SO INCREDIBLY AWKWARD and hooo boy I'm going to get a very uncomfortable phone call.