Love, patience and shoes

My friend Jan came over for dinner on Friday. We had a good time talking about writing, our pasts, and what we hoped our futures would hold. She's moving to Lansing at the end of the month, and though I haven't known her long she's already become a close friend, and my "miss you" blues already already gearing up.
Jan is a favorite of Saira, the family beagle. Jan loves dogs, Saira loves a good belly rub. It's a match made in heaven.
After Jan left I turned on some bouncy jazz music and began washing dishes. The dogs relaxed in the living room, worn out from the excitement of company, begging for morsels and jockeying for attention.
As I wrapped up my kitchen chores, an odd sound caught my attention. My leftover mom radar tuned in to a sound that wasn't quite right. A sound of mischief. I walked into the living room and saw that Saira was energetically gnawing on a shoe. My shoe. Half of my best pair of shoes.
"What are you doing?" I cried. Saira reacted as any naughty child would: she ran from the crime scene, leaped onto the couch and tried to wipe the guilty expression from her face.
There was no saving the shoe. What was once the top of my shoe was now a scattering of black confetti littering my pale green rug.
If this had happened a year ago I would have been shouting at Saira, and she would have cringed and likely had an accident on the rug or sofa, further enflaming my temper. I would have seethed and cursed as I cleaned up the damage.
But this is now. I gave Saira a mild scolding, gathered up the sorry remains of my shoe, found its mate, and dumped both into the garbage. Instead of rage, this thought kicked in: I can have a ruined shoe and a terrified dog, or I can have a ruined shoe. Getting angry would not repair my shoe and would teach Saira nothing. Sometimes pets destroy things. They make no distinction between their ratty stuffed bear or your best article of clothing, and they aren't going to learn that distinction.
I have, by force, become a better person because of my dogs. We adopted Indy and Saira a year and a half ago from our local humane society. They were adult dogs; they came with personality quirks and behaviors we were unprepared to deal with. At times I thought we'd made a huge mistake. Two mistakes.
What it's been has been a powerful lesson for me about anger, ego and love. All my life I've had a quick temper. My husband and my children suffered for it. Now I was unleashing that temper on two more innocent bystanders. I was angry that they didn't "know any better." Meaning they weren't behaving as I thought they should.
My moment of clarity came on a sunny fall afternoon when Indy knocked me down. Absent of leash manners, Indy was a brakeless freight train on every outing, dragging me down sidewalks as I fought to control him. I was walking him less and less often, dreading the battle of wills that always ensued.
On that fall afternoon, Indy spied another dog on the other side of the street. He went berserk as usual, pulling at the leash, yelping his glass-shattering shriek of excitement. Tangled in the leash, struggling for dominance, I lost my footing and fell over.
I was mortified. I imagined people thinking, "Geeze, why doesn't she control her dog?" I got up, yanked Indy over to me and swatted him. And swatted him.
My daughter Melissa, who was walking Saira, begged me to calm down. "Please, Mom, you look like you're abusing him."
I paused then. Indy was staring up at me, frightened and puzzled. Clearly he wasn't learning a lesson on leash manners. He was learning that the person he was learning to love and trust couldn't be trusted not to hurt him.
Was this who I wanted to be? This furious woman whose pride mattered more than her dog? It was a painful moment, but sometimes pain is what it takes to drive home a message.
From that day on I made a conscious effort to rein in my temper and keep my ego in check. When either dog misbehaved I responding with firmness rather than fury. On a recent walk with Indy I stopped to chat with a couple who lives down the street. Indy waited patiently, even sat and let himself be patted on the head. My neighbors said they couldn't believe this was the same out of control dog they'd watched me struggle with last fall.
The lesson has carried over into my human relationships. Instead of battling with my kids over this or that, I ask myself, do I want to be hurtful Mom, sarcastic Mom, win-at-all-costs Mom? Usually I don't. Sometimes, though, I still do. Like my dogs, I'm a work in progress. And it's all a labor of love.