I’m being stalked by a very well-known admirer

Frank Touby —

I have a stalker. As we start just thinking in terms of packing up to return to Toronto for Thanksgiving and prepare to leave the Lake Erie shore, Tank remains fixated mainly on me. He’s listening to Paulette, which is a good and necessary thing, but he’s feeling as if I don’t pay enough attention to him. There isn’t such a thing as too much attention to Tank. Not from me, anyhow.

He tolerates Daisy just fine, but he’s really fixated on me. I move, he moves. I yawn, he moves. I sneeze, he moves. You get the idea.

The Tank Report

I’m under closer scrutiny than when I was in the U.S. Army. He’s really focused on my every move.

When I leave he mopes by the front door. But then Paulette is able to draw his attention away and he returns to being a normal dog until I return again when he becomes my stalker.

He was such a steady companion to Danny and his various friends that Tank didn’t have much alone time.

These are the hard days for Tank (and the object of his affection) as he becomes oriented to a less-intensive interpersonal experience and finds more interesting things to do than wonder where I’m going and what I’m eating.

He was playing a bit with Daisy, but that seems to have been abandoned for a while as he steps up his adoration of yours truly.

I don’t want to hurt his already plundered psyche, but deflecting him has seemed a challenge.

The good news is that it’s subsiding. He’s starting to wander a bit into the woods on his own when I’m outside with him. If I go in, he’s back at the door like a shot. So it’s a slow introduction to a modicum of independence from his sole significant other: me.

In a few more days this will be over and Tank will have a more usual dog-to-master relationship with me and drop the dog-to-object-of-worship syndrome.

I realize it’s not worship. It’s just the realization of how unstable his life has recently been and a deep-seated dread that it might return.

As he becomes more secure with us, he’ll express that security in terms of moderation and reduced emotional intensity.