The Pando Paradox

Help! I don't know what the fuck to do!?

I had a panic attack yesterday. I felt one coming on again today. This could come across as a bit of a surprise to a lot of people given how well I seem to be going according to my weekly Sobering Thoughts update.

I’m learning that for me at least, I think it’s possible to be going well, and not so well, simultaneously. Maybe naive of me, but I’ve always kind of thought you can’t really be going well and not so well at the same time.

My sobriety is going great. As 6 months of sobriety becomes closer and closer, I’m at a point where at times I can go a whole week without even thinking about it. It all just feels very normal now. It’s just… my life.

But I’m struggling too… and it’s important I feel and accept that…

When we decided we would move to the coast for a better lifestyle and a better place to raise our son, it all seemed too perfect. Even though we had to rent out our house, bought a house at the coast with a self-contained dwelling underneath it so family could visit and/or generate extra income through Air BnB, start a new role at work with new team members, and ultimately have our first child, it all seemed perfectly reasonable and achievable. And it was.

It’s been a wild couple of months. My son is almost 7 weeks old now. The Air BnB has been up and running for a fortnight or longer and it’s been relatively fruitful. It was never a plan to have it generate income so early in the piece but The RBA won’t stop fucking raising interest rates, and while it was precautionary rather than necessity, I still felt a sense of urgency to get it up and running sooner than initially planned just to provide a little financial buffer. Especially when interest rates were and are still, predicted to rise more.

Everything we came here to do has just about been achieved and for the most part, I’m feeling more and more comfortable every week. I’ve found a new gym, and I’ve transferred my routine fairly seamlessly to the new area. Even found a new barber! Went this morning. Mad old bastard with long hair. Was saying fuck and cunt heaps, at 8:20 am! My kinda guy!

Anyway, I’m sure you all get the point now, for the most part, things are going well. So why am I having panic attacks?

My, fucking, dog! of all things! Can you believe it? Alright, here’s the context.

I’ve wanted a dog ever since an ex-partner kept the dog we had together. There are no dramas there. At the time, the best thing for the dog was to stay with her as her future was more certain than mine in terms of where I was going to be living etc.

So once I was settled in the Canberra house, I decided I wanted a dog. I fuckin’ love dogs, always have. I grew up with dogs, Jack Russell Terrior’s to be precise. They cop a bad wrap, but unfairly so, in my opinion. People often say they have small dog syndrome, which is accurate, but I also think admirable. If you want to teach a kid about self-belief, throw a Jacky in a cage with a Great Dane.

I had some criteria to meet when looking for a dog. I wanted to get a rescue dog if I could. For a few reasons. Puppy farming is fucking disgusting, especially for toy-breed dogs. Fuck that. I didn’t want any of those assholes to get any of my money. I also thought it would be nice to improve the life of a dog. But once I started to scroll through the pages online, I noticed some common themes. Through no fault of their own, all these poor dogs had long lists of requirements. You needed high fences, no other dogs, and no exposure to children, just to name a few. Most dogs required regular attention and lots of walks. I thought it was important, to be honest with myself. I didn’t want to lie to myself by telling myself I could provide the kind of life one of these dogs needed. I decided that if I could find a puppy up for adoption, I would get that instead. The idea behind it was that if I could find a younger pup, it wouldn’t have been exposed to as much trauma as an older dog and I would be a better chance of helping it have the life it deserved.

One Sunday night in April 2021 I found a 10-week-old “Bull Mastiff” pup at RSPCA in Orange, NSW. They were closed Sunday and Monday and not open again until 9 am Tuesday morning. I spoke to my boss on the Monday and told him that if they would let me take him, I would race up to Orange on the Tuesday and grab him. Sure enough at 9 am Tuesday morning I rang RSPCA and they said they would hold him until I got there. So I rang my boss and told him I was heading off. A four-hour drive from Marulan, NSW, to Orange, NSW.

It was early April, starting to get really cold, especially out in The Riverina. When I arrived they took me out the back. The little white pup was in a concrete shelter, with no blankets, a mangy old water bow, and diarrhea fuckin’ everywhere! This isn’t a shot at the RSPCA. they do an amazing job with nowhere near enough funding. I actually still donate $25 a month to them to thank them for Pando. They told me diarrhea would have been because his last sibling was sold on Saturday and he would have been stressed from being alone over the last couple of nights. Obviously, RSPCA staff came in to feed and water the dogs over the weekend, they just weren’t open to the public. They were telling me that he wasn’t a Bull Mastiff and actually a Bull Arab. Still a large breed dog, but nowhere near as heavy and a little more energetic. I wasn’t worried, I’d had Jack Russells. Even though I was mentally prepared for one of the laziest breeds of dog on earth, I thought I could handle a breed with slightly more energy. Whatever the case, as soon as I saw this dog, I knew he was coming home with me. There was no way I could leave the poor little bastard in those conditions another night.

Fun fact: Bull Arabs are actually an Australian-bred dogs made up of five different breeds of dog. They were bred to hunt pigs. They wanted to jaw strength of a bull mastiff with the speed of a greyhound and the athleticism of a leaner dog. Click here to learn more about Bull Arabs.

When we went to fill out the paperwork they told me that the dog was with its mother up until 9 weeks old, something I no longer believe. Pando was 10 weeks old, already desexed, micro chipped and had no visible scarring or stitches. He’d been there for some time. I understand why they may have lied to me, it’s their job to re-home these dogs and give them a chance at life. Also, at this stage, they could’ve told me he was going to die in a week and I still would’ve taken him home.

So, I threw him in the car, and off we went. a fucking long day of driving but worth every second of it.

He needed a name. A family friend said the brown circles around his eyes made him look like a Panda so he should be named Panda. I fuckin’ hated it. What I did like though was the famous Australian actor’s character in the film Two Hands. In my opinion, one of Heath Ledger’s best movies. Bryan Brown plays a gang boss in Sydney’s Kings Cross, Pando… I like grim shit like that.

So, meet 10-week-old Pando…

Things were great, for a long time. We were obsessed. Little jackets for him in the cold. He could spray watery shit all over freshly cleaned carpet and I’d just stare at him in adoration. He got walked a lot, he was great off the lead, he toilet trained himself, and learned to use his doggy door with no problems. To this day, he’s a very clever boy.

We noticed at the dog park he loved to play with dogs of a similar breed. As we settled into life in our new house with Pando, we both started progressing in our careers and while Pando was in no way being neglected, it felt appropriate to get another dog of a similar breed to keep him company during the workday.

I wanted to get another dog from RSPCA, but finding a specific breed of pup and then being able to travel to collect one during the COVID lockdown was impossible. We found a litter of Bull Arab X pups in Corowa, NSW. We got up early one Saturday morning, drove five hours there, turned around, and drove five hours back to be home by lunchtime. I already knew what I wanted to call this dog. I’d had time to think about it. He would be named after the Greatest Rugby League Footballer of all time… Joey

Pando and Joey, brothers and best mates, still are.

Things were great. Walks all the time. Joey got Pando’s hand-me-downs. Harnesses, jackets, all that bullshit. COVID reared it fucking ugly head again and between that and the shorter winter days of 2022 it started limiting the time we were able to spend walking them. They still got plenty of attention of an evening It was just harder to play with them or walk them, especially as our careers progressed further and our jobs became more demanding. Still though, there were no real dramas and everyone seemed pretty content.

Apart from them constantly trying to get into my veggie gardens and my constantly trying to block them from getting in there, we all lived fairly harmoniously. They were a little annoying at times. They dug holes in my perfect buffalo turf lawn and chewed my sprinkler heads, but that’s what dogs do. You can’t be mad at a dog for being a dog.

As they got older, and bigger, they became more damaging around the yard. Whatever though, they’re dogs, it’s what they do. Being 40kg Pups they often don’t know their own strength or capabilities. They started to play fight a lot. Think teenage boys… Pando started showing signs of separation anxiety. Often at bedtime, he would hide under the dining table because he knew it was time to be shit into the laundry. Something he still does from time to time to this day. He was and is afraid of being separated from humans. One weekend I was home alone and I got held up at work on a Friday night. The dogs had been left alone for way longer than I would have liked. When I got home that night I saw a note on my front door from someone saying that Pando was out the front and they’d put him back in the yard. I thought it was odd. He’d never gotten out before. Never even tried to. He’d never been a bolter. I put it down to him feeling a little deserted and stressed about my whereabouts. I didn’t think a lot of it.

Weeks later, there was a storm while no one was home. I came home that day and the guy from the house over the road came over and said Pando had escaped and he just put him back in the yard with no problems. Sadly this gradually became a regular occurrence for Pando. The boys are now the same size, Joey is more athletic than Pando, and has never escaped. Not once. I think he’s too scared. A month or so before we were scheduled to relocate to the coast, it was happening Daily. Pando was desexed, so he wasn’t looking for a mate. Maybe he was getting sick of Joey and wanted some space. Usually, he would just wait in the front yard and when I got home he’d just waltz on in. I tried everything. I raised fences, put anti-bird spikes on top of brick walls, anything I could think of. He still escaped all the time.

One day I got a call from the ranger. He’d escaped and they had him in their truck. They asked how long until I was home. I wasn’t far away so they waited for me and dropped him off but warned me that if they picked him up again I would incur a $300 fine. Sure enough, a few days later he found another way of getting out. This time the rangers got him and took him back to the pound. They told me that they would not release him to me until they were satisfied that I had made the appropriate adjustments to my yard to ensure he could no longer escape. I could my Dad and that afternoon he gave me hand to raise the front fence significantly. I rang the ranger and asked him to stop by to see if he was satisfied with what I had done. He said he was nearby and would come past for a look. He was satisfied with what I had done and said I could pick Pando up from the pound the next day.

I remember driving to the pound to get him, excited about how excited Pando would be when he saw after spending a night in dog jail. I paid them $300 and they brought him out to me. To my surprise, he wasn’t. It was like he didn’t really care. It was really odd because, throughout all this, Pando was and still is such a beautiful-natured dog. He is just a big sook who wanted to lay on the lounge with part of his body touching yours, just for the comfort of knowing you’re nearby. The problem is, life just isn’t like that. I wish I could explain to him that I had to go to work so I could buy him dog food and pay the heater bill for him and that I’ll be home before it’s dark and he’s going to be okay. It started to upset me. I couldn’t understand what more he could want from me. I was doing everything in my power to make sure he felt everything was okay.

We moved to the coast in late July. Canberra had another bitterly cold and wet winter. When we got here the weather was noticeably better. probably only 5 degrees better, but when Canberra is 10 degrees and the coast is 15, that’s a 50% improvement. Both dogs really liked it down here for the first month or so. We had no issues at all. They were loving the sunshine. They’d spend most of their day sunbaking and scratching around in their new yard. I thought maybe in the new environment we were past this fence-jumping bullshit.

About a month or so after we got here it started again. That really fun game, Pando escapes, I wander around the yard to find where he’s getting out and find a way to prevent it. I thought I had everything covered. I thought there was no way he could get out anywhere. I was at home one day when i heard a loud noise on the metal outdoor stair case. I looked out the kitchen window to see the bastard launching himself off the second story hand rail into the neighbors front yard. I was absolutely shocked that he would jump from 3.5m high and 1.5m across just to get out of the yard and then wait at the front door to be let into the house.

(Joey Modelling where Pando would get up on the handrail and leap into the neighbor’s yard)

Shocked and impressed all at the same time, I thought, I’m going to lock him out on the back balcony while I figure something out.

The back balcony at its lowest point is 5.7 fucking meters from the handrail to the ground. I didn’t physically see him do it, so I don’t know how the fuck he did it, but Pando Houdini was locked outside on the top balcony and somehow made his fucking way back to the front door. He was pretty fucked up, but okay. Walking as I do after a marathon. It happened on a weekend so I thought I’ll give him until Monday and if he’s still a bit rattled I’ll take him to the vet. Monday came and he was fine.

I put shade cloth all around that outdoor staircase, fixed a post to the bottom of the stairs, and ran six wires 150mm apart, essentially making the handrail 750mm higher. He hasn’t jumped from that handrail area since. success. I got an electric fence and ran it around the perimeter of where my grass meets my garden beds to keep them out of the garden. I haven’t seen them in the garden since I did that. It sounds cruel, but most people say after one small zap they’ll never go near the fence again, and that seems to be true.

Recently though, I came home one day to find him out the front. I was baffled. After getting him inside, I went to the back balcony to try to figure out where he was getting out to find he fucking destroyed a lattice fence I’d built. As frustrating as it was, I couldn’t help but admire the determination of the prick.

My work yard was badly damaged in the bushfires of 2019/20. In fact, most of everything we had was burnt to the ground. So there’s still a heap of stuff laying around out there. I commandeered a couple of sheets of colourbond steel to replace the lattice. At this point, I was sick to fucking death of spending money on shit just to keep the bastard in the yard. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have used colourbond. Pando tried to jump the colourbond fence and for lack of a better phrase, got fucked up. WARNING! The below pictures a little graphic.

The fucked up thing about this is, even after hurting himself, he tried to do it a second time. Bleeding all over the place.

The vet was concerned that the skin between the two major cuts would die and if it did, we would be in for months and months of redressing the wound until the healthy skin gradually closed back over.

Luckily, as well as being a great escape artist, Pando is also a fucking brilliant healer, and a fortnight or so after the initial injury he was stuck back together and the staples were removed.

The vet confirmed what I thought and said he definitely has separation anxiety issues. Most likely from being dumped at the pound and separated from his mother at too young an age. The vest has started him on a Prozac-type medication which he’s been on for three weeks. The vet thinks it takes a month to truly have an impact on his behavior. He just wants to be on the lounge and wants me to stay on the lounge with him all day. Everything else just freaks him the fuck out. But that’s simply not sustainable. I have to work. We have a newborn. We have guests staying in the apartment downstairs. We have lives. This is why (wrongfully or rightfully) we got a puppy and not an older dog from the RSPCA, to try to avoid these exact kinds of issues. I truly felt like I was doing the right thing and a good thing.

Pando is still trying to find ways to jump the fence and occasionally succeeding. He’s been crate trained recently and it’s going ok, but even today he jumped the fence, I brought him straight back inside and put him in his crate and after a while, he broke out of his fucking crate (I was a tight arse and bought cheap ones).

I just feel fucking horrible. For a few reasons. I want him to have peace in his mind. i want him to feel at home here. I don’t want him to feel so anxious that he slices his fucking body up on the fence and then tries it again minutes later. I don’t want him leaping five point fucking seven meters off the back balcony. No dog should ever feel the need to do that. I wonder, what the fuck am I doing wrong? Why is he doing this? Joey is the happiest, most content (and admittedly a little bit simple) dog you would ever see. I just can’t figure out what more I can do for Pando. I have taken him to the off-leash beach where he runs and flops about like a maniac, happy as then comes home, has a sleep, and jumps the fence. I give him time away from Joey, jumps the fence. I let him play with Joey all day, and jumps the fence.

I don’t want to chain him up. I really don’t. But what can i do? The neighbors are starting to get pissed off with the new guys in the street who can’t control their psychotic dog.

I have identified one small section of fence today where I believe is the last remaining section he can get out. Today, I fixed a shade sail to the fence and the other end to the wall of my house, to make it physically impossible for him to get out there. If this doesn’t work, I honestly don’t know what I will do. They are advertised online to be rehomed, but that isn’t what I want. I just want him to be happy enough here to want to be here. I wish I could explain to him that if he keeps this shit up he may have to go and live somewhere else and I can’t promise him that it’ll be better. People have inquired about he and Joey, but I just don’t think I’ll find anyone who I believe is good enough to take my boys off me and do a better job.

I feel like a fucking failure. If I can’t look after the needs of a couple of dogs who just want a bowl of biscuits each day, some fresh water and couple of chicken necks, how the fuck am I going to look after my human son?

It’s all getting too much for me. I honestly don’t know how much longer I can do this shit for. The money. Pando cost $1400 in vet bills after his fight with the fence. I have spent over $2000 on this house alone in the last 10 weeks to try to dog proof it and I’m still not sure if I’m there yet. I’m physically and emotionally spent. Every single day I come home and there something else I need to implement or adjust because he’s found somewhere else where he’s trying to escape from. It’s starting to impact on what little time I have with my six week old son who changes and grows every single day. i work all day, dog proof the yard all afternoon, have dinner and I’m too tired to be of any value to my son.

When I go home from work yesterday, I saw that Joey had done a little accidental wee on the floor boards. he does it when he’s excited. Has done since he was desexed. He doesn’t know he’s doing it, but I was fucking furious. I didn’t take it out on Joey, but I could just feel a rage building in my body. I could physically feel it. I went and grabbed the mop to clean it up, the head of the mop broke off. The rage worked it’s way further and further up my body. I finished the 30 seconds of mopping. It was raining, windy and cold. I was fucking dripping in sweat. Dripping. I was shaking. Mostly in my legs. I had to get changed out of track pants a hoody to shorts and a singlet to cool down. A minute earlier the pants and hoody were perfectly comfortable.

I went and told my partner how I was feeling and my voice was shaky. I could hardly talk. I had to get a drink of water, sit down and focus on my breathing just to calm myself down. I was so scared. My heart rate was high and my pulse was heavy. Why was I reacting like this? What does it all mean. I’ve had panic attacks before, i knew what was going on, but I still couldn’t understand how a little wee and broken mop could trigger such a reaction from me.

It almost happened again today. Pando was in his crate after jumping the fence and I could hear him carrying on in there. bashing and crashing around, but I was ignoring him. Obviously, I’m no fucking dog whisperer but I am well and truly out of ideas and exhausted from trying to think up solutions. I went to the toilet and came out to find Pando wandering around the house. I saw red. I grabbed him by the collar, put his lead on him and dragged him onto the balcony, and tied him to one of the pillars. But I wanted to hurt him. I had the urge to hurt him. I didn’t, I couldn’t, but the urge was there and it was so very real. I felt like a fucking monster.

I had that same feeling as yesterday but I was able to nip it in the bud just a tiny bit sooner. Only an hour later when I was trying to do up a nut on the shade sail I was erecting… lol… I dropped the nut and that feeling came back… I lost my shit because I dropped a nut I was trying to tighten

What the fuck is going on? Am I turning into a psycho? I’m fucking scared. Today I said to my partner, “I am the closest I have ever been to completely losing control and I’m terrified I could find myself not being able to stop myself from doing something stupid”. I don’t mean suicide, but just this volatile feeling of pure anger burring up in my chest and me struggling to contain it.

I don’t know how to look at it. It’s so unfamiliar to me. I’m a grumpy person. Everyone who knows me will tell you that, but I am not an angry person. I don’t understand if this means I am losing control of my temper, or if it means I am getting better at identifying it and should commend myself for recognising and controlling it.

I’m just praying like fuck to The Flying Spaghetti Monster that today’s fix works. Also that as Pando settles more into his medication he can relax a little. They’re only pups still, just real fuckin’ big ones. I don’t want to rehome my dogs. It’s the last thing I want to do. And I will not rehome them to anyone who can’t give them a better life than they already have here. But it’s starting to affect me way too much. I have to, at some point do what’s right for me and my family. I’m so fuckin’ torn. More torn than Natalie Imbruglia in the early ’00s. I fucking love my dogs. But maybe they deserve more than I can offer them right now. Maybe they’re just being asshole teenagers and are weeks away from chilling out. Maybe today’s shade sail fix will solve all the problems, maybe even world poverty, hunger, famine, whatever.

I was hoping writing this would help me figure out what to do. In some ways, I think it may have. I certainly think getting this off my chest will get some negative bullshit out of my head and give me more space to handle the next dummy spit I have when I can’t find the keys that I left in the ignition of my car.

It’s currently 11:10 pm, usually, I’m asleep by 9 pm. I’ve been up since 4 am. I went to the gym, went for a run then spent another day dog-proofing my fucking yard. I also just took the above photos. I think I have achieved something from this blog. I think I have realised that I can’t give up on them because I’m tired. I think I need my boys as much as they need me and I couldn’t live with myself if I let them go somewhere or to someone else who can’t give them as much as I can. I wouldn’t want someone to just give up on me. I think I just have to get better. By that, I don’t mean working harder. I have to be smarter. Slow down a little. Have some empathy towards them. Try and be a little bit more of who they need me to be. They’re not going to respond to anger and negativity. As wanky and cliche as it sounds, they’re far more likely to respond to kindness and love. Time to kill ‘em with kindness… metaphorically

Thanks for listening.

X.