Coping Skills

I seem to be going through - what mom calls- a naughty phase. In general I’m a pretty obedient dog. I was a therapy dog, for Pete’s sake so I’m very well trained. The thing is…. lately I’ve been doing some very non- therapy- dog things.

A few weeks ago my human dad was on a trip for five days. I didn’t like the interruption in my schedule and routine, so I figured I would send a message by eating my mom’s expensive artist paint brush. Why, you may ask? Not sure. Just thought it looked tasty. The next day I was still pretty ticked off so I decided to eat my doggy toothbrush that’s been laying on the bathtub for three month and haven’t eaten but randomly decided to eat. Out of no where. Why? Still not sure. But it sure did communicate how displeased I was. The next day my mom only let me out of her sight for maybe 5 minutes and I managed to make my way upstairs and eat the container of my doggy toothpaste. She caught me with the tube in my paws (well, what was left of the tube).

You may be thinking, “Dunkin, seriously… what were you thinking?” And …umm… my reply would be, “not sure.” You see, sometimes it’s possible to get so out of sorts that you may start doing things that don’t match your values. Once ya start the snowball, it’s kinda hard to stop, so you just keep going with it until you see that look of utter disappointment from people you love, then ya snap out of it.

Mistakes happen. Mom was upset but she still loves me, still takes care of me, and didn’t make me go live with other naughty-toothbrush-eating-dogs. Maybe I can learn to be more flexible with my schedule and not let anxiety rule my life. There’s a lot of coping skills I could have tried (chewing a bone, chasing a ball then not knowing what to do with it, snuggling with humans, staring at Cohen until he pays attention to me, snuggling more with humans, demand to be pet 24/7- you know, normal relaxing stuff) .

What kind of coping skills could you use instead of going down a path of self-destruction? Remember, recovery isn't linear. There are ups and downs. Mistakes are going to be made. You're going to get better, something unexpected happens, you may walk a few steps backwards, but it's possible to get back on track.

Or, just get angry again and eat paper towels out of the garbage like I did last night, but I wouldn't advise it because they kinda tasted terrible. :)