Finding a less-than-dreary mental health topic to write about this week is difficult. It may be a good time to talk about Lucy.

Lucy pooped and puked on a friend’s floor last week while we attended a birthday party. She zoomed and zipped around nonstop, and people probably thought—well, I don’t know what they thought, but I knew the buck stopped at me.

Shift to when she is home. Lucy is the sweetest baby girl and hasn’t had an accident in my home for months. She plays with her toys, looks out the windows, and naps with her feet in the air. When I’m at the computer, she sleeps at my feet.

When we travel in the car, she’s on my lap or in her little bed. But when we stop for ice cream, she flips 180 degrees and rips back and forth across the front seat because she thinks the person at the drive-thru has a treat for her. When they don’t, she is heartbroken. She sits down and looks up at me with big, black, sad eyes, and I know she is wondering, “What the heck!”

Around 8:30 in the evening, she usually gives me a weak bark, and I say, “You wanna go night night?” She looks at me and wiggles her tail. I point my finger to her crate, and she prances in. She sleeps until 5:30 or 6:00, and who could ask for more than that? She’s an angel.

But I can’t take her anywhere nice because I can’t trust her to behave. Sometimes, like at the birthday party, I had no choice but to take her into the house because it was too hot to leave her in the car. She gets so excited around all the wonderful people who give her tons of attention that she forgets her manners.

I know people like that. They seem reasonable and appropriate until they go to a ballgame or meet friends at the pub. Then they blossom, explode, or deteriorate, whatever one wants to call it, into behavior that is certainly a contrast to who they are normally. I might be one of those.

Like parenting, I want all the credit when Lucy is sweet, but I don’t want to believe it’s MY fault when she is naughty.

Life goes on, and Lucy will be Lucy. She is the dichotomy of good and bad, sweet and sour, trained and wild. She is a little like all of us. May we all have someone who loves us anyway, whether we do it right or get it wrong. I have Lucy, and she has me. Aren’t we blessed?

Until the next time: Live while you live

Jennifer Goble, Ph.D., LPC, is the author of “My Clients…My Teachers,” and the blogger and writer of Rural Women Stories: www.ruralwomenstories.com.

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