Tender.

Last weekend, the whole famn damily went on a hike in a nearby canyon with Sweet Dog. At the very end of our hike, as we passed by a picnic table full of people, a large, unleashed male boxer attacked Sweet Dog. True to her submissive ways, she whimpered and cried out and ducked for cover while FH wrestled the boxer off her and yelled at the silent, motionless owners. CG was scratched up and Sweet Dog was cowed and dirty but unhurt. We were all a little shaken.

I've felt panicked and breathless for days thinking about this. Ever since they were both babies and it was clear that Sweet Dog was not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination, one of my biggest fears is that some dog will attack us while I'm walking alone with my two girls and I will have to make a Sophie's Choice about who I will protect. (There is, of course, no question that human trumps dog, but it breaks my heart to even type that.) I've had nightmares with variations on this theme for the last few nights.

On Monday at the playground, I ran into a mom I hadn't seen since our babies were slugs. We hung out (as much as two people who are corralling and monitoring the whims of two toddlers can "hang out") for a few hours. Z was her usual self: a little reserved and careful when new or potentially scary things happened, a little slow to warm up, dismayed and sad when things didn't go her way. As we were leaving the mom said "Z is just so sweet and tender."

One might say we are all a bit tender here at Casa de Clueless.

Sweet Dog doesn't fight back. She doesn't ever even bark. While we mostly list this as, perhaps, her greatest trait and one of the many reasons we talk about cloning her, it is also somehow symbolic of how submissive she is. "Don't mind me, I'll just lie here and wait for you to notice that my eyeballs are turning yellow from pee. I wouldn't want to *shudder* bark at the back door or anything!"

I always wanted to be the person other people described as robust. Resilient. Strong.
But I have always known that I am very, very tender. Sensitive. Passive. I've done years of therapy and tons of work to be stronger and more resilient. I hope to encourage robustness in Z and I'm clueless as to how. Obviously she's hard wired a bit like me at the get-go. Then there's the whole modeling thing. She's learning from me to be..... like me: tender.

And she's always shocked whenever she hears a dog barking. Dogs? They don't bark. They just lie there and willingly get their eyes gouged out, right?