After a week of having Basil lope through my house – the tic-tac sound of a weird, long dog all legs and suspicious side-eye trotting down the hallway – I came up with the pea theory and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. The pea theory, while mostly rescue-greyhound specific, mostly about their strange little adorable brains, has helped me understand their world a bit better. It broadened my own tiny weird brain too.
Basil suffered through a few years as a racing dog. The effects of that time are physically prominent – a handful of racing accident scars on his glossy black coat, his dirty green branding tattoo, a bald butt and legs caused from the unnatural stress of being forced to race. He’s almost the archetype of a greyhound – black with distinguished salt-and-pepper patches on his long snoot, tall and long and awkward, the world’s gentlest eyes. A friend once described greyhounds as looking like “an old sack full of coathangers” and having one in my house only makes this description more evocative and true.
But as with most rescue dogs, it’s mentally where the real consequences of being abused show up. Compared with other rescue dogs I’ve trained, Basil is a dream – barely reactive to other dogs, loves people, doesn’t suffer much in the way of resource guarding (being territorial around food/ beds) that is common with ex-racers. But what we have discovered is that Basil, primarily, hates situations.
This is not an official diagnosis – technically he suffers from anxiety, which manifests in a variety of ways – but my partner and I have identified that in layman’s terms, Basil hates to recognise and endure situations. A situation can be anything – leaving the house, being near a pigeon, dealing with people in two different rooms, having food served at the “wrong” time, someone knocking on the door – and it will discombobulate him to such an extent that he will be stressed and sooky for the rest of the day.
The behaviourist at the adoption agency, Gumtree Greys, told us all about stress and cortisol levels, pointing out that cortisol lingers in their brains and that stress can be cumulative, so after being scared by a carrot falling off a bench, three hours later during a walk he might freeze on a street corner and not move for 15 minutes, staring at nothing. His brain is still flooded with cortisol.
Not being a scientist, I found the cortisol level description hard to relate to, and after a couple of weeks, settled on the pea theory instead: Basil’s brain is a bunch of frozen peas floating in Coca-Cola. All it takes is a little bit of stress for the Coke to start fizzing and the peas to start bobbing around frantically like popcorn on a skillet. Of course he can’t make rational, calm decisions – his peas are popping! We’ve learned that once a situation has been endured, it’s about calming him down, removing him from the stress if possible, and waiting for those frantic peas to settle before asking him to do anything that requires even a skerrick of concentration or discipline.
I love the pea theory because it helps us understand the peculiar needs and desires and fears of this creature who now lives in our house. Greyhounds can be almost alien. I’ve had dogs all my life, and I’m still surprised by the differences. They don’t sit because they can’t; they express affection by big leans; they sleep essentially all day. Add on the trauma of an exploitative and violent racing life, and it’s no wonder they’re left with the soda and legume situation.
But I also love the pea theory because it has helped me get through my own horror of situations. Recently, I came back from minor day surgery and found myself unable to concentrate on work. I realised that having a huge square of flesh cut out of my neck had gotten my own peas a-tumblin‘. So I sat down with a cup of tea and a romance novel and let them settle. When I feel my own Coca-Cola brain start to heat up and the peas begin to jumble, I try to be kind to myself.
Adopting Basil was in itself something of a situation. My partner and I were well-prepared. I’d adopted two rescue dogs before, I have a good background in training reactive dogs and we had sunk our life savings into beds and toys at Petbarn. We were ready for the work we would have to do to help out a dog that had lived an awful life, that probably hadn’t experienced much kindness, that had been through a disorienting series of foster homes, and we believed in the importance of doing it. On the first night, we set him up in his bed in our room, and when we turned the lights off to go to sleep, he cried – not howled or whined, but actually sobbed like a lost, abandoned child. That first week, learning his boundaries and his fears and his anxieties were enough to get us stressed and fearful, worried we weren’t up to looking after this terrified snake-dog. We found ourselves just sitting and watching him, tense, our own peas a tornado of concern.
So it was something of a surprise when we fell overwhelmingly and disgustingly in love with Basil. It’s been two months now, and it’s beyond rewarding to watch him emerge from his shell, to become a goofy, affectionate dog who loves his routine, who is learning how to play with toys, who has become a local celebrity who old people yell compliments to as we walk past the nearby retirement village in his snazzy outfits. I’ve never met a sweeter, gentler dog.
My peas, where I was concerned about the work ahead of me, about the disruption of my life, about the responsibility of owning a traumatised dog, have entirely settled, and I couldn’t imagine life without this odd bag of bones leaning against me, without a snoot nestled in the crook of my arm as I type, without his gorgeous tiny brain fizzing and popping.
Patrick Lenton is a writer and the author of A Man Made Entirely of Bats. He tweets @patricklenton
