It angered the abuser that Gus was afraid. The abuser, though, had taught Gus the fear and his fear was well founded. We got Gus around 1999 I'd guess. Not too long after my return to my home state. He was a cute little thing and had the adorable dark eyes that we associate with so many dogs. He was good and loving and he adored P.
Gus had a kennel he slept in near the front door and the kids took him into the yard at the mobile home and played with him. The kennel was his safe place, his retreat he could go to when the rough housing got to be a little too much. P and M sometimes walked him down to the little park and played with him there, but for the most part Gus was a house dog and he loved us unconditionally.
Sometime around the time we bought the house in 2000, Gus began to change. Things were different in a house. Gus was not allowed upstairs and his kennel was in the basement near the furnace room.
Gus did not like the furnace. It made strange noises which frightened him. If we left the house, we put him in the kennel so he wouldn't get into trouble. If the furnace came on, though, he barked.
Gus got to be a pretty big boy. When we took him to the vet he weighed in at seventy-five pounds. When he laid on the floor at P's feet when we were watching television there was no place to walk. Most of the time we didn't mind.
Until the abuser reared his head. If we put Gus in his kennel at night and P wasn't home to comfort him (P's room was in the basement too), the abuser would go downstairs and take a newspaper and beat the kennel. Sometimes Gus cowered, sometimes he snarled depending on the level of fear he was experiencing. If the abuser was in a particularly nasty mood, he'd beat the kennel and sprayed water in Gus's face.
The rest of us were afraid, too. We didn't want that anger turned on us. So we laid in our beds, prayed, and said nothing.
The abuser would get angry if Gus was in the living room and had his tail between his legs. Gus didn't want to be near the newspaper/watersprayer man who scared him. So Gus would attempt to slink out of the abuser's way. This angered the abuser more and the abuser would scream and yell at Gus while Gus attempted to get away and go down the stairs to his safe place, his kennel.
Sometimes the screaming and shouting stopped. Sometimes Gus was followed.
When things changed six years ago, one of the first things we did was destroy the kennel. Gus was free to go wherever he wanted in the house. The kids asked if he could sleep in their beds with them, something that had previously been forbidden. Often he slept at the foot of my bed as if on guard duty.
Gus was a good dog and he loved us. Now I know he protected us too. He took the abuse that would have been physically heaped on us. We took enough verbal and emotional abuse, not knowing what to call it at the time, just knowing we needed it to stop and fearful we would be treated no better than our beloved dog.
The abuser had an altercation with all of us at different times and it was then that we were able to recognize the monster within the person who was supposed to love, cherish and protect us.
Today, we carry the scars of the emotional and verbal abuse. The kids are older now and they have labeled what happened at home for what it was - abuse. Each seeks to remedy the results of that abuse in healthy ways. I'm only just beginning to realize the depths of the trauma that not only the kids, but myself, endured. One has even labeled their trauma Complex PTSD, and in their cases the symptoms seem to fit.
For me, it is difficult to reconcile, the rage that was expressed in our home with the person I once knew. The abuser doesn't realize what he did to each of us and has no regrets for the things done. It is highly unlikely that he will ever take responsibility for the pain and grief all of us have endured and continue to combat. He thinks he has forgiven himself and that doing this is sufficient. The truth is he is not healed and hasn't taken healthy steps to understand the rage that lies buried in him. That monster is only sleeping.
For me, it is a character defect that I did not better protect my children as well as our family dog. I buried my head in the sand many times. So many of the incidents seem like overacted scenes from a television series. Yet, they were real, and they often replay for me in the dark of the night, robbing me of restful sleep. Sometimes I wonder, did we really experience that?
We did.
I'll be working on and with this for a very long time.