The Chaos of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order” – Carl Jung

I’ve been thinking a lot about chaos recently – how it cuts across all areas of life, whether we like it or not. It seems to me that so much of life involves walking the razor’s edge between the two polarities of chaos and order. And so much of our daily fatigue comes from the relentless need to summon structure from within our psyche, and to impose that structure upon this always-changing chaos.

I’ve been summoning quite a bit of this structure within my psyche as it’s been necessary to impose order on a small and fiercely chaotic (newly acquired) Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy. It sounds all well and good and very Norman Rockwell-esque to talk about puppies being wholesome and cute and fun, but in my experience thus far with this specific spaniel, the animal (whom I deeply love and respect) has pushed me to the frontiers of chaos and forced me to confront inner demons related to what I thought a peaceful and well-ordered life entailed. It’s not fun. It’s rewarding and beautiful and rich, but it’s absolutely not fun. Cleaning up the poop and wiping away the piss and rushing to grab the animal before he devours the house plant – it’s not generally fun the way I think of fun – as in video games or table tennis.

We admire and love our dog more than is reasonable or clinically healthy, but make no mistake, this small four-legged creature is a highly talented purveyor of the art of chaos. Never had I realized how much order I had taken for granted until our lives were upended (and almost destroyed) by the arrival of this cute and (sort of) depraved animal. The former rules and decorum of daily living were literally shredded, chewed up, spat on, shat on, and pissed upon in such a dramatic fashion that it provoked a moderate identity crisis within me as I lay awake deep into the night wondering whether I actually was a dog person or not. Within two weeks of our puppy’s arrival and his almost psychotically obsessive focus on our every action, I suddenly had more sympathy (not complete sympathy – but more sympathy) for cat people, and why they need and want to be left alone by their antisocial pets.

Cavalier King Charles spaniels are widely considered to be “moderately intelligent dogs,” and while I do proudly regard our dog as being moderately intelligent, I am concerned that he displays a profound and troubling lack of common sense. He attempts to attack cars; he tries to eat paper towels that were just used to clean up his own messes; he tries very hard to eat anything that looks at all different from the background color of the floor (gum, plastic caps, paper, rocks, trash – all of this stands out from the dark pavement, and thus our dog has eaten these items); he chews through dry wall; he eats ear plugs; he’s eaten two of his beds; and he shows utter indifference to larger dogs barking at him (despite our counseling him to step back). While I’m frequently concerned for him during these (now routine) displays of common sense deficit, I also admire his insouciant renegade streak. I’ve never exactly eaten my bed, but I understand where that motivation might come from, given the stresses of modern life. And as a human, I have a superego that overrides my animalistic id, and thus prevents me from doing things like chewing through dry wall. But our dog apparently has no superego, and I have to admit that it’s kind of exhilarating to see a creature galivanting through life completely unrestrained by the internal word of “no” – reaping chaos and destruction and doing so in a completely earnest and unapologetic manner. He’s like a rock star on a drunken rage, destroying his hotel room and defecating on the floor while vomiting out the window – every single evening before bedtime. This is when the spaniel breaks free from the bounds of common sense and unleashes chaos on the household.

The housebreaking has been (and still is) an ongoing battle – a psychological game of chicken between owner and dog where accidents happen so willfully and so malevolently that I hesitate to refer to them as “accidents.” How many times have I slipped away into the other room for a moment of privacy, only to return to a fresh pile of dog poop right outside the door, with the four-legged perpetrator staring intently at me from across the room, brown eyes wide open so earnestly, as if to dare me to disappear for another moment alone? At which point he would no doubt “shit with bad intentions” once again, if I may paraphrase Mike Tyson’s description of his punching. It’s true – our dog is the Mike Tyson of shitting. He can knock you out in 72 seconds with a lightning-fast explosive shit out of nowhere, and you’re absolutely not ready to deal with it – and suddenly you’re down for the count and you’re cleaning up the floor.

As Tyson famously said, "everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The same is true about dealing with dog shit. Everybody has a plan until the dog shits on the floor. At which point, all bets are off, because you’re not about to enjoy that cup of coffee anymore, or watch that movie, or go out to dinner, or do anything else fun or relaxing until you’ve dealt with the shit, and then you can get back to your plan, if you’re lucky. But then the dog might have something else in mind – probably he’ll go chew up the rug or bite a hole in the wall, or eat his bed again, and then maybe after that, you can enjoy your coffee. Your life is now dictated by the chaos of the spaniel, and his unpredictably ferocious ways. I’m tempted to ignore the shit, just to reclaim the sovereignty and decision-making of my life, but it seems wrong to just sit there comfortably on the sofa, sipping my coffee, while a steaming and smelly pile of dog shit sits unaddressed only a few feet away. I do have a strong and enviable lazy streak at times, but I prefer to be lazy in a clean and hygienically safe space.

How many times have we Googled: “When do Cavalier King Charles Spaniels finally actually become house-broken please?” I warned my wife that if our dog’s deplorable bathroom habits continued unabated, someday we could very well end up appearing on Cesar Millan’s show (and not in a good way) as the only couple with a five-year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that is not yet house-broken. It would be so embarrassing for our family, friends and relatives: “Hey - we saw you guys on Cesar Millan’s show! The grownup dog shit people!” That would be our claim to fame forever. Poop. Luckily, we still have four and a half years to avoid this from happening – but still, I fear that it’s a very real possibility, so stay tuned.

Cesar Millan’s central premise when tackling issues related to abnormal dog psychology is that the neuroses that show up in the dog have their roots in the neuroses of the owner. The dog is merely reflecting some preexisting pathology within the owner. If that is the case, then extensive therapy might be warranted for both of us, as our dog, Chester, is displaying mild to moderate neuroses in the form of attachment disorder, mood disorders, inhibition deficit syndrome, lack of personal boundaries, generalized chaos, and aggressive and malevolent pooping. Probably I’m just describing a typical Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, but at this point, I just don’t know anymore.

Because the dog seems so intent on spreading chaos, I have gone very deeply into the chaos. I ruminate on chaos, and I abound in chaos, and (to understand the motivation of our dog) I often delight in chaos. I guess I can say that I’m now an expert on chaos, so I’d like to share my insights on chaos with you. It strikes me that order and chaos are primordial, as Jordan Peterson points out in his book, “12 Rules for Life,” where he suggests that the Garden of Eden represents order, whereas the serpent represents chaos. Order and chaos are also seen in Hinduism; Shiva’s Tandava dance is a representation of the cosmic cycles of these two polarities. Taoism also gives us the dance between the Yin (chaos) and the Yang (order). It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that our lives are indeed governed by these two polarities, and it seems that the deeper we enter into the chaos, the stronger we must rely on internal order to craft a successful balance. That is, the more that one plays with the Yin of chaos, the more one must summon the structure of Yang from within our depths, in an almost mathematically complimentary manner.

Why do we have the stereotype of the macho man being so messy? It’s as if he’s so overflowing with Yang (structure & order) within his psyche, that the outside wildness of Yin (disorder and chaos) doesn’t bother him anymore. Why do we have the stereotype of the softer, effeminate man (excessive Yin) surrounding himself with such a tidy and compulsively organized IKEA style room, overflowing with structure (excessive Yang). Could there possibly be a relationship between the internal Yin and the external Yang, and vice versa? That is – could there be an energetic tradeoff between the internal and the external polarities?

I imagine this precisely because our dog has brought so much disorder and chaos (Yin) into our lives, I find myself summoning so much internal order and structure (Yang) to deal with the wildness of this creature and the disordered world he has created for us. And in so doing, my inner Yang muscles are growing, and I thus find it easier to manage other chaotic events, as I’ve had so much practice with our dog. It seems true that the more Yang you possess within yourself, the less threatened you are by the external Yin.

As a case study to support my theory, just look at any Marvel action movie – let us imagine Spider-Man, for the sake of argument. Why is it that the director constantly unfurls greater and greater challenges of chaos (Yin) upon the archetypal superhero, as if to measure the superhero’s innate reserves of structure (Yang)? Why do we require our superheroes to possess so much Yang? Is it not because the more one embraces the challenges and wildness of the frontiers of life and the outer boundaries of growth, the more one encounters the savages and vagaries of chaos? And the only way to overcome that chaos is by imposing order upon that chaos, from the depths of our inner reserves of Yang? The greater our inner reserves of Yang, the more we can impose our own personal order upon the external world – the more of a superhero we become. I suppose that the problem-solving associated with our work-lives could be labeled simply as such: imposing order upon chaos – summoning inner reserves of Yang to conquer outward displays of Yin. And our super-heroes are expert problem solvers, are they not? Which is what makes them so successful – which is what we admire about them so much. They have excessive reserves of inner Yang to call upon when it’s necessary to impose order upon the chaos and challenges of life.

As our lives become every more complex and chaotic, we demand that our superheroes display even greater inner reserves of Yang energy to conquer this overflow in Yin, which would account for the recent Mission Impossible movies, and their excessively over-the-top challenges to Ethan Hunt’s masculine Yang qualities. Back in the mid-90s, it was sufficient to have our superhero hanging off a helicopter and being shot at from the villain; but in the wild chaotic times of 2026 (overflowing with Yin), we now require that our superhero be able to summon ridiculously excessive amounts of Yang as they demonstrate herculean problem-solving skills that mirror the challenges and complexities of our own daily lives – thus we have Ethan Hunt dangling from a ledge aboard a sinking submarine buried under arctic ice while a nuclear device must be disabled as he is being shot at by multiple scuba diving assassins. Could it be that we all relate to this, because that’s how we all feel under the insane pressures of modern life in America?

But let’s come back to the dog. Because that’s all the chaos I’d like to deal with tonight. I know there is an excess of chaos outside, but I feel that I can do a better job of managing outside chaos if my own house is in order, including the dog. And I get that house in order by summoning the Yang within me to impose order on the Yin that surrounds me in that household. And while my dog gives me more practice than I might have wanted in that endeavor, the practice is no doubt invaluable. For as we embrace the inevitable chaos of new beginnings and new creatures in our homes, our ability to navigate that chaos grows, and thus we feel more confident as we move forward in the world, forever dancing on the razor’s edge between order and chaos – the space in which we live our lives as superheroes of our own private fates, along with man’s best friend – a true guardian and fellow traveler in the chaotic and beautiful dance of life.

Author's Note: AI is never used in any of my writing and never will be.

Carl McCoy, copyright 2026

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