Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself (21 page)

As I said, I never saw any of this, because I was too young and it went right over my head, or because my grandfather managed to hide it from me, but my mother saw all of it. She grew up with it, and in her most formative years, it was what shaped her. It would have been difficult enough, having a crazy father, but having one who also self-medicated with alcohol made it impossible to know what to do. Sometimes the drunk one told her he loved her, but she couldn’t trust the drunk one. Sometimes the drunk one pushed his wife Alice around, and when Sandra tried to come to her mother’s defense, she got pushed as well. It was lucky that he was diagnosed while he was in the service, because the whole family lived off his disability checks, but it wasn’t lucky for my mother.

She had no one to set a good example for her, no one to show her how to be a loving parent. As a young girl, my mother saw her mother experience a panic attack. She remembers getting on a city bus with Alice, but after only a few blocks Alice became convinced that the bus was going to crash, until eventually the driver stopped to let them out, five blocks from their stop. Alice was given a prescription for valium, one of the earlier psychotropic medications released in 1963 to treat anxiety.

My information about Alice and Roland is incomplete, because Sandra didn’t like to talk about her childhood much. It was clear to me that her early life was not easy. She had nowhere to turn and no one to talk to. If she ever cried, her mother and father made fun of her for crying, rather than offer sympathy. She learned to hide, keep her head down and make herself invisible, and not to fight back.

When I was about fourteen or fifteen, she had a number of brief hospital stays, but all she’d tell me was that she had a “chemical imbalance.” I’ve read that people who suffer from schizophrenia are hospitalized when they are considered to pose a danger to themselves or to others, which meant my mother grew up with a man who was probably diagnosed as dangerously insane. Sandra’s mother and father were both, to varying degrees, mentally ill. I’m not qualified to say whether or not my mother is, too, but even if she isn’t, she still grew up imitating her parents’ behaviors, unconsciously. They didn’t know how to show or express love, so Sandra never learned how to do it.

She has had three romantic involvements in her life, to my knowledge, and she has intimated to Michelle that her first romantic involvement with a man, before getting involved with my father, was abusive. Her first impression of Mark was that he was, I quote, “an asshole.” Why, then, would she pursue a relationship with him, if not to refight the battles she’d lost as a child and, it turned out, lose them all over again? I should add that she was able to express love in one way: like many people too shy or introverted or troubled to love other human beings, she could love animals. She and my father, when they began their ill-fated marriage, had a Siberian husky named Reagan, whom my mother adored. She never forgave my father for taking the dog with him when he left. And she loved her cats—the same cats I hurt, perhaps because she loved them and not me.

The lessons I learned from my mother were the opposite of beneficial. The way I saw it, they directly resulted in my constant bullying. But how did this happen? Why was I singled out for bullying?

I once asked a therapist that. He dismissed the question and thought it was unimportant. I felt, to the contrary, that understanding what it was about me that drew the scorn and anger of my peers would be a crucial part of the healing process.

From kindergarten on, I set myself up for punishment and abuse because I’d already built a protective fortress around me, a way of carrying myself that marked me as different from everybody else. I walked on eggshells where there were no eggshells. I anticipated hostility and expected trouble, and as a result, I generated hostility and trouble. I’d learned, at home, how to behave like a victim. My peers didn’t know what was different about me on any conscious level, what it was that they didn’t like. It was beyond all of us. All they knew was that they didn’t like it, they didn’t feel comfortable around me, so they attacked what they didn’t understand, afraid of becoming me.

I had “please don’t victimize me” written all over me, and that invited the bullies to do as they pleased to me, knowing I wouldn’t fight back, because I’d already surrendered. I did that because that’s how my mother learned to cope and survive. I sabotaged myself because she’d shown me how to do it. She didn’t mean to, but she did.

I
returned to the Page Animal Hospital the next morning, arriving around ten o’clock. It was another bright, brilliant Arizona morning, with blue skies and a warm sun toasting the sand.

Both Krista and Dr. Roundtree were there, and I knew immediately, by the way they both smiled at me, that things had turned a corner. I was enormously impressed by how professional and caring they were. They brought me immediately to the back room. I quickly scanned the cages to see how the black-and-white cat was doing. Either he’d been moved somewhere to recover, or he hadn’t made it, because I couldn’t find him anywhere. But my concern was for the dog now.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“He’s still eating and taking fluids,” Krista said. “We like that. And he’s pooping and peeing.”

“He’s pretty weak,” Dr. Roundtree said. “But that’s to be expected.”

He explained that he’d performed the same blood tests to check for organ function that he’d performed on the day I’d brought him in, which was standard procedure. You do the tests, rehydrate the dog, then do the tests again to measure the differences. As far as he could tell, the dog seemed to be bouncing back.

“Why are his teeth so brown?”

“He probably had distemper before his permanent teeth came in,” Krista said. “The infection disrupts the formation of the enamel.”

Krista said he was on his third I.V. bag. To put it in scale, given his size and diminished weight, it would be like a normal-sized human drinking two five-gallon jugs of water. No wonder he couldn’t move. He would have sloshed himself to death. She showed me the reports of the blood work they’d done, how his electrolytes were coming back into balance, how his white cells were up, which would help him fight off infection. He was pulling through.

“So what’s next?” I asked.

It wasn’t a question I wanted to ask. By that, I mean that I felt responsible for the animal and wanted to pay his health-care costs. But beyond that, there was only so much I
could
do. Michelle and I had already talked about getting a second dog, and I had decided one dog was enough. We were also working long hours, seven days a week, to keep the Wrench-It Center afloat and the bills paid. Neither of us would have the time to stay home with a sick puppy and nurse him back to health. We also needed to take Kohi into consideration, and while he got along fine with other dogs, those instances were quick meet-and-greets at the park or on the street. In his own house, he was the alpha dog, and we weren’t sure if he’d welcome the competition.

“Wait and see, but I think we’re out of the woods.”

“What about psychological damage?” I asked. “I suppose that’s hard to say.”

“It is,” the veterinarian said. I knew the dog wouldn’t be able to talk it out with a therapist, of course. There was a chance the dog would be clingy or need a lot of attention. He could show avoidant behaviors toward people, or growl, or even nip or bite. “But dogs don’t think like we do. He’s not going to think somebody put him in the canyon because they wanted to hurt him. They can’t really tell what our motivations are.”

The dog was also, I hoped, young enough that if someone was cruel to him, he might not remember, the way adult humans can’t retain anything that happened to them in the first year or two of our lives.

“Do you think he’ll get along with other dogs?” I asked.

“Impossible to say,” I was told. “It depends on how socialized he was before he was abandoned.”

“Do you think there’s a chance his owner will be looking for him?”

He didn’t think so. His best guess was that the dog was what they call a “res dog,” referring to the Navajo reservation lands outside of Page. “Res dogs” often wandered off, looking for food. However, he didn’t think anybody would have bothered putting the dog in the canyon. For one thing, few if any locals had the gear and experience to get so deep into such a technical canyon. He’d checked, but the dog didn’t have any subcutaneous microchips to identify it. I wondered what the chances were that someone would adopt him. There’s something called “black dog syndrome,” which describes why black dogs are always the last to be adopted. What it comes down to is that people just don’t like them.

The doctor left me alone with the animal. I argued with myself, even though I knew which side of the argument was going to win. It seemed like a bad idea to adopt the dog myself. Was I being overcautious? Callous? The instinct to protect myself from emotional blows was strong and entrenched. It would hurt too much if something went wrong and I brought the dog home and then he didn’t make it, or turned into a major behavioral rehab project. At the same time, if I’d come this far, I couldn’t stop now. It would be like climbing all but the last ten feet of a mountain. I was afraid it would turn out to be a “false peak,” which happens sometimes when you’re climbing, and you think you’ve reached the top, and only then do you realize there’s an even higher peak hiding behind the one you initially spotted.

When I knelt down next to the dog, this time he was able to lift his head from the towel I’d placed him on two days ago. When I was in the best shape of my life as a Marine, lifting weights, I’d been able to bench press 350 pounds. The dog, lifting his head from the towel, seemed to make a similar effort. His tail wagged again, this time the full tail and not just the tip, and he looked me in the eye. I think that was the moment that sealed the deal, like the moment when the first wolf pup snuck into the light of the campfire, thirty thousand years ago, and looked the first pet owner in the eye, as if to say, “You and me—Whaddaya think?”

I heard Krista approach behind me and looked up.

“Are you going home?” she asked me. “Back to Salt Lake City?”

“I do have to get back. Do you think he’s ready to travel?”

She nodded.

“I can help you move him to your car and give you some extra towels for the trip,” she said. It felt a bit like she was making the decision for me, but in a good way.

There was one last matter to attend to. Digging my wallet from my back pocket and then my debit card from my wallet, I went to the front desk and told the girl there that I needed to pay for the dog I’d brought in. It took her a second to print out the bill and hand it to me. I braced myself. A friend of mine had brought his dog into a veterinarian’s office after it ate an oatmeal raisin cookie from Starbucks, and after they’d pumped the dog’s stomach and held him overnight for observation, his bill came to almost $1,200, making it perhaps the world’s most expensive raisin cookie. The dog I’d rescued was going into his third day. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if his bill was anywhere near a thousand dollars a day. In desperate times, you start thinking of what you have that you can sell on eBay or Craigslist. I had plenty of room on my credit card, if I needed it, but I’m extremely conservative when it comes to money. I knew I was responsible for the poor little pup, but I struggled with the idea of spending more money than I could afford, and I felt guilty for having doubts.

The bill was a little over $600. This was what I was afraid of and had clearly not budgeted for. I looked at it and decided to see what I could do. I asked if, given the circumstances, they could please whittle it down closer to their actual costs, including labor. I didn’t want to short anybody, but I simply did not have $600 to spend. It made me extremely uncomfortable even to ask for this favor; I value my integrity a lot. I told Dr. Roundtree I would own the bill, but I was hoping he could work with me on it.

Krista walked out and seemed irritated that I was looking at the bill. She took it from me and walked into the back office. A few moments later, she came back out with the invoice in her hand. Had she overheard me talking and knocked off some of the cost? Was I about to get a “pain in the ass” surcharge for trying to negotiate the bill?

Krista looked at me and said Dr. Roundtree was going to have the Angel Fund cover the bill. I asked her what the Angel Fund was. She said they tried to set aside money, when they could, to cover situations like this. The bill was going to be discounted, 100percent. I’m guessing Dr. Roundtree had known he would use the fund to cover the pup’s expenses, but I think he wanted to get some kind of a commitment out of me so that I would not just leave the dog behind. Assuming I am correct, I can completely understand this position. Charity is wonderful, but it also must subscribe to the laws of math. If they helped every animal they rescued free of charge, it would not be sustainable.

I was literally speechless; I looked at Krista and just stared.

I snapped out of it and decided negotiations were not over. I handed my card to the office manager and asked her to bill me for $200. Krista stepped in and said no.

“I’m going to contribute to the invoice,” I said. “I’m extraordinarily grateful for what you have done here and I’m going to help.”

She didn’t go for it. Was this really going to come to blows? I’m in pretty good shape, but she was looking pretty scrappy standing there. A brief battle of wills took place, the kind I wish happened more often, and she finally gave in.

I thanked everybody for their kindness, and I shook Dr. Roundtree’s hand before going outside to clean out the foot well on the passenger side of my truck, where the dog would be safer than if I allowed him to ride on the seat. They’d given the dog superb care. They’d treated and rescued hundreds of animals that had been abandoned or hit by cars or mistreated, and I had only saved one. The work they did every day was heroic, but it was new to me. A moment later, Krista came out holding the animal in both hands, her arms outstretched like a ring bearer at a wedding, the dog limp as a rag. I used the towels to make a bed for him in the foot well, and then she placed him on the bed. I felt like a new dad, coming home from the hospital with a day-old baby, a mixture of joy and dismay.