You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness

Table of Contents

 

 

ALSO BY JULIE KLAM

Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2010 by Julie Klam

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Published simultaneously in Canada

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klam, Julie.
You had me at woof: how dogs taught me the secrets of happiness / Julie Klam.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-44473-3

1. Klam, Julie. 2. Dogs—Therapeutic use. 3. Dog owners—Biography. 4. Human-animal
relationships. I. Title.
RM931.D63K
615.8’5158—dc22

 

 

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“The humans have tried everything. Now it’s up to us dogs!”

—Danny,
101 Dalmatians

LESSON ONE

How to Find the Right One for You

One night I dreamed I had a dog. He was a Boston terrier, not stocky, but substantial, with a good face. He came slow-motion scampering through the high grass and wild daisies of my sleep. He was perfect in every way, and I instantly felt an unexplainable future love for him, the kind I’d always imagined I’d feel when I met my soul mate—the Sonny to my Cher. His eyes were big O’s and it looked like his face was spelling O-T-T-O, so I knew that had to be his name, and that I had to go find him.

I was thirty, living alone in Manhattan, and employed part-time as a clerk in an insurance company. The only thing I felt sure of was that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. With no career and no boyfriend, I had the feeling that I was waiting for my life to start, and I needed something special to show me how to make it happen.

I believed everything was a sign. I went to my parents’ house and found a
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
T-shirt in the attic that I’d never seen before and thought, Maybe I’m going to work with Steven Spielberg . . . or be contacted by aliens; or I’d buy a pair of pants and find a square of paper in the pocket that said “INSPECTED BY 34,” and think, I’ll meet my husband when I’m thirty-four, or, I need to lose thirty-four pounds.

After the Otto dream, I called my friend Barbara at work because I knew she’d understand. We were both going through a period of fogginess in our lives and were looking for clarity, which we chose to seek in the reliable forms of psychics, seers, tarot card readers, crystal goddesses, and astrologers. We were certain that definitive answers—perhaps in the guise of a nice Michelin road map—were laid out somewhere. All we wanted was to know what was going to happen so we could stop worrying about it. Was that so much to ask? We just needed names, dates, and locations. My mother, who worked as a healer, had a steady stream of recommendations, though she always emphasized our lives were ours to do with what we wanted. But we didn’t know what we wanted. We wanted someone to tell us.

I’d call my mom up and say, “Bad news, I’m not going to meet my husband for five years. I might as well just stay home and watch TV.”

“No,” she explained, “you are in charge of your own path. All of the great yogis say you have free will; these are just suggestions of what may happen if you do nothing.”

“Oh good, so I won’t necessarily die in a hang-gliding accident?”

“Why would you be hang gliding? You’re definitely not going to die hang gliding because you won’t be going hang gliding! What are you, Bruce Willis?” Even though she was a healer, she was a Jewish mother first.

But this Otto dream seemed significant and I wanted Barbara’s take.

“Is that the kind of dog that looks like a cat?”

“Yes,” I said, “kind of like a cat and an old man combined.”

“Oh, I think that’s the kind of dog Michael has.” She held her hand over the mouthpiece and asked Michael, her funny, gay coworker, if Buster was a Boston terrier. I heard him say yes and start espousing his virtues. Then she asked me if I wanted to know where he got it.

“Sure,” I said and waited while she got the breeder’s name and number, thinking that this all figured into the magic; I mean, what were the chances that a guy who worked in Barbara’s office had the very same kind of dog I dreamed about?

I did some research on Boston terriers to see if they’d work as an apartment dog and what their shedding ratio was. I was in luck: in the book
Finding the Breed That’s Right for You
, Bostons got five out of five stars in the categories of apartment suitability and hypoallergenicity.

I found out that the Boston terrier originated when an English bulldog and an English terrier were bred and then the product was bred with a bulldog. Though they were not intentionally bred for it, Bostons have a very pronounced loyalty to their masters. Because they looked like they were wearing tuxedos, they were nicknamed the “American Gentleman.” Though I’m not the formal type, their look was very appealing to me. I’d seen them in early silent films and they felt old-fashioned and classic. They were kind of like Harold Lloyd as dog. And they were very popular around New York City during my grandparents’ childhood, which made them even more comforting to me.

A few days later, armed with my vast knowledge of Bostons, I gave the breeder a call. “We’re not doing Boston puppies anytime soon, we’re concentrating on Frenchies,” she said, referring to the Boston’s “cousin” the French bulldog. “But we’re involved with Boston terrier rescue. Do you know what that is?” I said yes even though I didn’t. I sort of figured it had to do with rescuing Boston terriers in peril. You know, stuck up in trees, stranded on ice floes.

“We’re fostering a young male, about a year and a half, and the people who were supposed to take him never showed up.” She said he’d been on the street for a long time when he was brought into the shelter in the winter; he still had summer fleas, and mange, and was skin and bones. They were nursing him back to health, and with all he’d been through, he’d never, not once, had an accident in the house. “He really is a wonderful dog,” she said, adding, “All he really needs is a little love,” which made me imagine the dog version of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. “We’ve been calling him Buddy. His ears droop over; he’s definitely not show quality, but if you don’t care about that, then he’s perfect.” While I talked to her I wrote down on a piece of paper “ears,” “show quality,” and “Buddy.” I don’t know if I shouted, “
I’ll take him!
” or if it just felt like that. It turned out the people who stood him up the day before called a few minutes after me but the breeder said it was too late. Another girl was coming to get him. Me.

He was way out in Pennsylvania, though, and I had to get someone to drive me there.

When I hung up I said,
“Am I getting a dog?”

I was convinced that doing anything to shake up my world would help with the at-sea feeling permeating every aspect of my life. I really wanted to meet a guy, and all of the conventional ways, like hanging out in bookstores and coffee bars and taking classes in biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History and, the one I did most, sitting in my apartment watching TV, weren’t working. I needed to find something to get me out and about that wasn’t so contrived. I’d grown up with dogs, but they were huge English mastiffs that I was terribly allergic to. I liked them as much as you can like anyone whose mere presence gives you an acute asthma attack. Recently I had started looking into the hypoallergenic breeds. Apparently poodles were fine, but I wasn’t crazy about them despite the claims that they are the smartest breed of dog. (I never understood how that was determined. Were they found by their owners hooking up Bunsen burners and pouring liquids into flasks?) I believe that different dog breeds speak to different people. The first time I’d seen a Boston was in a black-and-white photo with the actor/comedian Chris Elliott that hung in his foyer. I babysat for his kids and when they were asleep, I stared at the photo, captivated. When I asked Chris about it, he said the dog was just a prop for the photo shoot, but he remembered he was cute as a button. As loopy as it may sound, every time since then that I passed a Boston terrier on the street, I felt a little tug, a small flat-faced voice saying to me, “You and I should be together.”