You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness (5 page)

At the first possible moment, we had Beatrice “fixed.” So, you know, she wouldn’t leak anymore. Slowly things began to calm down. Violet turned one and it seemed like a good time to have baby number two, but not in that one-bedroom. We moved a few blocks north to an apartment that would accommodate more family members. We even gave Violet the larger bedroom so she could share it with her future brother or sister (Florence or Lawrence). Around the time we decided to start having purposeful sex, our finances went screaming south. It just wasn’t a good time to add another dependent, as I lovingly referred to our future potential child. So Violet got a great big room and another year went by and our money situation kept getting worse.

We needed an escape route. So Paul, Violet, Beatrice, and I went to stay at my parents’ house for the summer—we needed to regroup and not get any further in the rent-hole.

Violet was pretty much happy there once we got past the initial transition, but I wasn’t. I was certain that Beatrice felt the way I felt. One day she was outside and got stung by something on her eye—she looked like Jake LaMotta. She walked up to me and I swore she said, “Can we please go home now?”

Bringing your dog to someone else’s home is always a dicey issue, whether they have dogs or not. If they don’t have dogs they are completely freaking out about the carpets and furniture; and if they do have dogs, they expect them all to be treated the same way. When I was growing up, my parents treated our dogs very much like, well, dogs. They weren’t issued additional coats in the winter or given rain boots. They ate their dog food from their dog bowl, and they didn’t beg at the table. They lay in their dog beds—not on the furniture. And this was still how they ran their dog ship.

We did not. Beatrice very nearly had a seat at the table in our home and there was no furniture or rug that was off-limits to her. My dad was very concerned about this special rug he had that was colored with vegetable dye. I’m not really sure why, but you cannot pee on it. And Bea didn’t. (But Violet did.)

I think because their dogs were so much bigger than Beatrice, my parents and their dogs didn’t begrudge her lying on the couch with the people at cocktail hour. I remember the first time I went to their house with Otto. They had recently put down wall-to-wall sea-foam carpeting in the upstairs. Definitely no dogs allowed. That didn’t apply to Otto. “He doesn’t see color,” I’d tell my father. Dad wasn’t amused. I watched him stand at the foot of the stairs, Otto at the top, head cocked, with my dad yelling,
“Get down here, fatty!”
Otto looked at him, considered the offer, and went back to my mother’s dressing room to lie in the sun. Sea foam wasn’t his choice, and it wasn’t his problem either.

I am not sure their dogs were aware that Bea was even a dog. To them she was more of a doglet, and she quickly tired of being disrespected. When the summer came to an end, we all happily returned to the city with plans to get to work, make lots of money, and not have another kid, yet.

I felt the space within me that was filled with the longing for another child quickly transformed into a desire for another dog. When I brought it up to Paul, he was very emphatically against it. Primarily, he felt that we were just getting back on our feet. Why would we want to complicate things? And there was also the cost and the time. Paul wanted to wait until things settled down a bit before getting back to the business of having a second kid. I felt entirely ambivalent about the second kid. Well, not so much ambivalent as terror-stricken by the thought. Kid number one was now walking and talking and sleeping at night and using the bathroom. A new baby would be like starting at square one. It was all sort of out there in the ether of the relationship; we weren’t ready for anything at the moment so it was all hypothesis. And one of the unexpected side effects of our summer away was that now Violet was afraid to sleep alone. So she slept in the bed with us. And Bea. When I went to the gynecologist, she asked me what birth control I was using. I said, “My daughter and our dog sleep in our bed.” She didn’t ask any further questions.

In the meantime, we both started working again. I was writing from home on a computer that insisted on taking me to the Internet to look at dogs, specifically Boston terriers in need of rescue. There was always the thought that somewhere I’d find the reincarnated Otto who I’d imagined would have his identifying feature, the walleyes. I also thought he’d be back in Pennsylvania. The largest site for this sort of search is
Petfinder.com
, which kept leading me to Bostons who were in the custody of Northeast Boston Terrier Rescue. I went to the website and read the description.

I clicked on a link called “Success Stories” with photos and stories of the dogs saved. One in particular stood out. It was a studio portrait photo of a Boston terrier whose tongue was hanging out of his mouth. His name was Champ and it said, “This attractive fellow is Champ. Champ was abused by his former owners. His jaw was broken and never set, so his tongue hangs out of his mouth. His new owners report this just adds to his wonderful personality! Champ now has a caring wonderful family who love him and his flaws.”

 

 

 

 

I FELT A STINGING
in my eyes and a lump in the pit of my stomach. I needed to help dogs like Champ. Dogs like Otto.

I read on about what the volunteers did. It sounded perfect. I could help these dogs without getting one. In fact, it would be far better for all involved to help several rather than just one. The idea of doing volunteer work appealed to me as well. I had just cut out a quote from Marion Wright Edelman: “Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.” My grandmother drove buses of veterans during World War II, my mother and father taught disabled kids and mentored, and everyone in my family was heavily involved in various Jewish organizations. I sent an e-mail asking if I could help and got an application back.

I sent the form back and got another e-mail from Sheryl thanking me and telling me that without a car I probably wouldn’t be called on to transport and with a three-year-old child, they most likely wouldn’t be able to give me a dog to foster since they didn’t really know what those dogs’ personalities were like and wouldn’t want to risk injuring my child. I would be able to do visits to prospective homes (in the New York metro area) when they came up. In the meantime I could familiarize myself with the Yahoo! group listings to get a sense of what they did.

I was slightly disappointed, because fostering sounded fun, but also excited that I had committed to do something. And in a couple of years when Violet was older, maybe then I would be able to help more.

Joining an existing Yahoo! group is like coming into a foreign language class that’s already under way. They’re all talking in acronyms and using terminology you’ve yet to learn. The first post I read said something about an HC. I Googled HC and it said: “Hors Concours,” which meant non-competing. Well, when the rescue group used it it meant Home Check—the home visit that was done for every prospective foster or adoptive home. I was going to have to get an HC before I would be able to foster, though that didn’t seem to be in the cards for the near future.

There was a lot going on all the time. The postings involved issues with fosters, requests for someone to foster or for the group to get ready for a mass of incoming (from a puppy mill or just various people surrendering at the same time), information about upcoming fund-raisers, links to Boston terriers in shelters in the area, links to Bostons on Craigslist, warnings about pet food recalls, a lost-dog notice, and the occasional “OT” (off-topic), which was usually a joke or a poem. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those things where I’d join up but never really be a part of it . . . like the pregnancy Yahoo! group I’d joined and dropped.

About two weeks into it, my attention started to drift. Everything in the group seemed to be happening in York, Pennsylvania, or Rochester, New York.

And then, as so many stories begin, one night the phone rang. It took me a while to understand what was happening. The intake coordinator of the group, Jane, had gotten my number from Sheryl. It turned out there was a Boston puppy, an eight-month-old, whose owner wanted to surrender him because she worked so much that he was spending all of his time in, and she was spending all of her money on, doggie day care. She’d bought him at a pet store on a whim even though she’d never had a dog and knew nothing about Bostons. I said, “Yes, yes,” and “Oh, the poor dog,” and “Oh, the dumb owner.” I called Paul and told him the good news and he said, “We’re going to end up keeping him, right?” And I said, “Of course not! Two-week foster!” And he said, “He’s going to sleep in our bed, right?” And I said, “No, he’s not.” I wanted to get him, assess him, and move him out so we’d be available for the next one. Sure it would be hard. I’d read the posts about the failed foster homes. Those wimpy people who fell in love with the dogs and couldn’t let them go. That would never be me.

First, we had to have our home check. We were great, our home was fine, and Beatrice introduced a growling, snapping aspect into her personality that made me think we’d flunk for sure. We didn’t. It turned out that her reaction was “normal” and Jill, the volunteer, recommended introducing any potential foster to Beatrice outside on neutral territory. Little did Jill know that Beatrice considered the entire borough of Manhattan to be her territory.

Now it was all approved and I just had to make arrangements with the owner, Charlotte, for the transfer. She e-mailed a bio and pictures of Hank. He was very cute and sweet. She had not yet had time to get him neutered but she would give us the money for that and he was “pretty much housebroken.”

I met Charlotte in a pocket park by my home. Hank was bigger than his pictures and he was a little hyper, but you know, he was a puppy and probably very nervous about this trip. I had Bea come out for the neutral meeting; there was a good deal of snarling and barking as we took the dogs up to my apartment. Hank flew into the apartment jumping from chair to couch to dining-room table. “He’s nervous,” I told Paul. “Me too,” said Paul. Hank finally wound down and went to his bed, where he gnawed on his rawhide. Charlotte got teary-eyed as she prepared to say good-bye. She looked at him resting in his bed and said to him, “Why couldn’t you always act like this?” (Red flag! Hmm, but didn’t she say she was giving him up because she worked so much?) She handed over his papers from the pet store and the vet and signed the surrender forms I’d downloaded earlier, and where it said “Donation,” she said, “Well . . . he was fifteen hundred dollars!” In other words, she’d already donated to the pet store. I was anxious about the whole scene and figured the sooner she left, the sooner everyone would settle down, so I didn’t push it. I did remind her that she’d said she’d pay for the neutering and she told me to let her know the cost when it was done.

And Charlotte left. And Hank did not.

It was evening so we were all settling down to bed, or we tried to while Hank flew from chair to bed to head. Violet was in a self-taught earthquake position, crouched, head tucked under, beneath the table. There was no crate for him; there was no off switch for him. Apparently, what was meant by “pretty much housebroken” was “he pisses and craps wherever the hell he feels like.” All night long he barked and flew and yelped and . . . bit.

In the morning I called Sheryl from my cell phone as I walked to the gym. It was our first conversation. She had a big laugh, a smoky voice, and an Australian accent. I did a five-minute monologue on the Horrors of Hank and how wrong Charlotte’s description of him was. She listened and waited till I finished.