DogTown (20 page)

Jeff Popowich stood watching, along with a half dozen others, as Lenny and another man lowered the old puffy-lion dog into a small grave cut into the rocky ground.

“There you go, friend,” Lenny murmured. Then he and the other man silently shoveled dirt and rocks into the hole. “I’m going to do a short reading and then, as we normally do, you can pay your final respects,” Lenny said quietly to the gathered mourners.

He read out of a little book: “He demanded so little of us—fresh water, food, a patch of sunlight…and he gave so much in return—uncritical, undemanding, unlimited affection…he will always be present in our hearts….”

Elissa Jones stood at the grave’s edge, unsuccessfully fighting back tears.

Lenny lay a flat, square, reddish stone on the grave and then set Bruno’s green collar on top. One by one, people stepped up and put little polished stones on the gravestone, to honor Bruno’s memory. A light wind stirred the dozens of wind chimes hanging in the trees, like an aeolian harp being stirred by the wind’s ghostly hand.

“I’ve never done a placement at Angels Rest where the wind chimes failed to sound,” Lenny said. “The chimes are a signal from Bruno that everything is OK. Bruno is over at Rainbow Bridge, whole and happy and healthy and runnin’ around—and in need of nothin.’ See, when he’s over there runnin’ around, he kicks up the wind and the wind finds its way over Rainbow Bridge, down into Angel Canyon and strikes a chime in Angels Rest, so we know he’s OK.”

The Rainbow Bridge could be thought of as a self-serving fantasy, a sort of never-never land where cherished animals are supposed to go after they die. But out here in this ancient, celestial place, where the wind chimes keep resonating long after they’ve been struck, and the desert sky is limitless as the deeps of space, the Rainbow Bridge seems just as real, just as plausible, as anything else. Because the bridges that form between humans and their companion animals—including all the cripples, strays, refugees, and left-behinds like Bruno, the beloved cinnamon bear—are as enduring as the red-rock canyon walls.

Engraved on a stone at the entrance to Angels Rest is a poem meant to comfort the grieving human heart when those bonds are broken. But it also suggests that mortality, human or animal, is really just an illusion—a sort of Rainbow Bridge to the beyond:

A
s I sit here writing, my dog Kaiser is sleeping on my couch. He’s peaceful and calm, totally oblivious of me, my other dog, Sherman, or anything else going on. I’ve known Kaiser since around the time I started working for Best Friends. Back then, he was a very different dog. Today, Kaiser is a big, healthy, brown-and-white shepherd, but in his early days at Best Friends, he was underweight and small. Kaiser was also such a nervous wreck that he could barely look at me if I was in the room. Looking at him now, so completely comfortable and so relaxed, it’s hard to imagine that he was ever that shy and closed off. But thanks to the help of big brother Sherman, Kaiser has become the easygoing guy he is today. Through Kaiser I learned to work for his trust and friendship, a reward I now get to enjoy every day.

In September 2003, I applied for a job at Best Friends. They were interested in hiring me, but before I could be brought on officially, I had to go through a two-week on-site evaluation. It essentially was a trial run where the staff at Best Friends and I could see if I would be a good fit for the society. They started me off in the admissions area at Dogtown, where all the new dogs are brought in. The dogs wait in admissions while medical work is being done; it’s a good time to get to know the dogs behaviorally, too. It seemed like a good place to start: the new guy working with the new dogs.

Kaiser came to Best Friends at about the same time. He had been sheltered by the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. They “traded” him to Dogtown because they were having problems finding a home for him and thought Best Friends might have a better shot at placing him in a home. The staff in San Francisco told us that Kaiser was very shy around people. He would sit all the way in the back of his cage and bark a “Stay away!” warning at anyone who walked by. Because of his nerves, Kaiser didn’t eat very much, and it showed. When he arrived at Best Friends, I could tell by looking at him that he was very underweight (his medical exam later showed that he weighed 20 pounds less than normal for a dog of his size).

Kaiser wound up being one of the dogs I worked with during my two-week trial run, but it was not love at first sight for the two of us. He was very fearful of me and wouldn’t come near; when I entered his enclosure, he would quickly move to the point farthest away from where I was standing. I tried not to take it personally. I liked Kaiser and wanted to help him, so I kept an eye out for ways that I could show him my friendship without scaring him.

Every morning we had to leash the dogs up to take them out to the runs, and then bring them back in the building at night. The walks didn’t seem to be helping Kaiser, who seemed more fearful when it was time to go for a walk. Trying to leash up a nervous dog can often make the situation worse, as the animal will try to stay away from you, which is just what happened with Kaiser in the beginning. But one morning, I brought Sherman with me, and that changed everything.

Sherman, a big black-and-tan shepherd mix who was rescued from the streets of Tijuana, went to work with me every day (which is a great perk at Dogtown, by the way). He had a few of his own responsibilities, mostly accompanying me and sanctuary dogs on walks and finding sticks along the way to carry around. It was a pretty good life for him, and he seemed to enjoy it.

Sometimes we don’t know much about the dogs who come to the sanctuary, so we have to do our own evaluations to assess their personalities, learn their likes and dislikes, and get a sense of who they are while we work with them and try to find them homes. During my tryout at Dogtown, Sherman came in handy when we evaluated how new admissions got along with other dogs. He’s a pretty mellow dog who likes other dogs; we didn’t need to be too concerned with his showing aggressive behvaior toward new dogs. It was always good to have him around to see how they would interact with him.

With Kaiser, introducing Sherman to him turned out to be the best way to start building a relationship among the three of us. The morning I brought Sherman into Kaiser’s run brought about an amazing transformation in Kaiser’s behavior. The instant Sherman came in, the two of them started playing together. They were running, wrestling, and jumping in and out of the kiddie pool. It was a puppyish side of Kaiser I hadn’t seen before.

Kaiser didn’t even seem to mind my presence in there with the two of them as they romped and splashed. He didn’t retreat into the farthest corner when he noticed me. Even the leash ceased to be as scary to him; leashing Kaiser up for his walk became a whole lot easier. It was the start of beautiful friendship: Sherman helped Kaiser to overcome his fear, and that helped build a better relationship between Kaiser and me.

After my two-week evaluation ended, I was offered the job at Dogtown. It was an exciting moment for me, but before I could start full-time, I needed to take about a month to wrap up things in my old life. When I came back to start my job, I went back to work in the admissions area, taking care of the new arrivals. While I was gone, Kaiser had moved on and had been placed in a run with other dogs. At first, it went well for him, and he seemed to get along well with his runmates.

But in that month’s time, Kaiser seemed to have forgotten Sherman and me; when I went to visit him, it was like starting all over again. He was nervous around me and didn’t seem to enjoy going on walks with Sherman and me all that much. But since he seemed comfortable with his runmates and caregivers, I didn’t worry too much. It looked like he had made a good transition, and I thought he would be OK.

But things took a bad turn for Kaiser in his new situation—he got into a fight with one of his runmates and had to have his injuries treated by the clinic staff. It wasn’t long before he was back in the clinic being treated for injuries from another dogfight.

We were learning that Kaiser is the type of dog who gets pretty anxious in a high-energy environment, and that being at Dogtown was too much stimulation for him. When Kaiser gets nervous, he is unsure of what to do or how to behave. The way Kaiser deals with his anxiety is to start fights with other dogs, but a lot of the time he ends up being the one who gets hurt the most. After the second incident, I thought that maybe life in a home with Sherman and me would be a better environment for him, so I decided to foster him and took him home to stay with us.

For Kaiser, it turned out to be the right move. The calmer environment plus the increased personal attention seemed to do the trick. He quickly started coming around, warming up to Sherman and me again. He was still anxious, but not nearly as much as when he was at the sanctuary. He still wasn’t eating very well, until I found out that he loves cottage cheese. After that it didn’t take long to get him up to a healthy weight. Kaiser’s new diet and new environment seemed to suit him. His anxiety was lessening, his coat looked healthier, and his bond with Sherman and me was growing stronger.

My dogs go everywhere with me, which means that Kaiser got put into all kinds of new, unfamiliar situations all the time. It helped to have Sherman around, because just like that first day, Kaiser was much braver in these situations as long as he was near Sherman. I brought both dogs to work with me at Dogtown, and Sherman was instrumental in helping Kaiser to feel comfortable in that high-energy environment.

We all took vacations together, too. Kaiser’s first big road trip was to Washington State. During the entire two weeks, he was practically glued to Sherman’s side, but we all had a pretty good time together. Sherman has helped Kaiser get through countless scary situations, and has proved to be the best big brother a dog could have. Things were going so well that I decided to adopt Kaiser.

Being in my home gave Kaiser the chance to proceed at his own pace. For the first couple of years, new people made Kaiser nervous, so I didn’t push him too hard to make friends with everyone who came to visit. If I had friends over, he would prefer to stay out in the yard until they left. If we went out, it was pretty much impossible to get him inside someone else’s house. It used to be that if someone tried to pet him Kaiser would shy away and not come near, but if you ignored him and gave him some space, he would eventually come up behind you to investigate you. When he did become more comfortable (which could take a long time), he would let you touch him. It took some of my friends years to be able to walk up to Kaiser and be able to pet him.

After a few years passed and Kaiser grew more confident, though, he started acting more like a normal dog around unfamiliar people. Instead of avoiding people outright, he is now comfortable approaching them and checking them out up front. And instead of taking between six months and a few years to be able to touch him, new people can now pet him the same day that they meet him. Kaiser has been with me for almost six years, and I can’t imagine what life would be like without him around. People who meet him now find it hard to believe he was ever an unsocialized, scared dog.

As I finish writing, Kaiser is still sleeping on his couch, his legs twitching as he dreams. I can’t help but think about how lucky a dog he is to have made it all the way to Best Friends, where we found each other. Every day, thousands of shy, scared dogs just like Kaiser die in shelters around the world. All Kaiser needed was time, patience, and a good dog brother like Sherman to bring him out of his shell. I’ve never met a dog whom I thought was unadoptable and didn’t deserve another chance at life. I just wish there were more homes out there to give the Kaisers of the world the chance for a restful sleep on a couch of their own.