You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness (7 page)

I arrived within twenty minutes and waited for her to come. I watched for her to show up from all directions and saw a very thin young woman wearing a black slip, black stiletto heels, and Victoria Beckham-type sunglasses. She seemed nice, definitely on drugs, but at least she was a dog lover.

Immediately she apologized for not being able to bring the dog, whom she’d named Mr. Man, up to my area. I said it was fine. She said she’d brought the dog to a vet in her neighborhood who’d scanned and found a microchip and gave her the number of “some ranch” but she threw it away. She didn’t even call, because she KNEW this dog had been abused. He was panting and acting very anxious, but it was sweltering and she was nutty so I couldn’t really assess the situation. Having come from the gym I didn’t have any of my stuff with me—a leash, harness, or crate. She had some sort of wiry rope device attached to a scarf around his neck that she said I could keep. He wasn’t interested in her good-bye; in fact, when I took the rope from her, he just started running and running and every ten feet he would stop and have explosive diarrhea. I had one bag with me, and he must have gone forty times. Now I was going to have to figure out how to get him the hundred blocks back to my apartment. I called information for a pet taxi service but they had no one available to help me so I bought some water and sat in the shade for a minute. Mr. Man jumped at something and I cut my hand on his rope trying to subdue him. Blood started oozing down my arm and got on my shirt and legs and Mr. Man started crapping again. People looked at me like a bloody, sweaty woman in disgusting gym clothes with a crapping dog . . . which was accurate. I wanted to shout, “I’M AVERY FANCY LADY! I SHOP ONLY IN THE FINEST OUTLETS!” It was useless. I couldn’t scream,
“Cut”
or even
“Help!”
Help what? Help me plug this dog’s butt long enough for me to get him in an air-conditioned taxi! I called Paul, who was at work in Soho, and left him a message to call me. I waited and waited and as I was about to give up, whatever that meant, I looked straight ahead and saw Kettle of Fish, a bar owned by my husband’s friends Adrian and Patrick. I dragged Mr. Man up to the door and looked in. Paul and I had stopped there many times over the years. Adrian was never, ever there. Today she was standing by the door. Dressed in gauzy white, she was my angel. She gave Mr. Man a bowl of water, which he inhaled, and she refilled it two more times. She gave me some paper towels and a Band-Aid and somehow the cool dark bar had the effect of a dose of Pepto-Bismol because the Man stopped his eruptions. I wiped him up, carried him out the door, and hailed a cab. I held him tightly to me, praying to the God of humiliation to please not let him lose control in the cab. As if by a miracle, he made it up to my street. The minute we stepped out of the cab, he was going again, but I didn’t care. We were home.

I came in and called Joy.

“The eagle has landed,” I said. “And he has some pretty serious tummy trouble. Also, um, the woman I picked him up from . . . I believe is a ‘lady of the night.’”

“Is that right?” Joy said. “Well, I could tell you when I talked to her she was higher than a kite.”

We spoke a bit about the transport plans. Mr. Man had settled down and seemed to be very sweet so I agreed to keep him until someone could get him out to her in western Pennsylvania.

“What about his name?” I said. “I don’t really want to call him ‘Mr. Man.’”

“Well, I’d planned to call him Chip after Chipper Jones of the Braves,” she suggested.

“Fine, I’ll call him Chip.” I thought the fact that she was giving him his name boded well for my getting him out of here. “Because he’s
your
foster.”

She laughed warmly. “I’m looking forward to him.”

“He is cute,” I said.

“Awwww,” she said, her voice like honey. “Poor little darlin’.”

I posted a message on the Yahoo! board letting everyone know what was happening. Paul came home from work and Violet came home from being with her babysitter and everyone was happy to see that Chip neither flew nor bit. He was sweet and mellow and deferential to Beatrice so we were all quite happy with him. I spoke to Sheryl the next day and recounted the story. I hadn’t had a ton of experience in rescue but I was a fairly experienced dog person and Chip did not strike me as abused, as Coco had said. To say she was an unreliable narrator was fair. The problem was that an accusation of abuse had to be taken seriously. Which I did. And I knew this dog, who was friendly, not hand-shy, and well-mannered, did not have signs of abuse. Joy and I discussed the very distinct possibility that Coco might have some transference issues.

We all agreed very quickly that Chip was a nice dog (and by “we all” I mean Paul, Violet, me, and the guys who worked in my building—Jimmy, Carlos, Victor, Anthony, Raphael—who became something of an informal approval committee). They were always offering assessments of the new fosters—rating based on personality and appearance. We also all agreed that Hank had set the bar very low; still, Chip was sweet and I had more than a fleeting thought that maybe we would foster him and not send him to Joy after all.

On his first morning while he ate a breakfast of rice and boiled chicken, I looked through descriptions of missing Boston terriers to see if anyone had reported him. There was nothing online. I walked him and Beatrice over to a nearby vet and had them scan his microchip for me. They were able to tell me the registered number and which company’s chip it was so I’d know whom to call. I phoned when I got home and they were able to trace it to a large pet chain in New Jersey. Whoever had bought Chip had not changed the contact information. The pet chain, though, had the name, address, and telephone number for the person who bought him. It had been a little over a year and I knew he’d been missing for a while. He’d been with the guy who lived with his mother for over a month before he’d gone to Coco for a couple of weeks. I sent an e-mail to the board of directors telling them about the info I had and Sheryl said she would call the people and inquire about how the dog had been lost, what they’d done to find him, etc. . . . before we would return him. We were all still being cautious because of the original “abuse” report from Coco. After all, the rescue group didn’t know me that well and didn’t want to risk giving a dog back to an abusive home.

Sheryl had called a few times that day with no answer and no machine and she was so busy with the rest of the rescue group and her own job and life, it seemed to make sense for me to keep calling. I programmed the number into my cell phone and called over and over for the next two days. I double-checked the phone number with information and then called the pet store again. The number I had was correct, but no one had any further word. I checked with my friend Jancee, who is from New Jersey, and she told me the area of New Jersey where the people lived was a nice, pleasant suburb. I put the address into Google Earth and found their house had a small yard. I couldn’t zoom in enough to see if there was a fence. A week into the search, it was pretty clear that the people were gone, moved or whatever, and we decided that we’d send them a letter and then we’d know we’d made every attempt to get in touch and would assume Chip into foster care, which at this point we decided would be me. There were so many new dogs coming in and someone had just surrendered two dogs together that Joy could take if I kept Chip.

I e-mailed the progress reports to the board. Some felt the fact that the people hadn’t reported the dog missing to the local shelter or to the microchip company showed they weren’t really looking and we shouldn’t put ourselves out trying to get him home. Sheryl worried, though, that Chip was some little child’s best friend and for that possibility we needed to make every effort. I agreed.

I sent my letter and heard nothing for another week. I started to make arrangements to get Chip neutered, a necessary step before reviewing applications. I’d also been feeling a little pull to keep him. He had a wonderful, sweet quality and a very cute personality. Physically he looked like most of the dogs that came into rescue: a little too big with a nose that was a little too long to be considered breed standard. The majority of people who bought $2,600 show-quality Bostons did not lose them or turn them over to rescue.

Coming home from the gym two weeks after I’d picked him up I looked at my cell phone and was about to delete the New Jersey phone number when I decided to give it one last try.

A woman answered.

“Hello?” I said. “I’m calling from Northeast Boston Terrier Rescue. Did you lose a dog?”

“Yes,” she said a little unsurely.

“I’ve got him,” I said proudly. “You can come get him.”

I heard her say, “Someone has Shaggy!”

She came back on the line. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Manhattan.”

“Oh no, that’s very far from us. We’re in New Jersey.”

I didn’t respond. My thought was if my dog turned up in Russia I’d be there. She was talking to whoever was in the room. She got back on the phone and said. “Can you mail him?”

I thought about hanging up right then but I just decided to stay with it. “You can’t mail a dog.”

“Oh,” she said wistfully.

“Listen,” I said, “I’ve been taking care of your dog for two weeks. If you don’t want him back, that’s fine, we can keep him.”

She asked me for my phone number and said her husband would call me back. I came home and immediately e-mailed the board. Mary Lou, who I’d learned was the toughest board member, shot back, “Mail him? She’s too stupid to get this dog back. If she calls, tell her you are sorry but you lost him again.” Everyone was a bit puzzled by the whole thing. I assumed I wouldn’t hear from the owners again, and was surprised a bit later when I was in the playground with Violet and my phone rang with their number. It was the husband.

I told him what I’d told his wife, and he told me they’d been in Portugal for the last month. The dog had been lost for three months. He asked me where I lived and said he’d be there in an hour, that he knew how to get to New York City because he had worked at Ground Zero. I gave him directions and told him to call my cell phone when he got into the neighborhood and I’d bring the dog downstairs to the park near my home. By then Paul would be home from work so he could come with me, in case there was any funny business.

A few minutes later the husband called again and apologized for the earlier confusion. He said his wife didn’t understand and I wasn’t sure but it sounded like she thought I’d stolen the dog and was calling for ransom, hence the comment about mailing him. . . . Still didn’t make any sense. I also asked him how Shaggy had gotten lost and he said, “A hole in the fence.”

“I hope you’ve fixed it,” I said.

We came home and had dinner and felt a little sad that Chip would be going. We also felt sad that his name was really Shaggy because that was such a stupid name. When the phone rang right around when it was supposed to, I told the guy we’d bring him down. It had started to rain a little, but Violet wanted to go so we put her in her little raincoat and put on Chip’s leash.

We could see the father, a daughter, and a small son at the corner across the street. The little boy was jumping up and down. Then I cried. Chip/Shaggy dragged us to his family and jumped up on the little boy—this was what Sheryl had predicted, exactly. The sister produced documents to prove that he was theirs, which I didn’t look at. I gave them the leash and we all said good-bye to Chip. The father pressed a one-hundred-dollar bill into my hand and when I refused he said, “Please, it would’ve cost me thirteen hundred dollars to replace him!” I took the money to send to Sheryl and told him once again to fix the hole in his fence.

We were all happy for the sake of the kids. The parents were clearly not dog people but they loved their children, and their children loved their dog.

If I hadn’t trusted my instincts, the story would have ended in a very different way. I don’t really know why, but my default setting when I have a sense about anything is “I’m probably wrong.” “That guy wasn’t lying to me.” “That woman isn’t on drugs.” Part of it is a desire to see people as they appear, because the alternative is so gross. But it’s also a leap to trust that you see something that isn’t there. I know it would have been more difficult to return Shaggy to his family if Coco had been more credible, but there it was. And that gave me the confidence to listen to instincts the next time something smelled funny, and it would. You have nothing else to rely on when you’re dealing with dogs.

LESSON FIVE

How to Be an Amateur Therapist

After Hank and Chip, Violet said she didn’t want to help any more dogs. It was confusing and upsetting for her to see these dogs come in and out of our lives. Paul felt the same way, and he became insistent in a way he rarely did. “This is too hard on all of us,” he said. “You need to find another way to help these dogs.”

Violet also was about to start pre-kindergarten, which would be a full day of school after having spent four straight years pretty much alone with me.

I worried so much about separation issues, just as I had with Otto. But Violet seemed pretty excited about going to school. I realized later, though, that she was under the impression that I’d be going there with her—all day, every day.

I told Sheryl we would be taking a break from fostering, but I’d been talking to Gilda, the transport and home check coordinator, about helping her. The home checks weren’t that difficult; when a new application came in, you looked at where the person lived and hoped we had a volunteer close by who would be able to visit the potential home. The transport issue was a whole other big can of slimy worms. It involved arranging the pickup of a dog from a shelter, puppy mill, or home and getting it to a foster family, which could be eight hours away. When I first started, the transports were easier to arrange, but as gas prices started to increase, it became much more difficult to get someone to commit to driving four hours, so we’d have more people driving shorter distances. Coordinating it was something akin to a relay race over several states with a freaked-out dog instead of an egg in a spoon. I helped out as best I could, and then Gilda asked me to take over while she moved to a new home. I agreed, as long as the dogs weren’t coming to my house.