by Janet Elder
Praise for
HUCK
“Janet Elder and her family fell in love with their dog, Huck … you’ll fall in love with them. A wonderful, inspiring book.”
—Deirdre Imus
“Huck is the Dewey of the canine world. The dog is a delight—even my cat, Norton, would have been charmed (after a hiss or two)—and the book itself is lovely and inspiring. I rate it 5 barks.”
—Peter Gethers, author of The Cat Who Went to Paris and The Cat Who’ll Live Forever
“Puppies have always been better than people. Now comes a book where a puppy makes people better people. Pet it, feed it, even read it. You’ll love it—and become a better person.”
—Dan Jenkins, sportswriter/novelist
Copyright © 2010 by Janet Elder
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elder, Janet.
The remarkable true story of how one lost puppy taught a family—and a whole town—about hope and happy endings /
by Janet Elder.
1. Miniature poodle—New Jersey—Ramsey—Anecdotes.
2. Puppies—New Jersey—Ramsey—Anecdotes. 3. Human-animal relationships—Anecdotes. I. Title.
SF429.M57E43 2010
636.72’80922—dc22 2010002021
eISBN: 978-0-307-71616-3
v3.1
For Michael and Rich
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
I DEVELOPED A LOT OF TALISMANS when I had cancer—a pair of pink-and-white antique-looking earrings a close friend brought from Paris; a delicate gold bracelet with a single charm inscribed LIFE from a woman I hardly knew who said she admired my bravery; a purple bear holding the word MOM my son, Michael, gave me when he visited me in the hospital; a note from my brother-in-law, scribbled on yellow lined paper, quoting one of the many doctors I had seen, who asserted, “You will be cured.” I kept my lucky charms near me, brought them along to doctor’s visits, stared at them in the middle of the night, and held tight to them when I felt vulnerable.
But no talisman was as powerful as a dog named Huck.
Michael said it took him only seven years of begging to get a dog. For as long as my husband, Rich, and I could remember, every year, Michael’s letter to Santa began with a young boy’s heartfelt yearnings for a dog. “I just want a puppy to love,” he would write in block letters. After years of finding everything under the Christmas tree except a dog, the letter to Santa still asked for a dog but an increasingly disappointed Michael would add parenthetically “even though I know I won’t get one.”
Michael was relentless in his lobbying effort. When he was ten years old, he had learned how to give a PowerPoint presentation in school and showed off his skills at home with a special creation for Rich and me entitled “My Dog.”
With Michael seated at the desk in his bedroom and Rich and me standing behind him, one photograph after another of smiling children and playful-looking dogs passed across the computer screen interspersed with outlines of his case. One page entitled “An Amazing Animal” had bullet points, like “You can always get a hug from a dog when you are feeling sad” and “The most loving animal ever.” Another page said simply, “A Childhood Without a Dog Is a Sad Thing.” The presentation had the desired effect of breaking our hearts. Michael sat there smiling, proud of his accomplishment and certain he had made a convincing argument, asking: “Did you like it?”
I was ready to cry, but I was not ready to get him a dog.
Michael’s obsession with animals in general and dogs in particular was my own fault. Somehow, from infancy, I had filled his childhood with endless images of pets, real and imagined, and he fell in love with each and every one. His earliest friends were the cuddly stuffed animals who shared his nursery, Geoffrey Giraffe, Sammy Squirrel, Mamma Duck and Baby Duck, and Snuggles, an enormous golden retriever large enough to take a nap on.
Before Michael was born, while Rich and I were waiting for nine months to tick by, we went out to buy a teddy bear. After rummaging through every neighborhood shop without finding the perfect playmate, we headed downtown to New York City’s cathedral of toys—FAO Schwarz.
On our way into the store, we shook hands with a tall man dressed like a toy soldier in a red jacket, blue pants, and a high black hat, standing sentry and greeting customers before they passed through the glass doors. Once inside, we nuzzled bears of all shapes and sizes: black bears, polar bears, panda bears, bears that looked a little too real, and others that were dressed like farmers or clowns. We laughed a lot and finally took home the irresistible, soft, sweet-faced, brown “Fuzzy,” to be renamed “Shoshy” by Michael some years later.
We had hoped Shoshy would be Michael’s closest compadre, the kind of stuffed animal that moves from bed to closet to attic but never to the trash. But Shoshy, the bear, did not turn out to be Michael’s favorite. Shoshy took a backseat to Corky, the dog.
Corky, sandy colored with brown eyes, was small enough to fit in the crook of Michael’s neck yet big enough to hug. He had come along in the avalanche of presents from friends and colleagues that accompanied Michael’s birth.
As soon as Michael’s hands were large enough to grab hold of Corky’s paw, Michael and Corky became constant companions. Corky slept alongside Michael, first in his crib, then in his toddler bed, and then in his “big boy” bed.
Corky was the perfect pet. He didn’t bark, didn’t shed, never had to be walked, and was endlessly tolerant of a little boy throwing him in the air and grabbing him by the tail. Whenever Michael’s play got a little too rough and Corky broke a limb, it was easily repaired by Grammy, who just happened to be a retired nurse and quite handy with a needle and thread. Corky was indestructible.
When Michael was a toddler, he had a tendency to run high fevers. Corky was content to lie very still and close. Corky had his temperature taken whenever Michael did. He had his own dish for ice cream. When Michael needed a Band-Aid, Corky got one, too. Michael’s imagination had transformed Corky into an integral member of the family. “Mommy, don’t forget to kiss Corky good night” or “Daddy, Corky needs milk, too” were the admonitions that served as reminders that Corky was only inanimate to us; he was real to Michael.
The potential for heartbreak was great. Rich and I were so afraid of losing Corky that we bought an identical stuffed dog for Michael to take beyond the confines of home—to the park and on sleepovers, long car rides, and visits to relatives. We told him the new dog was Corky’s cousin. It worked pretty well when Michael was a two-year-old toddler but was seen as the bald-faced lie it was by the time he was old enough for nursery school.
Corky and the menagerie in Michael’s room were just the beginning.
With writers for parents, Michael’s young life was filled with books. They were everywhere: plastic books in the bathtub, cloth books in the crib, cardboard books hanging off the stroller, and shelves filled with books lining the walls. We listened to books on tape in the car.
&
nbsp; In the mid-1990s, when Michael was a preschooler, it seemed nearly impossible to buy a children’s book that was not about animals. I spent hours perusing bookshops all over the city for picture books with little boys in them, thinking Michael would enjoy identifying with a character like him. But adventures starring little blond-headed boys were in short supply.
Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh’s loyal, bemused pal, was too insignificant a character compared with the tale’s other stars and their well-defined personas, all of them animals. I always ended up taking animal books to the register, mostly about dogs, Boomer Goes to School, Where’s Spot, My Dog Jessie, Officer Buckle and Gloria, Go Dog Go.
I’d bring my purchases home and I’d sit in Michael’s room on the rocker with the red-and-white polka-dot cushions, Michael and Corky on my lap, the sun streaming through the window; we’d read for hours. We read some of the books so often that in short order I was reciting them rather than reading them. The cadence and rhythms of the books were as much a part of the anthology of words I had wittingly or not committed to memory over the years—The Lord’s Prayer, the closing sentence of You Can’t Go Home Again, the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence, and now the entirety of The Big Red Barn.
Michael was a much longed-for child. I was thirty-six years old, nearly thirty-seven years old by the time Michael was born. Rich was forty-five. I continued to work full-time after Michael was born, leaving him in the care of babysitters. I missed him while I was at work, and I cherished every chance I had to be with him when I was not. During the week, those opportunities came early in the morning and in the evening, the perfect times of the day for a story, and reading together became a treasured ritual.
For Michael’s fourth birthday I bought him McDuff Comes Home, one of a series of books about an irrepressible white West Highland terrier, or “Westie,” named McDuff. In it, McDuff chases a rabbit through hills and streets and gardens, until he finds he has, in fact, run away from home. McDuff’s collar snaps off on a branch, making it difficult for even the most well-intentioned stranger to return him to his family and the high life he had been accustomed to, a life of sitting in the garden eating vanilla rice pudding with sliced sausage on top.
It became Michael’s favorite book, one that by then he was able to read himself, and one that I trace as the source of his unremitting campaign for a dog. It was after reading this book that he began asking, begging, imploring, and praying for a “McDuff” of his own.
The pleadings to Rich and me would come in spurts. We’d go through a month or so of solid nagging and then Michael would take a few weeks off. Just when I thought he’d put the idea to rest, Michael would come back at us. “I need a dog,” or “I just want to have a dog to hug,” or “Why can’t I have a dog to play catch with or to watch TV with?” or “You had a dog when you were a kid, don’t you want a chance to bring back those good old memories?”
It was tough. My answers to Michael’s pleas were always inadequate. From an early age he was able to intellectually outmaneuver Rich and me. Michael was quicker with a rejoinder than we were with new arguments. If he perceived any weakness at all, he’d pounce. I had to be careful not to make one of those promises parents make when they know they are losing an argument and are desperate to change the subject—”maybe when you’re older.”
I had many moments of weakness and many moments when I nearly caved. But my spine was always stiffened by the seemingly inescapable facts of our family life. Rich works for himself and travels a lot. I was already stretched too thin; my job at The New York Times working on the paper’s coverage of elections and public opinion was more than a full-time job. Who would walk the dog, especially at night when Rich was away? I couldn’t leave Michael asleep and alone at night. We live in a small apartment in New York City; dogs need houses and yards. What about vacations? Who would take care of our dog when we went away? No. No. No. No dog.
The only problem with my thinking was that it failed to recognize that Michael was going to follow his heart no matter what I said. Children have a way of doing that despite their parents. It is just as true when children are four as when they are fourteen. So if Michael could not have a dog, he was going to find a way to have another pet of some sort.
We were lucky enough to be able to spend part of every summer on Nantucket, an island thirty miles out at sea off the coast of Massachusetts. Rich and I had been doing so since we met. We had eloped on Nantucket. We continued going to Nantucket with Michael and, of course, Corky.
We stayed on the far end of the island in the village of Siasconset (known as ’Sconset to those who know) in a tiny gray-shingled cottage that hadn’t had much work done on it since the 1940s. It was filled with old books, mold, young spiders, and character.
The owner of the cottage, Bryce Roberts, was a man well into his seventies who had spent his own childhood summers living there. We appreciated his civility, his old-world manner, his choice of books and art, and his scrupulous attention to the details of how to make the coffeemaker work. He rented the cottage to us below the market price, and that in turn made it possible for us to stay for two or three weeks at a time. We enjoyed the simplicity of life we longed for all the other weeks of the year.
Our uncomplicated Nantucket routines rarely varied day to day or year to year. Every afternoon, we’d pack up bags full of sand toys and changes of clothes for Michael, hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen and head to the beach. We spent hours standing at the ocean’s edge, watching Michael first take tentative steps into the ocean and then daring marches toward and speedy retreats from oncoming waves. We dug deep holes for forts, built sand castles, and collected shells.
After the beach, we’d stop at Bartlett’s Farm. Everyone who has ever cooked a meal on Nantucket has been to Bartlett’s Farm, acres and acres of farmland by the sea, an island fixture since the early 1800s. Somehow the sandy soil and the generations-old care create vegetables that make you wish you never had to buy mass-produced vegetables from a supermarket again. Every Bartlett’s ear of corn, every melon, every tomato is a work of art.
The Bartlett family once owned a steer named Babe. They kept him out in one of their fields behind a split-rail fence. Children were desperate to get near Babe, especially Michael. The Bartletts dispensed their unsold ears of corn to anyone who asked to feed Babe. Michael was their most loyal patron. He never tired of feeding Babe and watching the behemoth’s drooling, slippery, long, pink tongue suck the entire ear of corn into his mouth, husk and all, smash it with his teeth, and swallow it, seemingly in one bite.
Michael loved Babe. Undoubtedly, Michael was partly responsible for Babe’s daunting girth, which kept both Michael and Babe from charging through the fence.
But Babe was not the only attraction at Bartlett’s Farm. Michael managed to find his first pet there. As I picked through the tomatoes, Michael would stand by the large wooden table that held hundreds of ears of corn. He’d examine the ears looking for stray inchworms, which he’d then carry on his finger out to the car. The worms usually died before we made it out of the parking lot, so there was never much discussion about the care and feeding of the inchworm. But one summer, when Michael was about five or six, he found a slender, green inchworm that lived longer than a few minutes.
“I’m going to name him ‘Inchie,’” Michael said as soon as we pulled the car up the shell-covered driveway behind our cottage. Laughing as Inchie crawled up and down Michael’s fingers, Michael insisted we make a home for his newly adopted worm. We rummaged through the kitchen cabinets and found an old mayonnaise jar and then punched some holes in the lid with a screwdriver. There Inchie lived for two days, feeding on grass and leaves. Michael was like a protective parent of a newborn, constantly checking on Inchie. “Do you think he has enough air?” Michael would ask us in earnest, carefully holding the jar and examining the air holes in the lid. “Do you think he knows it is bedtime?” “Is he scared of the dark?”
The older Inchie got, an age
measured in hours, the more attached Michael became. When Inchie died, Michael buried him in the garden in back of our little cottage. He fashioned a rock into a tombstone and wrote “Inchie” on it and stood in front of it with his hand over his heart and said, “Inchie, I will love you forever.”
Michael’s tenderness toward his newly found and quickly lost pet was so poignant I allowed myself a private daydream of getting Michael a dog. I went so far as to think we might get him a dog while we were on Nantucket. But by the time I walked from the garden through the back door and into the kitchen and picked up the local newspaper, the Inquirer and Mirror, off the kitchen table to look for ads for dogs, I had come to my senses and decided against it once again. No dog. We simply could not handle the responsibility.
Being on Nantucket, living life outdoors, gave Michael a chance to be closer to the natural world, freer than he was used to. Every summer, our city child was ecstatic to have a yard, even for just a few weeks. He ran in and out of the house at will, the screen door slamming behind him, something completely alien to a child who lives the rest of the year in a twenty-story apartment building. We all sat outside blowing bubbles, kicking around an oversized beach ball, grilling fish for dinner, and trying to lure one of a family of rabbits out of the shrubbery.
There was a shed just out the back door where the washer and dryer were housed. The deep sink in the shed was where Rich taught Michael the joys of filling a balloon with water and throwing it at each other, something that became a yearly ritual.
Eventually, Michael and a couple of his buddies from the city, Sam Bresnick and his brother Elias, who also spent part of their summers on Nantucket, escalated the ritual into a yearly battle. The arsenal grew larger as the boys did. By the time they were eight, they set out to battle one another with more than a hundred water balloons, leaving in their wake the exploded, colorful plastic pieces, all of which then had to be picked out of the grass.