Pure Joy

by Danielle Steel

  For now Miss Minnie is a little princess, happily getting spoiled, with her Paris wardrobe and everyone doting on her. Maybe I will get another Chihuahua one day, but not now. And if I did, just like with Minnie, I would have to fall in love. (It was a sign of major maturity and restraint that I turned down the puppy I was offered yesterday.) I never expected to, but I find I really like this breed. They’re tiny, but they’re hardy and spunky and have wonderful personalities. And they’re very smart. I suspect some may be barky, but Minnie hardly ever barks, which I like—except at the fax machine.

  I think, as with anything else, you need to know how much you can take on. Can you afford a second dog? Do you want to? Dogs can be expensive in today’s world, grooming, boarding if you go away, their basic needs, and the vet for checkups, vaccinations, and particularly if they get sick. Do you have the time and energy for another dog? I have enough of both for another dog—that doesn’t mean it’s right, but I know I could manage it, which leads me into deep waters at times.

  Sometimes the decision about whether to get a second dog is decided by the breed. Dogs of some breeds do better on their own, while others are one-man dogs and would be seriously unhappy to have a rival for your attention. Or it could make your first dog aggressive or depressed. Certain breeds have known traits, which it’s worth learning about. Years ago I almost adopted a dog whom my vet advised me was of a breed that would almost certainly try to kill my other dogs. Needless to say, I didn’t adopt him. So you really do need to know about the breed and how they respond to other dogs. And to children, if you have kids. Some breeds are more child-friendly than others.

  Minnie seems ecstatically happy on her own. She is one happy little dog, and everyone in her entourage adores her, and she knows it. She has a terrific life. Griffs are known to be happy in pairs or more and seem happy with each other, like my four Griffs. They seem content to be in a “pack.” But for now, Minnie is more of an only child.

  So I have to leave your decision of a second or third dog up to your own wisdom and knowledge of yourself and your circumstances. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision. After you weigh the pros and cons, listen to your heart. But if you want advice about whether to have a ninth child, be sure to call me (and the answer will be yes!). As for a second or third dog—that’s up to you.

  Nick’s beloved dog Molly

  J. M. Reed

  NINE

  Irreconcilable Differences. It Happens.

  Dogs have personalities, just like people, and sometimes when an adorable puppy grows up, the adult dog they turn into just isn’t a match with us. Or they have some really unfortunate trait that makes living with them from difficult to impossible.

  It helps to know the traits of the breed—they may not always hold true, but often they do. And being well informed about the breed you’re buying, or finding out from a breeder if possible what the personalities of the parents of the puppy are like, can be important. In a world where romantic relationships can be a challenge, sometimes a successful match with your dog as it grows up can be challenging or disappointing too. And when that happens, then what? What do you do?

  We’ve had some dog mismatches in our family, which ranged from the ridiculous to the tragic, in one case. The most obvious reason for a mismatch is if a dog is dangerous in some way, either to you or to your kids, or even to others, but most mismatches aren’t that extreme. Some can be worked out and some just can’t, again like people. There are some people you can spend a week on vacation with, or a weekend, and hope you never see them again. Some dogs leave you feeling that way too. Or sometimes a dog can work out well and then no longer be the right fit when circumstances in the family change.

  My beloved basset Elmer turned out to be one of those in the long run. As I mentioned earlier, once Maude joined us, he was a lot doggier and a lot less fun. And I kept them both for years. But once I had a baby in the house again, the combination just didn’t work. A basset hound is essentially a big dog on very short legs, which puts them face to face with a very small child. Elmer was a seventy-pound dog, with big jaws and big teeth, and a sweet nature. He paid no attention to the baby when it came along, but once my son was walking around the kitchen at a year old, and waving a slice of salami or bologna in Elmer’s face, he was not quite as sweet and would snatch it from the toddler’s hand in one gulp, something like Jaws. And it turned out Maude never liked kids and had tried to bite more than one. So it became dangerous to have them in the house with a toddler. And we found a home for them in the country with a family with older kids. It worked out well for all concerned, Elmer and Maude were happy there, and I was relieved. No mishap had taken place, but it could have easily.

  For a very brief time, I also had a rescue dog, a black Labrador named Betsey, who was friendly and exuberant and loved everyone. Exuberant was the operative word. She had some kind of latent, or not so latent, hunting gene, and her greatest thrill was spotting my then five-year-old daughter, wagging her tail furiously, and then leaping on her and pinning her to the ground, barking ecstatically, showing me what she’d “caught,” and keeping my daughter there, facedown, until I arrived to congratulate Betsey on her prize. I couldn’t break her of the habit, even after countless friendly introductions to my daughter, who wasn’t terrified of her but got tired of lying facedown on the ground while Betsey stood on her and barked with glee. I decided to give up early and found the Lab another home quickly, before we got attached to her, and once again it was a home with older kids, not young ones. She couldn’t knock them down!

  Sometimes a dog can be wonderful but just not a match for you, in terms of their habits and needs. And some dogs do better on their own, while others are happy in a group of other dogs. Once again like people, some are loners or meant to be only children, while others are more sociable and team players. At one point we got a beautiful white Maltese, who had a sweet disposition and made it clear that she did not like being part of a group of dogs. She had unlimited energy. In fact, she was turbocharged and had a lot in common with the Energizer Bunny. To make her feel special, and give her some extra attention and alone time, I would keep her in my office, on her own, while I was writing. My other dogs, when given that opportunity, would look at me with drooping eyelids and, deciding that it was all very boring, in ten minutes or less were sound asleep. I had named the little Maltese Faith, and my hours of typing only seemed to rev her engines to an alarming degree. She would start out on jet speed and get busier and wilder through the day. First she’d chew through all the electrical wires. Then she’d wipe out the phone. After that, she’d bounce around the furniture, gnawing cushions, make a bold stretch toward the bookcase and eat my books. After that, she’d nibble on my toes, usually eat at least one of my shoes, dance around to show me how cute she was, and bark at every sound. And yes, she was very cute, but after fourteen hours of typing, I’d be starting to sag in my chair, and Faith would still be looking for things to do. She was tireless, too much so for me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t wear her out, and when I sent her back to play with the other dogs, she looked unhappy. And in my office, she was distracting, and a nightmare. It took me several months to finally admit we were mismatched. I needed a dog with less energy (a lot less!), and I strongly suspected she needed to be an only child.

  A friend of mine had lost her dog around that time and was heartbroken, missing her dog. And I think it was a Maltese too. I talked to her honestly about my experiences with Faith, that she was clearly a great dog but had too much energy for me and maybe needed to be an only dog. My friend came to meet her, and it was love at first sight. I knew the minute I saw them together that it was right. Faith went to spend a few days with her, and their romance flourished and has only deepened over time. Faith moved on to her new home, and I’ve run into my beaming friend with Faith a few times. I really guessed that one right. I’ve always liked a slightly ragtag look to my dogs, with tousled hair, and not all impeccably groomed and clipped. But once Faith m
ade it to her new home, her beautiful white Maltese hair was perfectly brushed. She was wearing a pink rhinestone-studded collar and leash, and when I saw her, she gave me a look that clearly said she had risen in the world and had no use for a commoner like me. She had become a princess. She strutted proudly beside her new owner, while my friend told me all the things they’d been doing together. They were an absolutely perfect match. Faith and I never were, and I’m so happy that I had the courage to say so and let her be much happier somewhere else. She never did anything “bad,” she just wasn’t right for me.

  We had one very, very bad experience with a French bulldog I brought back from Paris, named Sophie. Some people are nice, others aren’t, and dogs are much the same. And some people (and dogs) are simply insane. Sophie was insane. (I wasn’t so sure about the breeder I got her from either, since he told me a few months later that a fortune teller had told him I was his long-lost mother and I should adopt him immediately. P.S., I didn’t). In any case, Sophie flung herself at anyone who walked by, barking ferociously, wanting to attack them. And the mistake I’d made in getting her came to a tragic end, when she attacked and killed the very old Brussels griffon we had, who had belonged to my late son Nick. The loss was sad for all of us. Molly was old and blind and no match for Sophie, and it was over instantly. Sophie’s partner in crime was Tommy, a male griffon I had who, unlike my others, had never been friendly and had bitten several people over the years, and we kept him anyway. They set on Molly together. I called our vet the day it happened, and we put up both Sophie and the male griffon for adoption and sent them away the same day they attacked Molly. I didn’t want to see them again. We found good homes for both of them, where they did well separately, but after what they did, they didn’t belong with us. Nothing like it has ever happened before or since. It was a sad episode in our dog life and a very sad end for Molly.

  Less dramatic, we got another French bulldog a year or so later, who arrived with giardia, a contagious illness, and had to be isolated from the other dogs for five months, to avoid infecting them. Once released from quarantine, she showed signs of aggression, and we didn’t want a repeat of the Sophie episode. Our vet adopted the French bulldog. And although many people love them, after those two experiences, I wouldn’t get a French bulldog again, but that’s just me. Others seem to do well with them.

  We’ve adopted dogs successfully too, not just placed them with others. When Greta’s breeder called to tell me that her littermate was being given up by her owner, because she (the owner) was ill and could no longer care for her, we took her immediately. Cookie spent ten happy years with us until she died at thirteen.

  It’s not always easy to make the right match when you buy a puppy, or guess who they will turn out to be once they’re grown. It’s a crapshoot, like anything else in life. You do your best to make it work, but if you can’t, sometimes it’s fairer to the dog, and everyone involved, to find a home and an owner who suits them better. Not all matches are made in heaven, and sometimes it works out right the second time around. And if you are going to place a dog in another home, it’s best to be honest about what’s not working well for you. It may even be your personality, not the dog’s. Or just not the right fit. But hiding their problem traits, if they have any, will only create another mismatch. Even when we gave away Sophie and Tommy, we made full disclosure of what they’d done to my son’s dog. Both went to homes where there were no other dogs, and they never had a problem, but their new owners knew what they were getting, and why they had been wrong for us. It’s like in any relationship—being honest is essential.

  In any case, if you seriously believe you have a mismatch on your hands, more than likely there is a person or a family out there who would be thrilled to have that dog, and where even the dog would be much happier than he or she is now. Sometimes “irreconcilable differences” happen in life, even with dogs. Don’t beat yourself up over it, just try to find a solution that will work for all concerned.

  Minnie in her hotel room in New York, en route from Paris to San Francisco

  Victoria Traina

  TEN

  Minnie’s Return from Paris or Long Trips

  Personally, I don’t like long, long plane trips. I’m not a fan of flying for twelve hours or longer, or facing huge time differences when I arrive. I’m lucky that I don’t suffer from jet lag, and I’ve discovered that the secret to that, for me, is to break up long trips. So I don’t fly over the Pole when traveling from San Francisco to Paris (which takes about twelve hours). I stop in New York for a night or two, which turns it into a five-hour trip and a six-hour one and gives me the added bonus of visiting with two of my daughters, who live in New York. Breaking the trip up that way is a total win-win for me and seems to avoid jet lag completely. It’s a perfect solution, and as I prefer night flights, I sleep on both flights (San Francisco to New York, and New York to Paris) and arrive fresh as a daisy. And those two short flights are easy for Minnie too. She wears herself out all day, has all her normal meals, and by the time we board a red-eye flight at ten or eleven p.m. or later, she just curls up in her bag and goes to sleep. And both the winds and time difference are in our favor.

  But it’s the return trip from Paris to New York that is a tough one. The flight is long, and nothing is in our favor, except the movies and a decent French meal, neither of which Minnie can enjoy. The winds are against you going west (from New York to California also, but that flight is shorter than the Paris–New York flight), and with rare exceptions, instead of six hours flying to Paris, it’s about an eight-hour flight from Paris to New York, sometimes longer. Add to that two hours in security before the flight, and an hour waiting for bags and going through customs in New York, and it’s an eleven-and-a-half- or twelve-hour adventure. And if the plane is really delayed, as happens often in today’s world, it can be thirteen or fourteen hours. But twelve at best. It’s one of the reasons, other than their size, that I never tried to take any of my Brussels griffons with me. I didn’t want to undertake a twelve-hour trip with an adult dog that had never flown before. She might freak out or bark her way across the Atlantic (and someone might try to kill me!). In Minnie’s case, she’s grown up traveling and started flying at twelve weeks. And she’s so tiny that she can move about comfortably in her carrying bag. My griffs would have been completely immobilized in the bag and couldn’t even turn around. It always seemed cruel to me to try to take that long flight with them, so I never did—even if I could have put them on a diet and shaved off two pounds for the weight limit, which seemed mean too.

  But even for tiny Minnie, twelve hours or longer in her traveling bag seems endless. She has weathered it well, but I can tell that she doesn’t enjoy that leg of the trip, and who could blame her? And it’s always a day flight, so she is confined at a time when she’d normally like to be running around.

  I carefully consulted with the vet before the first time I made the return trip, and even the outward-bound flights, and had been told to give her water every two hours and feed her every four hours. When tiny dogs are very young, they can get hypoglycemic, so it’s important to keep them fed and watered. We even have a tube of a vitamin meat paste, and I can put a little dab on my finger, and she loves it.

  She’s also very good about not peeing off her Wee-Wee Pad, or in confined spaces, and I was worried about her not going to the bathroom in her bag for so many hours. So on all the long Paris–New York flights, I take her to the bathroom in her carrying case, let her out, and put her on a Wee-Wee Pad. The theory is to let her move around freely for a few minutes. Great idea, but Minnie doesn’t like it. She stands in the middle of the bathroom, on her Wee-Wee Pad, her legs stiff, and won’t move an inch. She actually likes small, confined spaces, and I think feels safe there. Being let loose on the plane, in the bathroom, is frightening and not fun for her. She won’t move, walk, or pee, she just stands there, staring at me. So it is a very long flight for her, but remarkably she does okay. Instinctively, she won’t
drink water, as though she knows she’d have to pee. But I offer water anyway, several times on every flight. I don’t give her canned dog food, but I put kibble in a bowl in the bag, but she eats very little on the plane. I hear her crunch it occasionally. So we manage on the long flight, but I always feel sorry for her. It’s a long trip even for me, and worse for her. I don’t know what we’d do if the flight were longer. I think that’s about as far as I’d take her. So we won’t be flying to Australia anytime soon.

  Amazingly, she seems to like her carrying bag that we use for the plane. I would think it makes her feel claustrophobic, but I think it’s actually cozy for her. She often climbs into the bag, just for the fun of it, when we’re at the hotel in New York, or even at home. And she pulled a disappearing act on me one time, when I looked everywhere in the hotel room for her and couldn’t find her, and thought she’d run away when someone opened the door, and I found her happily asleep in her bag. As much as we travel, it’s now a familiar world for her. And I have discovered that Chihuahuas like small spaces.

  Years ago my daughter Victoria called me from New York in a panic. Her teacup Chihuahua had vanished. She had looked everywhere and couldn’t find her, and she was terrified that she had either escaped the apartment or gotten stuck in a small space somewhere and been injured. She called the doorman of her building to ask if someone had seen her. I offered every helpful suggestion I could, and crying miserably over her lost Tallulah, Victoria blew her nose in a tissue, stepped on the garbage can pedal to toss away the tissue, and there, sound asleep, was Tallulah. She had gotten into the garbage can and gone to sleep. She has also hidden in open suitcases. They curl up and just happily go to sleep, while we frantically look for them.