And that was when the home for Yellow fell through. Suddenly, instead of Green Bean being the only one unsold, there were two. His new owners abruptly decided that they just didn’t want Yellow, though they had had more than two months to think about it. I was angry at their unexpected about-face because we had turned aside others who had liked him best out of the litter. One family, whose son had grown attached to him after several visits to the litter, had to be convinced to take a girl because the yellow pup had been spoken for.
Nevertheless, I tried to accept their decision with some equanimity: I reassured them that we didn’t want them to take the puppy if they were at all uncertain. And this was true. The last thing I wanted was a puppy back with me when he was five months old, possibly untrained, perhaps unloved. As the cutest, most outgoing pup in the litter, Yellow would now be one of the last to go. He had been the under-ear patch in the group, and as such, his patch was nearly hidden, looking just like a very black ear. With a completely black one on the other side, he had a certain handsome symmetry to his face. He was growing more and more rambunctious with every day that went by, and I thought to myself that he was going to be a handful for whomever finally took him.
It didn’t help that we hadn’t placed Green Bean, either. He was getting increasingly dependent on me as the days went by, and it was hard not to favor him over Yellow, or to worry about him more, because Green Bean seemed to need me more. I knew I shouldn’t care on such an intense level, but the fact was that I did. My relationship with Gulliver had been so different, as he had been the one who mothered me. When Green Bean snuggled in my arms and tucked his chin around behind my neck, I had to remind myself that I didn’t want a shy, introverted dog who would need to be coaxed along. Nor did I want a dog who couldn’t be shown in the breed ring.
And then suddenly Chrissy and Mike appeared, having seen the advertisement I’d run in the AKC breeder’s section. They had just lost their beloved Dal to old age the month before. I was concerned that they hadn’t done an appropriate amount of mourning to take on a new pup, but a friend reminded me that people grieve at their own rates. So I invited them over, feeling doubtful but willing to give the situation a shot.
They came to the house and tried to play with Green Bean, but he hid behind the couch. Mike put his head on the ground and shook his curls at him. Green Bean hid behind me. Chrissy tried to give him a cookie. Green Bean hid behind Brad.
They didn’t seem to mind and said they wanted him anyway. I didn’t like the situation, though. I wanted him to go off with tail flying, unafraid of the world. And so, over Dawn’s objections, Brad and I kept him an extra week and hired a trainer to take him out on expeditions without me, so that he could experience a bit of the world without the buffer of his human mama.
As the end of week nine rolled around, I knew I had to let go. Although the week had helped his shyness, nothing was going to permanently solve it until he got into his new home and relaxed. And I worried that the fear period had begun; even more than before, he needed to bond with his new family rather than with us. So I told Chrissy and Mike to come and pick him up.
Fortunately, Green Bean was blissfully asleep on his bed when they arrived and didn’t struggle or protest as I put him into Mike’s arms. It was all so different from what I had imagined: the panicky struggle, the cries as he was packed into the car. Chrissy gave me a hug and promised the requisite pictures. We chatted for a while, as I made a great effort to maintain my composure and then wished they would just leave already. When the door closed behind them, I wept.
But Chrissy proved true to her word. She sent pictures almost immediately, and then, three times, a “letter from camp,” written in Green Bean’s voice, arrived on my email. Over the next few weeks, it became apparent that he was happy. They even decided not to rename him, and so he remained Green Bean. He had lost his shyness, it appeared, as he frolicked with friends and family across Chrissy’s Facebook page. I liked to think that this was in part due to the extra time and attention I had given him, putting him on the road to his start in life.
But then there was Yellow. His small brown eyes were full of worry. He was stranded, right where he had grown up. At ten weeks, I wondered, Where is he meant to be?
•••
Even as I dreaded my last puppy leaving, still I was not happy about Yellow staying. Brad and I were growing attached to him as the days went by, but the calls for a male puppy did not come in.
We had hit a dry spell. Everyone who phoned wanted a girl, or a puppy for a lot less money, or they lived far away and didn’t want to pay the extra to ship a puppy. And I didn’t know how I felt about sending a puppy in the cargo hold of a plane anyway. I imagined his reaction: deep in the dark belly of the jet, frightened by the roar of the engines, desperate for a friendly face with no one to give it, needing to potty but nowhere to go. It just didn’t seem right to me.
Finally, I got a call from a man who didn’t seem to care what the dog looked like or who he was and simply wanted to arrange for “transport movers” to come and pick him up. In rapid-fire emails, he suggested that I give the moving company a check for taking the puppy, and then he would send on the rest of the fee. I said I needed to meet him first. He had to fill out an application. Did he have a fenced backyard? Who would take care of J.W. during the day while he was at work? As I got no answer to my questions, I began telling him that I wasn’t interested in selling him a puppy. Nevertheless, he persisted. He was willing, he said, to pay more than I was asking for J.W., to compensate me for my extra time in coordinating with the movers. Understanding at last that I was being scammed, I emailed him angrily that I didn’t place puppies via Allied Van Lines.
The weeks unfolded slowly. Twelve, thirteen, now fourteen, fifteen. Myrna was fading, and I was getting more and more attached to the one pup left here. He was so full of life.
Everyone else had gone home a month and a half ago. One Saturday at the end of September, Dawn and her husband and Brad and I went to a baseball game: the San Francisco Giants finally broke their losing streak, led by Cody Ross, who knocked several out of the park. Dawn turned to me. “That’s it, Linda,” she said with a smile. “Name the yellow puppy Cody.” And so we did.
And in this way, at sixteen weeks, twice the length of time the other puppies had stayed with us, Yellow suddenly moved, late, beyond his puppy name into something more adult, even though we knew his eventual owners would undoubtedly change it. Day by day, we called him, “Cody, come!” and he did, responding more and more quickly to his new moniker, running from room to room with his black ears flying and his big puppy paws pounding the wooden floors.
He watched television every night with Brad and liked to follow the action on the screen with his ears perked up, whether it was a barking dog, a program on skunks, a loud truck, or Bette Davis. Nightly, we joked that instead of having “the head” (that delightful move Gulliver made when he put the warm weight of his head in your lap), we had “the hot bod,” as Cody liked to deposit himself full-length across your legs.
After a while, I got jealous of his time with Brad and took the puppy, against my better judgment, with me into the bedroom, where I either watched television or read on the bed, leaning up against my pillows. I used to call Myrna around nine o’clock most nights, but now she was too weak to really talk, and so I spent most of the time with Cody.
He did one of two things as he lay on the bed with me: he either flung himself across my face (making it impossible for me to see anything with his hot little body in that position, and bending my glasses so I had to gingerly twist them back into shape), or he stretched himself across the bed full-length, on the other side, which made it impossible to cuddle and pet him. I would try to pull him back over next to me, and he would move right back to Brad’s side of the bed. The first time he did it, I sighed at the futility of trying to relocate him and then smiled: maybe he just wasn’t a bed cuddler like Gulliver. Another reason he should go.
And y
et there was a look in his eye that reminded me of my special dog. Still, I wasn’t so desperate, I thought to myself, desperate the way I’d been back in those dark years after Jim had left me and the only one I had to depend on was Gulliver. Maybe I didn’t need another Gulliver. I certainly didn’t need a patched dog.
None of this cute stuff mattered. Beneath my outward optimism when anyone asked about him going to a new home (“It’s just a matter of time,” I’d say with a casual shrug), I was worrying more and more: the older a puppy got, the harder it became to place him. People either wanted cute little bundles of fur at eight weeks, babies with whom they believed they could bond right away, or they wanted older dogs who were already trained: sit, down, off, stay, come—and perhaps the most important of all, potty! With his rapidly lengthening legs and more pronounced muzzle, when he stood up in his seat belt in the backseat of the car, he could nearly get his entire face out the window. Every day, Cody was beginning to look more and more like a dog and less and less like a puppy.
PART XI
a different sort of dog
{IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE}
Cody
twenty-four
THE LEAVES ON THE few trees that did change color in the Bay Area began to turn in late October, just as Cody kept changing, too. Sailing season was still in its height, as on the West Coast, some of the best weather is in the autumn. On the boat, Cody turned out to be a natural sailor. Unlike Gulliver, he neither barked at the Jet Skis nor snarled or tried to attack other dogs when we went for walks. He attended his puppy kindergarten and played happily with other dogs even though he didn’t pay too much attention to my commands to “sit” and “stay.” The only trick he knew was “kissy face,” which wasn’t really a trick at all—just something he loved and didn’t need to be told to do. Potty training was turning out to be a big job, and as I mopped up accident after accident, week after week, I groused about his possible lack of intelligence—as well as the chore of housebreaking someone else’s dog.
At night, he went meekly into his crate and looked out from behind the grate with a pleasing expression on his face, while Breeze settled into her spot on her chair, and Brad and I got ready for bed and turned out the light. Unlike his mother—who as a pup had clawed at the door of the crate week after week when we put her in to sleep—Cody made it easy for us. With a sigh, he circled, plopped himself down, and made not another sound until morning, when he woke earlier than we did. Then I would roll over and hear him chewing patiently on his bone until we were willing to rise and open the bedroom curtains to the day.
He was a thoroughly calm and agreeable dog, except when playing with Breeze: he dominated her, climbing aboard her back and chewing on her neck, and she made no attempt to discipline him. We were stuck with yelling at him to get off, which he basically ignored. When he stole a dish towel or a roll of toilet paper, he paraded through the kitchen, proudly displaying his prize, and would come sheepishly to relinquish it if you called him sternly.
His big paws promised that he would be a big dog, and he liked to cock his head and look at you with his small round eyes, butt glued to the floor, as he waited patiently for a dog cookie. He had six small spots, the size a pinkie fingertip would make, which were smudged across the very end of his snout. This made him look as if he had been happily digging in chimney soot. And dig he did, making big holes in the yard and the garden, showers of dirt flying out from between his back legs, as if he were looking for buried treasure. I didn’t understand it: he had plenty of bones in the house. I wiped off his paws, filled in the holes, and sighed in despair.
I had resolved not to get attached to him back at week ten. I kept reminding myself that he was a patched puppy, and a dark one at that, whom I could not show in the conformation ring.
All in all, he wasn’t what I wanted.
I was stubborn about not giving in, even though Brad sent me appealing looks whenever he had him tucked up under his arm, or when Cody washed our faces with his long sticky tongue. I anticipated the crying I would do as I put him into someone else’s arms, but I hardened myself against my emotions.
No calls.
And then, wham! He suddenly understood potty training and in the space of a day began holding his pee until I could get him outside when, with his nose, he rang the jingle bells that I had hung over the knob of the back door. Nevertheless, I ran a new ad in the AKC Breeder Section and put him up on Dawn’s blog site, with a prominent photo filling the first page.
And then, one night, Brad asked me to sit down beside him and Cody where they lay on the couch.
“I don’t think I can do it,” he said.
“Do what?
“Give him up.”
I reached down to stroke his soft coat and wondered who would be his mother and father, who would pet him if he left. Who would put down his food bowl? Who would tuck him into his crate at night? I had no answer for myself, or Brad, or him. I was, against my will, growing closer to him. I couldn’t help it. He cocked his head like a dog in a television ad every time you asked him a question. He was too endearing. Too cute. Too willing. Too altogether perfect in his most imperfect of ways.
If Gulliver had been a “giver” and Green Bean more of a “taker,” maybe Cody was the balance between the two. Secure, self-assured, able to love without losing himself.
And didn’t I have to consider Brad’s feelings? Wasn’t he part of the decision as well? Another breeder told me that her kids always fell in love with at least one puppy in a litter and begged to keep him. “I just tell them no,” she said, “and they get over it remarkably fast.” Stung, I replied, “My husband isn’t a child.”
She stared back at me, clearly baffled.
I discussed the problem of Cody over and over with my psychiatrist. What should I do about this growing attachment? How should I handle it, extinguish it, learn to live with it—even though I knew I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, act on it?
“Sometimes,” she said philosophically, “God gives you the dog you are meant to have.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. But because it was Barbara who was saying it, I had to listen—despite my resistance.
Reluctantly, I began to write emails to breeder acquaintances who worked in obedience, asking if they had ever kept a dog from a litter who could not go on to work toward a conformation championship. Had they ever kept a dog purely to train in performance? But I also wondered, couldn’t we have a third dog who was a pup from Breeze’s next litter, who could be shown in both?
•••
I was beginning, just beginning, to rationalize. If I couldn’t show him in the conformation ring, maybe I could just train him to be a superb obedience dog, one of the caliber Rhiannon had been. I received answers back from those breeders to whom I had written that said no, they had never done that, but some said that they would, if they were in the same situation. One, a veteran in obedience whose scores were always in the high 90s, welcomed me “to the dark side.” I laughed at that and felt a little more comfortable with the notion. A little, but still I wasn’t convinced. I could not know then that Cody would turn out to be a High in Trial winner.
Simultaneously, I sensed those friends who were breeders in conformation shaking their heads. “He’s not your Gulliver,” one of them said to me. “How will you feel when Breeze has another litter and there is the perfect show boy?” asked another. And the most pragmatic of them all: “How would you fit three full-grown dogs on the boat?”
I had wanted to believe I wouldn’t be influenced by others’ opinions, but obviously, I was. I considered their points and wondered what kind of a breeder I was if I couldn’t control my emotions enough to give away pups who were clearly unsuitable. You couldn’t keep every one. And I thought also of Michele’s old cliché: if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But I remembered, too, Rhiannon—who hadn’t been meant to stay, but who was the very first special dog to come into my life.
I went to the DCNC Specialty
on Halloween weekend, and it hit me once again. On a beautiful sunny day, I watched the show dogs gait beautifully around the ring, free stack, and show themselves off to the judge. I was envious of Dawn, taking Breeze in and winning an Award of Merit. I did participate in the Parade of Winners and discovered that I was enjoying myself. I went home determined once again to place Cody with someone else. He could never stay with us because I wondered whether I would ever love him as much as I had Gulliver.
But once I got back and saw him nestled on the couch in Brad’s arms, I wavered. As I wrestled with the problem once more, another idea came to me. I had always wanted to do therapy work with one of my dogs, to visit convalescent and elderly homes, hospitals for children and adults. Unfortunately, once the idea had occurred to me several years ago, I’d never owned the right dog. Rhiannon would have been perfect, but she was long gone. Breeze was too bouncy and was nervous around kids. Gulliver hadn’t gotten along with other dogs, and usually you went with a team of handlers and dogs to the different sites. But Cody—why, Cody might just be perfect.
And it might be a way of expanding my life, of meeting new people and making new friends, of starting a new interest, one that was perhaps more fulfilling than showing. It could take me back to the charity work I had done for my temple with the soup kitchen and the Meals On Wheels program I had run, to the afternoons I had spent volunteering in my kids’ schools. It would take me back to a far better place in my life, if only in this way. I signed up to be our club’s liaison to the Dalmatian Club of America and contacted our rescue organization about writing better biographies for the abandoned dogs currently listed on the placement lists. I began to donate funds regularly to different Dalmatian shelters. I was trying to get out of my own little world.
And then there was “Furry Friends,” a local organization that directed therapy dogs into different venues. I heard about it from a writer I didn’t really know but with whom I had started emailing when she wrote to tell me how much she had liked one of my books. Maud Carol Markson had a rescued greyhound named Liberty, and before I knew it, I had a new friend and a writing compatriot who was a true dog person. I read her books and loved both of them. Calling “Furry Friends” myself, I discovered the specifics of the requirements for a therapy dog, learning what traits and how much training was required, and how old a dog had to be. I wanted to know what Cody and I could expect.
Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair With Thirty-Eight Dalmatians Page 20