I yearned to rescue this big, beautiful dog, but given everything that had recently happened in my life, maybe I was taking on more than I could handle. I suddenly felt a little pressure and a lot of responsibility. I studied the big guy as he stood in the snow cautiously studying me. What was he thinking? And what was I thinking?
“He’s good with women,” she told me. “He warms up to them right away.”
“But not men,” I said.
“Not at first, and he seems particularly scared of taller men,” she said. “I’ll see if I can call him over and you can introduce yourself, but try not to loom over him. Get down to his level and move really slowly, so you don’t scare him.”
We both crouched and she called out his name, “Kong! Come!” She explained that this was the temporary name her daughter had given him because he was as big as King Kong. “You don’t have to call him that,” she assured me. “Actually, it’s best if you choose your own name for him, one that you feel suits him.”
He started over readily enough, but slowed when he saw me and stopped entirely about ten feet away, closer to her than to me. “I don’t think he’ll walk right up to you,” she said. “But he should be okay if you go to him. Just stay low.”
Leaning over, my knees bent, I moved towards him as slowly as I could. He hadn’t seemed aggressive when playing with the other dogs, so I wasn’t worried about him biting me, but he was just so big, and I was concerned that my nervousness would scare him off. “There, there, big guy. It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just coming over to say hello.” He backed up a little when I got near, but he didn’t run.
Up close, he was awe inspiring. I was astonished by how self-possessed he seemed. He gazed right into my eyes in the most extraordinary way, a look that revealed intelligence but also wide-eyed caution. And there was something else. Even though he was young (they had estimated he was between one and two years old), he had the eyes of an old soul, the same eyes I’d seen in the Petfinder photo.
I carefully held my hand out to him. His muzzle moved from side to side a foot from my hand, taking in my scent. When he didn’t growl or edge away, I inched closer, bit by bit, until the back of my hand was right in front of his nose.
He was on high alert, hardly moving. I could see the whites of his giant, unblinking eyes. His head hung low, but he seemed determined not to show his fear too much. He continued to look me straight in the eye as I got closer, and held our eye contact, unlike any dog I’d ever met. It was as if he wanted me to know he was appraising me as much as I was him and he was going to set his own terms. Despite whatever neglect or abuse he’d suffered, he still had that dignity in him. I felt his whiskers brush my fingers as he took in my scent. He was staring up at me, his big, brown eyes saying, “I want to like you, but I’m just not sure.” I didn’t try to pet him, just withdrew my hand once he’d backed his muzzle away. We looked at each other awhile longer and then I moved away from him and stood up.
Calling her daughter and dogs after us, the woman led me into her house. Inside, a very necessary mudroom opened into the living room. The dogs poured in after us, tracking snow everywhere. “I just let it go during the day,” the woman told me, nodding at the mess. “Before I go to bed, I get a mop out and clean it all up. The foster dogs usually aren’t with me long enough for me to teach them any manners.”
The all-black Newfoundland, the dog that had been friendliest, belonged to the family. Extremely sweet-tempered, she was the spark that had convinced the woman to start fostering in the first place. She loved the breed deeply and used her dog as an example of how Kong might eventually act once he opened up to me. We had a cup of coffee and talked as I watched Kong move around the house. He filled the room with his presence.
Before meeting him, my main concern was that he might be aggressive toward people or other dogs. Now, however, seeing him in person, I knew that aggression wouldn’t be an issue. But his size would. This was an enormous dog. Could I handle him if he had a mind of his own? I had no earthly idea. Here, in this rural setting, he had lots of room to himself, and it was really quiet and serene. But what if he bolted once he got to the city? What if traffic scared him? And what about the regular noise of an urban center? What would I do with this massive terrified dog then if it was all too much for him?
I had promised myself that I wouldn’t bring him home after only one visit—I wanted to make sure I didn’t rush into anything. But at some point in the two hours I spent watching him, and despite all the voices in my head saying, “Don’t do it!” I found myself announcing, “I would like to take him home with me today.”
“Today?” the woman repeated.
“Today. Yes. If that’s okay. He is beautiful, and he seems very sweet and gentle. I think I can give him a good home.” I looked over at the big dog, now lying in the corner, watching me. “Once in a while in life we all need someone to help look after us. Might as well start now.”
“I agree,” she said. “And I have a feeling he could become a very good dog someday.”
There was a bit of paperwork to fill out. I sat down at the kitchen table to take care of it, and while I did, the woman walked my dog—my stunning black-and-white Newfoundland—outside to relieve himself before the drive to the city. When we’d both finished our respective business, she gave me a short leash and a collar and helped me load him into the backseat of my car. He was a little hesitant, but she coaxed him and he gently stepped into my car. I got in after he was settled, and when I rolled down the window to say goodbye, the woman leaned in and gave me one last bit of advice. “If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out, please call us and we will take him back,” she began. “But you should give it some time if you can. It’s traumatic every time a dog changes homes. He won’t turn into the perfect pet in one day. Be patient. Wait, just wait.” Funny she said that, because my grandfather used to say the same thing to my brother and me when we were kids: “Wait a bit. Just wait a bit. Try not to rush so much. Do things properly, and good things will come your way.”
I nodded and thanked her, rolled up the window and set off for home.
As we pulled out of the driveway and onto the road, I glanced back to make sure he was okay. I was leveled by the sheer size of him. He took up the entire backseat. It reminded me of that scene in the movie Jaws when they see the shark for the first time and Roy Scheider says, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” I was going to need a bigger car.
As nervous as Kong had been earlier in the day, he didn’t cower or whimper. He sat quietly, staring straight ahead out the windshield. I looked back at the woman and her daughter and waved as we drove away. I was surprised that the dog didn’t look back. He had his sight only on what lay ahead. I couldn’t help but think of Jane the night she left: she never looked back, either.
As I drove, a million thoughts raced through my mind. Where was this dog going to sleep? What if he barked and drove the neighbors crazy? What kind of food did he like? But the refrain my mind kept coming back to was “Oh my god. I just adopted a 140-pound dog. What the hell am I doing?”
The other thing bugging me was the name the foster family had given this animal. Kong. Aside from the fact that he was big, it didn’t suit him at all. It was a novelty name, as though he was a carnival attraction or some sort of freak show. I could not bring myself to call him that. The question was, what would his name be?
“What are we going to call you, big guy?” I said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. He kept quiet the whole way, gazing straight ahead out the window.
SIX
Two hours later, on a drive back that was much easier than the way there but filled with a different kind of tension due to my new companion in the rear, we were home. Or at least, I was home. The leviathan in the backseat was in a very strange land, one filled with brightly shining lights, tightly packed houses and fast-moving vehicles. He didn’t bark or make a sound, but his head was on a swivel the second we approached the city.
Instea
d of pulling around the back and into the garage, I parked in front of my house. I stopped in almost the exact spot Jane had when she’d told me she was leaving me. It was the first time I’d parked there since she’d left. I turned the car off and pivoted to the dog in the backseat. His giant head was now lowered and he looked up at me with his big brown eyes as if to say, “Please don’t hurt me.” For the first time since the whole “get a dog” urge started, I felt sad. I felt sorry for this creature. What if I couldn’t make him feel safe and secure? If I couldn’t do it for myself, how was I going to do it for him?
“It’s okay, big guy. I won’t hurt you,” I said a few times, as I slowly reached out to let him smell my hand. He let me gently rub his ears, but his apprehension never wavered. “Let’s take you to the park. I bet you have to pee.” It was a phrase I would say over and over in the days, weeks, months and years ahead.
I lowered the front seat of my two-door sports coupe, quite possibly the worst car I could have for such a big dog, and tightly wrapped the leash Newf Friends had provided around my hand. “Let’s go, big guy. Let’s go for our first walk.” I motioned toward the open door and he leaned forward, his enormous nose twitching as he smelled the air of a city for the first time. A minute or so later, he put one awkward paw down on the floor of the backseat, followed by another down on the road. He cautiously glanced around and then hopped onto the street. Then he gazed up at me. “Good boy! See, you’re okay. Let’s go.”
I led him across the street and into the park. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure who was leading who. He wasn’t totally unmanageable, but clearly he wasn’t used to walking on a leash, and he basically moved from smell to smell, dragging me along behind him. Eventually he stopped by a light pole and sniffed frantically while circling the pole, and then took an astonishingly long pee—a solid fifteen or twenty seconds. I hadn’t seen racehorses pee that much, never mind a dog. This was followed by more pulling and sniffing across the snow-covered ground, where he suddenly stopped and then squatted, producing my first glimpse of yet another reality of owning a giant dog. I had a plastic bag with me (thank goodness it was a grocery bag, not those tiny ones they sell at pet stores), and as I stooped to clean up after him, the question came to me again: “What the hell am I doing with you?” I asked it out loud as I attempted to veer this leviathan of a dog toward a garbage can so I could get rid of the perilously full bag. He kept walking in tangents, almost pulling me off my feet to track scents in the snow. I am six-foot-one, weigh 210 pounds and have taken my share of body checks, knocks and bumps playing hockey. But my walk in the park with this dog was anything but a “walk in the park.” Despite being underweight, this dog was incredibly strong.
“Hey!” I pulled back on the leash and tried to get his attention. He stopped for a second to turn around, giving me a look that said, “What do you want?” Progress! I’d finally caught his attention. But before I could be too pleased with myself, off he went in another direction, hauling me behind him.
The big dog dragged me around the park a bit more, until I eventually veered us toward my house. It was getting cold and starting to snow even more, and it was time to introduce him to his new home. “Here we are, big guy,” I said, as we made our way up the short walk to the front door. I looked down at him, hoping he would give me a happy bark and eagerly wag his tail like on those Lassie episodes I watched as a kid. Instead he stopped dead in his tracks, immovable as a rock.
“C’mon. It’s time. It’s going to be okay,” I said. Reluctantly he followed me up the three stairs onto the front porch, and I told him to sit as I fumbled with my keys. Naturally he didn’t sit. Instead he stood motionless and unsure as I opened the door. “This is it. This is your new home.”
He eyed me as if to say, “What am I supposed to do?”
“All right. I’ll go first,” I said, crossing the threshold. “It’s totally safe. Come.” And with that, we were in the foyer. But no sooner had I said it was safe than I tripped over the hockey bag I’d left at the door. I didn’t fall, but my lunge startled the poor dog and he cowered on the floor. “I’m sorry,” I said gently. “You’re okay. I just lost my balance.”
I was met with a very unsure look. I sat down on the floor beside the enormous ball of fur and slowly unclipped the leash. “Everything is okay. You can walk around, check it out … Just don’t pee in here.” It was a joke, but I wasn’t joking—not that he got it.
Since I had promised myself I wouldn’t bring a dog home on a first visit, I hadn’t done anything to dog-proof the house. My place hadn’t seen a mop or broom since the volunteer had been there to check it out, and the empty food containers had made a return appearance in almost all the rooms on the first floor. I got up and started tidying.
I kept an eye on the big dog as I cleaned old pizza boxes and Chinese-food containers, empty juice boxes and beer bottles. He crept from the entranceway into the living room, cautiously sniffing at the floor and the furniture. For such a giant creature, he could pad along so delicately. As I kept tabs on him, he did the same with me, tracking my movements out of the corner of an eye and avoiding me as best he could. If I moved more than about six feet near him, he’d back away. It was as if we were both magnetized to maintain the same distance between us at all times.
In the confines of my home, he seemed even more massive, and every time he entered a room it felt full to capacity. Trying to open things up for him, I shifted around some of the furniture, while he explored the new space with his head lowered and his nose working overtime.
Just when he was calming down and moving along with a bit more purpose, a loud ring of my cell phone caused him to jump and hide under the dining room table—which, of course, was smaller than he was. I grabbed my phone quickly and turned off the ringer as I checked who it was: Matt, no doubt calling to ask how the visit to the foster home went. I’d call him back later. Now I needed to coax the giant out from under the table. “It’s only a cell phone,” I said. “It’s not scary.” I held the phone up for him to see. He met my gaze, but his body language said, “Stay back,” so I did. I went to the living room and sat down. I turned on the TV, with the volume on low. He eventually settled and lay on the floor, watching me from afar. This would take some time, and I needed to be patient, I reminded myself.
And that’s when I realized I was so ill-prepared that I didn’t even have any dog food. With the basic cleanup out of the way, I decided to make a run to a pet store, and because I didn’t want to leave the dog alone in the house by himself quite yet, I had to bring him with me.
At the farm I’d had the foster woman’s help in putting the leash on him, and the only other time I’d had to get it on him he was in the tight confines of the backseat of my car. Now I got down low and inched my way over to him, holding the leash out in front of me. “Time to go for another short car ride,” I said. “You must be hungry.” He was teetering on the edge of flight, and if he could have run away from me, he would have, but there was nowhere for him to go. Reluctantly, his head down, and eyeing me suspiciously the whole time, he let me clip the leash to his collar and we headed out the door. It was so obvious he didn’t want to go, but what was I supposed to do? I got him outside and opened the car door to invite him in. He jumped onto the backseat with a bit of coaxing.
With my new dog staring out the window and taking in all the sights, I drove to a big-box pet store. Dogs were allowed in the store, which was great, but as we walked in, I started to doubt whether arriving with a dog clearly not socialized very much was such a good idea. The second we entered he was overloaded with dog-friendly sights and smells. It was probably his first time in a store like this, and he was like a kid at Christmas. He started pulling me straight to the rawhide dog bones, smartly displayed at dog height. He grabbed one before I could say or do anything to stop him. As I firmly said, “No,” and began to gently pull the toy out of his mouth, he abandoned the rawhide bone and lurched toward a huge, plush donut. Once it was lodged in his ja
ws, he started pulling me down the aisle again. I noticed people staring. It was somewhat embarrassing to be yanked down aisle after aisle by a giant, donut-carrying dog.
Thankfully a store employee intervened. “You look like you might need some help,” she said. I wasn’t even going to try and be cool. I just nodded a desperate yes.
“What a beautiful dog he is. What’s his name?” I quickly explained that he was a rescue and I had just gotten him, and he didn’t have a name yet. Meanwhile, Kong sat down calmly beside the woman, donut still in his mouth, and let her rub his head. The lady at the farm had been right: he absolutely was more comfortable around women than men.
Some other customers in the store had stopped shopping and were watching what was rapidly becoming a spectacle. I tried to get back to business. “I’m wondering if you can help me choose some basic things—a food dish, a water bowl, a good-quality food, some treats … And I guess we’re taking that giant donut,” I said, noting how much saliva was now on it.
“Sure thing,” she replied. “Why don’t I hold his leash.” I handed it over to her and she looked down at the big dog and said, “Come with me, beautiful boy.” With that, Kong followed her over to the leash-and-collar section, with me lagging behind. She picked out a collar (the biggest one they carried) and fitted it onto him easily. Kong obviously liked having the salesgirl close to him, and I was pretty sure he would never have let me put anything around his neck the way he let her do it.
“Give that a try,” she said, passing me the leash. I followed her through the store, and although Kong tried hurling me down the aisles, the new collar definitely helped me control him better. When we got to the food selection, I said, “He’s still far too thin, and I’m looking for a really good food that will help him put on weight.”
Free Days with George Page 6