Paws and Reflect

by Neil S. Plakcy

  That night we settled on a name: Ruby—feminine but tough. It suited her.

  The next morning was Christmas. Homer decided we should go in the opposite direction of the park—he didn’t want me to bring home any more abandoned dogs. So we went off to walk through a vacant lot where we’d walked for years. They were on leashes, right beside me, and I noticed that Ruby was walking really close to me, like maybe she was afraid I was going to take her back out and tie her to the fence again.

  I don’t know when she first stepped on that glass. I looked down and thought, What is that huge thing sticking out of her paw? And the next moment I saw blood, lots and lots of blood, gushing from her foot. That glass went through her pad and came out the other side. Imagine your palm being punctured right through by a long strip of sharp glass. I went nuts.

  I bent down and tried to hold her foot and stop the bleeding. She stood quietly. It must have hurt like hell, but she didn’t react. Finally I picked her up and carried her home, but it’s hard to hold a forty-pound bundle in your arms while you’re running as fast as you can.

  I hit the house screaming. Nick says I’m always annoying in the morning, but this time he was really concerned. He was horrified when he saw the blood. The two of us tried to get her upstairs into the bathtub. There was blood everywhere. Very Pulp Fiction.

  Homer retreated to the bedroom.

  After we unsuccessfully tried to wrap her paw with gauze, Nick held Ruby with her paw in a towel while I called the Animal Medical Center to see if they were open on Christmas. Thankfully, they were ready for an emergency.

  We drove fast over the Brooklyn Bridge, which looked so strange with no traffic, and parked right in front of the animal hospital on Fifteenth Street in Manhattan.

  We told the vet, “We don’t know anything about this dog. She had no rabies tag. We have no idea if she’s ever had any shots.” They took her into surgery, informing us on the way that we were probably going to be out a month’s rent before they got the geyser in Ruby’s leg stopped.

  That was not a happy Christmas. But Ruby pulled through— she was tough. We visited her every day in the hospital. We paid for her shots, we paid to spay her, and $1,000 later, she was ours. Our Christmas gift to ourselves.

  Homer graciously let her into his comfy life. Ruby turned out to be a flying squirrel chaser, a tree climber, a rabbit and rat killer, and a crazy girl. She’s two years old now, a runty forty-pound Boxer mix, but she’s the queen of our house. And Homer allows it.

  You would think that Homer would be the alpha dog because he was there first, but she’s definitely the alpha. They have an agreement: He doesn’t kill her, and she doesn’t kill him.

  She has chosen Homer’s best-friend pack for her friends. Other dogs, even Homer’s other friends, she hates. She’s very exclusive. We have to leave the dog run at Prospect Park when certain dogs show up. When she’s out in the wild, she’s totally different. Then any dog is fine. She’s too busy chasing squirrels to bother with them. But the dog run—that’s her territory.

  Homer is the steady guy, someone you can count on to be there. As a friend put it, people want Homer to like them, not out of fear, but because of his sweet personality, his attentiveness, his need for affection. He is also the kind of dog that gets invited to Thanksgiving at neighbors’ houses even when they’ve put their dogs away for the day. He knows not to eat off the coffee table.

  Homer and I are so close that I imagined at one point I would want to clone him. But then an op-ed piece ran in The New York Times by a guy considering cloning his dog, who just happened to be named Homer, too. He talked about how their relationship was really their experiences together, so that even if the dog looked exactly the same and had the same DNA, it wouldn’t be the same dog. Knowing my Homer the way I do, I was pretty convinced that would be the same for us.

  He is the only one that I rescued from Washington Heights, brought to Brooklyn Heights, Massachusetts, Vermont, North Carolina, Virginia, Long Island, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and Fire Island; the only one who spent summers with Robert, Trevor, Erik, Jeff and Tracy; the only one who nearly got us kicked out of the building just for being “a pit bull” (don’t get me started). And then there’s the scar over his right eye, the one he came with—which the clone wouldn’t have. No, Homer is quite clonable, as it were, but he’s a unique part of me that I came to see could never be repeated.

  And Ruby, well, you’d be crazy to clone her, unless it was for military purposes.

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  Stephen Kwielchek: MY PH. D. IN DACHSHUNDS

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  No matter how strong the emotional connection between a man and his dog, both have to survive the dog lover’s biggest challenge—housebreaking. Problems with housetraining are the main reason that dogs get turned into animal shelters. This basic and necessary step in a dog’s life has spawned thousands of experts who have

  written thousands of books about how to do it successfully.

  But no matter how successful, there are always a few stumbles along the way.

  One big roadblock can be convincing a male dog to inhibit his instinct to “mark” his territory. It is an ancient impulse, brought on by the need to communicate to other males that this piece of the planet is his home range, so they had better move on.

  Stephen Kwielchek’s story is one I entered into many years ago, as I was one of the trainers Stephen mentions. To their credit, neither Stephen nor his partner, John, ever seriously considered the option of getting rid of the difficult Dachshund, Cab.

  Stephen had observed a close man-dog friendship before, in the life of his father. While he did not have a dog of his own, he recognized the need John had for Cab’s company. He was willing to try anything so that they could get along as friends. And it was Stephen who discovered the magic training technique, although totally by accident.

  John is a quiet man who didn’t wish to put the story of his bond with his dog into words. But before his death from AIDS, Stephen spoke candidly about his efforts to get Cab to accept him.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  IN OUR FAMILY, my father was always the one who got the dogs. He went to the pound and brought back a Dachshund. They were always good dogs, but they were always my father’s dogs. I didn’t pay much attention.

  The first time I visited my partner at his house, I met his dog, a big brown dachshund called Cab, short for Taxicab. John was crazy about Cab. He would spend all day taking the dog for walks, throwing the ball for the dog to fetch, and even when he was watching television, the dog would be on the sofa next to him.

  The dog was kind of haughty, a snob. He would look you over when you came in. He didn’t really care much about me as long as John was there. John was obviously the center of his universe.

  The first time I stayed overnight at John’s house was a problem for the dog because he was used to sleeping next to John in bed. With his short legs and tubby body, he couldn’t get up on the bed himself, so John kept a stool nearby for him to step up. When I came over, John moved the stool so the dog couldn’t get up on the bed.

  And you didn’t need to be an animal communicator to figure out that the dog hated this. He had to sleep on the floor, even though he had a number of big comfortable beds—and toys and dishes and anything else a dog could want. The dog was mad.

  After I left, John put the stool back. He came home that night, and Cab had peed on my pillow. This dog was completely housebroken, and the first bad thing he’d ever done in his life was pee on the pillow. John didn’t say anything, just changed the bed.

  Next time I stayed over, same thing. Cab peed on the pillow after I left. John was shocked.

  I stayed over more and more. Sometimes it was easier to go to John’s, a farmhouse in the middle of a lot of fir trees, a long driveway going up to it, lots of privacy and room to relax.

  The dog started to take a dislike to me. As soon as I would come in t
he door, I would see the dog’s expression change. He would get this hard look in his eyes, like I was the enemy. It was unsettling. And whenever he could, he jumped up on the bed and peed on my pillow.

  I suggested that John permanently remove the stool so the dog couldn’t get up on the bed. He removed it for about a week. But John has a soft heart. So one day he put the stool back, and as soon as the dog got up on the bed, he peed on the pillow again. And this time it was a fresh pillow. I hadn’t even been there. It was like he’d been saving up and waiting

  So John called a trainer. She taught us how to housebreak the dog, how to praise him for being outside and yell at him for doing that “bad thing.” John did everything she told him to do.

  But Cab was already housebroken. He knew all the rules. He was doing it out of jealousy and spite. He didn’t want me hanging around with John.

  The trainer said that dogs didn’t have jealousy and we were just projecting human emotions onto him. He supposedly had other things on his mind, like “Who is the alpha dog?”And “Who is gonna eat first?” Dog things.

  Nothing she tried worked.

  Next the trainer decided that we had to make the dog like me. So for the next week, John was not allowed to talk to the dog or feed him. I was the one who had to take care of Cab’s every need.

  The dog figured it out. He pretended to like me. He knew I was the only one getting the food out. But underneath I could tell he could barely stand me—he was just putting up with it for John’s sake. As soon as I stopped petting him, he ran to John.

  After a while, we decided I should move out to a cottage on John’s property. So I rented the cottage, and Cab saw me every day. But we still always had this problem: Cab peed on the pillow.

  We got a clicker, and we tried clicking when he was doing the right thing, like peeing on a tree, and not clicking when he was doing the bad thing, only we couldn’t do it when he was peeing on the pillow because he never did it when we were around. He was sneaky about it. Some days he’d pretend he had no problem with me at all. But the next day there it would be, pee on the pillow.

  Then suddenly I got some bad news: My father died. It was unexpected. He had a heart attack, they took him to the hospital, and he lasted three days, then he died. It was really hard on my mother. I spent a lot of time with her, trying to help her and get things settled, because I’m an only child and she didn’t have anybody else. I was doing everything I could. And the one thing she wanted most of all was to get rid of my father’s dog.

  I had totally forgotten my father had a dog, so I went to look at him. I found him in his bed in the laundry room at the back of the house. He was an ugly Dachshund mix named Alvin. I talked to him, and he didn’t look up, didn’t even lift his head. He just looked at me with sad eyes, and I could tell he knew that my father had died. So I felt really bad for the dog.

  I talked to John about it, and he told me to bring the dog to our place. That was really generous of him because we didn’t think that Cab would be able to take it. He had been an only dog for so long, and he freaked out when John had another human around him.

  But Alvin was very old and sad, and it didn’t seem right to put him in the pound. And I couldn’t see sending him off with anybody else when he was trying to handle all that grief.

  We talked to the trainer, and then a behaviorist. We heard from the behaviorist that before introducing another dog we needed to make sure Cab felt secure about his position. We were supposed to make a big fuss over Cab when we brought Alvin in. We were trying to think what we could do that would add up in Cab’s mind to “making a big fuss over him.”

  All he does is eat and sleep. So I bought him some steak. John decided to go all out: He bought him this bed at a tack store in Middleburg that sells imported plaid horse blankets and sterling silver flasks. People who go fox hunting and drink sherry in the morning hang out there.

  This bed was a very up-market luxury item. It was so huge that Cab could have shared it with a Weimaraner. It was made from the softest green plaid wool material. The bottom was a warm, soft mattress, and the sides were made out of bolster pillows. If I got locked out of the house, I would have slept in this bed.

  Cab ate the steak and investigated the bed. He instantly loved it. He rolled around on his back and rubbed against the bolster pillows. He was one happy dog.

  The next day I brought over Alvin. The funny thing about Alvin is that he was always kind of a chipper dog, always happy and up. Just like my father. When my father died, Alvin got sad. A month later, Alvin was still sad. But I’d be sad too if I realized that the only person I had left in the world was me—I am not anybody’s version of a good housekeeper.

  But he cheered up when he saw there was another dog. We were so scared that Cab would hate him, but for Cab it was love at first sight. He just adored Alvin. He wanted to do everything that Alvin did. Alvin would sniff a tree, then pee on it, and then Cab would sniff the tree and pee on it. They went around the whole yard that way. Alvin had a crummy, old bed my father had bought him, and I put Alvin’s bed next to Cab’s in the garage.

  It looked pretty sad. John wanted me to throw the old thing out. But I could imagine my father making a special trip to Sam’s Club to buy it, and I just couldn’t toss it. I thought it might still smell like my dad. Most of the time, the two dogs would sleep in Cab’s bed. But every once in a while I’d see Alvin in the crummy old one, and I’d imagine he was remembering my dad.

  Alvin and Cab hung out together all the time. Alvin was more than ten years old, while Cab was only around four.

  When we went to work, we put them both in the garage and they could go in and out of the yard on nice days. Then they could go back through the dog door and get in their beds in the garage.

  When we came home, John went in the farmhouse with Cab, and Alvin came to the cottage with me. We both started to think that Alvin was kind of a cool dog.

  Cab and Alvin would lie down touching each other. When they went out, it seemed like Alvin was in the lead. And that’s how they spent their days. We still couldn’t get Cab to stop the bedwetting, but by then John had unloaded a truck’s worth of pillowcases from Bed, Bath & Beyond and we just got used to it.

  Things went along for another couple months. Then John all of a sudden got sick. I took him to the doctor, and we discovered he had pneumonia, and he had to go into the hospital.

  The first night that John was in the hospital, I went in the house, and Cab was there, and when he saw me he made his really hard face. Then he realized that John wasn’t with me. Then I fed him. He realized it wasn’t any kind of behavior training: John really wasn’t there. He had to depend on me. So I talked to him a little, then I took Alvin and went to the cottage out back.

  I had dinner, and then I heard barking. Cab wanted to come in the cottage. So I let him in, and he and Alvin hung out together. They talked some kind of dog conversation. After a while Cab wanted to leave. I opened the door. He ran out, saw that John wasn’t there, and came back.

  This went on a couple times. Finally he realized John was not coming home that night. So he settled down at my place and slept. In the morning I looked around. Cab had never been allowed in my place because, figuring what he did every time he got a scent of me, we thought my place would be like one big urinal to him. But he hadn’t taken his usual revenge on me for being John’s good friend.

  The next night when I came home and called the dogs, Alvin came running to me, but there was no sign of Cab. I was worried. He was in the garage, in his bed, just lying there, so sad, like his heart was broken. He just really missed John. And he didn’t know what was happening.

  After three weeks, John seemed to be going down. His lungs were not clearing up; he was on oxygen all the time. I spent a lot of time with him. Everyone we knew thought it was AIDS, but he wasn’t HIV positive.

  I couldn’t worry about what people thought because John had developed a serious infection of the sac encasing his heart. He was on all kinds o
f antibiotics, then super antibiotics, another one, and another one, and another one. And finally the doctor said, “If this one doesn’t work, we’re in a lot of trouble, because our arsenal is depleted. This is the best one we’ve got. This has got to work.”

  During this time, I was very solicitous of Cab. I bought steak, grilled it, and when he still didn’t want to eat it, I fed it to him, out of my hand, in cut up little pieces. I let him stay in the cottage with us every night.

  Alvin was great with him, like he was taking care of him. When I came home from the hospital, I would sit and tell Cab what had happened. I even took one of John’s hospital gowns after he’d worn it and put it in Cab’s bed. He loved that. He’d sleep on it on his back and put his feet in the air and rub himself trying to get John’s smell all over him.

  But he just couldn’t understand: Where was John?

  Finally the antibiotics took effect. John started to get better. First he started breathing on his own. Then he ate something. Altogether it was six weeks that John was in the hospital.