Our suspicions rested on our housesitter. We called her and got a confession. She said she was having a party in our absence when a sick, starving dog came up through the woods and collapsed in the driveway. She felt sorry for it. To a point. She carried it into the backyard and gave it the remains of a deli platter. The dog tried to eat some roast beef and pastrami. It tried to drink a margarita. But in the end it was too weak and keeled over. Nobody at the party wanted it. She didn’t have the heart to move it. That was a week ago.
I nudged the dog with my foot. Nothing. Beth told me I would have to call the city to cart the dog away. I had no idea whom to call. I wanted a hot bath. I didn’t want to deal with a carcass. I went inside to look up the dead dog division of the city of Los Angeles. While I was thumbing through the Yellow Pages, I looked outside at the corpse in our backyard and lo and behold the corpse was looking back at me. We made eye contact before it dropped its head back to the ground.
I called to Beth and went out to investigate. She came running and we both took a closer look. We came to the conclusion that whether sick or starving, the dog was near death. Beth told me to be careful. It wasn’t our dog. If we fed it, it would be.
“That’s crazy,” I said.
Beth said, “Trust me. It doesn’t matter how nasty a dog is. If you feed it—it will be yours. That’s the rule. Dogs think with their stomachs. You’ve never had a dog. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
Beth was right. I didn’t know anything about dogs. I never had a dog except for about twenty minutes when I was seven years old. It was a grim childhood event. Our family had two pet snails. Mom thought it would be a good strategy to occupy my time with a normal pet. She got dibs on a cocker spaniel puppy. She brought it home, we fed it, we named it Honey, we talked to it in baby talk, we petted it, we poked at its sides ever so gently, causing it to vomit on the kitchen floor.
Unfortunately, Dad witnessed the event. He said something along the lines of “Get that damn dog out of here.” So Honey was here and gone. That was the extent of my experience handling a dog.
Beth left me there to ponder while she went to take a bath: to feed or not to feed. I had the first flash of memory of the Dodges’ backyard and that starving horse and that poor duck. I couldn’t help myself. I went inside to see if we had any food in the fridge. The only thing there was part of a leftover turkey sandwich. I put it on a plate and went out back with a bowl of water, put it by the dog, and went inside.
I took a hot shower and climbed into bed. Beth was reading. Without looking up from her book she asked, “You feed it?”
I confessed. “Turkey sandwich.”
“It’s your dog,” she said.
I got defensive. “It’s not my dog. Anyway, I don’t think it will live until morning. How about this, tomorrow, if it’s alive, I will take it to the vet and let them treat it and send it out for adoption. They do that sort of thing all the time.”
Beth was unconvinced. “Okay. But that dog is not staying here. It’s the dirtiest, ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.”
“I know. I know. It’s horrible and it stinks. I’ll get rid of it.” I turned off the light and went to sleep praying that the Grim Reaper would visit our backyard that night.
The Grim Reaper let me down. The next morning it was still breathing, so it was off to the vet. I put the dog on my lap and headed down the hill. I looked down at this thing of filthy matted fur that had the stench of death about it and thought it couldn’t be any worse. But once again, I was wrong. The dog groaned, and then let loose with a diarrhea explosion.
I erupted with a torrent of expletives directed at the dog as I did figure eights down Laurel Canyon Boulevard. When I gained control of the car, I pulled over and rolled down the windows for air. The dog looked up at me in utter humiliation. I looked back and felt guilty. I told her, “Don’t worry. It’s all fine. Ten more minutes and I check you into the nice vet man and it is arrivederci, baby.” I stopped off at a 7–Eleven and got a big cup of water and tried to wash off my pants and the dog. It made it worse. We still stunk, and I looked like I had the accident.
We did not win any fans in the waiting area of the clinic. Between the stains and the stink, most pet owners gave us a wide berth. I was called up to the reception desk. The nurse asked me what was wrong with my dog. I explained, “It’s not my dog. I found it and it needs to see the doctor.”
The woman looked at me without a glimmer of humor or hope and said, “What’s your dog’s name?”
I explained again, “It’s not my dog so I don’t know its name. It may not even have a name.”
The nurse said, “For treatment, we need to know the name of your dog.”
I became more intense. “It’s not my dog.”
“Whose dog is it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, we can’t see a dog unless you own it and it has a name.”
There was something Kafkaesque about the bureaucratic cloud hovering over the pet clinic. But I had something Gregor Samsa didn’t have. I had a MasterCard. It worked wonders in the dog registration process.
The nurse ran the card through the machine and said, “There you go, but I will need the name of your dog.”
I gave in and said, “Pooch.” She smiled and looked at my credit card.
“Pooch Tobolowsky.”
“Yes, yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
She took the dog away from me and made a face of sheer revulsion. They would have to clean the dog before the doctor saw it so I would be billed for a bath as well.
I left the dog in their competent hands. I drove home with the windows rolled down thinking I would probably have to sell the car and burn my clothes. I jumped in the shower. Beth came in and said I had a phone call. It was the vet. He wanted to talk to me about Pooch Tobolowsky. Beth was not pleased. I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist. I ran to the phone with Beth calling to me, “I told you if you fed that dog you would own it.”
The doctor explained that Pooch would need to be on an IV for about ten days. They needed to put her on vitamin therapy. She was so dirty that they couldn’t just wash her, but they had to shave her. In the process they discovered she was covered with small tumors that would have to be removed. The doctor told me I was looking at several hundred dollars and even at that he couldn’t guarantee the dog would live. He wanted to know what my decision was: treat Pooch or put her down.
The Ghost of Kookie the Chihuahua hobbled in front of me. I was uncertain of the dividing line between kind and cruel, but in the end, I pushed aside any reasoned debate and just said, “Treat her.”
Ten days later I went back to the vet. I signed the credit card bill for $600 and the nurse called back for Pooch Tobolowsky. I gasped when after a few minutes the assistant came out with a shaved dog covered with scars and stitches from numerous surgeries. But when she saw me she leapt from the assistant’s arms and ran helter-skelter across the floor of the waiting room and jumped into my lap. She started licking my face furiously and crying.
The doctor came out and told me she still couldn’t eat dog food. I would have to cook a mixture of sautéed hamburger, egg, and rice five times a day. She could probably eat that. I said if she didn’t, I would. The vet wanted to see her again in two weeks.
We got back to the house and Pooch was ecstatic. She was home. She dashed across the backyard and barked at the invisible squirrel by the tree. Beth heard us and came outside. She saw Pooch’s buzz cut highlighted with fresh stitches and green antibacterial ointment and she started laughing. “Oh my God. Now she really is the most hideous dog on earth.”
I said halfheartedly, “Beth, we can take her back to the clinic for their pet adoption day.”
Beth laughed even harder. “Are you kidding? No one in their right mind would want this dog. It’s horrible. It’s like a Frankenstein dog.”
Pooch ran over to Beth and almost knocked her down. She started licking Beth. Beth fell on her back in
the grass laughing and Pooch jumped on her and continued with the affection offensive. If nothing else, Pooch embodied the joy of being alive.
THE NEXT WEEK I spent most of my waking hours in the kitchen cooking rice and simmering hamburger. This dog food could have won Iron Chef America. Pooch would watch me through the back door. I asked Beth if she thought we could let Pooch inside.
Beth explained that there are two kinds of dogs: outdoor dogs and indoor dogs. Pooch was an outdoor dog.
That proclamation lasted about three hours. Pooch snuck in behind me during one of my many trips from the kitchen to the dog bowl. Once inside Pooch ran roughshod over everything: barking, jumping on furniture, knocking things over. Beth said now that the dog had come into the house, we would have to teach it behavioral rules. A squirt bottle was the only way.
I went to the gardening store and asked the woman if she had anything I could use on a dog. She gave me a bottle that would shoot several sprays ranging from a fine mist to a long-range stream. I set the bottle for stun and came home. I filled it with water and waited for the first infraction. It came after about sixty seconds. Pooch started barking at the invisible squirrel in the backyard. She started leaping against the back door in response to nothing. I shot the dog with the spray bottle. She stopped, turned, and looked at me. I shot her again. She loved it. She thought I had come up with a novel method of hydration. So she would come up to me for an occasional drink.
After ten days it was time to go back to the clinic to get Pooch’s stitches removed and a follow-up visit with the doctor. I waited for about twenty minutes. The vet came out to see me. He had a strange look on his face. He said, “Stephen, can you come back to my office?” I felt uneasy. I didn’t even know veterinarians had offices. I walked back to a little room with a desk, some textbooks, family photos, and a poster on the wall of the life cycle of the tapeworm. The doctor went right up to his X-ray viewer and turned it on. There was a strange image of what I assumed was a dog. The doctor took his pen and used it as a pointer and began, “Stephen, I’m sorry. I need to show you why your dog is going to die.”
Die? My brain went blank. I heard his words but couldn’t feel a thing. He said that the malnutrition had kept her spine from developing as it should have. One of her disks was swelling. Sooner or later the disk would create enough pressure to cripple her. Eventually it would kill her.
I asked, “How long?” The doctor looked somber. “Soon. Eight weeks. Ten weeks. All you can do is keep Pooch comfortable. Try to keep her calm. Come back in a couple of months. If she is in any pain, we can put her down.”
I was in shock. I shook his hand, collected the dog, and started home. She was in my lap. I rolled down the window so she could stick her head into the breeze. The wind blew back her ratty-looking bangs. She stuck her tongue out so it was flapping in the wind. I broke down and started to cry. I pulled the car over, much to Pooch’s surprise, and I wailed like I had never done in my life. That’s when I knew she was my dog.
After about three minutes, I collected myself and continued home. I carried Pooch out of the car so she wouldn’t bound over to Beth. I placed her on the ground. She ran over to the tree and started barking at the invisible squirrel. Beth asked me how she was. I sat down in the yard and told her the sad story of our dog and Beth began to cry and held on to me for comfort. Pooch ran around us joyously, unaware of the source of our grief.
I have noticed in my life that even the most casual relationship with an animal is capable of eliciting powerful emotions. You can know a person for years and not be moved by them, but their cat is another story.
We took a breath, got up, and went inside. We left the door open so Pooch could follow. We walked back to the bedroom. Pooch trotted behind. We opened the door to the dog-free zone and Beth lifted Pooch up and set her on the bed. Pooch couldn’t believe her good fortune. She spun in circles and snuggled down between us. “If she only has a few weeks with us, then she should be happy,” Beth said.
The next morning, I decided that in her remaining time Pooch should see the world. Every morning we went off in a different direction exploring the wilds of the Hollywood Hills.
At night Pooch nuzzled in between Beth and me. She took over the entire bed. We slept on the periphery. But every time we felt like we were going to fall off the edge, we thought of Pooch’s final days. Her comfort came first.
We neared the date of the final visit to the vet. That day we walked from the top of our mountain to the bottom. We sat by a creek and I fed Pooch Poochburgers and we shared a drink from a canteen. We walked back up the mountain. I told Beth we were leaving for the doctor. She hugged me and kissed Pooch, and we headed off to the clinic.
We arrived and our doctor was waiting for us. I handed over Pooch. He said he would check her out. He would get me before they did anything drastic.
My dear friend Bob told me that we spend the first part of our lives choosing who we want to live with and the last half choosing who we want to die with. For whatever reason, Pooch found me. She gave me the opportunity of making the dream I had as a little boy—the dream with the rabbits—come true. She was lost. We brought her into our secret home in the woods; I gave her water and a turkey sandwich.
The doctor interrupted my rabbit reverie. He came out looking concerned and asked me to come back with him. We went into his office and he pointed to Pooch’s X-rays. He said, “I can’t explain it. Pooch is cured. The spine is normal. The disks are normal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“She’s going to live?”
“That’s right. Her blood work is perfect. Her muscles are no longer atrophied. Whatever you did, you did it right.”
I thought for a moment and then it hit me. “Good God. We walked. Every day. All the time. Up and down the Hollywood Hills.”
“Well, all of the exercise did it. She’s lucky she found you.”
“I can take her home?”
“Take her home. She’s all yours.”
We rode home with the car window down and the wind tousling her ears and tongue. We got home. I told Beth the news.
Beth was overjoyed. We hugged each other until we realized that we now had a dog that had no discipline at all and slept in the middle of the bed. But there was nothing to be done but grab the squirt bottle in case she got thirsty at night and be grateful that she was still with us and would continue to be with us for a long, long time.
26.
DON’T ARGUE WITH THE ROAD
I RECENTLY VISITED my dad in Dallas. Mom passed away about three years ago. Dad is almost blind. He said if there was anything I wanted to keep from the old days, I should look around and take it. I went on a treasure hunt. I found a dinosaur I made from clay in first grade. It resembles a brontosaurus with a thyroid condition. I found the complete works of Shakespeare I got from a girlfriend my senior year of high school. I found a book on werewolves I bought when Beth and I lived in the flea apartment on McFarlin. That had to be thirty-three years ago.
I found photo albums I made in college. Polaroids of Beth when we first met. Pictures of friends I hadn’t seen in decades. Pictures of my broken foot in Illinois and of my first apartment in Los Angeles where the ants almost ate me alive.
I found speech tournament awards my mom kept from my debate years in high school. Reviews from every play I was ever in. I was thrilled with every discovery and heartbroken that it had been so long since I had thought about them.
It’s never the photo. It’s the moment. The feeling of the cascade of time pushing you forward and the instant when you said to your mom or dad, or your girlfriend, or your sister holding the family cat, “Hold it, right there!”
We no longer lived in our childhood home, but I still slept on my childhood bed, the bed I had since I was fourteen. It no longer had the necessary structural integrity for a good night’s sleep. It would either tilt to the right or the left depending on where your weight was distributed. There was no rest on this bed, but there was a sense of
accomplishment in the morning if you managed to ride the balance point like a kid standing on the middle of a teeter-totter. They always advertised these mattresses as lasting a lifetime. Mom and Dad intended to put them to the test.
My first night home this trip I was determined to look at my art history notes from college that Mom had kept for me. I discovered my little bed had no sheets. Dad had gone to bed so I went on another hunt with far lower expectations. I checked a closet in the hall that seemed like it could be the final resting place for any number of things, including sheets and blankets. It was.
I found some trophies I had won for debate. I found pillows my mother said she had gotten from her mother, who brought them from her mother in Europe. I found my brother Paul’s favorite green blanket. It was all so nothing and all so precious.
I found my sheets. I lifted them from the top shelf and there, underneath them, was the huge, white family Bible I bought when I played Jesus in Godspell. The one I had taken to Illinois over thirty years ago. I hadn’t seen it or thought about it since. I used it to hold my window open at the apartment where Beth and I lived on Green Street. I know it sounds disrespectful. It probably was, but the fresh air was important and valued, especially on a muggy, Indian summer day. I remembered on slow mornings, out of boredom, I would open the Bible up at random and see if anything made sense to me.
I have no idea how the Bible ended up under the sheets. In her final years Mom was losing more and more of her memory due to Alzheimer’s. She could have put it up there and forgotten about it.
I took the Bible to bed with me that night. I wanted to look it over for traces of memories more than insight. I turned once again to the story of Joseph. I found where I left off three decades ago. Joseph is thirty years old, give or take. He is the second most powerful man in all of Egypt. His brothers have come in search of food. They don’t recognize Joseph. He recognizes them. He messes with their heads. He eventually breaks down into tears and embraces his family, telling them not to punish themselves over the way they treated him. His hardships have placed him here in Egypt in a position of power where he could save them and be an instrument of “astonishing deliverance.”
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