Rescue Road

by Peter Zheutlin

  “At this point,” he writes, “the dogs and I have become a pack. We are all starting to form bonds and I have learned the personality of each of them. I am thankful for getting to share part of my life with each of them. I am happy I have such a great group of dogs to go through this experience with me. I love them all.”

  • • •

  The ride through Virginia is the longest of any state on the route. Greg and Tommy occasionally fall into stream-of-consciousness conversation, often started by something they hear on Radio America, the conservative talk radio station Tommy listens to and that Greg largely tunes out. Maybe it’s the unusually exhausting trip we’ve had, or the fact that they spend an inordinate amount of time in a small space together with nothing else to do, but over the course of one ten-minute period in Virginia, a conversation which begins with Tommy describing a huge moth he saw at the truck stop where we showered ricochets rapidly to the existence of bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster to “trunk monkeys” (a reference to a series of car commercials) to aliens performing colonoscopies. They egg each other on, each trying to top the other by raising the conversation to a higher level of absurdity. The banter has a wonderful Robin Williams–esque randomness to it. It’s all the more comical because of Tommy’s passing resemblance to the actor John Goodman and Greg’s marvelous way of laughing and talking at the same time that seems only to urge Tommy to ever higher flights of fancy.

  Despite the banter, it would be a stretch to describe Greg and Tommy as friends, despite, or perhaps because of, the amount of time they spend together. Greg is indisputably in charge, and Tommy generally refers to him as “Boss.” They don’t see one another between trips. What Greg values is that Tommy shows up on time and does the work Greg needs him to do; it’s not easy finding someone willing to do a job as demanding and dirty as this one, especially for a wage Greg can afford to pay. In truth, their relationship is as Greg needs it to be. He doesn’t need a friend on the road; he needs a stalwart employee, and Tommy has never let him down in the four years or so he’s been working for Greg.

  “The driving can be so boring and so monotonous,” Greg says to me when the latest explosion of random humor abates, apparently trying to explain the giddiness I’ve just witnessed. It also seems to relieve some stress. “Adhering to a schedule is my least favorite part of the job,” he adds. “It would be nice to be free from that and be able to spend more time with the dogs outside. But we always have people waiting on us.” He doesn’t mean this as a complaint—he values every adopter for giving a dog a second chance. But when the demands of the schedule are bearing down on him, as they are today, he wishes he could give the dogs a little more of his attention.

  • • •

  Just before 3:00 p.m., we’re a few miles from the West Virginia border and we make a quick stop to check on the dogs. Sadie is still my seatmate on the mattress. We’ve been together like this for more than a thousand miles and she’s a complete love: quiet, gentle, uncomplaining. I share my snacks with her; she rests her head in my lap.

  “Adella’s worried about you,” Greg says to me at one point after getting off the phone with his wife. Adella knows how tough it is on the road, and she knows Greg can be sarcastic and quick-tempered, especially when he’s stressed. “I told her you were fine.” And, indeed, though extremely tired, I am fine, even content. It has been a long trip, and we have many miles still to travel, but the excitement of nearing the finish line and witnessing Gotcha Day is beginning to build.

  Soon the South is behind us. After twenty-five miles in West Virginia and twelve in Maryland, we’re in Pennsylvania, a definitively northern state.

  The Maryland-Pennsylvania border is also the Mason–Dixon Line. Though it has, over time, come to unofficially demarcate the North from the South, and separated the free states from the slave states during the Civil War, the Mason–Dixon Line has its origins in a land dispute between two families, the Penns and the Calverts, dating to before the American Revolution. Charles Mason, a British astronomer, and Jeremiah Dixon, a distinguished British surveyor, completed the survey between 1763 and 1767. For Greg, the line has come to represent the moment when the dogs have safely left behind lives of neglect, abuse, and pain, and are within reach of new lives in their forever homes. On every Rescue Road Trip, he writes a Facebook post from just beyond the Mason–Dixon Line to tell people we’re getting close. It’s not just a historically symbolic crossing; it’s a symbolic crossing for Greg, the dogs, and their forever families eagerly awaiting us.

  “With yelps, howls, and wagging tails, we crossed the Mason–Dixon,” he writes. “All bad memories of being homeless, starved, abused, abandoned, unwanted, and unloved were left behind us. Our thoughts are on forever families and forever love. Gotcha Day is almost here. Are you excited? Is your welcome sign ready? Get ready, we are almost there!”

  • • •

  A little more than two hours later, we pull into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn near Allentown, where about two-dozen Allentown Angels are waiting, another of the volunteer groups that have sprung up along Greg’s route. The group formed in mid-2009 and is organized by Keith and Diane Remaly, who learned about Rescue Road Trips, as my wife and I did, when they adopted their first dog, Dallas, through Labs4rescue. The Remalys have four rescue dogs. (Dallas died shortly after this trip in June 2014, leaving the Remalys profoundly bereaved.) He’s a production planner for a hydraulic equipment manufacturer; she’s an engineer with Verizon.

  “When my eyes got opened about what goes on down south, and how many dogs are put down, I wanted to do what I could to help,” Keith told me when I was writing the Parade magazine piece. “It makes you want to do more for them.” Through social media and word of mouth, Keith grew the Allentown Angels. Volunteers range in age from eighteen to nearly eighty. The Allentown Angels meet Greg every other Friday night, come rain or snow. One snowy winter night a volunteer plowed a large area for the dogs to walk and relieve themselves.

  One dog of the thousands Keith has seen stays in his memory. “There was an American Eskimo dog I was walking, and whenever I turned to head back toward the trailer, he pulled in the other direction,” Keith told me. “I knelt down and he put his paws on my legs and I talked to him. I swear as I said to him ‘You’re going to your new home tomorrow,’ he went right back to the trailer as if he understood me.”

  What draws Keith and the other Angels to this parking lot every other week, even on a New Year’s Eve, isn’t just the dogs. It’s Greg. “He’s a super guy,” says Keith. “His heart is as big as a Volkswagen.” The Remalys even traveled to Ohio for Greg and Adella’s wedding in 2012.

  All along the route, I notice the intricate connections that have been made to create a network that supports and sustains all sorts of rescue efforts. When Keri has a dog she thinks needs special attention, she not only tells Greg, but she calls Keith too, so he can check on the dog when it reaches Allentown. This Friday night, she can talk to Keith in person. Even though we haven’t been caravanning today, Keri and Greta pull in shortly after we do. Keith has already told his volunteers that in addition to helping Greg with the dogs in the truck, there are forty more arriving with Keri and Greta.

  It’s a mild, beautiful evening made even more festive by an added feature to the usual scene of dogs and people gamboling on the grass expanses adjacent to the parking lot: a potluck dinner laid out on a long table filled with salads, casseroles, and desserts. Someone even brought a gas grill and is cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. In the middle of the table is a large sheet cake with “Thank you, Rescue Road Trips” inscribed on it.

  As dogs romp and play with strangers they will only know for an hour or so, one very happy couple and one very happy little dog are getting to know each another. For Willis, Gotcha Day is today: his new family, Mary Ellen and Phil Gambutti, are from nearby Easton and were waiting with their welcome sign and hearts surrendered weeks ago to a photograph of Willis they saw online. Now that he’s finally in their
arms, they are overcome with joy and little Willis…well, as always, he’s just a happy little camper.

  • • •

  As in Birmingham, the whole scene has a carnival air, with Greg’s truck the equivalent of the big top in a traveling circus. The extra attraction tonight is Keri and Greta’s menagerie. Inside the trailer, two volunteers, Anita Patterson and Maureen Keenan, both wearing knee pads, jeans, gloves, and headlamps, do the job Lynn Watson does in Birmingham: they help Tommy and Greg hand off dogs and clean the kennels. They work like a well-oiled machine; they’ve done this task so many times, it’s become a polished routine. Outside, passersby stop and watch the puppies and wonder aloud about the unusual scene they’ve stumbled upon.

  Then, just as quickly as it began, the evening winds down. Every dog has been petted, fed, watered, and walked. As dusk turns to darkness, the food is packed away, the buffet table and grill are loaded into pickup trucks, and volunteers say their good-byes and drive away in their cars. It’s suddenly and eerily quiet and empty, as if the midway at a small-town circus has been rolled up and stowed for the trip to the next town.

  But just when you think this forty-hour day, a day that started yesterday morning near Lafayette, Louisiana, is over, there’s yet another in a series of endless tasks to be attended to. Gotcha Day drop-offs start around nine thirty tomorrow morning in New Jersey, and to ensure everything goes smoothly, Greg alphabetizes the envelopes with each dog’s medical records and writes down the number of the kennel each dog is in. It may seem like a small thing, just another hour’s work, but it’s another in the countless tasks that never seem to end when you’re on transport. And even when that’s done, Greg is taking pictures of the dogs with his iPhone, pictures he can use for tomorrow’s Facebook posts. At 11:00 p.m., Greg calls it a day. A very long day.

  Keri and Greta are staying in the Comfort Inn parking lot for the night; we drive five minutes up the road to the parking lot of another motel where, at 5:00 a.m., Greg will meet up with P.E.T.S. (Peterson Express Transport Service), another operation, like Greg’s, bringing dogs up north from southern states. Dogs bound for farther north than Connecticut will be transferred to P.E.T.S., as our Albie was, for the final leg of their journey home.

  As Greg climbs into his bunk in the trailer, I settle into my sleeping bag wedged between the rows of kennels for what I hope will finally be a restful night—at least, as restful as a five-and-a-half-hour night can be. Greg ends the day as he always does, with a text to Adella, telling her he loves her. And, as he always does, he falls asleep immediately.

  For the next hour or so, all is quiet, but I’m having trouble shutting my brain down. I pull out my notebook and record some of the thoughts the day’s events have sparked. Yet even when exhaustion overcomes me and I tuck the notebook away in my backpack, sleep still eludes me. Then, I hear it: a dog toward the back of the trailer whimpering and starting to cry. I know it’s not Willis as it was a couple of nights ago, since he’s with his new forever family. I get up as quietly as I can, so as not to set off a ruckus, and discover it’s Salyna, the white and yellow Lab mix with the distinctive blue tongue and dark eyes I took a fancy to when we first met in Alexandria. It was less than three days ago, but it seems like forever. After a couple of attempts to calm her, I take her from her kennel, and for the next three hours, I sit inside by the trailer door with Salyna in my arms, where she falls asleep.

  Within the quiet of the trailer, I can discern the first sounds of morning, just before five, in the form of birdcalls. When I crack the trailer door to peek outside, it’s still dark. I’ve yet to close my eyes.

  27.Saint Martin Parish is a neighboring parish to the east of Lafayette Parish.

  10

  GOTCHA DAY

  INSIDE THE TRAILER, THE START OF THE new day is marked by the sound of a single dog barking, then two, and then three. Soon you can hear the sound of wagging tails brushing against kennel walls, paws scratching at kennel doors, and an occasional whimper. The sounds build gradually, as the rising din stirs more and more dogs to wakefulness, until the trailer is alive with the sounds of eighty-some dogs on the threshold of new lives.

  For dozens of families waiting down the road, this is the day they’ve been anticipating—some for days, some for weeks, some even months. The welcome-home signs have been made, the dog beds placed before fireplaces and in cozy corners, and the balls and chew toys purchased. The life of every dog we’ve gotten to know these past few days will be forever changed in a few hours—and so will the lives of every family ready to welcome them home.

  For Greg, this is the day that makes the endless miles of blacktop, the long absences from home, and the burden of carrying so many people’s hopes and dreams on his shoulders worthwhile. Today, Trudy and Popcorn, Bijou and Piper, Baby Bella and Tennessee, Pam and Jupee, and seventy other forsaken dogs will be delivered from lives of hunger, fear, abuse, neglect, and pain. Many were days or hours or even minutes from being put down before someone stepped in and gave them a second chance at life. But for every fortunate dog stepping toward his forever home today, it’s hard not to think of all those who didn’t get the lucky breaks and ended their days unloved, unwanted, and unknown in kill shelters, by the side of a road, or lost in the woods.

  After transferring a handful of dogs to P.E.T.S. for the final leg of their journeys, the light of the rising sun starts to limn the eastern sky. It’s a few minutes after six, and Greg eases himself behind the wheel. First he calls Keri and Greta, to make sure they’re okay. We won’t be traveling in tandem today; we have five stops to make, in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, and Keri and Greta have to get to Rhode Island to prepare for tomorrow’s adoption event. Then, just before he maneuvers the stick shift into first gear, he pauses to tap out another Facebook post on his iPhone: “Your heart is pounding. You barely slept last night. Today is finally here. ITS GOTCHA DAY!!!!!!! Feel the love! We’re leaving Allentown. Pluckemin, New Jersey, now I’m all about you. I’m on time and on my way!”

  A thick fog has settled into the low-lying valleys of eastern Pennsylvania this Saturday morning (Gotcha Day is always a Saturday), but as the sun climbs higher in the sky, it begins to burn off until Greg is fighting a strong solar glare; we’re pointed due east, directly into the sun. He lowers the visor and grabs his sunglasses. With more than a million miles behind the wheel, Greg’s driven in all kinds of conditions: high winds, snow, ice, and torrential downpours. A little solar glare is nothing more than a minor nuisance.

  In little more than half an hour, we cross the Delaware River into New Jersey and the day is crisp and clear. A car passes, a horn honks, and the driver gives us a thumbs-up. Greg gets that a lot when people read the writing on the side of his rig: “Rescue Road Trips: Saving Lives Four Paws at a Time.”

  Knowing I won’t likely have a chance after the last of the dogs has been picked up in Putnam, Connecticut—he’ll be leaving almost immediately for the seven-hundred-mile drive back to Zanesville, and I’ll be heading sixty miles to my home outside Boston—I ask Greg what it’s like for him at the end of Gotcha Day when, suddenly, the trailer is empty and quiet. He pauses for what seems an eternity, turning the question over in his mind.

  “It’s a difficult emotion to explain,” he finally says softly. Then, without pause, he continues. “It has opposites in it. I’m happy to be finished and excited to be going home to see Adella and Connor. But I don’t like going back in the trailer because the dogs are all gone. It’s lifeless and cold, plastic and metal. Right now, it’s full of life in its best form. You can walk down the aisle between the rows of kennels and feel all the good stuff coming out of them. You can see it in their eyes. In Putnam, suddenly, that’s all gone. It feels like a void. There was life in here just seconds ago. I’m unhappy the dogs are gone, but happy each dog has a home.

  “The good part of the job, the dogs, are gone, but I feel satisfied it was a job well done,” he says. “When the last dog is handed to its new family, I survey th
e panorama of people with their new dogs and think, I’ve never seen so many happy people in one place. The people aren’t interacting with each other; they’re all getting to know their dogs. They’re all having the same experience. You can believe the world is a better place.

  “Then they all disperse and it’s just Tommy and me. Then Tommy will say, ‘Boss, you or me?’ and he brings me back to a different reality. His voice signals the end of my taking in the scene and reminds me the job isn’t over; that it’s time to drive home. When we arrive back in Mattingly’s lot and park the truck, I’m usually in a good mood because we are finally done. We live with that diesel engine noise all week. The silence that follows the engine being shut off means it’s over; we’re home. No matter what the weather, Adella will be on the porch or in the driveway waiting for me. She tries to be the first thing I see. She makes a big effort to be there each time. The sight of her—it’s what she represents: home, life, love, a comfort I can’t describe. I’ll hug her and not want to let go and we won’t even care I’m a smelly truck driver smeared with dog shit with dirty fingernails. As soon as I step away from her, the dogs are ready to greet me. Beans and Harry first, while Treasure whines and Murphy runs in circles. They all compete for my attention. Connor will say something simple, and it’s enough. The house smells like my house and I know I’m home.”

  • • •

  All week, Greg’s been using Facebook to build excitement as he drives toward Gotcha Day. It isn’t because he loves using social media; rather, there’s a method to his social media madness. He believes his reports from the road help strengthen the growing bonds between waiting families and their pups. He wants to do everything he can to ensure there’s a happily-ever-after ending for every dog. By infusing a holiday spirit into Gotcha Day, by encouraging people to bring welcome signs, and by making something of ceremony of the handoff to each family, he believes he’s helping, in a small way, to bind each family to their dog. Many are going to have their struggles as they adjust to their pup and their pup to them. If they ever waver, he hopes they’ll remember Gotcha Day and why they decided to welcome a rescue dog into their lives to begin with.