She certainly was. She talked to Debbie about the need to let go, for Tara’s sake. She described her own, similar experience, and it definitely had an effect on Debbie.
Soon after, the day finally came when we couldn’t fool ourselves anymore. We took Tara to the park for a picnic, and she wouldn’t eat, not even the cherished hot dogs. We also noticed that she would not sit in the sun; obviously her condition had expanded to include an aversion to bright light.
We took her directly from the park to the vet, and he got right to the point. “I’m sorry, but it’s time.”
It’s very hard for me to convey how I felt at that moment. It was as if a train had been slowly bearing down on us, and though we saw it coming months in advance, we just couldn’t seem to get out of its path. The sadness was unbearable, oppressive; it seemed as if we were suffocating.
We felt as if we had let Tara down. She was depending on us—we were the only chance she had—and we hadn’t come through. She deserved so much more, but we just couldn’t seem to give it to her.
But whatever guilt and grief we were experiencing, the bottom line was that the vet was right, and none of the other stuff mattered anymore.
It was time to let Tara go.
He put two blankets on the floor, double thickness so they would be softer, and Tara laid down on them. Debbie and I both got on the floor with her, a position we have assumed with many other dogs since.
We held her while the vet gave her an injection, which was a sedative designed to calm her, though she really didn’t need calming. She was peaceful and accepting.
He shaved her leg above her vein and administered the pink liquid. She didn’t react to anything he was doing; she just stared into Debbie’s eyes, silently saying good-bye.
I swear, she looked at us with a level of dignity and courage that only golden retrievers possess and told us that it was OK.
And it was.
We stayed with her, alone in the room, for at least fifteen minutes after it was over. I don’t think a word was spoken the entire time.
When we finally got up and left, Debbie and I went back to the Malibu beach that Tara loved so much, and we sat there and took turns crying and consoling each other. I tried to focus on the consoling, since she had known Tara for nine years, while I’d had the pleasure for only one.
It would be a while before we fully realized what a transforming experience the past three months had been. Our lives would never be the same; we would soon embark on a mission that could fairly be described as dog lunacy.
But at that moment, all we could focus on was the oppressive sadness that we felt. We talked about things Tara had done, quirks in her behavior, and how much we loved her. We decided in the moment that neither of us would ever eat a hot dog again, as a way of honoring her.
At this writing it’s a vow we have kept for twenty years, even extending the ban to pigs in a blanket. As someone who grew up with the idea that a great meal could be enjoyed while standing at the counter at Nathan’s in Coney Island, I confess that I wish Tara had instead had a preference for broccoli in those final days.
Debbie and I would find ourselves laughing at some memory, but the laughter was short-lived. It was just so hard to process the knowledge that Tara had died.
Except she hadn’t.
Not really.
We would see to that.
A Really Long Year
In one crucial way, Debbie and I reacted very differently to losing Tara. I was ready to get another dog right away—a golden retriever, to be exact. But Debbie couldn’t bring herself to do it; she seemed to shut herself off from even considering the possibility.
Every dog she saw reminded her of Tara, but no dog could ever be Tara. And certainly no dog could ever replace her.
So instead of taking walks with a dog around our Santa Monica neighborhood, we would just be two humans out for a stroll. The problem was that I think there are more goldens on a per capita basis in Santa Monica than anywhere in the world; having a golden must be a town ordinance or something.
Every time Debbie would see one, which meant at least once on every block, she would start to cry. And I’m not talking about eyes filling with tears and getting choked up. I’m talking about full-blown sobbing, right there on the street.
It’s fair to say that our walks were not something I looked forward to.
A friend suggested that we might get some comfort from volunteering at an animal shelter, and I was enthusiastic about the idea. My hope was that it would get Debbie comfortable with dogs again and maybe even pave the way toward our getting one. I think she had some trepidation, but she went along.
We went to the West Los Angeles shelter for an orientation meeting. It’s one of the better shelters in Los Angeles County, but that is bestowing faint praise, since the other ones are, in varying degrees, disasters.
The staff started the meeting by telling the apocryphal story of a guy walking on a beach where thousands of starfish had washed ashore and would die if not quickly returned to the water.
He began picking up the starfish one at a time and tossing them into the water. Another man came up to him and pointed out that with so many thousands of stranded starfish, he was wasting his time and effort. There was no way that one person could make a difference.
The man responded by picking up another starfish and returning it to the water. “I made a difference to that one,” he said.
The point was that even though the Los Angeles shelter system is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of abandoned animals, we could make a difference by focusing on saving one animal at a time. It made sense to us, so we signed on.
We should have stuck with the starfish.
We reported dutifully for work two evenings a week and a full day on Saturday. We also took dogs to mobile adoptions in shopping centers, waiting for people to come by, fall in love, and take one home.
But there were too many great dogs and not enough decent potential owners. So we had to sit in the overcrowded shelter, watching as dogs languished in cages until some of them were euthanized so that others could take their place. We also had to watch as people came in and adopted animals to use as guard dogs, or worse.
As bad as that was, it’s not what pushed us over the edge. One day we were in a shelter in Baldwin Park that made the West LA shelter look like the Ritz-Carlton. A guy came in with his three sons and their one-year-old Lab mix. As we listened, the idiot explained to the shelter worker that they were turning the dog in; they didn’t want it anymore.
He was given a standard form to sign, acknowledging that he had been told his relinquished pet could be put down after one hour. This wouldn’t really happen, at least not that fast, but the truth was that owner turn-ins to that shelter did not last long at all. If a dog is found stray, it has to be kept for at least five days, to give the owner time to show up and claim it. But when the owner turns it in voluntarily, there is no such need, and the amount of time the dog will live is dependent on how overcrowded the shelter is at that particular time. The Baldwin Park shelter, it should be noted, was always overcrowded.
So the man casually signed the paper, and as the worker went to process it, Debbie and I overheard his conversation with his sons. It seemed they had adopted the dog from the same shelter ten months earlier, when it was a puppy. Now that it was full grown, they didn’t want it anymore, because puppies were cuter.
So they were getting rid of it, without apparent regret or embarrassment, and then going into the kennel area to find another puppy to adopt. And the shelter rules for LA County made it a perfectly legal thing to do.
I was outraged, but Debbie lost it. She berated the man, calling him an asshole. She probably shouldn’t have done so in front of his kids, though they would eventually find out that her description was accurate, if they didn’t know it already. My natural aversion to confrontation kicked in, and I stood off to the side, pretending I didn’t even know what was going on.
The man backed o
ff, the first wise thing he had done in probably ever, and they left without getting a new dog. I’m sure it was a temporary victory; they most likely came back when they were certain Debbie wasn’t on the premises.
We told the shelter workers that if the turned-in dog was not adopted, we’d find a rescue group to take it, and we eventually did so.
And then we bailed out of there, and out of the shelter system as well. If we were going to make a real difference, it would have to be another way.
And it wasn’t long before we found one.
The Endless Planning
We’d known that we were going to be moving east, with all the dogs, for five years.
Ever since the fire.
In the summer of 2000, we moved from Santa Monica south to Orange County, because Debbie took a job down there as a vice president in charge of media at the Taco Bell corporation, based in Irvine. She had been a senior vice president at the FOX television network for twelve years, so it was a big move, both careerwise and, to a lesser extent, geographically.
Normal people could just find a place, sign up to buy or rent, pack up their things, and move. But we were not exactly a normal family. We had to find a home that could house thirty-seven dogs, since that was the total at that particular moment. We also couldn’t have nearby neighbors, for reasons that are obvious but that I’ll explain in detail later. So house hunting became something of a challenge.
As we were soon to discover, Santa Monica was the only city in Southern California that allowed more than three dogs per household. Santa Monica actually had no limit at all; their rule was that you could have as many animals as you could comfortably house. Comfort, I can assure you, was and is a subjective determination.
So when we got to Orange County, we were obligated to look in what they call the unincorporated areas, meaning they have no city government and are run by the county. We quickly found a perfect house in a small canyon town called Silverado. We were up on a hill, with very few neighbors within barking distance.
Even though it felt like living in the middle of nowhere, it was only ten minutes from a supermarket, and twenty from large shopping centers. The house was a hundred years old, but it would feel a lot older once it had to put up with our “family” for a while.
It proved to be quite comfortable for us, and we had every intention of staying there until Debbie might decide to retire. With that prospect nearing, I set out in September 2007 to figure out where we should move to once there was no job keeping us in California. I could write anywhere.
Debbie and I had both grown up and lived back east, me in New Jersey and then New York, and Debbie in Pennsylvania and New York. We craved real weather, and we have grown kids in the New York area, so the East Coast was the likely place to move.
We settled on Maine, found a great house on a lake with no neighbors anywhere close, and bought it. The plan was to let it sit there, and do whatever renovations might be necessary when we got ready to move. We figured that would be at least four or five years away.
One month later, California was in flames. There were wildfires all over the state, the by-product of a weather phenomenon called the Santa Ana winds. These are winds that blow from inland toward the coast, and they are distinguished by very high gusts, temperatures in the mid-nineties, and almost no humidity. Obviously that creates the perfect conditions for out-of-control fires, and that’s what seems to happen every year.
With the state’s firefighting resources taxed to the limit, some moron decided to set a fire in the woods about six miles from our house. At first it spread in the opposite direction, but three days later it looped back toward us.
One morning I stood in our backyard and watched the fire slowly coming across the canyon toward where I was standing. It was small and slow-moving and therefore beyond infuriating; firefighters armed with water pistols could have stopped it in its tracks.
But there were no firefighters there; they were deployed elsewhere. And the fire kept coming inexorably closer, building in intensity.
Debbie was at work, and I called to tell her to come home; we were likely going to have to evacuate. Our neighbors had already gone, but for them it was comparatively easy. All they had to do was round up some important possessions and ride out of there. We had twenty-seven dogs to worry about.
We had one SUV at home, and Debbie went to a rental-car place and got another. The fire was picking up speed even more rapidly, and I told her to get home as soon as possible; we were running out of time.
There were police barricades not letting anyone into the area when she arrived, but that didn’t prove a significant deterrent. She went around them and barreled on home, probably making the correct assumption that what she was doing was not a shooting offense.
We then began the process of loading the dogs and one duffel bag into the two cars. I think there were maybe three dogs willing and able to jump in on their own; the rest had to be hoisted once we rounded them up. I did the rounding, and Debbie did the hoisting.
We did a final count, and came up with twenty-six; Coco was missing. I searched frantically for her while Debbie tried to keep the others calm, not an easy thing to do since they were squashed into two cars.
Finally I found Coco wandering on the property, grabbed her, and carried her to the car. I stuffed her in, and we were off.
There was not a square inch of unoccupied space in the cars. The flames were about a hundred yards away and moving in the direction of the house; we were going to get out, but there seemed no way it could survive. I remember turning to take a final look at it.
We called a friend named Ron Edwards, who ran the Irvine Animal Care Center, one of the best shelters in Southern California. He said he had room to take and care for as many dogs as we brought him. So that’s where we headed.
We left twenty-five of them there, a gut-wrenching thing to do. We had gotten these dogs from shelters, and had made a solemn promise to them that they would never have to go back. Their new surroundings would be temporary and safe, but they had no way of knowing that. They would be in cages, also something we had told them would never happen again.
Once they were in the dog runs, Debbie and I went in to each one, petting them and vowing that they would not be there long. But the truth was we didn’t know how long they would be imprisoned, or where they would go once we got them out.
We kept Louis and Hannah, both golden retrievers, to stay with us in a hotel. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a hotel, and once we dropped the dogs off at the shelter, we made at least twenty calls to try to get a room somewhere. But with much of California evacuated in the various fires, there were no rooms to be had.
We finally got lucky; the Irvine Marriott had one room. Amazingly, even though the law of supply and demand said that they could have charged a fortune, they gave us the room at half price, which was their policy for people displaced by the fires. And they made an exception to their no pet policy; we could bring Louis and Hannah.
I have been a fan of Marriott ever since. They really stepped up when we needed them.
So there we were, living in the hotel and watching news reports to monitor the progress of the fire. Louis and Hannah were living it up; they got to go on plenty of leash walks, since there was no doggie door for them to trudge through on their own. And we were on the concierge floor, where free food was provided, so I could get them plenty of miniature meatballs. If they felt any concern for their twenty-five friends stuck in the shelter, they hid it well.
But for us it was a frustrating time, made more so by on-camera statements that Governor Schwarzenegger was making to the press. He was explaining California’s inability to deal with the fires by bemoaning the perfect storm that had arisen, a combination of high heat, high winds, and dry air.
“Arnold,” I would yell at the television, “THAT’S WHAT THE SANTA ANA WINDS ARE! AND THEY COME EVERY YEAR!” It would be like the mayor of Buffalo explaining that they couldn’t effectively plow the streets bec
ause of a combination of low temperatures and precipitation. “THAT’S WHAT SNOW IS!”
One day became two, and two became four. We saw hints of the fate of our house on television; one reporter stood in front of a burned-down structure less than a quarter mile away. But even though we were extraordinarily pessimistic, there was no way to be sure since they wouldn’t let us back into the area where the fires were still raging.
So the question became, what the hell were we going to do in the likely event that the house was gone? When you have twenty-seven dogs, you can’t exactly rent an apartment. And even if there were possible solutions, we had no time. Our dogs were languishing in a shelter; we didn’t even go to visit them for fear of getting them excited and then letting them down when we left them there again.
We would have to move to Maine, or at least I would. Debbie would be bicoastal until maybe she could find a comparable job back east. The house in Maine wasn’t close to ready or livable; it was a log-cabin style that wasn’t even fully winterized. But we would somehow deal with that; we had no other choice. If only we could figure out how to get there.
On our fourth night in the hotel I got an e-mail from a reader in Maryland, who asked if we were anywhere near the fires. She described herself as a dog rescue person, and was of course concerned about the dogs.
I wrote back and told her that I thought we’d lost the house and asked if she, as a dog person, had any idea how to transport twenty-seven dogs cross-country. She didn’t, but she vowed to ask the question online and get some ideas.
Over the next forty-eight hours, I received 171 e-mails from strangers, most of them offering us their house on the way to Maine. If we were coming through Topeka, for instance, we could stay in someone’s home, with twenty-seven dogs!
It was an amazing example of what is a remarkable subculture of dog people in America. They are in every city and state, bound together by their common love of dogs. And it had just been demonstrated to us in a very powerful and touching way.
Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure Page 2