I had gotten friendly with two of the women in the group, Joanie Patrick and Robin Miller, and I invited them to dinner the night before the signing. Robin brought along her husband, Randy, whom I had not previously met.
The conversation got around to our trip to Maine, which was no surprise, since every conversation I had with everyone was about that. When Randy heard about it, he didn’t hesitate; he wanted to be a part of the trip.
Randy would bring a great deal to the party. He and Robin were dedicated rescue people who had a special soft spot for senior and special-needs dogs. As a retired airline executive with an expertise in airline overhaul and maintenance, he knew how to fix stuff. That would perfectly complement me, since I knew how to break stuff. Like Emmit, Randy also had considerable cross-country driving experience.
I learned later that Randy has a real protective instinct. He felt his presence and expertise could actually help ensure the safety of everyone on the trip, human and dog, and that alone was enough to get him to sign on.
The bonus part of this was that both Emmit and Randy were “real” men. They even had toolsheds at home. Until that point, our group had consisted of Cyndi, Debbie, and me, which meant we were suffering from a “real man” deficit.
But all of a sudden we had two. And if you included me, we still had two.
Among the things we didn’t have was a date for the trip to begin. We had bought a house in Maine that was lived in only during the summers, and we were both renovating and winterizing it. A number of construction issues were coming up, and the target date kept getting pushed back.
May became June, and June became July. I told our contractors that we weren’t in a huge hurry, but that once we set on a date, then that had to be the date. Once we put the trip into motion, there was no reset button to press.
Of course, while we weren’t rushing them, the move had to be accomplished no later than October. We couldn’t take a chance on hitting a snowstorm on the way; we might never be heard from again.
They finally had a date that they were comfortable with … September 10. We told Cyndi, Randy, and Emmit, and they were fine with it. Cyndi had a friend, Mary Lynn Dundas, who wanted to go along as well, so with Debbie and me, we had six people. No way that would be enough, but we were making progress.
Hunter/Tudor—Tudor/Hunter
When one of my books is released, I usually go on a signing tour of varying length. Many of the scheduled events are set up by bookstores or libraries in combination with local rescue groups.
It’s a win-win for me. The fact that rescue groups are involved increases the attendance considerably, and I therefore sign and sell more books. Even more significant, they are able to raise money for rescue by selling tickets, having auctions and raffles, and things like that.
Even when it’s not a rescue event per se, smart bookstore owners alert the local rescue groups that I’m coming, and they show up to hear a fellow dog lunatic speak.
Very often they bring dogs to the signings, sometimes with the store owners’ permission, sometimes without. I’m always pleased by dog visits, because after some time on the road, I generally need a dog fix. The face of a golden retriever feels like home.
One of the best mystery bookstores in the country is the Poisoned Pen, in Scottsdale, Arizona. The owner, Barbara Peters, has a well-deserved reputation as a savvy, dedicated, and respected bookseller. She has a forceful personality, and my reaction when she tells me to come to the store for a signing is to stand up, look her in the eye, and say, “Yes, Barbara.”
Barbara never fails to alert the local golden retriever rescue group that I’m going to be there, and they usually get into the spirit by bringing a golden with them. A few years ago, when Dog Tags came out, they brought two of them to a Sunday-afternoon signing.
The dogs were nothing short of spectacular. They were twelve-year-old brothers, and if there is such a thing as identical twins in dogs, they would have been it. They had spent their entire lives together but were now homeless and under the care of the rescue group. They had been prettied up for the occasion with bandanas that said, respectively, “Hunter” and “Tudor.”
Older dogs are always very difficult to place, and in this case it was even tougher, because the rescue group understandably had no intention of splitting up two dogs that had been together for twelve years. Therefore, they had to find a potential adopter willing to take two senior dogs.
Good luck with that.
So the group had come up with the brilliant idea that I should take them, which was more than fine with me. I didn’t even bother to call Debbie, since she would have been disappointed that there were only two of them.
It was summer, and therefore way too hot to consider putting them in the bottom of an airplane. I canceled my flight, rented a car, and drove the six hours home. Since Bumper had liked it so much, we stopped at a McDonald’s for a welcome-to-the-family treat, and off we went.
When we got home it was time to introduce them to their thirty-one brothers and sisters. We generally do this outside, in a fenced-in area. It’s usually one dog we’re introducing, and the group descends on the newcomer to check him or her out. It can be intimidating for the new arrivals, but after fifteen minutes or so, they’re used to it and starting to feel at home.
This time was different; we were introducing two new dogs, and the reaction was hilarious. Our dogs didn’t know where to go first, and they bounced from one to the other like pinballs. It served to cut in half the stress that Hunter and Tudor went through, since they each had only half the energy directed at them.
The only problem was that our dogs feel empowered to set the fashion trends in our house; for instance, they have decreed that all human clothing be covered with dog hair.
In this case they quickly decided that they weren’t fond of the bandana look. So within minutes, they tore the offending garments off Hunter and Tudor, leaving them bandana-less.
That wouldn’t ordinarily be a big deal, except for the fact that it also left them nameless. Once the bandanas with their names were removed, we had absolutely no way to know which was which, since they looked exactly alike. Our solution, which we employed for all the time that we had them, was to call each of them “Hunter-Tudor.”
They didn’t seem to mind.
Interestingly, Hunter and Tudor had pretty much nothing to do with each other once they lived with us. Each of our dogs usually has a base of operations where they feel comfortable hanging out and sleeping. In the case of Hunter and Tudor, one of them spent almost all his time in our bedroom, and the other in my office.
It’s not that they weren’t dog friendly; they interacted frequently and pleasantly with their new housemates. They just showed no interest in each other.
We had Hunter/Tudor and Tudor/Hunter for three years, which means they were fifteen when they died. That's a long life for a golden, though clearly not long enough.
They died within three days of each other. I don’t mention that to imply that one died of a broken heart from losing his brother. Because of where they hung out in the house, I can’t even be sure that he knew his brother was gone. But there is certainly that possibility, and if I’ve learned one thing, it is that the heart of a dog is more than large enough to be broken.
“Poop” … Just This Once
I don’t like the word “poop,” and I can’t say it without feeling ridiculous. It doesn’t sound serious enough and seems way too delicate. The stuff that I seem to spend my entire life cleaning up is … drumroll, please … dog shit.
I’ve had four back surgeries, and I would estimate that dog shit is responsible for four of my back surgeries. So while I’m sure no one is particularly crazy about it, I probably like it even less than most.
In California, where the weather is always annoyingly fine, we had double doors that led out to our property, which was fenced in. The doors were always open, so the dogs could go in and out easily. We never considered a “doggie door,” since our
s would have had to be huge.
Of course, that did cause other problems. In the summer, the open doors let air-conditioning out and bugs in. In the winter, on a cold night, you could hang meat in our house.
So I came up with a solution, the only successful handyman-type idea I’ve ever had. We hung strips of clear plastic from the top of the open doors to the bottom, sort of like you would see in a car wash. The dogs could go in and out through the strips, which would then fall back into place. It certainly wasn’t perfect or airtight, but for someone who can’t change a lightbulb, it was inspired brilliance.
But the dog shit would accumulate outside, and the area required frequent maintenance. I was adept at using a dustpan and broom; Debbie is a maestro with a plastic bag. Once the shit is picked up, we hose down the entire area. It’s not fun, but not doing it is even less desirable.
Moving to Maine presented us with a bigger problem. It gets cold there, and snowy and muddy. If we used the open-door “car wash” approach, we would freeze to death.
Our contractor decided the solution was to build an extra room onto the house. The dogs would walk into that room through a doggie door, and then out through another one to the yard. The room would be the buffer, helping to keep out the cold from the main house, and bearing the brunt of the snow and mud as it was tracked in.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I didn’t want to have to build a “shit room.” It would have been ridiculously expensive, would have looked silly, and seemed wholly unnecessary.
So we tasked the contractor with finding or building a doggie door that would solve our problem. It had to be big enough for Wanda the mastiff to get through, which is to say we needed something roughly the size of the Lincoln Tunnel.
And they did it. If you ever find yourself in Maine, needing an enormous doggie door, just call Hervochon Construction. They rose to the occasion, on this and every other bizarre request we made.
Wanda has to duck only a little bit to go through the clear plastic, which immediately snaps back into place, with the benefit of magnets. It’s a remarkable feat of engineering.
Unfortunately, the stuff still has to be cleaned up. I’ve abandoned my dustpan and broom for a snow shovel, which I use year-round. But the job gets quite complicated in the winter, when the area is covered with snow and ice.
Not to get too technical for laypeople not involved in the shit removal business who might be reading this, but it’s a simple principle of physics. Shit stuck in ice tends to remain in ice until it melts. Before it melts, it’s impossible to remove. After it melts, I don’t want to get close enough to remove it.
It’s a dilemma.
Also, when it gets to the hosing-down-the-area part, which is essential to the process, the hose gets frozen in the winter, as do my face and hands.
Suffice it to say that it’s still a work in progress, but we unfortunately get a chance to practice our technique every winter’s day.
Solving the “How”
After very careful consideration and a few dozen calls made by Cyndi Flores and me, it seemed as if RVs were the only possible solution, if we could somehow acquire them. They would provide relative comfort for both dogs and humans, would hold a good number of both, and could be slept in. Based on our online research about the size, it seemed like we would need three of them to be comfortable.
Buying three RVs was clearly cost-prohibitive, and a company would have had to be as insane as we are to rent us any. Anyone who has ever been in our house knows that once this many dogs enter the picture, any picture, nothing is ever the same again.
So I would have to lie. It would be a lie I could get away with, since the company would have no way of knowing about it. It wasn’t as if they’d be with us on the trip. I knew we’d be ultimately responsible for any damage caused, and would certainly have to clean the vehicles thoroughly before returning them. So in that sense it would be a relatively harmless lie.
We simply had no other choice.
I called the largest RV rental company, Cruise America, and inquired about prices and availability. I wasn’t planning to tell them how many dogs would be onboard, but I wanted to make sure that at least one or more were allowed. We’d clean up as best we could after the trip, but it wouldn’t be perfect, and it would be hard to claim that humans did the shedding.
So a few minutes into the conversation I asked, as nonchalantly as I could, “What’s your policy toward pets?”
“We allow them,” the woman said.
“Does it matter how many? We’re trying to decide whether to bring our dogs, and we have three of them.” I had clearly checked my dignity at the door.
“Doesn’t matter at all,” she said. “As long as you return the vehicle in the same condition as you received it.”
There it was. With those few words, she made her decision for us. If the future Jeopardy! answer is “The maniacs took them to Maine,” then the question will be “What are RVs?”
Of course, like everything else, the answer wasn’t as simple as it seemed. For example, they wouldn’t rent them one way, so we were going to have to drive them back to California, albeit dogless. And there were all kinds of operational issues, like water and propane and toilet flushing, that in a million years I wouldn’t know how to handle. But with Emmit and Randy on board, those “real man” issues would be manageable.
Debbie and I went to the local place where we would pick up the vehicles, to judge what size we’d need. They seemed close to ideal; there was even a sleeping area above the front seat that the dogs wouldn’t be able to get to. Sleeping with our group of dogs is an acquired taste, and this way the other humans on the trip would not have to learn it on the fly.
The vehicles came in three sizes, and we actually walked around the inside of them, figuring out where dogs could sleep, so as to judge what our needs were. We finally rented two of the largest and one medium. With twenty-five dogs, the most one would have to accommodate would be nine, and that seemed very feasible. In fact, it would likely be more comfortable than our house.
The RVs also had a bathroom with a shower, as well as a kitchen with a refrigerator, a stove, and a microwave. We would be totally self-sufficient and wouldn’t have to rely on hotels and restaurants, which was a major relief.
I called Cruise America a few more times to try and cajole them into letting us return the vehicles in Maine or Boston, rather than drive them all the way back to California. They couldn’t do that, explaining that the RVs had to be in certain places for the next renters.
But they came up with a way that we could return them to Manassas, Virginia, which was a hell of a lot better than California. Cyndi Flores offered to drive one back, since she now lived in Virginia. Obviously, we still had to make arrangements for the other two.
In terms of transportation, we were set, and if John Travolta finally called, I could tell him to keep his damn plane.
Now all we needed were some more humans.
Weasel
Debbie and I were in the SEACCA shelter in Downey; we had limited open rescue space at that moment, and had room for only three more dogs. Debbie saw a smallish one, about a year and a half old, black, white, and gray, that looked unlike any we had ever seen.
But that’s not what caught her eye. What was most noticeable about this dog was how scared she was. She was in a cage with four other dogs, and she looked panicked to be there. When we went over to the cage, she pulled away from us; she was afraid of humans as well.
We didn’t take her with us, but it haunted Debbie for the next few days. So she went back, knowing that the dog would not have been adopted but fearing that she might have already been put down.
She was still there, petrified but alive, and Debbie rescued her. We took her to our vet for a checkup and a bath, and I was there when she arrived. She was adorable, and we named her Ellie, but we knew that Ellie wouldn’t be adopted anytime soon. She was just too frightened and would never go near a potential adopter.
; So over the next month, we worked with her. We petted her, took her for walks, and tried to socialize her as much as possible. We hired a trainer, and we asked her to make Ellie a priority. And it was working; she gradually started coming out of her shell, at least with us. But with other people, not so much.
Finally a woman came by and fell in love with her; in fact, she also fell in love with a dog named Clark. Clark was ten years old, and therefore mellow, but Ellie was not high-energy either. The adopter was a senior citizen herself, and we had some concerns when she told us she wanted to adopt both Clark and Ellie. But she convinced us she could handle it, and she was obviously a dog lover who would care for them well, so we let her do so.
The phone call came about three hours later. The woman, who lived in Culver City, had taken Ellie and Clark for a walk. When they got back inside her house, she dropped the leashes, not realizing that she had not completely closed the door behind her.
Ellie was out of there.
I drove around Culver City for three days looking for her. I can’t stand thinking that any dog is out there in the world alone, but in Ellie’s case it was even more troubling. I figured she must have been scared to death.
I didn’t have any luck, but then I got a call from the West LA shelter. Whenever we placed a dog, Debbie put one of our tags on them before they left the vet’s office. It was for situations just like this. So the shelter person, who knew us quite well, saw our tag and called.
I was hopeful it was Ellie, but it didn’t have to be, so I asked the guy what she looked like.
He laughed and said, “I’m not sure. Sort of like a weasel.”
I went to the shelter, and it was definitely her. Not only did she have our tag on, but she was still dragging the woman’s leash. So we rescued her from a shelter for the second time.
Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure Page 6