One less-than-swift representative whom Debbie told we were traveling from California to Maine thought that meant we were traveling internationally, and tried to switch the call to that department.
Of course, every time we stopped, the dogs wanted to get off the vehicles. The driving motion lulled them, but when we stopped they decided to head for the exits. This time we didn’t let them off, since they had just been walked and it would mean an extra forty-five minutes to do so. Benji in particular was annoyed by the decision and loudly barked his disapproval.
That set the rest of them off barking, and the other customers in the gas station looked in the windows to see what was going on. Strangers peering in at them made the dogs even nuttier, and the barking got that much louder, attracting more people. And so on and so on and so on …
My hope was that none of these people worked for local animal control. In fact, my fear was that somebody was going to think we were abusing the dogs or illegally transporting them and call an animal control officer. So we took the time to patiently explain to people what was going on, and most of them seemed to buy our story.
I wished they would have bought our gas instead.
Big Sarah
We have rescued thousands of dogs from many different places, but only one from a pet store … Sarah, the Bernese mountain dog.
I say this with some embarrassment, because in my view, getting one dog from a pet store is one too many. Doing so encourages the proliferation and continued operation of puppy mills, which no dog lover should want to do. Having said that, I have never regretted for a minute that we got Sarah.
Debbie had been shopping with a friend in a mall, and the friend needed to buy something in the pet store. Debbie went in with her, only to discover that it was a store that sold puppies. And one particular puppy caught her eye: a Bernese that, according to the information on the cage, was five months old.
She was not the most beautiful of Berneses, not even close, and she had been in the store, in the same cage, for more than two months. And that cage was by that point way too small for her; she had almost no room to stand up or turn around.
That was not a situation that was likely to change any time soon. The adjacent cages all had much smaller, much younger, and much cuter puppies. It seemed extraordinarily unlikely that someone was going to come in and choose Sarah; that isn’t how people buy puppies.
Debbie had a conversation with the storeowner, who confirmed that pessimistic view. She was preparing to send Sarah back to the breeder to get her money back, which would have left Sarah to an uncertain, probably grim, fate.
So Debbie negotiated a price that reflected the circumstances and could in no way be seen as an inducement for the store to keep selling puppies. She brought Sarah home, and since then, if there has ever been a day or a moment that Sarah wasn’t smiling, I must have missed it.
She’s now nine years old, which is a very advanced age for a Berner, and she’s still as active as a puppy. She is also the house barking instigator; no matter what the catalyst, she is the first one to see it and bark at it, and the others follow suit.
Sarah has very serious arthritis, and two tumors that are inoperable and will ultimately do her in. But for the time being, she seems happy every day and loves life, and that’s what it’s about for us.
The Barking. My God, the Barking
Since most of our dogs are old, they sleep the majority of the day. I’ve often said that the inside of our house seems like a Civil War battlefield when the fighting was over and the guns had stopped firing … eerily quiet, with bodies lying everywhere.
But if FedEx shows up or the gardener is outside, the dogs spring into action, and it sounds like a foxhunt has broken out.
Things that normal people think nothing of cause us to cringe. For instance, Domino’s commercials invariably begin with a shot of the deliveryman ringing a doorbell. It may be a thirty-second spot, but the effect of that doorbell lasts a lot longer than thirty seconds. I can be in New York at a hotel, and if I see one of those commercials come on the television, I instinctively and involuntarily brace myself for an audio onslaught.
The noise of a barking explosion can be absolutely deafening, and it always comes at an inopportune time. It usually starts with an outburst at five thirty in the morning, telling us that the dogs have decided it is time to get up. And while daylight savings time might provide other people with an extra hour of sleep on the night the clocks are changed, not us. The dogs operate on their own body clock.
When she was working, Debbie would make business phone calls to New York starting at six A.M. California time. A planned five-minute call could take three times that long, allowing for long periods of barking to block out all communications.
The people on the New York end apparently thought it was hilarious, and they would regale us with stories about how they put the calls on the speakerphone, and everybody gathered around to hear the insanity and laugh.
We never found it quite so funny.
I frequently have occasion to do live radio interviews about my books with stations around the country. I can count the number of times that the dogs didn’t bark during those interviews on very few fingers.
One time I was doing an interview with a Baltimore station, and I began, as I often do, by alerting the host and apologizing in advance for the fact that there might be a barking outburst in the middle of the interview.
The session was nearing an end, and amazingly there had not been a peep. Apparently, whichever dog was in charge of alerting the others that there was an interview to ruin had fallen asleep on the job. So before we signed off, the host rather smugly pointed out that my concern had been unwarranted, that there wasn’t a dog to be heard. He even jokingly asked if I had been telling the truth about our living situation.
I asked him to hold on for a few seconds, and I walked to the front door and opened it. I reached around and rang the doorbell, and the place absolutely exploded in a crescendo of noise. I held the phone to the sound for a few moments, and then yelled into the phone, “WHAT DO YOU THINK NOW?” before hanging up.
At the first sign of barking during those interviews, I would hide in a room with the doors closed. They haven’t invented doors that could keep out the kinds of sounds our dogs could generate, but they helped a little.
One time I was doing an interview with a Seattle station, and I was hiding in a closed room to avoid the noise. I wasn’t having much success, so I further insulated myself by going into a closet within that room and closing that door as well. So there I was, sitting in a dark closet at night, talking to a Seattle radio host. I felt like Tom Hanks.
I told the host what I was doing, and he laughed at the mere thought of my hiding like that. I told him that when the barking died down, he would soon be able to publicize the fact that an author had come out of the closet, live on his show.
But when we lived in Santa Monica, the absolute worst day of the year, every year, was Halloween. We lived in a neighborhood with a lot of families with little kids.
Kids who went trick-or-treating.
Kids who rang doorbells.
So we would block off the back half of the house, and Debbie would take all the dogs back there with her. I would then open the front door and plant a chair in the doorway, where I would sit with a bag of whatever treat it was we were giving out.
This had a double effect. First, it prevented the little monsters from ringing the doorbell, and second, it made me look like an idiot.
It was a small price to pay.
So to sum up, having all these dogs has made me a happy, loving person, except for the things that I hate.
Like television commercials.
And FedEx drivers.
And gardeners.
And mail carriers.
And little kids.
And workmen.
And fireworks.
And visitors.
And other neighborhood animals.
And thund
er.
And doorbells.
Doorbells are the worst.
Noel and Kahlani
Noel and Kahlani are goldens that we got within a week of each other. Kahlani already had a name that the shelter knew, but Noel didn’t. Since we got her a week before Christmas, Debbie named her Noel. If we had gotten her a week before Hanukkah, she might be named Moishe.
Noel and Kahlani are similar in terms of looks and demeanor. Both are light-colored and smallish, though Noel is the smaller of the two. Kahlani could stand to lose some weight; it seems she and I must have the same personal trainer.
Kahlani has recently discovered a new place to sleep, in the recliner chair that one would think would be reserved for humans. She’s even learned that by resting her body against the back of it, she can get it to recline, giving her considerably more room to sleep.
Noel likes to hang out in either my office closet or a small area behind my desk. She’s adorable and wouldn’t harm a fly, but it’s fair to say that house-training is not her specialty.
Both of them, like all the other dogs in our house, are safe and loved. And that’s really all we can do, all we concentrate on. How they choose to spend their time is their business, and we don’t try to influence them. If they want to stay apart from the other dogs and sleep the days away, good for them. If they want to wrestle and run around, also fine.
All our dogs have had enough stress in their lives. Once we get them, it’s smooth sailing.
Woofabago
I checked my BlackBerry and discovered that I had 114 e-mails that I hadn’t yet read. Since I have a total of about four friends, and even they’re not particularly crazy about me, this was slightly unusual. The only time I get a boatload of e-mails is when a book has just come out and readers are responding to my request for feedback. But I hadn’t had a new book out for a couple of months.
I started to read the messages and found that most were from readers telling me that they were following our adventure on “Woofabago” on Facebook. And based on the Facebook posts, it sounded like everybody, the people on the trip and the ones following it, were having a blast.
I partially understood it. If I were at home, watching football, drinking a beer, and occasionally checking out Facebook, I’d be having a hell of a time as well. The best part would be reminding myself that I was at home and not on an RV riding cross-country with twenty-five dogs.
A typical post from our group was made on the first morning. It said, “Yay! We have over 500 ‘Likes’ … a 25-wagging-tail salute to you all from all of us here on the Woofabago adventure. Consider yourselves honorary members of our Merry Band of Lunatics!”
Ugh.
Worst of all, Facebook was filled with pictures of the trip, including many of me. I had this image of social media exploding with talk of the fat, gray-haired lunatic with all the dogs. Had I known the pictures were being taken, I wouldn’t have exhaled.
At the next stop, I asked around and found out that the person running our Facebook operation was Cindy Spodek Dickey. That made sense; she’s an executive in the tech industry, and in fact was working at Microsoft when she met Debbie. Together they did a highly successful Taco Bell/Xbox promotion.
Cindy is a very upbeat person, which makes her my natural opposite. She’s also completely at home in social media land, while I’m only completely at home when I’m at home.
But she was not identifying herself by name in her posts, and since I was the figurehead of the operation, people were just naturally assuming that I was the one writing them. These were clearly people who didn’t know me; if they had, they’d have known that posts that did not include whining and complaining could not be mine.
And the only way I would use the words “wagging-tail salute” would be if an upbeat pod had taken over my body.
But I was getting credit for writing the posts, so I hurried to disabuse everyone of that notion with my actual first Facebook post. I credited Cindy for her work keeping America informed, and made sure that everyone knew I hadn’t been involved. I didn’t want anyone to think I was having fun; it would be too confusing when I killed myself midway across the country.
“What a shame,” they would say. “And he seemed to be enjoying himself so much.”
But I couldn’t worry about that right then; it was finally time to change drivers. Emmit, Joe, and Randy had been handling the chores exclusively, and they needed a break, even if they wouldn’t admit it. So I told Emmit that I was taking the wheel at the next gas stop, and I did so.
As we were about to leave, Emmit got back in the RV and sat in the passenger seat. He told me that Debbie and Cyndi were taking the wheel in the RVs that would be following us. In deference to the fact that it was their first time driving this kind of vehicle, we needed to take it slow and careful.
He said that I should keep my speed to no higher than fifty miles per hour and should stay in the right-hand lane. It was a good twenty miles an hour slower than we had been traveling, but Emmit said that later, when Debbie and Cyndi were more used to it, we could speed up.
So I did what Emmit said, even though it felt like we were crawling along. At that pace, we’d be in Maine in time to watch the Super Bowl.
When we got to the next dog-walking stop, Debbie came up to me and asked, “What is going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you driving with the emergency brake on?”
“Emmit felt that with you and Cyndi driving for the first time, we should take it easy,” I said.
She nodded. “That would make some sense—not much, but some—if Cyndi and I were driving. But it’s still been Joe and Randy.”
I reported this piece of news to Emmit, and it turned out that he hadn’t been completely truthful with me. Another way to put it would be that he lied through his teeth.
Apparently, Emmit has a well-developed instinct for self-preservation, and he made the assessment that his life would be imperiled if I was to drive an RV at a high speed with him in it. It’s a point of view that did have some logic to it.
But I took the wheel again, this time with Debbie and Cyndi actually doing the same. What I hadn’t realized was that we were about to be driving across the Rockies, which meant a lot of turns and bends in the road, and some moments when we seemed a little close to elevated edges. There were also hills; it turned out the Rockies have a lot of them.
It was a little scary, especially since it was nighttime, but nothing too daunting. If it weren’t for the fact that I was driving this strange, enormous vehicle, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
Debbie had a different point of view, and in the time since, to hear her describe it, you would think that we were hanging by our fingertips from a high cliff while being attacked by Geronimo and his warriors.
But the twists and turns made me go close to the speed Emmit had advised, so he seemed somewhat satisfied. I wouldn’t say he was completely comfortable, because about every thirty or forty seconds he asked me if I wanted him to take over.
We stopped for a late dinner, which Mary Lynn’s son had prepared in advance. It was spaghetti and meatballs, and Mary Lynn and Cyndi heated it while the dogs were wandering around the fenced-in area we’d set up for what seemed like the hundredth time.
You’ve never lived until you’ve eaten spaghetti and meatballs off paper plates, standing in an area pretty much covered in dog shit. Of course, it was almost completely dark out, so there was no way to actually see the dog shit, which made stepping an adventure, and something to be avoided.
The food was actually delicious, and it was a nice change. For me, it was a change from the cold cuts and fruit I had bought; for everyone else it was a change from the convenience-store stuff they’d been inhaling. Based on how my food had gone over with everyone, you’d think I’d sprayed it with pesticide before we left.
Everybody was getting tired, a combination of the arduousness of the trip and the fact that no one had gotten much real sleep during
the Vegas deluge. Not too many people seemed to be able to nap while we were driving, probably due to a combination of being thrown around by the rattling vehicles and having dogs licking their faces.
So we agreed to think about whether and where we were going to stop for the night, and we’d make the decision at our next gas station visit.
Based on the way the vehicles sucked up fuel, I figured that would be in about four minutes.
Frank
I was giving a talk at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Phoenix, which I do pretty much every time a new book of mine comes out, when in strode Frank. Thus ended my time as the focal point of the room.
I wasn’t surprised to see him; the rescue group had told me they were bringing him. We had already arranged that I would take him home, and I was therefore going to drive, rather than fly, back to California.
He was exactly as they described—frail, old, white in the face—and he walked as if he were pulling a wagon. He was perfect, and as he was led toward the front of the room, he had to run a gauntlet of hands from people trying to pet him.
The rescue people had actually led me to believe that he was in worse physical condition than turned out to be the case. Once we got him on pain meds for his arthritis and put him on a special diet for his stomach issues, he was basically fine.
There was nothing extraordinary about Frank’s time with us. He was an affectionate, loving golden retriever that never gave us a moment’s trouble. He was slowing down considerably by the time we started on our trip, but he made it with flying colors.
Frank died about six months after we got to Maine. I can certainly report that his last years were contented ones.
Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure Page 14