Tillie gave one last sob and then began to giggle. She raised her hand again, but instead of patting my head, this time she patted the mattress.
“Here, Buddy,” she said, pulling the blanket off her head. I guess she’d decided that the storm was a lot scarier than I was. In any case, I didn’t need a second invitation. Up I jumped and settled down beside her.
Tillie wrapped one arm around my neck, I put a paw on top of her other hand, and together we slept through the thunderous night.
When we woke up the next morning, the storm was over. But we were still cuddled together.
“Good morning, Buddy,” Tillie said. “Isn’t this a beautiful day?”
It certainly was. The sun was shining, Tillie was smiling, and I finally felt that I was really, truly home.
Forever!
Teddy Slater has written more than one hundred books for children, including Smooch Your Pooch and Dottie and the Dog Show. She lives in upstate New York with her husband, Fred. Her own beloved pooch, Barkly, often appears in her stories. He was adopted from a shelter in Sidney, NY.
I’m pretty sure I’ve been to Pawley before. It’s a fairly big town and I don’t live too far away, so probably, right? But I know right away that today is going to be different. This is going to be a trip I remember. Today, I’m getting a dog. My first dog ever — and I’m twelve, so that’s saying something.
The light ahead of us turns red, and Mom pulls the car to a stop. I look out the window on my side at another quiet, leafy block of houses. It’s pretty nice here, a lot like my town. A lot like most towns in Maryland, I guess.
The light turns green, and she steps on the gas pedal like she’s afraid it might break. Mom drives like she’s in an anti-race: First one there loses! I look down at the brochure for the Pawley Rescue Center again and try not to be too impatient. I’ve got a green light, too: I can pick out a dog, and we will adopt it. I’ve been asking for years, but this time I know it’s true. It is my birthday present.
“Any dog I want, right, Mom?” I say.
She turns her head and looks at me. At the speed she’s driving, taking her eyes off the road is pretty low risk. “Any dog,” she says. “Within reason.”
Within reason? What does that even mean?
“So,” I start, “no unreasonable dogs?”
She smiles. Here’s a secret: I think Mom wants a dog as much as I do.
We’re finally at the Pawley Rescue Center. Life lesson: No matter how slow your mom drives, eventually you will get where you’re going. The place is a little smaller than I thought, based on the picture, and a lot louder. Even before we open the front door, we can hear an off-key symphony of barks and yelps and yaps. It sounds awesome.
Everyone inside is really friendly. I’d tell you their names, but I get introduced to them all at once so most of that info falls right back out of my head. If there’s a quiz on this later, I’m in big trouble. The lady at the front desk is really pretty, though, and the girl who shows us around is named Abby. Also, she has red hair, but that probably won’t be on the quiz.
Abby is just a few years older than me. She says she volunteers here on the weekends, and she seems to know at least something about every single one of the dogs. That’s pretty amazing, because there are a lot of them.
“Do you want to see the puppy play area?” she asks us, right off the bat.
Who in the world would say no to that? And sure enough, the puppy play area is a demolition derby of over-the-top cuteness. All these little fur balls are romping and rolling around. I see one black-and-gray puppy barrel into a group of three other mini-mutts and knock them over like fuzzy bowling pins. A second later, he’s up on his back legs and bopping the other puppies on their heads with his front paws.
“We call that little guy Beezwax,” says Abby. “Because he never minds his own business.”
“What kind of dog is he?” asks Mom.
“A Siberian husky,” says Abby. “Very energetic.”
I like him immediately.
Next we go out back to see the yard. There are dogs in all shapes and sizes out here. Some are running around, and some are lying in the sun. Mom asks about a bunch of them. There’s a bulldog and a boxer and a border collie — and that’s just the Bs! She asks me what I think about each one, but I don’t know what to say. They’re all pretty awesome. How does anyone ever pick just one dog? Seriously?
Then we go inside to see some dogs in the kennel. Some of them are really friendly and come right up to us, wagging their tails a million miles an hour. An enormous Saint Bernard is slobbering on Mom right through the wire door, but I’ve already moved on. The dog in the next pen sees me. His tail thumps the floor a few times, but he doesn’t get up. His fur could not be any blacker.
“Who’s this?” I say.
“Oh, that’s Barkly,” says Abby. “Black Lab.”
Mom joins me, too. The dog’s tail thumps the floor a few more times, but he still doesn’t stand up.
“He’s a little older, around six, we think,” says Abby. “They’re a little harder to place at that age, but there are a lot of advantages… . You know what you’re getting. Less guesswork. He’s a great dog!” There’s something different in her voice now, but I can’t place it.
“I like him,” I say.
Mom looks at him a little more closely. She glances over at the Saint Bernard, then back at Barkly. “I don’t know,” she says. “He doesn’t seem as friendly as some of the others.”
She starts to move on, but I stay put. He’s still looking at me, and just like that, I understand. I remember what Abby said: “harder to place.” He’s friendly. He’s just been here longer. He’s not getting his hopes up. Everyone wants the supercute puppies, or the interesting, unusual breeds. Who’s going to want some six-year-old black Lab?
I guess I’ve been standing here longer than he’s used to, because he raises his head up. Now we can both see each other a little better. And just like that, I know the answer.
“I want this one,” I say.
“Oh, honey, are you sure?” says Mom. “What about Beezwax?”
I think about it for a second. Beezwax is definitely an awesome puppy. But I’m not a baby anymore, so my dog doesn’t need to be either.
“Nope,” I say. “This is the one.”
Abby smiles really wide. Mom hesitates for a moment. When she smiles too, I know I made the right decision. I’m smiling bigger than both of them. In his cage, Barkly gets to his feet. His tail starts to really wag now. It’s like he understands. We have a dog.
Barkly steps out into our backyard for the first time. He takes a few cautious steps onto the grass, and then whirls all the way around. At first I think maybe he’s chasing his tail. I’ve heard about dogs doing that. But he’s looking all around as he spins. I realize he’s just taking in the full, 360-degree glory of our little square yard. It’s not as big as the one at the rescue center, but he’s got this one all to himself.
He spins around again, just to confirm that there aren’t, like, a dozen dogs hiding behind our one skinny tree. Then he just stands there for a second, happy and maybe a little dizzy. I kneel down in front of him and start to give him the official introduction to his new place.
“Hi, Barkly,” I say. “I’m Martin, Martin Benbe. You’re a Benbe now, too: Barkly Benbe. It sounds pretty cool. You’re going to live here now, with me and my mom. You’ve already met her. My dad lives here too, but he’s in the navy so he’s away right now. I told him about you, though, and he says he can’t wait to meet you. So that will be cool, too. Anyway, this is your house behind you, and this is your yard right here. Mom asked me to ask you not to dig it up too much.”
So that’s my official speech. Barkly listens closely the whole time. When I’m done, he licks my face. I think that’s his way of saying: “Nice to meet you; I like my yard.” I stand up, and he starts sniffing the lawn like it’s his job. He goes up and down in lines, as if he were pushing a lawn mower. When he
gets to the tree in the center, he lifts his leg and … Well, let’s just say I’m not sure that tree is going to make it another year.
Afterward, he follows me back into the house. I give him a biscuit, and then he decides the house needs a good sniffing, too. That’s fine, as long as he doesn’t decide any of the lamps need a good watering!
Barkly has a new dog bed, and he likes it a lot. He sleeps in all kinds of funny poses. Basically, whatever position he was in at the moment he fell asleep is the position he stays in. It’s like he’s playing a game of freeze tag with himself.
But when he’s not sleeping, he follows me pretty much wherever I go. I like that. It makes everything I do seem more interesting. Instead of “I guess I’ll go sit in the chair in the backyard,” it’s “Hey, let’s go to the backyard!”
He still really likes it out there. We play fetch sometimes with an old tennis ball that is now completely saturated with drool. He’s really good at starting and stopping quickly in our little yard and is downright awesome at fetch. They don’t call them Labrador retrievers for nothing!
The difference is in the house. For the first few days, he walked around inside like he was in a really expensive antiques shop (an antiques shop where you get the prices by sniffing, of course). It was like he was afraid he might break something, or just a little afraid in general. But now he bounds around the house like he’s in a, well, a normal house.
Mom and I are “discussing dinner options” on Wednesday night when Barkly comes tearing into the kitchen. He skids to a halt on the tile and looks at us with big, wild eyes. Then he spins around and tears right back out of the kitchen and into the living room. Mom and I both laugh. “Crazy dog,” I say.
“He’s figured it out,” says Mom.
“Figured what out?” I say.
“That he gets to stay.”
Mom and I are watching television, and Barkly is curled up next to the couch watching the inside of his eyelids. It’s a little after eight o’clock, so prime time on the TV and nighttime outside. Suddenly something bangs against the corner of the house.
“Whoa!” I say, because it was really loud.
Mom doesn’t say anything. She just whips her head around and looks at the spot where the sound came from. It was right by the window, but all I can see out there is dark sky and a weak glow coming from the nearest streetlight. I’ll be honest, it’s kind of scary. Mom hits the mute button on the remote. I look at her face. I can tell she’s listening carefully. She holds up her finger to shush me.
I hold my breath and listen, but Barkly doesn’t know the shush sign. About two seconds later, all Mom and I can hear is his barking. I’ve heard him bark before, but not like this. It’s loud and rough, and it fills up the whole room. His feet are set firmly, like he’s the last one in line on a tug-of-war team.
All of a sudden, he shuts his mouth, turns his head, and bolts for the front door. When he gets there, he starts barking again.
“Stay here,” Mom says, and I do. Kind of. (I might trail her to the edge of the room a little.)
She gets to the front door, and peers through. There’s no one there. I can’t hear her let out a big sigh of relief, but I can see it.
“Good boy,” she says to Barkly. “Shhhh, now. Shhhh, shhhh.”
And he may not understand the shush sign, but he understands that. He stops barking and heads back toward the living room. He gives the front door one more look as he goes. It’s like he’s saying: “Don’t make me come out there!”
“It’s good to have a dog around,” says Mom as she sits back down on the couch.
I try to think of something funny to say because I don’t want her to think I was scared. Finally I say, “I thought navy wives could handle anything?” It’s one of her favorite expressions.
“We can,” she says. “But so can navy dogs.”
I raise my right hand to my head and give Barkly an official navy salute. He looks over at me for a second, and then goes back to staring out that window. He’ll play later. Right now, he’s on duty.
Barkly and I are in the backyard, resting up from a few rounds of fetch. I’m sitting on the ground, and he sits down in front of me. Then he raises his right front paw and holds it out. I reach out and shake his hand. Well, his paw. You know what I mean.
I knew what to do because I had a friend named Jamie in the last place we lived. His dog shook hands, too. It’s like a trick you can teach them. And now I’m looking at Barkly and wondering where he learned it.
It’s not something I’ve really thought about much. I guess I haven’t really wanted to. But I’ve always sort of wondered: How did such a great dog wind up in a rescue shelter at age six? I thought maybe his last owner was a jerk and didn’t like him. But jerks don’t teach tricks to dogs they don’t like.
Now I’m thinking: Was it a family? Did they move? Did someone lose a job or something? Or was it one person, maybe an old guy or something? And did something happen to them? Did they …
Barkly stands up. He wants to play more fetch. He always wants to play more fetch. That’s fine with me. I don’t really want to think too much more about all that anyway. I pick up the grungy old tennis ball, soggy with fresh drool.
I guess it’s not so much that I want to know the answers. It’s more that I’d like them to know something. Whoever it was who gave Barkly his name and taught him how to play fetch and shake hands. No matter what happened or why they had to give him up. If they’re in some other state now, or even if they’re up in Heaven. I want them to know something. Ready? It’s pretty simple.
I love him, too.
I pull my arm back and throw the ball. Barkly shoots across the yard like a rocket. And then he comes right back.
Michael Northrop is a former editor at Sports Illustrated Kids and has written short fiction for Weird Tales, the Notre Dame Review, and McSweeney’s. His middle grade novel, Plunked, was named to the New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing. His third young adult novel, Rotten, is about a rescued Rottweiler. You can visit him online at www.michaelnorthrop.net.
After old Walter fell on the icy back steps, most of us dogs knew we were in trouble. He crawled into the house and lay on the kitchen floor for a long time. Sometimes he slept, sometimes he cried. Once he called out, “One hundred and one Chihuahuas! Just like the movie!” It was something he said to everyone who visited us or dropped off another dog. That night Daffodil, Ernie, Paco, and I lay next to him to keep him warm.
The sign on his front door read: CHIHUAHUA RESCUE!!! Some of us were brought in by our owners after they lost their jobs. Others were thrown over the front gate. Me, I got lost the day my family moved. I went for a walk to look around and … I couldn’t find my way back. After living under an abandoned house for a week, I was grateful that someone found me and took me to Walter’s. “Darndest color I ever saw,” Walter said when we met. “I think I’ll call him … Pumpkin.”
He loved us and tried his best to take care of us, but there was never quite enough food or clean water. Many of us were too scared to go outside, so the floor — and just about everything else — was filthy and smelled awful. A hundred dogs were simply more than one person could handle. Sometimes people came to adopt us, but they usually left empty-handed. “We’re going to think about it,” they’d say, or, “I’ll have to talk to my husband.” I didn’t care. It hurt me so much when I lost my family that I couldn’t bear the idea of a new one.
Night was coming again. Walter must have been as scared as we were, because he began to pull himself into the living room on his elbows, making terrible moaning sounds until he reached the little table with the phone on it.
He was crying when he pushed a thick book off of it, saying, “What else can I do? I can’t let you die!” He held it close to his eyes, shuffled through the pages, then pulled the phone off the table. “555-6431,” he muttered, “555-6431.” We waited, shivering and frightened, wondering what it meant. “Is this Pawley Rescue Center?”
Then silence. “We need help! The dogs, my leg … What? About a hundred of ’em. That’s right. And could you call nine-one-one for me?”
With that one call, all of our lives changed in an instant.
The knock on the door came soon after. “Mr. Tompkins? Mr. Tompkins?”
“In here.” Two people scanned the room with flashlights. “Oh, my gosh!” someone exclaimed. “Look at these dogs. There must be …”
“One hundred and one Chihuahuas! Just like the movie,” Walter said in a voice choked with sadness. Then an ambulance and several more people arrived. I ran around the house looking for Daffodil, Ernie, and Paco so we wouldn’t be separated. Instead I found Spike. He was a mean dog: He enjoyed fighting the way some dogs enjoy chasing a ball. He grabbed my ankle and bit it, hard enough to make it bleed. “Just a little something to remember me by!” He yapped and ran to the rescuers as if he was the friendliest dog in the room.
As I licked my wounded leg, I realized I’d never see most of them again. “Good-bye, Walter!” I cried as they took me out to a waiting truck. “Thank you! Good-bye, everyone — good luck!”
The drive was short to the … what had Walter called it? The Pawley Rescue Center. They looked happy to see us, although almost everyone said we were “in bad shape.” “What you need is a bath and a good home,” one of them told Daffodil as she carried her off.
Someone scooped me up, saying, “You definitely need a bath!” I liked the way she smiled and petted me. Maybe she needed a dog. I snuggled up close to her.
“Did you see his leg?” a boy asked her a few minutes later as he helped her dip me into warm, soapy water. “That’s a bad cut.”
“I’ll have you take him to Dr. Mehta as soon as we’re done.” I tried to lick her face as she scrubbed months’ worth of dirt off me. It made her laugh. “Hold on!” She dried me and handed me to the boy. “He’s all yours, Milo.”
Milo took me to a room with a high table. “Put him down there; I’ll get a muzzle on him.” While the boy was very gentle, I didn’t like that thing they slipped over my snout one bit.
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