by Colleen Sell
A full-grown standard schnauzer weighs between forty-five and fifty pounds. As Ina grew into adulthood, her rooftop ruckus grew less cute and more threatening as, the bigger she became, the further down she could lean. She also became more confident and expanded her limits accordingly. Several times she leaned down over the eave so far that I don't know how she never fell. This brought her bared teeth not so very far above anyone brave enough to walk beneath them.
Of course, having a dog patrolling the roof of one's house isn't totally a bad thing. The sight of flashing fangs and pearly white teeth accompanied by the resonance of sharp barking above people's heads sent most door-to-door salespeople to our poor neighbor's house. We didn't need a security system.
We had our own live burglar alarm right there on the roof for all to see, in snarling glory. She didn't bark at our friends (or our neighbor); when they came to the door, she would run back and forth on the roof, silent, her tail wagging. We knew who was approaching the house by our dog's actions.
When we took Ina for a walk, strangers would stop us and ask, “Is that the dog from the roof?”
After giving directions to our house over the phone, people would pause and ask, “Is that the house with the dog on the roof?”
Before long the directions to anyone who lived in the area were simply “green roof, red car, dog on roof.” The inevitable response was, “Oh, I know your house.”
Then one day when Ina was barking, indicating an unknown visitor, I did what I always did. Before going downstairs, I looked outside to see if I recognized the car. It wasn't a car. It was a van. The SPCA van. A man wearing a green uniform was standing in the middle of my driveway, looking up on the roof at my barking dog. I knew I was in trouble.
Even though I reasoned it was probably too late, I tried to call Ina in. It only made her worse. She alternated between running back and forth on the roof and leaning over the eave to bark and snarl.
When the man dared to walk beneath where Ina hovered above him and go to the door, she jumped back inside the bay window, bounded past me, and ran downstairs to the door to “greet” our visitor.
Since he'd already seen her, I didn't bother locking Ina up. Holding her firmly by the collar, I opened the door.
The man didn't smile. He bluntly informed me that someone had complained, saying that I was locking my dog out on the roof.
I explained how Ina's trips onto the roof were completely voluntary as well as how we had tried repeatedly to stop her, but couldn't. After I reminded the gentleman of what he had witnessed, he reluctantly agreed that the dog did enjoy being out on the roof. He also acknowledged that, with the window open, she was free to go in and out as she pleased. Once assured that the dog was healthy and happy and not in danger, he turned to leave.
The second the door closed, Ina dashed up the stairs, bounded through the living room, jumped out onto the roof, and ran straight up to the peak of the garage to watch, no doubt pleased to see the last of the SPCA officer. With Ina once again in her familiar gargoyle position, I stood at the window, also watching him leave.
But he didn't leave. Halfway to his van, he turned around and started to come back. Ina scuttled down and positioned herself above the doorway. The man stopped and looked up at my darling dog, lips curled, teeth bared, poised and ready, and daring him to walk beneath her, so she could once again voice her opinion.
He looked up at me and asked the question that makes many dog owners cringe. “Does your dog have a license?”
“Yes, my dog has a license.”
And, yes, I know my dog is on the roof of my house.
She likes it there.
˜ Gail Sattler
Puzzle
What's this?” Ed asked, holding up the envelope.
“Fan mail,” I replied, trying not to sound smug.
“You got a fan letter at the newspaper? That's quite an accomplishment after writing a column for, what, ten years now?” My husband ducked away before my fist could connect with his upper arm.
“I've written the column for six years, smart aleck, and this isn't my first fan letter — I've gotten three other ones.” I handed Ed the package. “The letter came with this.”
He took the small box from my hands and shook it over the counter. The contents landed with a clink on the tile. Ed could no longer suppress the urge to roll his eyes. “Wow, now I am impressed. A reader has given you toenail clippers.”
“Doggie toe-nail clippers,” I clarified. “For Puzzle.”
He looked blank.
“For the dog.” I motioned to the backyard, where the stray beagle sprawled on the picnic table.
“You've named her? I told you we couldn't keep her. She's someone's pet.”
“Matt named her Puzzle because of the markings on her back. They look like jigsaw pieces. Cute, huh?” I opened the sliding door and stepped outside.
“You're a cat person. You don't even like dogs,” he said.
“Well, I like this dog. Come, girl! Come, Puzzle! I've got a present for you!”
The beagle lay on her back on the picnic table with all four paws pointed to heaven, looking for all her worth like road kill. At the sound of my voice, she yawned widely and thumped her tail but stayed put.
Ed followed me across the patio. “She's so lazy she doesn't even come when you call her.”
“She's still weak from hunger,” I replied.
I strolled to the table and sat on the bench. Puzzle's tail thumped wildly, but she made no effort to sit up. I didn't blame her. It was a beautiful summer evening, perfect for lolling around outside, doing nothing. Matt was playing with the kids next door but was due home any minute. Maybe we'd take Puzzle for a walk. Or teach her how to sit or roll over. She obviously had already perfected the command to lie down.
“We can't keep her,” Ed said.
The dog ignored him, and so did I. She looked at me with chocolate eyes that were both comical and sad. Her only identifying mark was the bony lump on her left leg. I rubbed it. Her tail wagged even faster. I wondered who had allowed this sweet animal to wander with no collar or tag. I had asked that question in my last two weekly columns, but no one had come forth to claim her. Only Dorothy, who'd written all four of my fan letters, had responded. Her cocker spaniel, Rusty, had recently died. The toenail clippers were Rusty's, and she couldn't bear the sight of them anymore.
Puzzle rolled to her side and pawed my arm. Her toenails were long enough to paint, but I had no idea how to use the clippers. I would ask the veterinarian when I took her for a checkup. I rubbed her ears and dodged the tongue that sought my cheek. She had terrible breath, but we'd take care of that too. On Saturday, Matt and I would shop in the city for a collar, toys, and special treats that were good for halitosis. My dog-owner friends at the newspaper had helped me make a list of essentials.
“We can't keep her,” Ed repeated. “She belongs to someone.”
“Hush, Matt will hear you,” I whispered.
I waved to our son as he scampered across the neighbor's driveway. Hearing him, or perhaps smelling him, Puzzle bolted from the table as though shot from a cannon. Barking happily, she bounded across the grass and jumped on Matt's chest, knocking him on his rear. They rolled around on the lawn. Laughing, Matt struggled to his feet and stumbled toward us as Puzzle grabbed the cuff of his shorts and held on.
I propped my face on my hands and sighed. “What a heartwarming sight — a boy and his dog.”
“She's trying to rip his shorts right off him,” Ed replied. He touched my shoulder. “Look, some other little kid might be missing Puzzle. It's not healthy to get so attached.”
I shrugged off his hand. “You're wrong,” I said. At least I hoped he was.
“So this is the mysterious dog I've read about,” the vet said.
“Her name is Puzzle,” Matt replied. He sat on the exam table with his arms wound around her neck.
“I know. This pooch is famous, because your mom wrote about her in the newspaper.”
Doctor Jeff's eyes settled on mine. “I pinned your column on the bulletin board in the lobby, in case one of my patients is missing a beagle.”
“Oh, good idea,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“She's my doggie,” Matt said.
Doctor Jeff smiled. He lifted Matt off the examination table and set him on the floor, patted his head, and turned back to Puzzle.
“See this knob? She's had a broken leg bone that's healed over,” Doctor Jeff said. He positioned Puzzle on her side and lifted her back leg. She complied completely, as though she had done this a hundred times before. “She's been spayed. There are a lot of other scars on her belly, though. I think she's been on the loose for a while. Strays get scratched up when they run through barbed-wire fences. And her gums are in bad shape. Bad diet or malnutrition is my guess.”
“Maybe her owners didn't feed her,” I said stiffly.
“Or she could have been lost and wandering around looking for them,” Doctor Jeff said.
“Or they threw her away like garbage.”
Doctor Jeff put his hand on my mine, but I couldn't meet his gaze. “You did the right thing taking her in and bringing her here. We'll give her immunizations and medicine for her gums. If no one claims her, then she'll have a good home with you.”
“I know,” I said, but his words didn't comfort me. Puzzle wasn't really ours. Not yet, anyway.
In the lobby, Matt held Puzzle on a leash while the receptionist admired her. After I paid the bill, I wandered over to the bulletin board and found my “That's Life” column pinned up between thank-you notes and photocopied articles about the dangers of heartworm and the importance of neutering. I pulled my column from the board and stuffed it in my pocket.
On the way home from the vet's office, I swung into a fast food joint for a quick snack. At the drive-through window the cashier took my money and handed me two vanilla cones and a plain junior hamburger.
She peered at Matt, the dog, and me, as though sizing us up. “Hey, is that Puzzle?”My heart jumped like a fish in a bucket. Did the cashier recognize her?
“I've been reading your column in the newspaper,” she explained. “Did you find her owner yet?”
“She's our doggie,” Matt called from the back seat.
“Nope, no one has claimed her,” I added, and handed Matt his cone.
“Well, she sure is cute. Someone must be looking for her,” the cashier said.
After Puzzle wolfed down her hamburger, I gave her my ice-cream cone. I'd lost my appetite.
“Newsroom. May I help you?” I propped the receiver between my chin and shoulder and kept typing. My column was due in an hour, and I was struggling with it.
“I think I know where that beagle came from,” the caller said, without introducing himself. I stopped typing mid-sentence.
“Are you Puzzle's owner?”
“Her name is Sadie. She belonged to a neighbor of ours.”
I couldn't breathe. “And they want her back?”
“I doubt it; they took off. They were tenants on a place over on County Y. Couldn't pay rent, and the sheriff was always over there for one thing or the other.”
I knew the road. It was three or four miles from our place, rural, with run-down houses and dilapidated barns and outbuildings. The police reporter at the paper had written many stories about problems on County Y.
“How do you know the dog I wrote about is Sadie?”
“You wrote that she had a big bump on her left leg. It was from a break. You don't want to know how the bone got broke. Anyway, I fixed up Sadie and tried to get her to stay with me and the wife. She did for a while, but she kept going back to her owners. Didn't have a lick of sense, that dog.”
My hands were shaking. “You said her owners moved away?”
“Ran away is more like it. They left their animals — couple of cows, a horse, a few chickens, a bunch of cats. No one was feeding them animals, so I notified the county.” The caller cleared his throat. “I would have taken in Sadie, but I couldn't find her. We were out of town for a few weeks, visiting our son in Kansas City, when her people abandoned her and the rest of them animals. Sadie must have wandered until she found someone who would feed her. Maybe that's how she came to you.”
I don't know how I mustered the strength to ask, “Do you want the dog?”
“Sure, I'd like to have her, but my wife says she belongs to you now. See, it took Elsie a while to catch up on her newspapers, because we'd been away. She read about Sadie, I mean Puzzle, in your column. Elsie always reads your column. She's a fan.”
I was right — Puzzle belonged with us! We could keep her with a clear conscience. She was meant to be ours. I couldn't wait to get home.
Even Ed relented when I told him about the caller. We celebrated by taking Puzzle for a walk on a new leash. She ran down our country road, her nose pressed to the ground, with Matt galloping behind her.
I caved in to my husband's demands and stopped treating Puzzle to ice cream and hamburgers from McDonalds. He reasoned that the extra weight wasn't good for her bad leg. We got her teeth cleaned, and I learned how to trim her nails with Dorothy's doggie clippers, although she didn't like it much.
Ten weeks after Puzzle wandered into our yard, the harvest moon lit up the house like a giant nightlight. Matt cried out in his sleep and I went to check on him. As I passed the slider in the dining room, I saw Puzzle asleep on a blanket on the picnic table. She was curled up tight like a caterpillar. She didn't much care for the new doggie condo we had bought for her, and she wouldn't come inside for more than a few minutes at a time.
The next morning, she was gone.
“Beagles do that, they run off while following their nose,” a coworker told me. It had been three days, and I was distraught. Matt was inconsolable. Ed felt bad, too. We missed our dog.
We drove up and down country roads with the car windows down, calling her names: Puzzle and Sadie.
On a hunch one afternoon after work, I took a detour down County Y and drove slowly past three miles of sagging farmhouses. At the end of the road, where County Y meets County A, stood an old two-story with a front porch that had seen better days.
An older man and woman sat on the porch. She was reading a newspaper and paid no attention to my old Ford. Seeing me, the man reached down and patted the head of a dog, a beagle, stretched out next to his chair. Then the man raised his hand and waved.
I knew it then: Puzzle had gone home. She was right were she belonged.
˜ Ellen D. Hosafros
Trouble on the Hoof
Finally! The sun was out! We were two stir-crazy nine-year-olds who had been cooped up in the house for four long summer days, watching the rain come down. I was visiting my best friend, Sally, who lived on a large farm, where cattle grazed in rolling pastures separated by barbed-wire fences and hogs wallowed in a big pen by the barn.
Sally and I spent every possible minute together. Each September we crossed our fingers and wished on every star that we would be in the same class at school. We were in the same Brownie troop, swim class, and dance class. We liked to pretend we were sisters. Summers were the best — we swam in the spring-fed creek, read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and had sleepovers every chance we got. Sally's home was just two miles down a country road from mine, so most summer mornings we would meet halfway down the road between our homes, then walk together back to one house or the other. We climbed trees, built playhouses, and hiked over the pastures with Sally's German shepherd, Bill.
Bill was the best! When Sally's older sister, Susan, got too bossy, he would jump up and put his big paws on her chest with a warning growl. If she yelled at us, Bill would push her down and flop on top of her, tongue lolling out of his mouth in a big doggie grin, while Sally and I howled with laughter, and Susan howled with indignation. There he would stay until we called him off. He was our pal and went everywhere we did. Our folks never worried about our safety as long as Bill was around, and he was always around.
Sally's folks agreed with our plan, and her mom reminded us (needlessly) to take Bill along. The one thing Sally's dad insisted upon that fine morning was that we stay out of the south pasture. A bull whose infected horn had been removed was penned there. This bull was a grumpy old guy on the best of days, and the operation had made him downright mean. “One horn is plenty when it comes to causing trouble,” Sally's dad warned us. “I want you girls to promise me you'll stay away from him. He could really hurt you.”
We cheerily agreed and bounced out of the house, the screen door slamming behind us. Blue sky was reflected in every puddle, and the air was so fresh and sweet we couldn't breathe deep enough to get it all in. We picked our way down the muddy lane to the barn with Bill loping along beside us, stopping to sniff at every dew-laden bush and clump of grass. We paused at the pigpen to gaze at the baby pigs with their pink, curly tails, but knew better than to try to touch them. Their massive black-and-white mother snorted at us and gave us a look as if to say, “Don't even think about it!”
We wandered into the barn and climbed around in the hayloft, trying to catch wild kittens, but they were too quick and too skittish for us. They would stare at us with their big blue eyes, looking so fuzzy and adorable we could hardly wait to get our hands on them, but when we reached out, they would leap away, squeezing between the hay bales where we couldn't reach them or scampering up the wooden beams with their sharp claws, far above our heads. Bill whuffed in boredom, slouching on the straw-covered floor below us.