by Kim Kavin
Millions of dollars in resources, actually. A number of organizations make substantial financial grants to help shelters start spay/neuter programs. PetSmart Charities alone budgeted nearly $12 million in 2011 for spay/neuter initiatives.12 The Petco Foundation provides similar financial grants to shelters and rescue groups, and works with Spay USA to provide lowcost sterilizations nationwide.13 The ASPCA gives grants as well as business plans and training to shelters that want to improve spay/neuter services.
None of these organizations have a problem with rescue groups transporting dogs like Blue hundreds of miles into homes, but they do believe those groups also have a moral responsibility to assist with spay/neuter initiatives—so there will be fewer dogs needing transport overall.
“It can be true that, if you just work on the transports, then all you are doing is exploiting the problem,” Hoffman says. “Unless you are also involved in spay/neuter, you are not actually solving the problem. You never turn off the faucet that is flooding the shelters in the first place.”
When I adopted Blue, I was actually pleased to see that he had already been neutered. By the time I met him, the surgery was long since a memory and I only had to worry about routine shots going forward. To me, it’s just plain crazy to believe that spaying or neutering a dog will do anything but prevent him from procreating. I have seen no evidence, with any dogs I’ve known, that spaying and neutering changes a dog’s personality or causes him health problems beyond minor post-operative discomfort.14 I had my Beagle mix Floyd neutered, and he lived to be nearly sixteen. I got Stella spayed right after I adopted her, and she was just as hyper after the surgery as she was before it. If Blue was any different before he got neutered, well, then I need to go thank the veterinarian for yet another job well done. Blue’s personality is absolutely dynamite. He could not be a better dog.
The same is true of my foster dogs Izzy and Summer. The people who eventually adopted them appreciated the fact that they had already been sterilized. The adopters also appreciated how beautiful they were, how friendly they were, and how much love they wanted to share—all of which left me with tears in my eyes as I dropped both of them off at their new homes.
11 The Toby Project provides free and low-cost spay/neuter services throughout New York City. A graphic on its website, www.tobyproject.org, shows how a single, unaltered female dog and her puppies, if also left unaltered, can give birth to 67,000 additional dogs in just six years.
12 According to the PetSmart Charities 2010 annual report, the spay/neuter funding was part of nearly $40 million the organization planned to give in 2011 for projects including adoption and transport.
13 Visit www.Petco.com/foundation for a state-by-state list of places where you can receive low-cost spay/neuter surgeries.
14 And researchers are now working to eliminate that, too, along with the cost and training required to perform spay and neuter surgeries in the first place. As of August 2011, the Michelson Prize and Grants program had given more than $6 million in funding to applicants with ideas for nonsurgical spaying and neutering techniques. The first researcher to succeed in creating a pill or other easy-to-use sterilizer for dogs and cats will win a $25 million prize. Details are at www.michelson.foundanimals.org. Another group working toward this future is www.600million.org, which was started by a cofounder of PETA. That group takes its name from estimates that 600 million stray dogs worldwide give birth to as many as three billion puppies every year.
A Better Life
Summer went first. I was surprised, actually, because compared to Izzy she seemed less likely to find a home fast. Like Blue, she was a little skittish. She wore life’s hard knocks on her face the way gangsters wear brass knuckles on their fingers. She wasn’t jumpy and bubbly, like Izzy. She was a little older and couldn’t be advertised as young, let alone as a puppy. She was calm and sweet and most content if she could just find a safe place to take a well-earned nap. She was the kind of dog who seems to have had the odds piled sky-high against her from the day she was born.
The family across town who applied to adopt Summer after seeing her on Facebook didn’t care that some people might find her less than perfect. They thought she was beautiful, and they wanted to give her a good home. They’d always had purebred Golden Retrievers, including their four-year-old Golden, Abbey, who was just as much a part of their family as their college-age son and high-school-age daughter. But they’d recently learned about the crisis in America’s shelters, and this time, they wanted to adopt a rescue dog instead of buying a purebred. I happened to post Summer’s photograph online pretty much to the exact day that they decided they were ready to make a difference.
I drove to their house with Summer in the backseat, and, if I’m being honest, prepared to hate these friends-of-a-Face-book-friend. Even though Summer had been with me for less than two weeks, I’d already come to love her and felt fiercely protective of her. Blue loved her, too, and I secretly hoped that the adoption wouldn’t work out. I was ready to keep her and make sure she was safe forever. I was fully prepared to become what rescuers call a “failed foster”—somebody who tries to say good-bye to a dog only to realize what she really wants to do is adopt him.
I sat for a few moments after turning off my engine in the family’s driveway, trying to find something—anything—wrong with everything around me. But the neighborhood was so quiet that I could hear birds chirping. Norman Rockwell might as well have painted the scene, it was so gosh-darn picture-perfect. I knew I had no choice but to get out of the car and take Summer inside.
When I knocked on the door and was invited in with a smile, I saw tons of room for dogs to romp and play. I saw dog toys on the floor and a water bowl nearby, just as in my own home. Their Golden Retriever, Abbey, seemed as healthy, friendly, and content as any dog in my own family. She seemed to like Summer immediately, too, going right up to her with a feverishly wagging tail.
Then I shook hands with the mom and dad. They briefly looked at me, but they couldn’t take their eyes off Summer. As I was looking up and around their house, they were looking down at her frail little body with love.
“She’s a bit shy,” I said, making excuses as Summer slowly made her way inside. She at first didn’t seem interested in getting to know their dog Abbey at all, and instead sniffed all around the kitchen to check the house out.
“That’s okay,” the dad said—and then he lay down on the kitchen floor. The mom sat down next to him, as did their daughter. “Summer will come to us when she’s ready,” the dad said as we all patiently waited.
It was like somebody was feeding this guy lines from a script, his attitude was so perfect. The whole family might as well have been a figment of my imagination. They were, quite simply, awesome.
And sure enough, after a few minutes, Summer did go to them. She played with them, she sniffed around Abbey, and she figured out where the water bowl was so that she could take a few gulps. I spent a solid hour making sure Summer was in good hands before I felt comfortable enough to say good-bye. I drew out the process of leaving the way a three-year-old hems and haws when she doesn’t want to go to bed.
As I walked out the door, leaving Summer behind, I started to cry just the same way Rhonda Beach had when she’d handed Summer over to me in the diner parking lot in North Carolina. I was so happy and sad, all at the same time. I drove down their street and had to pause for a few minutes at the first stop sign. I cursed myself for failing to have tissues in the car. I had to use my sleeve to wipe away the tears streaming down my cheeks.
Later that night, while sitting on my sofa with Blue and Izzy, I got a phone call from Summer’s new mom.
“I saw how worried you were when you left,” she told me, “so I wanted you to know that Summer and Abbey have been wrestling like old friends. They love each other. And we love her, too. She’s going to sleep with our daughter tonight, curled up in bed. She’s doing great. We’re thrilled to have her in our family.”
Yes, of course, I st
arted weeping all over again, like I do at the movies when that rousing orchestral music starts playing during a happy ending. Blue and Izzy, sitting there staring at me on the sofa, must have thought I was ready for a straitjacket.
A few days later, it was Izzy’s turn to go home. I followed the directions to a neighborhood in Pennsylvania that turned out to be just as nice as the one where I’d left Summer. This family’s house was also on a cul-de-sac, also with a grassy yard.
I rang the front doorbell with Izzy standing next to me on her leash, and when the door opened, she leaped inside as if she owned the joint. The dad and teenage brother stood over to the side while the mom and teenage daughter sat on the foyer steps, cooing and coaxing Izzy to go over and give them a kiss.
“She’s just so gorgeous!” the mom exclaimed, petting Izzy as if she were a priceless stallion won at auction. “I can’t believe she’s ours. This is really our lucky day.”
I made sure that Izzy had everything she needed. I’d brought along her favorite toy, her veterinary papers, and even the phone number of her first foster family, back in North Carolina, in case anything came up that required all of us to help. I’d also brought Izzy’s collar, which, of course, I said the family could keep.
“Oh no,” the teenage daughter said. “I already picked out Izzy’s new collar.”
The girl walked over to the kitchen counter and produced a brand-new collar with matching leash. Her mom and I helped her adjust them so they would fit perfectly. Both were hot pink and covered in black zebra stripes.
All in all, I spent about forty-five minutes that day helping Izzy to feel settled in. The mom’s cell phone rang at least five times while I was there.
“It’s just the family,” she told me, silencing the ring tone again and again. “They all want to know what our new girl is like. Do you think she can swim? Because we go to a house at the shore in the summer. Do you think she’ll like the beach? Everybody wants to know if she’ll like the beach house.”
Yes, indeed, it seemed that both of my foster dogs were going to have better lives than I do.
A Puppy’s Potential
After Izzy and Summer were gone from my home, Blue seemed a little bit lonely. I offered to foster more dogs for Lulu’s Rescue, but until the next one arrived, I made sure to take Blue on many trips to our local dog park and to Top Dog, which is our nearby obedience school. Blue loves to spend time with other pooches, and he’s a fast learner who has a lot of fun in class. He went on to earn his AKC Canine Good Citizen certificate on the very first try, following some pretty impressive turns at puppy kindergarten.
For those who have never attended, I can say that puppy kindergarten is not unlike your average day on a youth soccer field. There’s the coach, standing in the middle and trying to give instructions whether the kids are listening or not. There are the parents, technically not playing the game but still intensely engaged, constantly shouting commands, and seriously hoping their kid isn’t the one who screws it up for the rest of the players. And then there are the kids themselves, who really don’t seem to understand all the effort that has gone into creating their day’s fun. They’re pretty much just excited to be around lots of other kids, and they’re willing to follow a ball wherever it’s kicked.
The difference with puppy kindergarten is that, while every dog is part of the same group, the ultimate goal is to achieve individual success. There is a lot of repetition and practicing commands such as “sit,” “stay,” “lie down,” and “come.” Some dogs listen, some dogs don’t, and some owners get bored and give up way too soon in the training process. So just to drill home the point of the whole exercise, the Top Dog trainers traipse out one of their seasoned graduates at the beginning of each eight-week session. They tell him to sit and stay, and then they gleefully take turns trying to distract him by clapping in his face, offering him food, and shouting other commands. The dog—usually a Border Collie who possesses more award ribbons than Lassie had endorsement deals—never moves a muscle, except perhaps to yawn at these silly, silly humans. The dog’s unfettered obedience to his master’s most recent command of course impresses all of the newly enrolled people, most of whom ooh and aah while scooping their own puppies into their arms to prevent them from peeing on the floor.
As the weeks went on at obedience school, Blue got to know every dog in our class and loved them all. During playtime, he romped equally well with the spunky, three-pound Yorkshire Terrier named Bella as he did with the lanky, twenty-five pound Spaniel named Laslo. Blue became a rock star when working on basic skills, too. He sat when told. He walked on a leash without pulling. He came when I called him, flying across the ring and into my arms as if I, personally, were made of bacon and peanut butter.
I was, without question, the proudest mom in the entire ring, beaming as if my kid had just won the National Spelling Bee. And while I know all dog owners think their new puppy is the cutest thing since their first teddy bear, mine actually seemed to be, with the trainers coming over to tell me so and trying to determine Blue’s mix of breeds the entire two months that puppy class lasted. These are professionals who see upward of a hundred dogs every week. They’d coo over Blue and cuddle with him while all of the other dogs watched like wallflowers at the prom. One trainer even offered to dog-sit for Blue if I ever went on vacation, and she warned me, with a chuckle, that I might not get him back.
The last day of puppy kindergarten is the big finale, the Puppy Olympiad, as they call it in the alternate universe that is dogtraining school. The day’s schedule includes games that test what the dogs have learned, injecting a little fun into the experience after so many weeks of rote drills. In one game, each of the pups is given thirty seconds alone in the ring with his handler, to sit and lie down on command as many times as he can. The teacher holds a stopwatch, tells you when to start, and then watches alongside all the other people in class, who cheer you with their out-loud voices while thinking silently about how to beat your score when their turn comes.
Xena, a gorgeous Weimaraner named for television’s warrior princess, was first to stride into the ring that day. Her gangly legs were still growing, which left her a little off balance when she attempted to move too quickly, but she tried hard and did her best to listen, and her owner seemed happy with their score of seven. Laslo the Spaniel, on the other hand, positively blew it and barely earned a three. We clapped for him, anyway, because he seemed so happy just to be in the game. Most of the rest of the puppies earned respectable scores in the vicinity of nine or ten. I cheered for them all and encouraged Blue to watch, secretly hoping he might pick up a few tips that we could use to our advantage.
Then came Bella the Yorkie—or, shall we call her, Bella the Ringer. Her tiny body stood barely three inches off the floor. This, I would soon learn, gave her a distinct advantage in this particular Puppy Olympiad event. For a bigger dog like Xena to go from sitting to standing position and then back to sitting or lying down took a few seconds, at least, because of sheer physics. A Weimaraner has a lot of body to move. But Bella? She could move from standing to sitting with less effort than it takes most humans to clench their butt cheeks. A stiff breeze could blow this little dog’s rear end onto the ground. And she was well trained, too, watching her owner intently and responding to every single command. “Sit!”“Lie down!”“Sit!”“Lie down!” And she would, the little bugger, every darn time. Her score, when the trainer called time after thirty seconds, was an impressive eighteen.
Bella was still striding out of the ring with her precious plastic barrette atop her proudly raised head when the trainer called Blue and me as the day’s final contestants. I am embarrassed to say that I actually took a deep breath before I walked him into the center position to start. No three-pound pooch wearing pink hair accessories was going to whip my boy after all he’d been through in life.
“Aaaaand…. Go!” the instructor said.
My strategy was to keep Blue moving constantly, so he had time only to react t
o the commands instead of to think about them. Most of the other puppies had seemed confused by the idea that they had to move from sitting to lying down and then go right back to sitting, which is something we’d never practiced in class. Usually, our drills went from sitting to lying down, and then the puppies were told they could get up altogether. So, instead of telling Blue to sit and lie down, sit and lie down, in rapid succession, I decided instead to have him sit, lie down, and then walk a step or two toward me by telling him to come. Then I’d start again with sit and lie down, and then get him on his feet with “Come!” before telling him to sit and lie down again.
He thought this was one of the greatest experiences of his life, a mesmerizing new dance that we were doing together in the rhythm of synchronized swimmers. For about the first twenty seconds, Blue followed me around that ring as if he were a college kid chasing a dropped dollar bill in the wind. His eyes were focused on mine, his ears were perked and listening at all times, and his reaction to my every command was immediate. The teacher counted aloud as we approached Bella’s score of eighteen. “That’s fifteen for Blue!” “Sixteen!” “That’s seventeen for Blue with five seconds to go!”
I was sweating. I was breathing heavily. I was working desperately to concentrate and maintain the pace. I might as well have been trying to juggle apples while running on a treadmill at the gym.
And then I said, “Lie down,” and Blue looked at me like I was from Mars.
The entire room went silent. It was if everyone gasped at once, sucking the very walls of the place in.
“Lie down!” I cried. “Lie down!” My decibel level grew alarmingly high, as if I were trying to coax a child out of a burning building. All the people around us, who had been cheering just a moment earlier, no doubt thought to themselves, “They lost it! Blue lost it! He choked at the end!”