You Had Me at Woof

by Julie Klam

  I spent a lot of time ruminating over what was behind the surrendering of a dog. In my mind, there was a list of what I considered compelling reasons to give up your dog, and other reasons that stunk. I was always most struck by people who put so much energy into getting a dog and then dumped it. My therapist, who has the two bichons frises, met someone with a bichon puppy who was going to put the dog in a shelter—and she asked to take the dog, certain she could find it a home. It was a terrific, smart, cute puppy with a normal puppy’s energy. In the end my therapist’s daughter took her. The bizarre part of the tale was what came with this puppy to my therapist’s home:• four expensive plush dog beds

  • five baby blankets

  • twelve dog bowls

  • a large box of ear wipes, eye wipes, paw wipes, and butt wipes

  • a case of wee-wee pads and holders

  • over thirty plush toys and twenty-seven rubber toys

  • six bottles of shampoo

  • five brushes and combs

  • a case of treats

  • a huge cloth box that had been hand-painted “Toy Box”

  • clothes: a white tank with a BeDazzled “S” (the puppy’s name was Sophie); three pairs of flannel pajamas (top and bottoms) with baby ducks, rattles, and blocks printed on them; four hooded sweatshirts, two with sparkles, two without (for working out, I guess); a red T-shirt with embroidered and beaded hearts, a pink T-shirt that said, “Does this shirt make me look fat?”, a red T-shirt that said, “Princess” (the “i” was dotted with a heart), a pink T-shirt that said, “Little Miss Tiny”; some dressier sweaters.

  The outfits. The outfits! How on earth do you go from a person who spends hundreds of dollars at posh Manhattan pet shops on clothes and grooming items to a person who leaves a dog at a shelter? Not even looking into rehoming! The whole thing is so puzzling. I remembered getting an engraved birth announcement from a couple who’d bought a dog. Six months later I saw them and asked them about the “baby.” “Oh,” the wife said, “we gave her to my uncle. She chewed everything and messed all over the floor!”

  A puppy that chewed on things and wasn’t housebroken? Why didn’t you put it on a chain gang? It was mind-boggling, but not something that infuriated me, until I was the one taking in these castoffs. We’re not talking about a family who has to give up a dog because of allergies or discovering upon the birth of a child that the dog is aggressive, or someone who has to move to an elder care facility. I’m just thinking of people who put more effort into researching the aspects of owning a car than what it takes to have a dog.

  AFTER THAT Paul and I agreed that our family was not up to the job of fostering dogs. We couldn’t take that kind of risk. There were still many ways I could help the rescue organization, and before long I was assigned my first home check, then my second, then my third, and on.

  Pretty much everyone who wanted to adopt a Boston terrier in Manhattan lived in a fifth-floor walk-up, or so it seemed to me. I would arrive at these apartments breathless and say, “You do know”—huffing and puffing—“that Boston terriers’ legs”—gag—“are very, very short”—catching breath—“don’t you?” I didn’t discount them for that, unless they were looking to adopt a senior dog, in which case I still didn’t want to reject them. It’s a very unique position, sizing up someone to possibly adopt one of our guys. As I’d ride the subway to 135th Street or St. Marks Place, I’d think about the process adoptive parents go through before being allowed to adopt a child, while the people who got pregnant themselves were under no such scrutiny. In the case of our Bostons, we were the guardians and they were our charges. We couldn’t be responsible for backyard breeders or pet shop sellers not investigating the homes, but we could do it and at least we knew we were placing our rescues in homes where we’d be comfortable placing our own dogs.

  Most people tried very hard. You could see they’d cleaned up and they listened carefully to questions. One woman opened the door, never looking at me, and led me to the living room, where she kept her eyes glued to the Animal Planet channel. It wasn’t an act to show me she was an animal lover. She was just very weird. But a lot of excellent pet owners were not necessarily people I wanted to hang out with. I sort of liked to think of myself as a moderate, between the crazy animal people and the people who saw pets as disposable. The home checks I did in the city were vastly different from the ones in rural areas, because New York apartments generally didn’t have fenced-in yards. Many people who look to rescue a dog have had one before and know what it involves. And they’re attracted to a breed for a reason. As an apartment dweller with Boston terriers, I had a lot of insight to offer, and could highly recommend them as city dogs. I felt particularly connected to the applicants who’d seen a dog on our website and were applying for them. Many times a photo that gets to someone triggers something. It’s like the way I want to take every dog whose eyes are bulgy and go in different directions. My cousin Mandi, who is a veterinary technician and has worked in many shelters, cautions against picking a dog who looks like a dog who has died, because of course it’s not that dog and she feels like the owners can become disappointed when they see that. Her mother had a beloved English bulldog who passed away and was followed by another one who looked like the first one but was not. She actually hated the new one, and true to her prediction, it outlived her. But having taken Beatrice on the heels of Otto and knowing they were nothing alike and still being okay about it, I wasn’t so sure. I definitely agreed with keeping expectations realistic. I also knew people who would get the same breed of dog over and over and keep naming them the same thing (Sparky 1, Sparky 2, Sparky 3) and it didn’t seem to bother them (though I can’t speak for the Sparkys).

  I’d been busy with work and not paying as much attention to the list as normal when I got a call on my cell phone while I was at the gym. It was about ninety-five degrees outside and I had to dry off repeatedly to hear the message. It was Sheryl and she said it was urgent.

  I called her back and she boiled down the story. There was a woman with a found Boston in the West Village who was going to dump the dog in the city pound if someone didn’t get him TO-DAY. Violet was with a babysitter so I used the opportunity to get the dog (someone in Pennsylvania was set to foster but she couldn’t pick up the dog immediately). Sheryl said I should call Joy, the volunteer in Pennsylvania, because she’d been in touch with the woman. I called her as I started to walk. I didn’t know Joy, but after two minutes I felt like I’d known and loved her my whole life. She’s from the Deep South and she works as a psychiatric nurse.

  “Okay, you ready, Julie?” she asked, took a deep breath, and said, “So last week Sheryl gets a call from this woman saying a guy in her office found this nice Boston in New Jersey and he was going to keep him, but his mother wouldn’t let him. Now I don’t know why this guy lives with his mother but, anyway, he took the dog into the city and gave her to the woman. I talked to her myself and told her I’d meet her anywhere, but not in New York City because I’m afraid to drive there. So she told me she’d be going out to the Hamptons for the weekend and she’d bring the dog halfway and meet up with Cindy [another volunteer], and then right before this was supposed to take place, she canceled because she didn’t have a ride. So I talked to Sheryl and she said tell her to take a car service and we will pay for it, but she wouldn’t, so then I get a call from her today saying, ‘You have to take him now or I’m bringing him to the pound.’ So that’s where you come in.”

  I took everyone’s phone numbers and called the woman, whose name was Coco, and asked her if she could bring the dog to me. She told me she didn’t have money for that (but she did have money to take the dog to the pound, which was farther?). I asked for her address and told her I could jump on the subway and be right there. She said I should just meet her at the West Fourth Street basketball courts, which I knew from my NYU days.

  I arrived within twenty minutes and waited for her to come. I watched for her to show up from all directions
and saw a very thin young woman wearing a black slip, black stiletto heels, and Victoria Beckham-type sunglasses. She seemed nice, definitely on drugs, but at least she was a dog lover.

  Immediately she apologized for not being able to bring the dog, whom she’d named Mr. Man, up to my area. I said it was fine. She said she’d brought the dog to a vet in her neighborhood who’d scanned and found a microchip and gave her the number of “some ranch” but she threw it away. She didn’t even call, because she KNEW this dog had been abused. He was panting and acting very anxious, but it was sweltering and she was nutty so I couldn’t really assess the situation. Having come from the gym I didn’t have any of my stuff with me—a leash, harness, or crate. She had some sort of wiry rope device attached to a scarf around his neck that she said I could keep. He wasn’t interested in her good-bye; in fact, when I took the rope from her, he just started running and running and every ten feet he would stop and have explosive diarrhea. I had one bag with me, and he must have gone forty times. Now I was going to have to figure out how to get him the hundred blocks back to my apartment. I called information for a pet taxi service but they had no one available to help me so I bought some water and sat in the shade for a minute. Mr. Man jumped at something and I cut my hand on his rope trying to subdue him. Blood started oozing down my arm and got on my shirt and legs and Mr. Man started crapping again. People looked at me like a bloody, sweaty woman in disgusting gym clothes with a crapping dog . . . which was accurate. I wanted to shout, “I’M AVERY FANCY LADY! I SHOP ONLY IN THE FINEST OUTLETS!” It was useless. I couldn’t scream, “Cut” or even “Help!” Help what? Help me plug this dog’s butt long enough for me to get him in an air-conditioned taxi! I called Paul, who was at work in Soho, and left him a message to call me. I waited and waited and as I was about to give up, whatever that meant, I looked straight ahead and saw Kettle of Fish, a bar owned by my husband’s friends Adrian and Patrick. I dragged Mr. Man up to the door and looked in. Paul and I had stopped there many times over the years. Adrian was never, ever there. Today she was standing by the door. Dressed in gauzy white, she was my angel. She gave Mr. Man a bowl of water, which he inhaled, and she refilled it two more times. She gave me some paper towels and a Band-Aid and somehow the cool dark bar had the effect of a dose of Pepto-Bismol because the Man stopped his eruptions. I wiped him up, carried him out the door, and hailed a cab. I held him tightly to me, praying to the God of humiliation to please not let him lose control in the cab. As if by a miracle, he made it up to my street. The minute we stepped out of the cab, he was going again, but I didn’t care. We were home.

  I came in and called Joy.

  “The eagle has landed,” I said. “And he has some pretty serious tummy trouble. Also, um, the woman I picked him up from . . . I believe is a ‘lady of the night.’”

  “Is that right?” Joy said. “Well, I could tell you when I talked to her she was higher than a kite.”

  We spoke a bit about the transport plans. Mr. Man had settled down and seemed to be very sweet so I agreed to keep him until someone could get him out to her in western Pennsylvania.

  “What about his name?” I said. “I don’t really want to call him ‘Mr. Man.’”

  “Well, I’d planned to call him Chip after Chipper Jones of the Braves,” she suggested.

  “Fine, I’ll call him Chip.” I thought the fact that she was giving him his name boded well for my getting him out of here. “Because he’s your foster.”

  She laughed warmly. “I’m looking forward to him.”

  “He is cute,” I said.

  “Awwww,” she said, her voice like honey. “Poor little darlin’.”

  I posted a message on the Yahoo! board letting everyone know what was happening. Paul came home from work and Violet came home from being with her babysitter and everyone was happy to see that Chip neither flew nor bit. He was sweet and mellow and deferential to Beatrice so we were all quite happy with him. I spoke to Sheryl the next day and recounted the story. I hadn’t had a ton of experience in rescue but I was a fairly experienced dog person and Chip did not strike me as abused, as Coco had said. To say she was an unreliable narrator was fair. The problem was that an accusation of abuse had to be taken seriously. Which I did. And I knew this dog, who was friendly, not hand-shy, and well-mannered, did not have signs of abuse. Joy and I discussed the very distinct possibility that Coco might have some transference issues.

  We all agreed very quickly that Chip was a nice dog (and by “we all” I mean Paul, Violet, me, and the guys who worked in my building—Jimmy, Carlos, Victor, Anthony, Raphael—who became something of an informal approval committee). They were always offering assessments of the new fosters—rating based on personality and appearance. We also all agreed that Hank had set the bar very low; still, Chip was sweet and I had more than a fleeting thought that maybe we would foster him and not send him to Joy after all.

  On his first morning while he ate a breakfast of rice and boiled chicken, I looked through descriptions of missing Boston terriers to see if anyone had reported him. There was nothing online. I walked him and Beatrice over to a nearby vet and had them scan his microchip for me. They were able to tell me the registered number and which company’s chip it was so I’d know whom to call. I phoned when I got home and they were able to trace it to a large pet chain in New Jersey. Whoever had bought Chip had not changed the contact information. The pet chain, though, had the name, address, and telephone number for the person who bought him. It had been a little over a year and I knew he’d been missing for a while. He’d been with the guy who lived with his mother for over a month before he’d gone to Coco for a couple of weeks. I sent an e-mail to the board of directors telling them about the info I had and Sheryl said she would call the people and inquire about how the dog had been lost, what they’d done to find him, etc. . . . before we would return him. We were all still being cautious because of the original “abuse” report from Coco. After all, the rescue group didn’t know me that well and didn’t want to risk giving a dog back to an abusive home.

  Sheryl had called a few times that day with no answer and no machine and she was so busy with the rest of the rescue group and her own job and life, it seemed to make sense for me to keep calling. I programmed the number into my cell phone and called over and over for the next two days. I double-checked the phone number with information and then called the pet store again. The number I had was correct, but no one had any further word. I checked with my friend Jancee, who is from New Jersey, and she told me the area of New Jersey where the people lived was a nice, pleasant suburb. I put the address into Google Earth and found their house had a small yard. I couldn’t zoom in enough to see if there was a fence. A week into the search, it was pretty clear that the people were gone, moved or whatever, and we decided that we’d send them a letter and then we’d know we’d made every attempt to get in touch and would assume Chip into foster care, which at this point we decided would be me. There were so many new dogs coming in and someone had just surrendered two dogs together that Joy could take if I kept Chip.

  I e-mailed the progress reports to the board. Some felt the fact that the people hadn’t reported the dog missing to the local shelter or to the microchip company showed they weren’t really looking and we shouldn’t put ourselves out trying to get him home. Sheryl worried, though, that Chip was some little child’s best friend and for that possibility we needed to make every effort. I agreed.

  I sent my letter and heard nothing for another week. I started to make arrangements to get Chip neutered, a necessary step before reviewing applications. I’d also been feeling a little pull to keep him. He had a wonderful, sweet quality and a very cute personality. Physically he looked like most of the dogs that came into rescue: a little too big with a nose that was a little too long to be considered breed standard. The majority of people who bought $2,600 show-quality Bostons did not lose them or turn them over to rescue.

  Coming home from the gym two weeks after I’d picked
him up I looked at my cell phone and was about to delete the New Jersey phone number when I decided to give it one last try.

  A woman answered.

  “Hello?” I said. “I’m calling from Northeast Boston Terrier Rescue. Did you lose a dog?”

  “Yes,” she said a little unsurely.

  “I’ve got him,” I said proudly. “You can come get him.”

  I heard her say, “Someone has Shaggy!”

  She came back on the line. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Manhattan.”

  “Oh no, that’s very far from us. We’re in New Jersey.”

  I didn’t respond. My thought was if my dog turned up in Russia I’d be there. She was talking to whoever was in the room. She got back on the phone and said. “Can you mail him?”

  I thought about hanging up right then but I just decided to stay with it. “You can’t mail a dog.”

  “Oh,” she said wistfully.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’ve been taking care of your dog for two weeks. If you don’t want him back, that’s fine, we can keep him.”

  She asked me for my phone number and said her husband would call me back. I came home and immediately e-mailed the board. Mary Lou, who I’d learned was the toughest board member, shot back, “Mail him? She’s too stupid to get this dog back. If she calls, tell her you are sorry but you lost him again.” Everyone was a bit puzzled by the whole thing. I assumed I wouldn’t hear from the owners again, and was surprised a bit later when I was in the playground with Violet and my phone rang with their number. It was the husband.

  I told him what I’d told his wife, and he told me they’d been in Portugal for the last month. The dog had been lost for three months. He asked me where I lived and said he’d be there in an hour, that he knew how to get to New York City because he had worked at Ground Zero. I gave him directions and told him to call my cell phone when he got into the neighborhood and I’d bring the dog downstairs to the park near my home. By then Paul would be home from work so he could come with me, in case there was any funny business.