Another Good Dog

by Cara Sue Achterberg

He put his arm around me and said, “I love boats.”

  “They’re pretty nice.”

  “Let’s get a boat someday.”

  “Okay.”

  He took a long drink of his beer. I poked the ice in my cup with my straw, looking for more rum drink, and casually said, “So, OPH just posted pictures of four puppies that need a foster.”

  “What about Carla?”

  “She’ll be adopted any day now, I’m sure.”

  He smirked, sipped his beer, but didn’t say anything, so I pulled up the pictures on my phone. “Aren’t they adorable? And they’re named after Winnie-the-Pooh characters!”

  “All puppies are adorable,” he said, but he did scan through the pictures.

  “So, it’s okay with you if I do this?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes and said, “As if I have a choice.”

  “Good, ’cause they arrive next week!”

  The kids were over the moon excited about fostering the puppies. I’d promised them we would foster a puppy this summer, so why not four? I found Amy and we toasted to my four adorable puppies.

  I got everyone’s word that they would help with the puppies, and hoped that their word would be better than it had been in the past. I distinctly remembered similar vows in regards to the gecko, beta fish, and bird that led to prolonged reminders on my part and eventual abdication on theirs. Sadly, all the small critters in cages lived short, tortured lives in our care. Everything would be different with the puppies, though, they promised!*

  The first thing we had to do in preparation for the puppies was rename them. With over 4,800 dogs in the system, their Winnie-the-Pooh names were taken long ago.† I was sad when I heard this news because we have always been a Pooh family. The baby nursery was decorated Pooh, the first videotapes (dating myself here), CDs, books, and even computer games were all Pooh. I sang the song, “Christopher Robin” to my little cherubs when I tucked them in every night. Brady’s middle name was Christopher after you-know-who, which was a compromise because I seriously considered naming him Christopher Robin.‡

  We were still on our beach camping trip when I learned we had to rename the pups, so I posed the question to my dear friends while sitting around a table in our favorite brewery.§ We’d escaped the squalor of our campground once again in search of alcohol and air-conditioning, so everyone was in a happy mood. We considered using the names of the beers we were sampling, but decided that no one would want to adopt Noble Rot or Hellhound. After very little deliberation, we chose Jillie Bean, Lug Nut, Marzle, and Chick Pea.

  Jillie Bean was the childhood nickname for one of the kids traveling with us. Lug Nut was the name of a dog a friend used to have.¶ Marzle was the main character in a novel written by my would-be Christopher Robin during his junior year in high school, and Chick Pea simply sounded cute. All the names made more sense if you had a little beer buzz going.

  On our first morning back from vacation, Carla and I went for a slow run (more of an amble). For once, she wasn’t leading the way and there was no sprinting or any kind of bounding. The humidity got us both. I thought she might like a dip in the creek but when we got there, the weeds were high and her ear got caught in some stickers, so she backed away, retreating to the road.

  I was glad to be home. Glad to be finished with a week full of raging temperatures, swarming flies, blistering sunburn, and kids tormented by a lack of Wi-Fi. Suffice it to say, it hadn’t been the most idyllic vacation. I was pretty certain none of us would be camping at the beach again anytime soon.#

  We were only two days until puppy touchdown, when Mindy emailed to say that there were two Pooh puppy siblings whose planned adoption had fallen through. Would we be willing to take two more? Eeyore and Roo needed a foster home too.

  Uh . . .

  I tried to remember her words after she told me I’d been approved to foster four months prior. She’d said something like, “Now, always know that you can say no. I might sound desperate or pushy, but it’s okay to tell me no.”

  Hmmmm . . . uh . . . I dialed Nick at work.

  “What’s two more puppies when you have four already?” he said. I knew I’d married him for a reason.

  Carla watched us prepare the mudroom for puppies with very little interest. She was just happy to have us home and happy to be back to her regular runs.

  Addie had an important performance on the same night as we were to pick up the puppies, so Nick drove to Millersville to hear her perform and Ian went with me to get our puppies. I hated to miss Addie’s concert, but that was only the beginning of the sacrifices to be made in the name of fostering puppies.**

  Ian and I arrived at the bowling alley parking lot with a large crate filled with towels. I’d explained to Ian that, per the Puppy Guidelines, he and I were the only ones allowed to touch our puppies as we moved them from the transport van to the car.††

  “What if people want to pet them?” he asked, looking at the large group of OPH volunteers gathered in the parking lot.

  “They will, but you can’t let them.”

  He nodded. Ian is a nice kid, but he’s also a rule-follower, so he was probably the best person for this job.

  When Gina opened the van door, the puppies were peering out of their crate. I could see the two light-colored puppies, Jillie Bean and Marzle. They were unbearably cute and everyone around me squealed. Gina told me to start moving them. Even she wasn’t allowed to handle them.

  Ian and I shuttled the puppies one and two at a time, dodging the outstretched arms of people who could not resist them even though they probably knew puppy protocol as well as I did. Once they were loaded, I got a cooler full of vaccines, bags of wormers, collars, toys, probiotics, vitamins, and cranberry pills. Ian stayed with the puppies in the car.

  On the drive home, we listened to their sweet noises and talked excitably about our puppies. It felt a little bit like Christmas morning. When we were home, we installed them in their pen and stayed up way past our bedtime watching them and figuring out who was who.

  The next morning, I hurried Carla along on her morning pee stroll, anxious to get back to the puppies. So far, she’d had no interest in them, but Gracie had wandered by the pen and snarled a few times. They only wagged their tails and jumped at the sides of the pen, happy to meet her.

  All that week, it felt like my only job was caring for puppies. Much like the first few weeks home with a newborn from the hospital, my days, thoughts, work, and heart were consumed by my babes. After everyone was cleaned up, watered, fed, snuggled, and the pen poop-free, I would slink off to my laptop, but it was impossible to focus. The random noises, shrieks, and barks mixed with the metal rattling as they crashed into the sides of the pen sounded like the soundtrack to How to Train Your Dragon. Facebook was one thing, but a roomful of puppies? So much for meeting any deadlines.

  It was time to write up the pups for their OPH adoption page. They’d already generated a lot of interest,‡‡ but as I knew them better now, I set to work writing their individual bios. I thought it would be hard, but in much the same way as my own children displayed characteristics and oddities as newborns and toddlers that have carried right on through to their teens, I was confident I could lay out the basics of each pup’s personality.

  Boz was the runt, smaller than the others with the black and tan markings of a hound. His head looked a little big for his body and his massive paws said maybe he wouldn’t always be a runt. He had a hound dog’s countenance, which made him look sad and forlorn and adorable—all irresistible traits in a puppy.

  Jillie Bean was already listed as adoption pending,§§ and her potential adopters emailed to set up a time to meet her. This was no surprise. Not only was she quintessentially cute with those liquid eyes and constantly tilted face, but she was quite simply the nicest puppy in the bunch. Not that I didn’t like them all. She was just more even-keeled—happy to play, but not yanking ears or picking fights. I didn’t know if her new adopters had a psychic sense or just good pup
py karma, but they’d hit the lottery with their pick.

  Chick Pea was my girl, the one I’d keep if I was going to keep one of these precious pups.¶¶ She was strikingly handsome with the coloring of a boxer—brown with black points. One of her ears was crooked and stuck out to the side while the other folded forward, a feature I found made her even more irresistible. She had long legs and I was certain she would grow into an awesome running partner. She was bright and confident, more people-focused than puppy-focused. I hoped she’d get adopted quickly before I got too attached.

  Homeboy also had an approved adopter. He had similar coloring to Chick Pea, but with lots of splashy white on his legs, chest, and even a splash on his back. He was a small, stocky pup. He wasn’t pushy and hung back when the others rushed forward, yet he never hesitated to jump into each tangle. He was all puppy, but maybe a tad bit smarter than the others. When everyone else was fighting over one food bowl, he’d wander over to the other bowl and help himself. If everyone was diving for the tennis ball I’d just tossed in the cage, he’d sneak off with the plastic retainer case.##

  And Lug Nut! What a gorgeous, expressive, chubby face! He reminded me of Gary Coleman’s character on Different Strokes who always said, “What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” That was his default expression—that thought. He looked almost exactly like Homeboy, only bigger. He was a solid hunk of adorable puppy. He was the only one who could take on Marzle and his endless, ferocious energy. He would make a great dog.

  And then there was Marzle. Marzle was the same yellow as Jillie Bean, but with more white and a broader, bigger body. He was a dog’s dog. Even when everyone else knew it was naptime and headed for the crate, he would wander the pen looking for anything available for his busy mind and mouth. He had an insatiable need for contact and play. When I was in the pen trying to clean up and I felt someone grab my pony tail, I always knew exactly which puppy it was. When I reached in to give morning pets, the open mouth I would feel encasing my pinkie, that would be Marzle. When the puppy battles reached an intensity that demanded I leave my keyboard and go settle things, I always knew which puppy I’d be yanking out of the fray.

  Nick and I were at a fiftieth birthday party for a neighbor held at the VFW one Saturday night a week after the puppies arrived when my phone rang. I went outside to answer it, concerned it was one of the kids calling to tell me something was wrong with the puppies. It was a wrong number, but I noticed I had several Facebook messages. One was from an OPH volunteer named Jamie. She said her mom was visiting from Indiana and wanted to adopt Carla. In my sangria-induced happy state, this made no sense to me, so I closed my phone and went back to my friends and my sangria.

  The next morning, I scrolled through the messages on my phone. Nick was at the counter making breakfast and I was nursing my hangover with a big cup of tea and wondering whether I had only imagined the message about Carla from the night before.

  “I didn’t imagine it!”

  “Didn’t imagine what?” he asked, turning the bacon with one hand and reading the news on his phone with the other.

  “Someone wants to meet Carla!”

  “When?”

  Jamie’s most recent message was from two hours earlier. Apparently, sangria-happy me had told her this morning would be great. I looked at the clock. “In about an hour!”

  I’d always felt that Carla understood English. There were certainly times when she chose to play her dog card and feign ignorance, but most of the time she knew exactly what I was saying when I asked her to please get down off my bed or please move her large self out of the way because she was blocking the hall. When we finished our breakfast, Carla was waiting at the door to the deck. This was her signal that she was ready for her breakfast. If we didn’t catch on, she’d let us know loudly that the service was lacking. We fed her on the deck and Gracie inside to keep the peace.***

  Normally she gulped down her food and turned back to the door, wanting to be let in so that she could double-check that Gracie didn’t forget to eat every morsel of her own food. But on that Sunday, she finished eating and turned and walked to the edge of the top deck and stared out across the hollow. She didn’t bark, she didn’t move, she just sat there like she was waiting for something (or someone). Eventually she lay down, but not in her normal dog-as-rug position, but in an upright, alert pose, watching the driveway. Waiting. It went on so long that Nick went and got the camera and took her picture.

  Carol and Jamie and their family arrived right when they said they would. Carla had retired to her couch and I was outside weeding when they pulled up the driveway. I went to get Carla, but she was already at the door. I clipped on her leash and she walked out to greet them, as if she were expecting them.

  Carol was delightful. She’d recently retired and hadn’t had a dog since her beloved beagle died five years before. So she knew a little about hound dogs. I gave her some time alone to get to know Carla, while I chatted with her young grandson and his parents. Carol decided to walk Carla down to the end of the drive and back. I was busy introducing the cats and answering questions about the chickens, and they took off before I could stop them.

  There were two problems with taking Carla for a stroll to the end of our driveway. First, not only was Carol retired, but she’d recently had knee surgery. Second, our driveway is a steep hill. When I took Carla out for her run in the morning, she was always excited and hurried down the hill. In fact, most mornings I had to give a steady whoa on the leash all the way down or risk tumbling down the hill after her. Remember those sangrias? Well, I hadn’t been up for running (or much of anything else) that morning, so Carla was about four hours late for her daily run.

  I watched in amazement as Carla walked slowly and carefully beside Carol all the way down. When they reached the bottom, Carol waited while Carla looked down the road longingly, but then they plodded right back up the driveway.

  We talked some more and Carla remained at Carol’s side. I stressed how much daily exercise Carla needed, and Carol said, “She’ll be good for me. I need that too.” She said ever since she’d retired, it was easy to stay home in her jammies all day, but she knew she should get out. Carla would be the incentive.

  The whole time we talked, I felt teary. I knew this was right. The magic had finally happened. Carla was a perfect fit for Carol. She’d be loved and adored and useful too. She’d help Carol as much as Carol would help her.

  Carol planned to drive back to Indiana later that week. I warned her that Carla liked to look over your shoulder and drool as you drove. Carol just smiled and patted her new dog. She was ready for Carla and all her Carla-ness.

  Many times puppy visitors asked, “How can you get anything done? I’d just stand here and watch them all day.”

  Honest truth—sometimes I did. It was very easy for me to while away a good hour just watching the puppies wrestle or throwing tennis balls in the pen. When a storyline stuck, I’d pick up a puppy and carry it to the church pew on our back porch breathe in the puppy breath and almost always find my answer. Two weeks went by in a blur and all six puppies had approved adopters eager to take them home.

  With their quarantine lifted at the nine-day mark, we hooked up our puppy pen with our neighbor’s borrowed pen and created a puppy paddock in the grass. The pups loved the big, wide world and I climbed into the pen to play with them. They were thrilled to have me, chewing my laces and leaping on my back. Homeboy hung back as usual, letting the other pups have first dibs. I reached for him and cradled him like a baby for a belly rub. As I stroked his smooth belly, I realized, Homeboy wasn’t a boy!

  I’d had this puppy for two weeks. How was it possible that until today, I hadn’t noticed that he didn’t have a penis? I carried Homeboy/girl to the house and held her up for Nick.

  “She’s a girl!” I said. “I’m never gonna live this down.”

  He gave me a confused look. Nick liked the puppies, but he wasn’t really on a first-name basis with any of them, so he most likely didn�
�t even know how many girls and boys were in the pen.

  “They told me the two extra puppies were boys!” I rationalized.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he said. “It’s still a cute puppy. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters!” I shrieked.

  I moved all the puppies back into the puppy room and sat down at my computer to compose the email in which I would confess to the powers that be at OPH that Homeboy was actually Homegirl. And then I waited for the horror, the hand-smack, at the very least, the teasing. I was certain it was coming. Instead, I got an email back from Mindy, my foster coordinator, who simply said, “LOL.”

  Later I heard confessions from other fosters who had similar experiences of dogs and puppies arriving, listed as one gender, but actually being the opposite. Kindly, no one mentioned that it hadn’t taken them two weeks to figure it out!

  I retired to the porch with a glass of wine and my embarrassment. It was still my defense that I was told this was a boy puppy. And, there is a great body of evidence supporting the fact that most of us see what we expect to see. Magicians capitalize on it and marketing people count on it. Our government expects it of us and good teachers try their darnedest to teach children to see beyond it. And yet more times than not, we still see the old woman in the image and not the beautiful girl. I’m not the only one guilty of seeing what I expect to see and not seeing the possibilities or the person (puppy).

  My very progressive daughter thought it was pretty cool that I embraced the whole puppy and wasn’t hung up on the physical designation of my puppy’s gender. I tried to see it that way, but in the end, all I could really say, though, was—I just never looked. It didn’t occur to me. I was too focused on SIX PUPPIES and their poop/pee/chaos/needs/kisses.

  After learning that she was a girl, we tried calling her Homegirl, but Homeboy still suited. She might be a girl, but she was a tomgirl at that.

  I’m sure there are plenty of you out there right now thinking: How is it possible you had this puppy in your care for two whole weeks and never noticed that he was a she? How incompetent are you?