“What would that look like?”
“I don’t know. Just take a break.”
If Frank wasn’t AP† for the family we’d met the weekend before at an adoption event, I might have very well just adopted him and been done with it.
Messages from other OPH volunteers, fosters, and staff continued to come in. Everyone shared my grief. Several people said, “Texas knew safety and love before his death. That’s what we do for these dogs.”
I wrote about Texas’s death on my blog. It helped to write about it. It’s how I think, how I process my emotions. Spilling my pain on the page helped take the edge off it, but how long would it follow me around? Texas most likely would have died whether he was here with us or back on the farm where he was unwanted and likely mistreated. Everyone said there was nothing we could have done to prevent it, but I couldn’t help wondering, doubting. Maybe it would be best if we stopped fostering.
I looked at Tennessee and Frank lying beside me, for once content to rest. I stroked Tennessee’s black fur and rubbed Frank’s wide head. I loved them both. How could I not? And the risk was part of that love. It’s unavoidable when you open your heart to anyone—dog or human.
At the edge of the woods Crash pounced on a mouse—letting it get away again and again, only to chase it down. When Frank noticed the activity and took off with Tennessee right behind, I didn’t call them off. I let them put Crash in a tree and hoped the mouse would make it.
Life. Death. Was it different for animals? Did they know something we didn’t? When it was dark, I called the dogs away from the tree and headed to the house. The Frank bed was back in its place. I’d washed it and then almost put it in the basement, but changed my mind and returned it to the kitchen. Back inside now, Frank and Tennessee piled on it.
I could still picture Texas there, but it helped to know he hadn’t suffered. Chris had assured me that the fact he was lying so peacefully and there was no evidence of trauma—no blood, no foam, meant that he went quick. Dying was inevitable for all of us, so a peaceful passing was more than you could ask for. Texas was a beautiful, amazing, sweet dog. I knew by the way he cowered at loud noises and sudden movements that his life didn’t start out so peaceful, but I was glad that in the end he knew safety and love and happiness. I was glad we were able to give him that, but mostly I felt blessed to have had the privilege to love, even for a short time, such a good dog.
Without Texas, Tennessee morphed into a different dog. Left to his own devices, gated in the kitchen, Tennessee managed to decimate a plastic laundry basket, destroy the zipper and strap (the two most important elements) of Addie’s book bag, and gnaw the corner off one of her school-owned textbooks.
Apparently, without his playmate, he was bored. After he devoured my favorite sandals, Nick brought home a box of hard plastic tool-casings from his work.‡ He set the box in the kitchen with the lid opened and we pretended not to see as Tennessee snuck a few bright yellow drill casings out of the box. That box kept him busy for the better part of the weekend.§
Tennessee and Frank had approved adopters waiting to take them home, but we had one more week together, as both dogs were on hold until we got the results of tests on Texas. My emotions over their pending adoptions raged back and forth—happy for them, they deserved forever homes, but teary at the idea of saying goodbye to them, especially Frank.
A week later, all the tests came back negative, which meant we still had no real answers about Texas. My heart was so very tired of thinking about it. Did I miss something? Could we have done something? If only I’d been home . . . all these thoughts spun through my head when I watched Tennessee and Frank playing without Texas. I’d always hated mysteries. Living with this one frustrated me, but I had no choice but to make peace with it.
The following week we said goodbye to both Frank and Tennessee. Frank was the first to go. And the hardest. I already missed his wide soft head, always there, right next to me, pressing his nose to my hand. When we met his family for the Meet and Greet¶ at a nearby park, Frank bounded out of the car and introduced himself. He and his new furbrother (a lab-shaped yellow dog named Cole with blue eyes like Frank!) liked each other immediately. Frank wandered around smiling and wagging up everyone, gobbling up the offered treats (and then casing the bag for more). As always, he gravitated to the kids, but seemed equally enamored of his new mom and dad who obviously adored him.
When they signed the contract, it was a lump-in-throat moment for me, but no tears because it was clear this was his family. He’d have a new best buddy to play with and two kids to adore. Frank would be happy and busy. The whole family had such a joyful, easy energy, any dog would be lucky to go home with them, so I was thrilled that Frank was the one. He posed for a picture, sitting happily between his two kids with a big goofy smile on his face, and then they were off.
Still, I held my breath until I got the email from his new mom the next day. He was settling in great. He and Cole had played happily for hours. Yay for Frank, my favorite boy, I thought as I sat with Tennessee on Frank’s giant bed. We’d decided to keep the bed, partly because it was a great bed for multiple dogs to share and it reminded me of my favorite foster dog, and partly because I didn’t want his new family to feel obligated to keep his name. Most adopters change the foster dogs’ names, which was appropriate because it was the beginning of a new life. Frank was now Cooper.
Tennessee left amid a momentary monsoon a few days later. His family had already met him at the OPH event the week before, so they knew they wanted him. His Meet and Greet was quick. He was over-the-moon excited when they arrived, and he impressed all of us with the way he dialed back the energy when he approached their preschooler, careful not to knock her over. His dad texted me later and said that “Black Jack” (perfect name) had found his forever family. Okay, that did bring a few tears. I was happy for Tennessee, but I couldn’t help but think of Texas.
I’d decided I’d take another dog, if only to distract me from Frank and Tennessee.
“Another one?” Nick asked. “I thought you were going to take a break?”
“I can’t,” I confessed. “I need to do this.”
I didn’t understand why I needed to do it, but fostering had somehow graduated from my hobby to my calling. Losing Texas sheared my heart off at the knees, but at the same time it created an urgency in me. There were too many dogs like Texas still out there. Dogs that might never know safety and love. I had to help. I owed it to Texas.
I volunteered to pick up Tweety, a foster dog who’d been in boarding the previous week.# Wanting to keep my heart from dwelling on all that I had lost, I drove to get Tweety in the still pouring rain moments after Tennessee left.
We were both drenched when we arrived back at the house. Tweety was a favorite at the boarding facility and it was easy to see why. She was friendly and affectionate—her tail never stopped wagging. One of the employees sent along a giant bone and a stuffed animal for her to keep.
She’d been in the house about an hour when an email arrived to set up her Meet and Greet for the next day. What? The only thing I could tell the adopters about her was that she was overweight (the first foster dog I’d met that was fat!). That was it. Other than that, she was darn near perfect. Nick said she looked like the dog they put in the dictionary to illustrate the word “dog.” She reminded me of the Far Side dogs with her brown square body, little head, and curvy tail. She headed home to Virginia less than twenty-four hours after she’d arrived here.**
After Tweety left, we had a few days with no foster dogs. Nick asked again if I still wanted to keep doing this.
“I do,” I told him. “I hate that it hurts, but I can’t stop now. There are too many dogs out there.”
*I left a copy for her to read at her request.
†AP means Adoption Pending. An adopter has been approved to adopt the dog in question. This doesn’t mean they will adopt the dog, only that they have seven days to decide whether or not they will.
�
��Nick works for a company that makes power tools and hand tools. I’m not naming names, but the plastic casings of drills and saws that he brought home were black and yellow (and they weren’t Steelers promotional items).
§All the foster dogs to follow would have the same joy, and we’d find ourselves warning future adopters that their new dog might be prone to chew yellow power tools.
¶The OPH term for when an approved foster meets the foster dogs and makes the decision to take the dog home or not.
#Sometimes there are dogs whose time is up at a shelter, but no foster home is available. If OPH has already made a commitment to those dogs, they will still bring them up on transport. They’re then placed in a boarding facility temporarily until a foster home opens up.
**As I write this, she still holds the record as the fastest adopted foster dog we’ve had.
EIGHT
The Yin and Yang of Puppies
After the intense emotions of summer, I decided what we needed was puppies. As we drove to meet the transport, Nick asked, “What kind of puppies are they?”
“They’re four months old. One looks like a coonhound and one looks really weird.”
“I thought they were related.”
“That’s never been clear.”
“Hmm.”
“We’re also getting Melissa’s puppy.”
“Who’s Melissa?”
“My friend who just started fostering. This is her first one, but she couldn’t make transport.”
“And she’s getting a puppy?”
“That’s what she wanted.”
“Hmm.”
I knew Nick was thinking I was getting in too deep and overcommitting, as I’m prone to do when I’m passionate about something, but I appreciated that he didn’t say anything. He never got involved in the details of all this rescue work. He asked very few questions. Maybe he didn’t want to know.
It was a gorgeous fall night when we picked up the puppies. I’d recently been asked to mentor several new fosters and I introduced myself to them. I didn’t feel like I knew enough to be mentoring anybody, but I offered a few bits of advice about protecting your house, something I wished someone had clued me into when we started. “Keep the dogs somewhere contained where you can easily clean up after them. Like maybe a kitchen. You’ll need a tall baby-gate if you don’t have one.”
“The write-up says the dog I’m getting is housebroken.”
I hesitated and then went for total honesty. “Don’t believe that.”
“Really?”
“It’s not that the dog isn’t housebroken, it’s just that after the stress of transport and the new house, sometimes they regress.”
“Oh,” said the new foster, the excited look on her face dimming.
“But maybe I’ll be wrong,” I told her, just as the transport van pulled into the parking lot. I probably wouldn’t have believed anyone either back on the night we picked up Galina. I was too excited to think clearly or heed any warnings.
Charm and Chism indeed looked nothing alike. We put them together in our crate, and put Melissa’s puppy, Connor, a big black Lab puppy in the airline crate I’d borrowed. The crates sat side by side in the folded-down backseat. As we pulled onto the Beltway, I could hear growls coming from the crate with Charm and Chism.
“Doesn’t sound like they’re siblings,” said Nick.
“Or maybe it does.”
I saw him smile in the dark. Our three kids were finally reaching the age where the fights were no longer daily or physical, which was nice, but that didn’t mean there weren’t fights. Now they fought about issues like who ate more than their share of the Cheez-Its, who trashed the bathroom, and who had use of the gaming computer. With Brady away at college, Addie and Ian had settled into a peaceable friendship. For years, though, they had fought ferociously. Sometimes the words that passed between them took my breath away. Would their bond emerge from childhood intact? My little brother and I are close now, but as children we battled relentlessly, just like Addie and Ian. On the other hand, I can’t remember a single fight with my older brother, though there must have been a few, and these days we live on opposite sides of the country and rarely speak. Family connections are complicated. Maybe the pain inflicted would bind them together somehow.
When we got home, I moved Melissa’s puppy, Connor, to a bigger crate in the kitchen and put both our puppies in the puppy pen together in the mudroom. We gave them a snack and water and then turned out the lights.
We had just gotten in bed when serious barking erupted downstairs.
“Got it,” I said to Nick, who hadn’t made a move. He’d always been good at sleeping through crying children and alarm clocks, so he might have been asleep already.
I opened the mudroom door to find Charm huddled in the back of the crate I’d attached to the pen and Chism positioned at the entrance to the crate in the play-with-me stance. Her front paws were stuck out in front of her, butt in the air, and tail wagging. At the sight of me, Chism began running circles around the pen, occasionally pausing to launch herself at the fence where I was standing. She was oblivious to Charm, trampling over her when she crawled out of the crate to greet me. They didn’t seem like siblings or even friends.
I took Chism in the kitchen and let her run laps around the island while I snuggled Charm in my arms. Charm had the beautiful coloring of a Black and Tan Coonhound. Her mile-long legs reminded me of a newborn colt. If she grew into them, she was going to be a big girl. I fingered her floppy ears and she leaned against me, sighing. A person could easily lose their heart to this hound.
Connor watched Chism from his crate, but showed no sign of wanting to join her. I covered his crate with a blanket, so he could go back to sleep. I put Charm back in the pen and spent some time with Chism. I tossed her a tennis ball and watched as she dashed around the kitchen with no intention of bringing it back. Her gorgeous coat—a splashy pattern of gray and white and black, almost like army camouflage—would surely attract adopters. Her file said “hound mix,” but she didn’t seem very houndish, more like a Lab-mutt on speed. Her intensity was off the charts. Chism took up all the air in the room.
I caught her mid-flight and tried to calm her, but she squirmed out of my arms to launch herself at the cat who appeared on the other side of the sliding glass door. I watched her slam into the glass and then paw at it and I thought, Whoever adopts this pup better know their way around a dog training manual. She would either be the coolest dog they ever owned or the most difficult dog to ever rule their life.
It would take all night to wear off all her energy, so I caught her wriggling body and put her back in the puppy pen. Charm was dozing in the crate and lifted her head warily as I deposited Chism back in the pen. I closed the door to the crate, and put down another blanket for Chism, who picked up the blanket and began dragging it around. I dumped every dog toy I could find in the pen and shut off the light.
Melissa arrived early the next morning for Connor. Standing beside her van, she said, “Those puppy guidelines . . . are they serious?”
I laughed and said, “It won’t be as bad as you think.”
I was aware that I was stretching the truth a bit, but I didn’t want to frighten Melissa off before she’d even started. And besides, she was the one who wanted to foster puppies. I was almost afraid to check in with her later that day, despite the fact that I was her default mentor for OPH. I’d given Connor a little time in the kitchen to bounce around that morning and after a good night’s rest, he had almost as much energy as Chism, but was about a month older and ten pounds heavier.
In terms of fostering, Melissa was jumping in the deep end. She insisted she wanted to foster puppies, not dogs. I didn’t discourage her; I figured this would be baptism by fire. Connor would either be her first and last foster, or we’d know she was a nutcase like the rest of us. You probably did have to be a little crazy to do this, but it was a good crazy.
That week I watched as Chism bullied Charm out of t
oys, food, and my attention, but the battles of the first night didn’t repeat themselves. It appeared they had negotiated a truce of some kind. Still, I rarely left them alone together for long. They didn’t snuggle together, but they didn’t wrestle either. They were roommates who shared the same space but had entirely different interests.
Charm was most interested in snuggling. True to her name, she charmed everyone she met. She loved to be held and became a regular couch buddy for Ian in the rare hours that he was home. Between soccer and baseball, school work and the nonstop eating of a thirteen-year-old in a growth spurt, he rarely sat still.
Chism also loved people, but instead of sleeping in their laps, she’d rather chew on their arms or play chase. She was curious and smart and it wasn’t long before she was climbing out of the pen and reaching for the lever doorknob.
One morning that first week, I was in the kitchen canning applesauce, while the puppies played. Chism spent a few minutes making bodily threats to the cats through the glass door while Charm began sifting through the basket of dog toys. In general, Chism had no use for toys, unless Charm picked one up. I watched as Charm politely selected a toy from the overflowing toy bin. Before she took three steps, Chism stole it easily and carted it over to the Frank bed where she promptly ignored it so she could bark at the cats again.
Charm selected another toy and once again Chism dashed over to take it. Charm dropped the toy and stepped back as if to say, “Oh, you wanted that? So sorry, I’ll just find something else to play with.” Charm then selected a tennis ball out of the toy basket, but in moments, Chism grabbed the ball out of her mouth. I took the ball from both of them and tossed it across the floor, knowing Chism would chase after it and she did. Meanwhile, Charm picked up a stuffed ladybug with crinkly wings, but the moment Chism heard the crinkling, she dropped the tennis ball and ran back for the ladybug. Charm let her have it.
“Girl, you’re gonna have a rough time in the real world if you don’t start standing up for yourself.”
Another Good Dog Page 11