Another Good Dog

by Cara Sue Achterberg

  “This is how rescue is supposed to work,” I told Nick as I showed him pictures of Bernie relaxing on the couch in her new home.

  With Bernie happily ensconced in her new home, I decided to stop by a local OPH adoption event and pick up another dog from the handful who were pulled from boarding to attend the event.

  “You don’t want to take a break this week?” asked Nick.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “No reason,” he said with a shrug.

  It was as if he knew he should protest, but he also knew there was no point. As I drove to York, I wondered if fostering was an addiction. I thought it was puppies, but maybe it was the whole rescuing gig. It felt so good to help a dog and to help a family. A happy drug. I needed another hit.

  If OPH had a trademark dog it was “black Lab mix” or BLMs, as I referred to them. The very first dog OPH rescued was a black Lab and rumor had it that OPH’s founder was partial to them. BLMs were prevalent in the site’s listings most days. Nothing wrong with a BLM, mind you, but I was a hound girl myself.

  Catalina was a skinny (seriously skinny), leggy, long-nosed BLM who resembled a German shepherd in her size/shape/nose length, but had the short black coat of a Lab. When I met her at PetSmart, she was nervously guarding her own personal space—happy to meet people, but snarling at dogs that crowded her. Perhaps a week in boarding after a month or two in a shelter had made her a little defensive and suspicious. Who could blame her? Not me, so I hooked a leash on her and carted her home. She shook the whole way.

  It didn’t take long for her to settle in. She was nothing like the dog I witnessed at the event. She was warm and affectionate, sweet and eager to please. It took less than twenty-four hours for her to go from running from Nick (maybe she doesn’t like men) to jumping all over him with kisses (maybe she likes men best).

  Ian thought she looked like Sirius Black when he was in dog form in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I thought she was gorgeous—long legs, shiny coat, sweet face, big smiles.

  Catalina was a major fan of the cats, so we nicknamed her Cat.** She kept tabs on the cats’ whereabouts and announced any sudden moves they made on or off the porch. While Cat was large and leggy and full-sized, if underweight, she was still a puppy, so the chewing damage was major league. The first night she ate a baseball. Like a cat, she was very quiet and stealthy and no one noticed her with the ball during dinner when she was being so well-behaved, lying on the Frank bed. The only reason I knew she’d eaten a baseball was because she barfed it up overnight.

  Have you seen the inside of a baseball? Endless white string. The next morning, when I found the mess in her crate, I thought, Crap, she’s got SERIOUS worms. But upon closer inspection, I realized that there were bits of red leather mixed in and there couldn’t possibly be worms that long. Hunting around for the one red baseball we possessed confirmed my suspicions. She’d eaten it.

  While I was cleaning up the crate and sorting out the barf mystery, Cat removed the butter plate, Ian’s cereal bowl, and Nick’s coffee thermos from the counter. She licked them all clean and left them on the Frank bed. In the afternoon, she decapitated my car phone charger and ate a portion of the cord. I waited for days and eventually, like the penny one of my kids swallowed as a toddler, the cord worked its way out. Fostering is nothing if not humbling. Certainly, examining excrement for any sign of valuable objects will take you down a peg or two.

  “I’m a little afraid to tell you this,” said my friend Amy.

  “What?” I asked, suddenly worried. I consider Amy one of my closest friends, despite the fact that she lives four hours away. We were having one of our long-distance wine chats—drinking wine while catching up at the end of the day via cell phone. We usually did this when one or both of our husbands were traveling for work and we needed adult conversation.

  “We’re talking to breeders about buying a puppy,” she said.

  Amy and two of her kids have severe allergies to dogs. They have to take medication in order to visit my house. They’d tried adopting a rescue dog about six months before but it had been a disaster, despite how much they loved the dog. It was physically impossible for them to keep it and they’d tearfully taken it back to the shelter.

  I hated that she thought I might judge her for her decision. I understand why people buy purebred dogs, and I would never presume to judge them, but I thought about my tweets of late. I often ended with #adoptdontshop. Was that a bad thing? Was I unintentionally offending people? I certainly didn’t mean to, and I told Amy this now.

  “Your kids want a dog. You want a dog. Get a dog.”

  Sure, I wished they’d been able to adopt a rescue dog; they did too. But it would have been very difficult and because of the unknown factor in any rescue dog’s pedigree, it could have ended disastrously once again. Hypoallergenic dogs in OPH get adopted in seconds. Adoption coordinators keep lists of people waiting for one.

  When they brought their golden-doodle puppy, Chewie, home, I fell in love with him too. He’s a great dog. But now I wondered about my friends who bought purebred dogs simply because they liked purebred dogs. Was there something wrong with that? Did I think there was?

  No, I decided, I didn’t. Responsible breeders were not the cause of dog overpopulation. It wasn’t purebred dogs we were pulling from the shelters, not that we didn’t get a few. The dogs who were being thrown away in this country were the result of irresponsible people. You want a purebred dog? Get one, and don’t apologize for it. Just take care of it. And if you would, have it spayed or neutered. Leave the dog breeding to the professionals.

  *Chihuahua-dachshund mix.

  †We rarely got to name our foster dogs, so when we had the option of naming this puppy I gave Addie the honors since he was a purse-sized foster, in her honor. Addie was currently obsessed with the musical Hamilton and chose this name in honor of one of her favorite actors in the Broadway production. It was a mouthful and we generally called him “Oak.”

  ‡The same harness Addie had used to show one of our chickens in the Pet Parade at a local festival. The festival in which she won first place (a basket of dog toys).

  §Rescue dogs are usually given a green or blue tattoo after they’ve been altered. It’s nothing fancy, just a little slash. I’ve always thought it should be something more fun, like a smiley face.

  ¶So to speak.

  #Or Bernie, as we’d taken to calling her, as she was also a bit of a rumpled underdog—like one of the candidates running for president at the time.

  **Also because Catalina made me think of the sickly sweet, red-colored salad dressing I used as a kid to cover the taste of vegetables. I could eat anything green covered in that dressing.

  SIXTEEN

  Pup Overload

  The email said, “A momma and 3 pups just posted on Facebook.”

  Mindy knew I was jonesing for some puppies. I checked the OPH family page. The pups were adorable—barely two weeks old, their eyes not even open. The mom even looked a little like Lily.

  “I’ll take ’em,” I emailed back.

  Yay, puppies for Easter, I thought before remembering that I’m not the only one who lived here. I went for a bike ride with Nick and broke the news.

  “Puppies? This weekend?”

  “Yeah, but only three and they’re little guys.”

  “Well, hopefully Cat will take off this weekend.”

  “Yup, that’s the plan.” Cat had approved adopters who were friends of ours, so I had no doubt that her adoption was a sure thing.

  As soon as we got back from our ride, I sorted out the puppy room. I stacked the clean towels and mopped the floor. Then I removed all the accumulated kid flotsam, as the room had been vacant ever since Oak left. I even tidied the “garden.” The puppy room was also where I raised geraniums and begonias under lights, and in the spring started vegetables and petunias from seeds. I trimmed up the bigger flowers and pulled all the dead leaves off the geraniums. I made a mental note to look up whethe
r geranium leaves were poisonous to puppies.*

  Everything was set. Then I checked my email. There was a message from OPH medical that said my nine puppies would be arriving on the Friday transport accompanied by their vaccines.

  Uh . . . NINE?

  I knew one thing—the next conversation with my husband would need to take place over a beer. Or several.

  It was a beautiful night, so we took Cat and a six-pack and hiked up the hill to our favorite spot to survey the manor. We talked about the garage we were planning to build that summer, the three college boys who were due at our house in a few hours for Easter break, how funny it was that our cat Crash loved to torment our foster dog Cat. We talked about the first-run copies of Girls’ Weekend I’d received that week that had the pages all mixed up. I suggested maybe the print screwup was a good omen. Kind of like how bad weather on a wedding day was supposed to mean a good marriage. On our wedding day, everything that could possibly fall from the sky fell from the sky, and it had been a pretty stellar marriage for twenty years. It was a nice conversation. Finally, I confessed the news of our multiplying puppies.

  Amazingly, Nick laughed when I told him there were going to be a few more than three puppies coming. Six more, exactly.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Really.”

  “How’d that happen? I thought there were three.”

  I shrugged and waited for him to say something to the effect of, well, you’re on your own with this one. Six puppies was too many last summer. No way am I helping with nine.

  “Well, that should be fun,” he said, chuckling. “How is it puppies seem to multiply with you?”

  I looked at him—checking for sobriety—and he smiled at me. I squeezed his hand.

  “You’re pretty great,” I told him.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You just are,” I told him. See? You really can teach an old dog a new trick.

  “So, now instead of twelve dogs, we only have eleven,” I explained to my parents when they arrived for Easter dinner. I’m sure I never imagined I’d say that in my lifetime.

  Cat had left the day before. Her adoption would make it harder for Nick to get his favorite contractor out here ever again. She was being adopted by Heather, whose other half was Barry, our go-to guy for all matters involving digging, block laying, paving, or moving anything large. He’d built a rock wall, regraded our hillside, yanked out a few trees, addressed our barn flooding issue, and paved our driveway in the past, and now we’d hired him to lay the block and pour the floor for our garage-building project.

  Heather met Cat the day she and Barry were here to quote the job. When Heather told Barry she wanted Cat, he said, “But we’ve almost gotten rid of the kids . . .”

  He was a softie, though, so he called a few hours later and said, “What do we have to do to get this dog?” I doubted he’d be in a hurry to come out the next time Nick called him with a job.

  Meanwhile, we were getting to know our newest guests. Addie had taken charge of naming them, and came up with a list of cast names from her beloved Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton, Eliza Hamilton, Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan, Angelica Church, Maria Reynolds, John Laurens, Peggy Van Rensselaer, and Theodosia were little furballs who swaggered and swayed like tiny, fuzzy drunk sailors as they wrestled with each other and jostled for position at the milk bar named Schuyler. Schuyler was a great mom, even though she seemed to still be a pup herself. Another BLM, she had a sweet face and a white bib and white paws. She was always happy to see me, climbing to her feet to greet me with several puppies still attached. I remember that feeling, that desperate need for adult company. Being the mom to little ones was never easy—whether you had one or nine.

  Many times, Gracie was a tough dog to love. For seven years she had rolled in horse manure every chance she got, spent entire days barking at imaginary dangers in our neighbor’s yard, and chased the cats. She had never (ever) come when she was called and threatened to take out the poor UPS guy every week.† She had regular barking fits aimed at nothing visible to the rest of us—running up and down the steps, circling the living room, racing from door to door and back to us as if she was clearly trying to tell us something. Nick would tease her, “What is it Lassie? Did Johnny fall down the well?” Whenever I complained about her, the kids came to her defense. They loved her.‡

  One stormy Saturday night not long after the puppies arrived, Gracie began one of her barking episodes. It was nearly 3:00 A.M. and I was exhausted. I’d stayed up well past midnight waiting for Addie to get home from a cast party thirty minutes away. Worried about the storm, and knowing that she would be high on the excitement of a good show, I tracked her progress on my iPhone and imagined the worst. Even after she made it home, I slept fitfully and it seemed like I had just fallen asleep when I woke to Gracie barking intensely, racing up and down the stairs between our door and the living room. I nudged Nick and got no response. I waited a few minutes hoping Gracie might settle down on her own. Nothing doing, so I dragged myself out of bed and went to see what was up.

  Gracie ran down the stairs still barking frantically. I followed her, intending to put her in her crate, but when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard it—a puppy wailing.

  When I opened the door to the puppy room and turned on the light, all the puppies were up and Schuyler was whining, pacing frantically around the pen. It took me a minute to spot the source of the screaming. Peggy V had her head stuck between the puppy fence and the board we used to extend the puppy pen. The fence is connected to the board by small carabiner clips. I never imagined there was room for a puppy in the small gap between the fence and the board, but apparently there was. Much like a monkey who put his hand in a jar, Peggy had somehow gotten her head squeezed through and when she straightened up and pulled back, it didn’t fit back out. She was trapped.

  I quickly lifted up the entire fence and board, and slipped her out. Schuyler gave her a complete once-over and then licked her until she calmed and started nursing. I snuggled a few puppies to settle myself down, then barricaded the corner so that no puppies could get trapped before we had a chance to solve the problem in daylight.

  I gave Gracie a treat and long talking to, telling her that she was my hero. Had Schuyler gotten too frantic and pushed at the walls of the pen, she could have inadvertently strangled her own puppy. I thanked my lucky stars, the powers that be, and my sweet Gracie who saved the day (night). Then I lay awake for a long time thinking how crazy it was that OPH trusted me to foster these fragile pups, and once again I’d screwed up. I knew I’d never rig up a puppy pen without thinking carefully about how all the panels were connected, but how many lessons did I need to learn? And how many lucky breaks would I get?

  I remember having similar feelings when I fumbled with my own babies years ago. Leaving the hospital with firstborn, I thought, They’re going to let me just take him? Shouldn’t someone make sure I know what I’m doing?

  But I had help—parents, friends, and books, and while there were a few close calls, my kids all survived toddlerhood more or less intact. I suppose that’s the way it’s always been. No one can do more than the best they can do. It has to be enough, and thankfully, most times, it is enough. Maya Angelou, one of my greatest writing inspirations died that year, and her words said it perfectly: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

  We had five more weeks with these precious babes . . . how would we keep them safe? Now everything looked like a potential choking hazard or a threat to their safety. Is it too hot? Too cold? Can that one breathe on the bottom of the pile? Is the water bowl too full—could one fall in it and drown? Was that a sneeze? After the Peggy-stuck-in-the-fence episode, my worrying was ratcheted up a few dozen notches.

  Sometimes when the puppies slept, they slept so hard I thought they were dead. SPDS—Sudden Puppy Death Syndrome—is there such a thing?§ I didn’t know, so I lay a quiet hand on a belly to check for breathing. Lafa
yette and Peggy slept so deeply they didn’t move, even when other puppies trampled them or I lifted their heads trying to get a reaction.

  And the laundry! Just like when I had babies and toddlers at home, the laundry was endless. Towel after towel after rag after blanket. Truly unending.

  The sounds were also reminiscent of living with babies—there was crying and whining, but there was also that wonderful snuffly sound they made when nursing. They were just learning to work their vocal chords, and the volume and repertoire grew daily.

  Probably the greatest similarity was that my days again revolved around poop. Changing the towels, cleaning up the poop, taping down new puppy pads, only to do it all again twenty minutes later. And just like babies, I’d get the pen all clean, fresh towels set out, clean water bowl filled, and then someone would poop and everyone would run through it.¶

  Schuyler reminded me of every new, exhausted, overspent mother. She loved her babies, but she was always ready to get out of that pen when I appeared with the leash. And then predictably five minutes after we’d been away from the pen, something would trigger her worries—the neighbor’s coonhounds baying on a scent, a squabble in the chicken pen, my bad-boy horse knocking over the water trough. Any commotion would have her pulling on the leash back toward the house. She wanted to be certain her babies were okay. Of course, five minutes after she was back, she’d be standing at the gate to the pen hoping I’d happen by with the leash.

  As I assisted Schuyler in weaning her own pups, I sometimes wished Nick and I had someone directing the weaning of our own kids. It would be nice to have someone say, “Okay, at exactly 16.75 years of age, your child is ready to drive the car on the interstate in the rain with another passenger whom she might or might not have a crush on. Then at 16.83 years of age, she will be able to . . .”