Did we need directions home?
Did we feel stupid?
But we were so relieved. The night had ended well, and we’d learned something key about our Juno. She was super-sensitive to pain and vocal about it. She was a dog who’d cry wolf.
Juno’s having been born with a collie-wired brain made her a genuine working dog. And my books told me in no uncertain terms that working dogs need to work; if they don’t they’ll drive you crazy.
We opted for the latter at first, and because of that, she was the first dog I ever tried to train. It was sort of fun, the training. Especially the part where you lower your voice to sound like a growl. I rehearsed it in the shower. And Juno got the “sit” in a sec, but the “stay” was a metabolic impossibility. It took me a good three months to grasp that, because it seems that I don’t train especially fast myself. Eventually, though, we found the perfect way to put Juno to work.
Millard and I and the wonderful John Dunleavy, a burly, green-thumbed Irishman who helped us with the heavy gardening (in his spare time, he chaired the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade), had, over the years, subdued the grass leading down to the water. As our own, personal sward became prettier and smoother and freer of those open spots of sewage dating from the days when—yuck—all our toilets flushed directly into the harbor, it attracted Canada geese.
There is a large population of Canada geese in the Northeast that has never learned how to migrate, so each fall and spring, we’d find forty or fifty on our lawn, eating and pooping en masse. If you haven’t had firsthand experience with geese and you think they’re gorgeous, let me just tell you: They’re dumb. Maybe all birds are dumb—even parrots. But there’s no bird as stupid as the Canada goose. All alone, it justifies the extinction of its pterodactylic forebears.
After trying to run them off with the usual remedies like plastic owls and plastic snakes and evil-tasting and wildly expensive lawn sprays (oops—geese have no sense of taste) and chasing them and flapping an imaginary apron and yelling “Shoo,” (which gets them shuffling a good foot and a half closer to the water), we fell back on our second line of defense: gimmicks. Millard had an old bullwhip, for instance, and was (sexily) adept at snapping it over their heads. Surprisingly, the crack of the sound barrier being broken scared the very stupid birds—have I mentioned they’re stupid?—into gabbling excitedly and bunching up and moving a good three feet closer to the water. Trouble was, you had to walk down on the lawn to perform this singular feat effectively, and there—as I’ve mentioned—was lots of poop on the lawn; plus, while I practiced in secret, I wasn’t, in truth, very good. So if Millard wasn’t home, I was reduced to the plain old-fashioned “shoo.” That’s why I tried the remote-controlled toy car.
Shiny red and black with lightning bolts on its sides and a generous encrustation of plastic chrome, it was a thing of tacky beauty. With its neat remote, I intended, from the porch or even from the house, to guide that mean little robot right into our resident flock and drive it—the way cowboys drive herds, sort of—into moving on. Maybe moving away, even, because the geese seemed impressed. Or at least, they did their gabbling and bunching and shuffling thing as, on its trial runs, the car-flashing its lights and whirring insanely—zoomed toward them. This was encouraging enough that I dreamily allowed myself the vision of sitting with an iced drink while unerringly guiding my private missile toward enemy hostiles. Sort of like Cape Canaveral. Except that I’d stopped smoking, and the car, regrettably, wouldn’t blow up. Equally regrettably, my missile kept getting hung up on things like tufts of persistent dandelion and the fresher clumps of poop, and ultimately, I had to relegate it to a high shelf in the workshop; graveyard of my/our failed ideas.
So at last it came to that moment when Millard and I, having tried all options short of firing off a cannon (which we’d heard was working well at local golf courses but didn’t seem quite neighborly), fell back once more, regrouped, and our eye fell speculatively on Juno.
There she was, circling, leaping, trotting, pacing and basically needing to do something useful. Needing, in fact, to herd. Would she herd anything, we wondered, or just us? We took Juno out to the water side of the house and pointed her toward the geese. And well, to say she’d been born to chase would be an effmg understatement. She LOVED chasing geese! I had merely to open the front door and whisper, go! and Juno would hurl herself down the stairs, race flat out across the grass and be among them, barking. Dumb as they were—have I said they were dumb?-in some dim, reptilian part of their tiny brains, they recognized our girl as the hairy threat she certainly was, and in a great flap of wings, with incensed, excited honks, they’d lift off, as one, for greener, safer shores.
I haven’t mentioned that at the end of the lawn, where our bulkhead dwindled away, there was a little beachy stretch scattered with sharp stones and horseshoe crab shells and snotty strings of seaweed. One afternoon, as I sent my avenging angel off to work, the goose flock, instead of taking off for some less risky toilet, decided just to fly into the water twenty feet or so offshore, where it settled down gracefully to float and nonchalantly preen itself until the nuisance went away. Juno, revved up, heedless and possibly running too fast to stop, hurtled toward the beach and splashed in after them.
Shit! I hadn’t even known she could swim!
But not only could she swim, she was a Flipper in fur. It took only seconds for her to paddle out and create minor havoc among those astonished, imbecile geese which—Just as they did on land—swam two feet away and honked. With Juno hot on their tails.
Then somehow, her overexcited eye fell on a flock of mallards even farther from shore, and hey, something new to herd. She shifted objectives. She was close to a third of the way across the harbor when I began to panic.
“Juno! Juno! Come, Juno! Come, Juno!”
“Come on, good girl! Come ! ”
Juno didn’t come.
One chilly late fall day, just months after we’d first moved in, we’d watched a yellow Lab and her pup paddle past our house and head determinedly down the harbor—our brackish harbor, with its strong currents and eight-foot tides. Millard and I were on our knees in the garden, but we thought we recognized those dogs; they lived with a neighboring duck hunter, perhaps a half mile away. What the older dog didn’t see, but we did, was that her pup was tiring and falling behind. The autumnal water was icy and the two were swimming against the current. Even as we watched, the smaller dog paddled a few strokes and stopped, struggled to keep its head above water. It did, at last, but the effort cost it, and it was falling farther and farther behind. It was a game little pup, but it was failing.
We realized, just then, that the tide seemed to be carrying the two closer to our shore, and Millard and I tore down to the beach to try to drag them in before the puppy drowned. The bigger Lab, when we finally got to her, was wretched and shivering, but the little one was still, its tongue lolling out. Bundling both of them in blankets, we drove them to their home and later, much later, phoned their owner, afraid to hear. The pup hadn’t died. But it had been close.
So I watched aghast as Juno moved purposefully into the current, herding a flock that now seemed to be moving inexorably away from our shore. Damn it, why didn’t they fly? And how strong a swimmer was our Juno. Who’d never been wet before? I was in the midst of stripping off my shoes, socks and jacket to go in after her when I remembered what a substandard swimmer I am and, forgetting my shoes, turned to run for help. And then ... as in that classic New Yorkermath cartoon ... A Miracle Occurred.
Remember the sheepherding thing?
Well, somehow, even as she was paddling away, Juno was keeping an eye on the shore, and having spotted a far more important sheep getting away (me, running toward the house in nightmare-like slow motion), she turned from the ducks and began to paddle back to the beach to catch me. Bounding up the shingle and across the grass and shaking off the freezing salt water, she dashed into my arms.
So that was the end of goose duty or of any p
ractical employment for hyper Juno other than to show people how nicely she could barely “sit” (never, ever “stay”) and what a superstar she was at going up for a Frisbee.
Chapter Eight
Dog People
Surprisingly, it was the nineties already, and surprisingly, we’d begun to earn more money. In honor of our newfound almost-wealth, and because I’d never been one to allow money to sit around, let alone pile up and turn into more money, I decided, among several other less defensible indulgences, to have my groceries delivered. I found a way to rationalize this luxury by telling my friends it was a lot cheaper than going to the supermarket. Cheaper, because let loose among aisles stocked with gorgeously colored boxes, shiny bottles and slithery packets all chirping “New” and “Improved” and “Drink Me,” and given some even moderately inoffensive supermarket music and a little air-conditioning, I could be counted on to bring home a couple of just about everything. In olden times, before supermarkets, I often had my groceries delivered because each food category came from a separate store: the butcher store, the grocery store, the bakery; plus, milk was delivered daily. At your back door. In bottles. So if you found yourself stuck at home in a third-floor apartment in a Boston suburb with a toddler and no car, you called up the butcher and the baker and ordered. On the one hand, the butcher and the baker knew you by sight and knew what grind of hamburger or type of fruit pie you liked, so you didn’t really have to go. On the other hand, a toddler could be so numbingly boring that now and then, you just had to get out of the house.
This looks like I’m wandering, I know, but it’s all leading up to Jimmy Cagney.
A new supermarket delivery man—his name was Eddie—appeared at my front door one morning. At the sound of the bell, Emma and Juno, barking the alarm, raced to see who would be first to get to the door, to the porch, to the stranger, to widdle on his shoes. It could get really hairy in those first few moments as I struggled not to open the door wide enough for them to burst through and leap upon whomever had rung while trying simultaneously to maneuver the smaller parcels into the house through the crack, smiling like crazy all the while so as not to seem like some cartoon of a suspicious, mad-dog-owning homeowner. Of course in not opening that door, I was being careful, too, because I know there are people who are afraid of dogs. For such unenlightened souls, I’d hung a small bronze plaque above the bell. “Beware of the dogs,” it cautioned. In Latin. (There’s a dangerous charm to living on the edge of lawsuits.)
Eddie, however, was almost as happy to see my pups as they were to see him and invited them out onto the porch where he rubbed their heads briskly, the way men do.
“I love dogs,” he said, handing me my bags while Juno and Emma frantically inhaled his pants. “My wife breeds dogs.”
“Oh (that explained the pants), really?” I said, politely, semi-interested. “What kind?”
“Jack Russells,” Eddie replied. “Know what they are?”
“Do I know what they are? I’ve owned three.”
“No kidding? We just had a litter. Want to see a picture?” asked Satan.
And that’s how Jimmy Cagney—essence and distillate of Jack—came into our lives. Tiny, rollicking, nippy, tough, barky, demanding and, oh, boy, cute, Jimmy was the embodiment of Irish-ness. And why we hired Norah. Or to be completely honest, part of why we hired Norah. The rest of the story was, well ... I was beginning to get a little creaky. I no longer worked outdoors when the thermometer dropped below fifty, and I’d told Millard very firmly that I didn’t want to carry any more furniture up the stairs while walking backward. Forward, though, was still okay. Our house was magically growing larger and larger, however, and somehow (well, of course I knew how) it was accruing much too much in the way of dustable stuff: furniture, porcelain tidbits, taxidermed birds, tiny boxes, pictures, immovable marbles and general junk. Plus, I was writing all the time. I needed household help.
Have I justified that sufficiently?
I started by contacting employment agencies and after two or three false starts, one of them sent out this small and wiry Irish angel, though I was dubious at her interview. She wasn’t young. She was about my age, I guessed. (Though, what with Botox and highlights and various nips—no tucks—it had been getting increasingly difficult to know what “my age” looked like anymore.) And Norah McNelis, who arrived at my door with short blond hair and deep (untreated) smile lines, looked to be—well, maybe not young enough for this job? Sure, she was sinewy and thin, but she didn’t look like she was strong enough to run up and down our many stairs; to go out for the mail in the snow; to help me look after three hairy dogs. Three is a lot of dogs. But after we’d finished with the obligatory walk-through and I realized that, remarkably, she hadn’t said a word about the hair-covered chairs or the hair-covered stair carpet or all those flights of stairs, and hadn’t even seemed to register the millions of dustables, I was encouraged. Though still unsure. We stepped outside to sit on the porch glider and chat a little more. She was polite and somewhat stiff, and I was at my most formal and adult. (I mean, it had taken me long enough to acquire a little gravitas; I needed to take it out and dust it off every now and then.) All this time, I’d been carrying baby Jimmy Cagney to keep him out from underfoot, and I plopped him on my lap as we talked.
“Do you think you can handle this job, Norah? ”
Norah had that divine Kerry accent, which I won’t try to do phonetically. She might get mad.
“Well, I do think I can handle it, but,” she said, and here, she reached for my squishy Jimmy Cagney pup, lifted him out of my arms and held him up to look him in the eye, “the best thing about this job is the dogs.”
And that was that.
Millard and I were turning into semi—Dog People by default. We’d never assist at a whelping or dock a tail, and I can’t say I ever quite got the hang of plucking out Emma’s dead hair (“stripping”), but by my reckoning, Dog People is what you automatically become when you own three or more dogs. That un-looked-for achievement, plus my now almost-lifetime of experience, had led me to believe I knew a little about how dogs think. I could tell, for example, when they were anxious about something strange (one forefoot in the air), unless they were anxious about an approaching thunderstorm, in which case there’d be pacing, wandering from room to room, trembling, whining and trying to hide under a table. I could tell when the dogs were happy, because they’d blink their eyes slowly and pant slightly and stretch their lips into a gummy “smile.” I liked—and still like—to catch them dreaming. Their muffled yips alert me to their dreams, along with that faint running movement of their paws. Though I worry as I watch. Are they chasing or being chased? I hope they’re chasing.
I’d gotten quite comfortable, too, with the fact that when they were licking my hand, it was either because I’d been sweating or because I’d recently handled something tasty—not because they loved me. (Juno, though, has always licked twice for a head scratch.) It’s never failed to surprise me that all my dogs have understood the various names I’ve given them beyond their formal names; that I actually got a response to calls for Deeviedog, and Julioollio and Jujypuss, and way back there, Balooneyooney. And I like to watch them watching me. Is she getting ready to go out? (Time to start pacing.) She’s finishing dinner now—maybe there’s something left for me. (I’ll just go sit subtly on her feet.) It impresses me, too, that my dogs can tell perfect time within fifteen minutes of dinner, walk time and my bedtime. Dogs are smart. (In fact, those I live with these days seem to be able to count the number of times my phone rings: steady, regularly spaced rings are normal, requiring no action; two quick rings are the signal that someone’s coming up the elevator and it’s time to go berserk; three stuttery rings are the fax machine, which every so often is fun to watch.) And I’m amused by every dog I see trotting purposefully down the street as if it knows exactly where it’s going and what excellent thing it’s going to do or find or eat when it gets there.
So Millard and I were pre
tty comfortable with our dogs. In the thirty or so years since I’d consigned Fluffy to one hairy floor, we’d come to believe that we’d experienced, and more or less successfully dealt with, every possible type of dog behavior and problem:Aggression
Anxiety
Shedding
Humping
House soiling
House destruction
Clothing destruction
Carpet soiling
Dog sick (which, for obvious reasons, I haven’t dwelled on much)
Dog sickness
Dog loss
Emma had stopped eating.
We called the vet and the vet found a lump.
We started chemo, and after her first injection, Millard sat on the carpet in the living room with Emma cradled in his arms and said—to no one in particular—“We’ll spend whatever it takes.”
We did. But nothing helped. There was no help for our gentle Emma, who spent her last days crouched in the niche between a table and a chair on the cool tiles of the hall. Norah tried to soothe her poor face with a damp washcloth, but Jimmy Cagney and Juno wouldn’t go near her. And when she stopped eating, when the tumors became too numerous, when they were on top of her head and around her eyes, I called the vet who came to the house and took her away.
I can’t forgive myself for not going with her.
Millard made it a point to not be at home.
Miscellaneous thinkers and writers have commented on the configuration of the Heaven to which our lost, loved animals go.
Pablo Neruda had this to say about a favorite dog:... but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any promised heaven in the sky for any human being, I believe in a heaven I’ll never enter. Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
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