Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life (20 page)

I WAS DRIVING ALICE TO SCHOOL WHEN I NOTICED A BROWN
dog trotting down the sidewalk. The dog—even from a distance, an obviously sociable mutt—nosed a woman walking past and attempted to play with her dog, a taupe poodle in a plaid coat. With minimal effort, the woman and her poodle ignored the brown interloper who, sensing a cold shoulder, proceeded to sit back on her haunches and have a good scratch. This entire scene played out in a leafy residential neighborhood that borders a commercial boulevard near Alice’s school. I glanced up and down the street but could see no one calling out for a wayward pet. The dog had no collar and her paws were filthy. She finished her ear scratch, gave the sidewalk a quick surveillance, and loped off toward the busy avenue. My stomach sank.

From the back seat, Alice said, “I don’t think that dog has a person.”

“I think you’re right,” I said.

I pulled over to the curb and got out. Realistically, if the dog was lost, it would be in a mild panic and wouldn’t let me get anywhere near it. I was afraid it might bolt directly into the busy avenue and the outcome would be horrible.

I said softly, “Hey, sweetie, you lost?” I beckoned with I-know-the-good-scratching-places fingers.

The dog grinned widely. She dropped down on dog elbows and crawled, soldier style, to me. She rolled on her back and
licked my toes. Ten minutes later, Alice and I drove up to school with a pungent-footed guest licking my ear from the passenger seat. Alice gathered her school stuff and opened the back door.

“I think we should call her Macy,” she pronounced.

“I think we should call her Temporary,” I countered. Our dog at the time, Polly, was quite literally a cranky bitch of a certain age who viewed any attempt to interact with her as a gross invasion of privacy. We were going to remain a one-dog family.

That afternoon, I took Temporary Macy to our local animal hospital. She had no identifying chip. I checked the neighborhood where we found her. There were no “missing dog” signs taped to the telephone poles so I put up a dozen “found dog” signs and checked her into a nearby kennel. I boarded her for a week, visiting every day for pats and a walk, but no one responded to my signs. This was not entirely surprising as Temporary Macy was a mix of a couple of breeds frequently bred for urban protection or fighting; if they don’t show promise, they’re thrown away like old munitions. Actually, my affectionate ward was lucky, as many of her not-aggressive siblings are tormented to make them more vicious or, failing that, used for bait.

When I would visit her at the kennel, Temporary Macy would greet me with the kind of adoration reserved for those who have taken a bullet for the Pope. The kennel workers grew so fond of her they let her sleep under their feet while they worked the desk. It was abundantly clear she was domesticated, warmly social, and in crying need of a home. After a week passed, I decided to find her one. I knew it was time because finding her a home was the right thing to do and also because her kennel bill was beginning to wander up into weekend-escape-at-the-Ritz-Carlton territory.

I have never written a personal ad, but I cannot imagine making any greater effort to present someone in a more favorable light. I used phrases like “good listener,” “attractive,” “easy to please,” and “mellow.” I didn’t mention how she likes long walks on the beach, picnics in front of a roaring fire, and exotic out-of-the-way restaurants, nor did I take off ten pounds or puff up her academic credentials, but I think I hit every other cliché of the genre. I did say she was “submissive” and “easy to control,” which I suspect are familiar to readers of a different type of personal ad.

Within a few days, I had the good fortune to find her a home with friends of ours. Their son Dennis was slightly timid when it came to canine companionship but they felt such a mellow dog would be a natural introduction. The parents had never owned dogs before but Temporary Macy was so cheerful and easygoing, how hard could it be?

I wasn’t promising them something just to get the dog off my hands. She was an eight-month-old sweetheart who seemed to need very little in the way of exercise beyond a walk a day. She was housebroken, quiet, and lived to sleep with her head on your feet. I didn’t quite understand how a dog with at least two breeds in her that are known for energy and endurance was such a couch potato, but who was I to question the way of the dog? They named her Ursula, for her bear-like qualities. I considered the matter closed.

Three days later, I got the first phone call.

“Quinn,” my friend began hesitantly. “Ursula ate a potato chip and now she’s coughing.”

“She might have scratched her throat. She’s a tough puppy. She’ll be better by tomorrow,” I said reassuringly.

Two days later: “She seems to be happy and very active, but she’s still coughing.”

“She might have gotten kennel cough,” I said, slightly less confidently. “If it doesn’t clear up by tomorrow, take her to see the vet.”

The next day she was drooling bile, coughing, and unable to stand. They raced her to the vet to learn that their new family member had something like pneumonia, only nastier. The next week for them was a blur of multiple medications crammed down Ursula’s throat by plastic syringe, mopping pools of bile from the floor, and explaining to Dennis that if the dog fell down and didn’t get back up, to come find Mommy and Daddy right away. Imagine
Lassie
meets
ER
, with a little
Exorcist
thrown in for texture.

And who was responsible for this blameless family going through such an awful experience? That would be me. I spent a lot of time on the phone saying things like, “I am so sorry…I just didn’t know…You have to get up to medicate how often? Oh, God. I am so sorry.”

A week passed, and then two. Slowly, Ursula got better. My friend was able to throw away the syringes. Ursula improved. She became healthy. She went beyond healthy into radiant, then energetic, then positively robust. We discovered a new layer to Ursula. What we had taken to be a mellow disposition was, in retrospect, the first symptoms of a life-threatening illness.

Healthy Ursula had enough energy to pull a Humvee full of cinderblocks up Pikes Peak. Healthy Ursula thought the proper way to greet people was to jump on them, knock them down, and stand on their sternum. Healthy Ursula ate shoes. Also doors. Healthy Ursula was a pet I
never
would have placed with a family looking for their first dog.

A month passed, and then another. I would hear stories from Ursula’s family and they weren’t great. These kind people had neither the time nor experience to be consistent and firm owners, which is the only way you can train an exuberant and willful puppy. She was getting stronger. The family was weakening. Unless Ursula could help out with mortgage payments, something had to give.

Saturday morning, I got a call. My friend was in tears.

“We just can’t do it,” she wailed. “She’s the sweetest girl in the world, but I’m down to one pair of work shoes. She just won’t stop and she won’t listen. Would you please take her back?”

I looked around at Polly, my sullen elderly dog, at Lulabelle, my aggressively dog-loathing cat, and my child who doesn’t especially like being licked or knocked over.

“Sure,” I said with something that sounded almost like enthusiasm.

My job as Ursula’s rescuer had just entered its you-rescue-it, you-own-it phase. Without proper and consistent training, Ursula would be bounced from house to house, getting weirder and wilder with each stay. She could end up in a shelter. In Los Angeles County, twenty-four hours after an “owner turn-in,” a dog of her breed is destroyed. The only way I was going to save her sweet bouncy hide was by becoming the toughest alpha bitch in this area code.

Luckily, this comes naturally to me, which is odd because I have a cellular loathing of conflict and a hair-trigger reflex to be helpful—two characteristics rarely associated with strong leaders. As I understand it, Napoleon seldom offered to water people’s plants when they were out of town. Still, if being obsti
nate means saving a life, I can put my niceness in storage with the winter gloves and old tax returns and get down to business. Which is why, on an overcast and colorless Monday afternoon, I walked through their front yard, past the Ursula-sized holes dug into the lawn, past the macerated garden gnome and the odd designer-shoe carcass to play full-throttle, one-on-one,
who’s-your-bitch
with Ursula. The front door opened and Ursula, having seen me through the window, leapt in joyful greeting, aiming straight for my collarbone. I took her leash quickly, snapped it sharply, and barked, “SIT!”

The nose muzzle on her training leash did its job. Ursula froze for an instant, blinked in confusion, then rose back up on her hind legs and attempted to lead me in a waltz.

“SIT!” This time even sharper and meaner.

Again, she froze. I pressed her backside down. She sat.

I sang out merrily, “Good sit!” My voice had shifted from a sadistic Marine drill instructor to Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Hearing a sweet tone, Ursula made for my shoulders again.

“SIT!” I pressed her backside down. She sat.

“Good sit!”

The rapid-fire toggle between my tone before the sit (
Full Metal Jacket
) and after the sit (
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
) would have alarmed any reasonably alert psychologist. As it was, we hadn’t even left the front porch and this sweet overgrown puppy was already bewildered. We said a quick good-bye to her old family, who shut the door behind us with the speed and resolve of prison guards. Ursula looked up at me with something approaching hope.

“Come, Ursula.”

She leapt like Pegasus toward the front gate. I grabbed her by the collar.

“SIT!”

We composed ourselves.

“Come, Ur…SIT!”

I grabbed her by the muzzle, looked deeply into her eyes, and growled sharply. I don’t suggest this was to be my Christmas card image, but it worked. She sat stock still, whining softly in confusion. This was nowhere near as much fun as chewing shoes.

After a moment to demonstrate the depth and breadth of my authority, we started off again, Ursula walking meekly beside me. We made it all the way to their gate—a distance of about five yards—when it occurred to Ursula:
Why, if I could just take this unspeakable thing off my snout, I could run as I please and show the world what a well-muscled dog with bad manners can really do!
She flung herself against the gate, attempting to work the muzzle off by rubbing her nose against the hinge. I grabbed her by the collar in an attempt to get her forelegs up.

“SIT!”

Seen from the outside, I’m sure it appeared I was trying to lynch her. I finally got her back into sit and while she pouted, I plotted. A full “heel” position (dog’s right shoulder at your left hip, keeping pace with you while walking) might be more than she was capable of on her first walk. I decided to go for “walk,” which would be dog at my left side, slightly behind me, on a loose leash. This was all theoretical, as “heel” and “walk” both imply traveling more than seven inches forward at any one time.
Meanwhile, the El Greco clouds, until then patchy and benign, thickened noiselessly overhead.

“Ursula, WALK!”

We stepped out of the gate. Ursula leapt ahead of me, as expected. What I did next must have entertained anyone who happened to look out their window.

You can’t leash train a dog by dragging it by the collar because all you teach the dog is that this particular human has this weird fondness for randomly compressing its trachea. You have two choices. You can stop walking entirely until they happen to look up at you, to see if you died, and then start the walk again at your pace; or, you can walk quickly in a circle, using their forward momentum to neatly place them behind you.

So, I walked in a circle. Ursula ended up at my left side, a couple of inches behind me.

“Ursula, WALK!”

I began to notice how my dog-encouraging voice sounds uncannily like Mary Poppins. Ursula took two steps in the correct position. Then she saw a leaf and hurtled forward.

“SIT!”

She was now officially miserable. Inconsistent-yet-fun parents were becoming a distant memory. In this new life, she was somehow attached to Evil Psycho Stepmother. She lay down and sighed, nose between her paws. A fat drop of rain hit the ground an inch away. I tugged her back into a sitting position.

“Ursula, WALK!”

We almost made it to the next house this time before a raindrop on her back caused her to lose focus. We trudged in another tight circle and reestablished equilibrium.

We got another five feet before she decided to make a break for it, just for old times’ sake.

“SIT!”

The good news was that she was sitting without my having to push her back down anymore. The bad news was that she wouldn’t put her butt all the way on the wet ground, so it was less “sit,” more “hover.” I decided to accept it on technical points.

“Ursula, WALK!”

Ursula leapt away from the wet ground in relief, aiming to lick my jugular.

“SIT!”

She sat, her whole body language radiating misery. I looked at her in sympathy. All this shouting and circle-walking was in order to save her life, but she didn’t know that. In this game, both the saviors and the saved lead lonely lives. It was raining steadily now and I leaned over and rubbed her ear.

She took this as a sign that this obeying silliness was over and that we could be ballroom dancing partners again.

“SIT!”

The very instant after I yelled, there was a rumble of thunder so deep and resonant I felt it in my spine. The dog stayed in sit, but stared up at the sky in absolute terror. I was yelling at her and God was yelling at her. This was by definition a bad-dog day. We squelched onward. Either she was finally learning the basic rules of “walk” or the by-now torrential rain sapped her of her fight. It was certainly draining away mine. I have new respect for anyone who trains dogs in Scotland.

Ursula and I walked two whole blocks this way. It took an hour and a half. I popped her into my car where I spent another twenty minutes convincing her that I didn’t want her to drive,
thank you. Then I brought her home, enjoying the last few minutes of quiet before not one single living thing in my house was happy.