The Lost Dogs

by Jim Gorant

  It was a bright morning in mid-December, and Stirling and her husband, Davor Mrkoci, had made the short drive from outside Baltimore to D.C. to retrieve Jasmine from the Washington Animal Rescue League. Their station wagon had a built-in grate that enclosed the back section and Catalina had lined the area with blankets to make it more comfortable.

  Jasmine, locked in a sort of living rigor mortis, lay where she was placed, silent and motionless. Stirling had heard from others that many of the dogs peed or puked on their car rides home, but Jasmine did none of that. Stirling would’ve preferred a few body fluids—any signs of life—to the otherwise catatonic state Jasmine displayed.

  When the couple reached their suburban home, in a cul-de-sac at the bottom of a hill, they lifted Jasmine out and carried her into the backyard, where she remained motionless. Then Stirling brought out her other three dogs: Rogue, a Lab mix; Sophie, a blind fifteen-year-old cocker spaniel; and Reymundo, a shepherd mix. While Stirling held Jasmine’s leash she introduced the new housemates one by one. To Catalina’s surprise, Jasmine stirred.

  She perked up. Her whole body changed, became more relaxed. She stood. Her legs were bent, her back hunched, and her head and tail lowered, but she was up. She walked a little. She sniffed at the other dogs. She was suddenly, and literally, if only in the smallest way, animated. Stirling had found the moment hopeful, although she had to admit she had no idea how the Jasmine experiment would turn out.

  A lifelong dog lover, Catalina had grown up in Argentina, where the family’s German shepherd, Malebo, would walk with her to school every morning, then take himself home after she went inside. At sixteen she moved to the States and studied painting in college. Afterward she was looking for a job to pay the bills while she worked on her art when she stumbled upon an opening at the Washington, D.C., Humane Society. If she had to work at a real job, she might as well do something that allowed her to be close to animals. For better or worse, the position was in the Society’s abuse and neglect division, and working with dogs and cats that had been mistreated or ignored became much more than a job. It was an emotional roller coaster.

  After two years, Stirling was burned out, so she left to manage a doggie day care, moving from the world of injured and forgotten animals to the universe of pampered pets. It was an interesting contrast, but one Catalina did not study long; a year later she and Davor relocated to San Francisco. In California, Stirling started her own dog-walking and pet-sitting business. Every day it was just her and seven or eight dogs. As if that wasn’t enough canine time, she also began volunteering with a rescue group. The doggy-filled hours were wonderful, but three years later she became pregnant, and she and Davor decided to move back East to be close to family.

  They packed their four dogs in the car and drove across the country. When motherhood arrived, in the form of a son, Nino, it was gratifying and lovely, but it did not quell Catalina’s drive to work with dogs. She began volunteering in the Baltimore City Shelter. There, she met the people who ran a rescue group called Recycled Love, and she began working with them, too.

  Over ten years of caring for animals, she had been involved with hundreds of dogs and had developed a special keenness for taking on the hardest cases. For a time she had a German shepherd with aggression issues and she spent a lot time studying what caused such problems and how to alleviate them. She had nursed several scared and shut-down dogs back to a state of stability and happiness. She had seen a lot, although she had never seen anything as bad as Jasmine.

  There was a room in Catalina’s basement, finished and tidy with a big window that let in a lot of sunlight. She painted it a calming blue color and set a roomy dog crate on the floor. She filled the crate with soft blankets and a toy or two. Then she placed Jasmine inside, the way one might place a vase on a table or a clock on the mantel.

  The dog would not walk into the crate on her own, and she hardly moved once she was inside. She simply lay in one spot and stared out at the world around her, stared at Stirling. It didn’t matter if Catalina left the door open or closed, stayed or left, brought the other dogs in or kept them away. Jasmine stayed put—not flinching, not stretching, not even, it seemed, blinking.

  For the first few days the dog would not drink or eat, at all. Finally, Stirling simply left bowls of food and water just outside the crate and left the room, closing the door behind her. Only then would Jasmine inch out of her vault and partake.

  Four or five times a day, Stirling picked Jasmine up and carried her outside. As always, the dog went rigid at the touch, and Catalina hauled her like a FedEx delivery to the yard. She put Jasmine down on the grass, and the dog lay motionless, staring at her. Only after Stirling backed away, went inside, and closed the door would Jasmine get up and relieve herself. Then she would skulk across the yard to a hole in the ground she’d found. She would crawl down into the hole and resume her frozen vigil, staring out at the world around her like a statue.

  When she was not outside, she spent almost all her time in the crate. Although the door was almost always left open, Jasmine never ventured out. Whenever Stirling came in, the dog would stare at her with an intensity that was unnerving. Anywhere Catalina went in the room, anything she did, Jasmine fixed her with a steady gaze. There was nothing threatening about it—as always the dog kept her head down—but it was inescapable and unchanging.

  In the evenings, Catalina would go into the room, put on a soft light, play soothing music, and simply sit near the crate. She was hoping to help Jasmine decompress and relax and to start forming a bond. She would offer treats and toys, but as always Jasmine was unmoved. If Catalina tried to pet Jasmine, the dog would tremble. Jasmine just stared. Every time Stirling looked over, all she saw were those eyes, and she came to think of the dog as two brown circles boring into her. When Jasmine stared like that her ears were perked up, and the bent one asked, what, when, why?

  Catalina was beginning to have some questions of her own. Perhaps it came from all the years working with dogs, but she had developed an inner sense, an almost animal instinct, that she followed unerringly. When she had first gone to see Jasmine at WARL, she had not analyzed the prospect of taking the dog. She hadn’t weighed the potential impact on her family or what the odds of actually helping the dog might be. She simply felt it. Deep within her she felt that she wanted to help. She needed to help. And she had gone with that feeling.

  Now, though, the first shades of doubt occasionally flashed through her mind. Had she been wrong? The stakes were high. Just because many of the Vick dogs were in foster homes, it didn’t mean they were home free. Each dog was officially undergoing a six-month period of observation, and it was still a possibility that any dog could be deemed dangerous or mentally unstable to the point that its status might change. The powers that be could determine that any given dog might have to be moved from a home to a sanctuary or might even have to be euthanized. Already, BAD RAP had voluntarily sent one dog, Mya, to Best Friends because she proved too damaged for the outside world.

  Catalina was determined to keep anything like that from happening to Jasmine, but she knew that if the dog continued to struggle, hard questions would follow. She never had any illusions that it would be easy, that it would be anything but a long, difficult process requiring patience and will, but it had been four weeks and the dog was still lost in the woods of southern Virginia. Catalina did not know if Jasmine would ever make it out of there.

  Despite the lack of progress, Stirling continued to follow her instincts. She may have wondered if Jasmine would ever reach the hoped-for state of recovery, but she never questioned her decision to take Jasmine in.

  Catalina considered what she had to work with. The one thing that had any noticeable effect on Jasmine were the other dogs. By now, Catalina was certain it was safe to let Jasmine mingle with her other pets. She’d observed them together many times and she could sense that Jasmine would not attempt to harm them. She could see that Jasmine needed other dogs. Jasmine had grown up in a world
of animals and she felt safer and more comfortable among her own kind.

  By following her instincts Catalina was about to tap into a very powerful influence of dog behavior, the pack instinct. Canine motivations can be broken into a few key areas: survival, food, and companionship. Survival includes the drive to find shelter, procreate, and defend oneself, which comes in the form of fight-or-flight instincts. In that regard, Jasmine had established her crate as a den and since she had been spayed there was no procreative drive. In the fight-or-flight equation she’d clearly given up the fight and that was not a bad thing; it was the constant state of flight or withdrawal that had to be undone. The food drive includes not just eating, but any behavior associated with hunting or gathering food, and while Jasmine did consistently eat, she wouldn’t come out of her crate when someone was around and she never displayed the sort of tracking and chasing behavior associated with hunting, which indicated that she was not very deeply moved by those instincts. The companionship drive reflects the need dogs have to integrate themselves into a social order, the pack. Catalina could see that this instinct was still strong in Jasmine.

  In the yard with Rogue, Sophie, and Reymundo, Jasmine continued to show her only signs of life. She interacted with them, sniffing and walking and occasionally rubbing up against them. Moreover, she looked like a different dog during these times. She was more relaxed and comfortable and seemed almost normal.

  Stirling needed to use this to her advantage. Jasmine was now on a pretty steady schedule. She got food in the morning, which as always, she ate in solitude. Every two hours Stirling would carry Jasmine out to the yard, where she would pee and then sit in the hole in the ground. In the evenings Catalina would feed her again and then sit with her, playing soft music. At night she would let all three dogs out together in the yard.

  Jasmine always had a leash dragging behind her, and one night Stirling put leashes on the other dogs, too. She held these leashes as the dogs walked in the yard, and when Jasmine went to join them, Catalina picked up Jasmine’s leash in the other hand.

  Jasmine stopped and looked back at her. She looked at the other dogs, sniffing their way across the yard. Jasmine seemed to be weighing her options. She wanted to walk with the other dogs, but she was nervous about the leash and Stirling’s proximity.

  After a moment she moved forward. She walked with the other dogs. She went a few steps, then stopped and lay down, frozen again. Stirling dropped the leash and Jasmine went straight to her hole in the ground. It was over in an instant, but it had been something new. Something to build on.

  The next night Stirling repeated the process and again Jasmine walked a few steps with the other dogs while Catalina held the leash. She kept at it each night until she could take all three dogs on short walks around the yard.

  It wasn’t much, but it was progress, and Stirling would take whatever she could get. It had been nearly two months now and nothing else had changed with Jasmine. She still would not eat with anyone in the room. She shook when Stirling came near, had to be carried outside and in—stiff and petrified—and would not be touched. Everything scared her. Voices from upstairs, footsteps anywhere, would set Jasmine to trembling. Stirling had never had so much trouble earning a dog’s trust, but the success in the yard gave her new hope.

  She redoubled her efforts, using the other dogs to buy Jasmine’s trust however she could. Every night when she played the soft music, she would bring the other dogs in the room and simply sit, petting the other dogs and relaxing. From the safety of her crate Jasmine watched, unmoving, those intense eyes burning into Stirling.

  Stirling took to bribery, too. From time to time she’d randomly pop her head in the door of Jasmine’s room and throw a treat across the floor. The dog would never move to retrieve the snack while she was there, but when she came back later it was always gone. Still, Jasmine did nothing to acknowledge it. Most dogs would recognize the routine and send some sort of signal—a tail wag, a yawn, a snout lick, something—to show their appreciation, but Jasmine offered nothing, just those two brown eyes, shining out of the crate.

  The second month passed and so did the third. It was the same thing every day, over and over. Breakfast, dinner, hauling in and out. Jasmine sitting in the crate. Alone. Staring. Jasmine sitting in the hole in the yard. She interacted a little with the other dogs, she took her short walk on the leash, she stared out from the crate as Stirling and the other dogs sat in the soft light.

  Something had to give.

  30

  ON HIS SECOND DAY with Jonny Rotten, Cris Cohen was up at 6:45. Jonny had slept quietly through the night and Cohen was happy to see that he hadn’t had any accidents in the crate. By 7:00 they had negotiated the stairs and were out on the street. Jonny was excited and scattered, but better than he had been on the first day. He still jumped from side to side, and he alternated between stopping short and pulling forward, but he wasn’t tying up Cohen in knots.

  As they walked, Cohen started to get an idea of what Jonny did and didn’t like. He was very interested in people and wanted to say hello to everyone they passed. He didn’t seem to care much about dogs. Garbage trucks were a definite dislike. The first one they passed sent Jonny scrambling in three directions at once, eyes popping, head swiveling, nails scratching against the concrete in an effort to escape. He didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go, but he didn’t want to stick around.

  Cohen felt sorry for the little guy and tried to calm him, but he also had to fight back a chuckle. In his moment of uncoordinated panic, Jonny reminded Cris of Scooby Doo. Whenever Scooby saw a ghost (which happened with alarming frequency), he would go into a leg-spinning, head-twisting retreat accompanied by the cartoon sound effects of speedy footsteps, klonks, bonks, crashes, and breaking glass. Out on the sidewalks of San Francisco, Jonny had just gone totally Scooby.

  It wouldn’t be the last time that day. Everything was new to him, and while he spent 85 percent of the walk wagging his tail as he explored, the other 15 percent included less happy interactions with the real world. Still, they made it to the Lawton School, a small building two blocks away, before turning for home. As they paused in front of the school Jonny looked up at Cohen with his head tilted. A tall, wide set of stairs led up to the building’s front door, and Jonny seemed to be asking, “Do I have to go up those?”

  When Cohen ignored the steps and turned for home the little dog pulled ahead of him, crossing back and forth as he went so that Cris stumbled comically over the leash.

  After his big morning adventure Jonny had the day to relax in his crate, chewing on a few toys and basking in the sun. But when Cohen came home at 5:00 P.M., it was back to work. This time they walked through Golden Gate Park, a place full of dogs. Sure enough, they had hardly entered the park when one approached. The dog seemed like it wanted to come over and Cohen wasn’t sure how Jonny would react. He made sure to place himself between Jonny and the other dog. As it passed, Jonny looked over but seemed to have little interest. Jonny knew it was a dog; he saw it, but he didn’t care. The pattern repeated itself several times with other dogs and each time the result was the same.

  This was great news, and it made Cohen feel positive about Jonny’s long-term prospects. Sure, the little guy was scattered and scared and full of misdirected energy, but he was people-friendly and had no interest in messing with other dogs.

  As Cohen reflected on these things, he felt a sudden jolt in his shoulder. A crow was hopping along the ground just off the path. Yes, Jonny was fine with dogs, but he wanted a piece of that bird like nobody’s business. How many times had a big black menace like this one teased him from the trees while Jonny was chained up in the woods? Cohen had no idea, but he made a mental note. Crows: not a fan.

  After a nice dinner, Jonny retreated to his crate. He was wiped out, and by 7:30 he’d crashed. The house filled with the sound of his sweet little snores.

  Jonny and Cris were out by 6:00 A.M. the next day. Cohen had started to work with Jonny on heel
ing and the little guy was getting the hang of the leash, so they made more progress, marching right past the school and on to Sunset Playground. A set of bleachers stood next to a field, and Cohen took Jonny over to check it out. Cohen looked up at the long row of steps. He looked at the dog. It was worth a try, he thought.

  Maybe it was the open-air setting. Maybe it was that there were few distractions, but Jonny went up and down those stairs without a problem. For the first time, Jonny seemed a little more focused and Cohen figured that the steady exercise was helping settle him.

  But Cris had to work a little late that night and when he got home at 6:00, Jonny was a ball of energy. On their walk, Jonny was hyper. He scrambled around and he jumped up and down so steadily that Cris felt as if he were walking down the street dribbling a basketball. At the playground the sound of screaming children distracted him and made him uneasy, as did the wind, and the cars and the crunching leaves underfoot. As well as Jonny had done that morning, he was equally unfocused that night.

  Not all was lost, though. At dinnertime Cohen had begun hand-feeding Jonny. Cris sat on the floor with his legs stretched before him in a vee. Jonny stood in between Cohen’s legs. Cris asked Jonny to sit, showing the dog how when he didn’t seem to understand. Every time Jonny sat on command, he got a piece of food. And so they went each night, piece by piece, through one cup of kibble, reinforcing the sit command.

  This was more than a matter of good manners. Dogs that are raised the way Jonny and the rest of the Vick dogs had been grow up very reactive to external stimuli. They see a bird they want to chase, they chase it. They hear a sound they don’t like, they run. Teaching them even the most basic commands, like sit and stay, forces them to tune into their internal voice, especially when those commands are paired with rewards such as food or affection.