“Wee-wee what?” I asked. “This sounds like more work than having a real baby.”
“Oh, it’s going to be,” Joe promised. “Just wait. Having a puppy is a full-time job. Every two hours your dog needs to be picked up and taken outside so it gets the idea that relieving itself in the house is not an option. The puppy needs to be close to you, to be able to smell you, because it’s going to be missing its litter mates and mom. You’re his new mom!”
One day, as he continued pressuring me about getting a dog, I blurted out, “You’re driving me nuts!” With his typical acerbic wit, he answered, “Mmmmm… not a very far drive.”
Furthermore, Joe told me that, while he would be happy to support my efforts in training a dog, there was an older woman living just a few doors down from me on the third floor who was an experienced cocker spaniel owner as well. “She’s the perfect person to talk to, and you should definitely meet,” he said.
“Her name is Pearl and her dog, Brandy, recently died. This would help both of you. When I’m not around, you can go to her and she’ll give you great advice.”
Although I had lived in the building for three years, I had never exchanged anything except for a casual “hello” with any of the seventeen tenants living along our 120-foot hallway. All that was about to change.
A few days later, Joe came over to my apartment and took me down the hall for an introduction to his friend. This would turn out to be the most important thing that Joe would ever do for me—and the kindest. I could never have guessed that this casual little introduction would so completely change my life.
The door opened and there was Pearl, a solid-looking seventy-six-year-old with military posture, a sparkle in her eye, and a majestic high forehead with a mane of lustrous gray hair. There was something warm and homey about her, yet at the same time, I noticed a no-nonsense quality that spelled impressive strength. Not the perfume and jewelry type, Pearl was dressed in black pants and a gray cable-knit sweater, a cake pan in her hands, her sweater smudged with flour.
Dinah led the way into the apartment, her tail wagging.
“Hello baby girl! How’s my little Dinah?” cooed Pearl, pulling a box of biscuits she kept on hand for such occasions from a nearby bookcase. She bent down to give one to Dinah, but the dog hesitated, tentatively looking up at Joe for the go-ahead. With a nod of his head, Dinah gently pulled it from Pearl’s hand and trotted happily away with it.
Pearl’s own cocker, Brandy, had died the year before at age twelve, and she greatly missed her, though I would discover that Pearl was not one to reveal her emotions easily. Stoic and private, she pushed aside her loss and now enjoyed Dinah’s company whenever she came to visit.
“So, Joe, you smelled my plum tart and decided to come my way,” she laughed, ushering us in.
“Definitely. Pearl, I want to introduce you to my friend—and your neighbor—Glenn. I thought you two should get to know each other.”
“I’m no longer dating!” winked Pearl, firmly shaking my hand. She was so down-to-earth and easy to talk to, and I liked her from the minute I saw that plum tart, which turned out to be scrumptious. She cut into it, put some whipped cream on top, and we were good to go.
Next, Pearl introduced me to her husband, Arthur, a retired women’s apparel salesman, about eighty at the time, contentedly lounging on a gray velour armchair, his feet propped up on the matching ottoman, reading the newspaper. He was dressed in what turned out to be his daily uniform—a red plaid bathrobe, blue pajamas, and leather slippers.
“How do you do?” he grinned, leaning up toward me to offer a very firm handshake. “Glad to finally meet one of the neighbors.”
“Dinah,” Arthur boomed, “over here!” he said, taking off his reading glasses to get a better look and then pulling her onto his lap. “That’s a good girl,” he said, stroking her ears.
Pearl explained that they had moved to Battery Park City two years earlier from a country house in Red Hook, in upstate Dutchess County, New York, because they wanted a more compact home—“no more mowing that grass,” laughed Arthur—and loved being so close to the water.
“He never mowed it much anyway,” whispered Pearl, in an aside to Joe.
I noticed, even this first time we met, that there was an easy affection between the couple, Arthur touching Pearl’s arm, gently brushing her shoulder. I liked the way they teased one another—a rib here, a jab there, all in good humor. This was a pleasure to see after no less than fifty years of marriage.
“And we’re still talking,” laughed Pearl.
“And she’s still cooking,” Arthur answered.
Like Pearl herself, the apartment’s furnishings were practical and down-to-earth, anything but fancy, with heavy mahogany furniture, a worn brown-and-rust-flowered sectional sofa, and a small dining room table set in the middle of the combination living room–dining room, typical of many Manhattan apartments.
Everything was a bit dusty and worn, but it was cozy, with botanical prints, flowers, potted palms, and a forest of plants lining the windowsill, livening things up.
As we sat there getting acquainted, I was struck by Pearl’s wit and quick humor.
“So, Joe is talking you into real trouble,” she smirked.
“Yes, I am! A dog would be good for Glenn.”
“Good for you when you need a friend to keep you company outside, walking Dinah.” She leaned down to stroke Dinah’s muzzle and slip her another biscuit.
Pearl told me that she preferred a female cocker to a male—“none of that lifting of the legs!”—and that they were especially affectionate, though more prone to accidents than the males.
“There aren’t going to be any accidents,” protested Joe, “because crate training is almost foolproof as long as you keep taking the dog outside.”
“Mmmmm. We’ll see,” sniffed Pearl slyly, assuring me that nothing was foolproof “except my cake,” putting an extra piece of it in tinfoil for me. She ended our first little visit by saying, “Come by anytime.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Runt of the Litter
Now I was getting excited.
It was all planned out in my mind.
If I got a dog in late summer or early fall, I’d have enough time to easily train the puppy before the weather turned cold, brutally so in Battery Park City, where the wind would howl around the corner of our building.
“Listen, friend, you don’t want to be walking a puppy trying to figure out its head from its tail in a blizzard in January,” lectured Joe, who now called me on a daily basis to “dee-cuss,” as he pronounced it, “the homecoming arrangements for your dog.”
There would be no pet stores for me this time around. “You never do that,” he admonished. “It’s twice the money for half the quality, so either rescue a dog from a shelter or get a puppy from a private breeder.”
I set to work, researched cocker breeders, and finally found a reputable one in New Jersey—though the entire idea still seemed pretty abstract to me. But things were about to get a lot more concrete.
On July 15, 1988, after a nine-week pregnancy, Sweet Sue, a champion cocker spaniel who had been known on the dog show circuit for her elegant carriage, gave birth to six blond-haired puppies in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.
The breeders, Tom and Betty Campbell, who had earned a reputation for raising prize-winning cockers, were delighted with the new pups, at least most of them.
At six weeks old, the puppies were assessed for their show prospects. The breeders kept the best two on their twelve-acre farm, and three more found homes almost immediately. But the last of them, the woebegone runt of the litter, was left behind, unwanted.
That’s where I came in. I had been on Tom Campbell’s waiting list, hoping for the perfect dog all summer. So I was disappointed to know that the “best” of the puppies were already spoken for.
“Well, we do have one left,” he told me on the phone, as if offering a consolation prize. “We’ve named her Twiggy—because
her legs are kind of spindly and her body proportions are off. She’s a skinny little thing.”
“Oh, great,” I thought.
“So,” Tom continued, “she’ll never be a show dog, but I think she’s going to have an unusually beautiful face—very symmetrical—and a perfectly blond, even coat.”
Twiggy, Tom explained, was also the smartest of the bunch—the first to mischievously figure out how to escape from the pen and steal treats from a cookie jar by knocking it off a low ledge and rolling it over with her paws.
“That dog has something special about her,” he chuckled. “Interested?”
I certainly was intrigued. And just as Pearl was about to change my life, so was this unwanted little creature named Twiggy.
As for the puppy’s imperfections, I really didn’t care. After all, I had no intention of breeding a dog or having one compete in dog shows. The only thing I wanted was an affectionate, healthy, cute puppy with a calm temperament.
“Okay Tom, I’d love to meet her. Assuming we click, I’ll take her.”
Over the next few days, I was consumed with getting prepared, determined to avoid any more faux-paws.
I wondered how the prospective puppy would adjust. This puppy was going from “Green Acres” to high-rise living. From day one, she’d be entering a world quite different than the one she knew on “the farm” in Jersey. We have a lot of greenery in Battery Park City, but no pastures or barns.
Upon her arrival, she’d be coming into a circular driveway that leads into an all-glass-enclosed lobby, allowing you to see straight through to the Hudson River and New Jersey coast. The circular doors spin busily morning and night with baby carriages, luggage carts, and dogs moving in and out.
Once inside, the pup would be traipsing past our doormen, Felipe and Dave, and into a long mirrored lobby with couches, armchairs, and a mural of the Hudson River, which leads toward a bank of four elevators.
Getting off on the third floor, she’d then trot all the way down to the very south end of a long red-carpeted hallway where she’d find the white door leading into my apartment.
Entering, the new puppy would see a kitchen, a long living room facing onto the marina, and a bedroom with an exposure facing west, directly onto the Hudson, with a view of the Statue of Liberty. The Esplanade, dog run, and the river were less than a five-minute walk away.
Not a bad setup for a city dog.
My focus was on the kitchen, which I’d outfitted with all the paraphernalia necessary for a puppy, as if I were turning it into a nursery for a newborn. Key were the baby fence enclosing the room and the metal kennel—big enough to allow the puppy to stand, stretch, and sleep, with adequate room to turn around.
I put cushiony pillows on its floor and a green towel on top to semi-enclose it and make it cozy. Also ready to go were the food and water bowls, puppy chow, assorted toys, and nylon bones for teething—all of it meant to give my puppy the perfect housewarming.
So on an overcast day in October, when Twiggy was twelve weeks old, the breeder Tom drove the remaining pup into Lower Manhattan for her “interview.” I wanted all the support and help I could get that day, and felt lucky when Joe, and his partner Robert, offered to drive me over to the meeting place. “You’re not going to want to take the puppy home in a taxi, all alone,” said Joe, considerately.
So with Dinah at Robert’s feet, we all piled into Joe’s little white Volkswagen convertible for this early-fall adventure.
When we got over to our rendezvous spot—a parking lot near the South Street Seaport on Manhattan’s East River—there was Tom standing outside a dark green van, the back hood up, with a beat-up dog crate near the opening.
“Finally, we meet,” exclaimed Tom, a sturdy-looking man in his early sixties who put out his hand in welcome as he brought us around to the back of the car for a look at the star attraction.
And there in the crate sat poor Twiggy, a bedraggled blond ball of fur. She was shivering and raggedy. Her big brown eyes gazed up at us apprehensively.
“She’s a little homely at the moment,” apologized Tom, a master of understatement, “but she’ll improve.”
I wasn’t convinced. The ragamuffin puppy had a scroungy, rough-around-the-edges look to her, with an overgrown, matted coat and freckles around her nose. I thought she was the doggie version of the 1950s blond cartoon character Pitiful Pearl. Most amusing, she hadn’t yet grown into her ears, which were comically hanging halfway down her body. And did I mention that she was slightly bowlegged?
“Twiggy,” Tom explained, “got a little carsick coming over here—so she threw up.” Oh, great.
“It’s not unusual for puppies,” he assured me. “It’s the first time she’s ever been outside the farm, so she’s a little out of sorts.”
Twiggy drew back a bit and lay down, snuggling on what Tom described as her security blanket, a ripped pink cotton wrap “that has her mom’s scent on it. Keep this with her for now. She really loves it and it reminds her of Sweet Sue.”
Nearby were her two favorite toys, he said—a yellow plastic Scooby-Doo dog that made a squeaking sound and a long red snake that she clutched to her tummy.
Tom then opened the door of the kennel, slowly scooped Twiggy up, and gently put her in my arms.
This was the make-or-break moment I was waiting for.
“Well, hello there, little baby puppy,” I whispered, as Twiggy curled into a ball, leaning against my chest. I held her close and discovered that she had the most delicious smell. I felt an immediate click. I really did. She was so warm, trusting, and sweet. The sensation of her leaning into me was indescribable. When she licked my face, that was pretty much it!
I had found my dog, the one I’d been waiting for, and I felt it with total conviction. I handed Tom a check, he wished me good luck, and off we went in Joe’s VW, back down the FDR Drive to Battery Park City.
True, it had taken thirty-five years to accomplish this, but after my early fear of Strippy, the false start with Baby, and my test-dog, Dinah, at last I had found a dog of my own.
“I have an announcement to make, guys,” I told Robert and Joe. “I hate the name Twiggy.” Everybody laughed.
“It does conjure up a slightly pathetic image, doesn’t it?” said Robert.
“So,” I continued, “I’d like to introduce you to my new puppy. Her name is Katie.”
“Well, that’s an improvement,” replied Joe.
I had decided to name my dog after my all-time favorite movie star—Katharine Hepburn.
A few years earlier, in the course of my work interviewing celebrities, I went to Miss Hepburn’s house for a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a long talk. It was an unforgettable afternoon. The dazzle of this legend’s presence—her incisive energy, wit, and intimidating hauteur as the grandest American actress of them all—left an indelible mark on me, as you’ll later read.
I figured that maybe this little puppy from New Jersey, the runt daughter of Sweet Sue, could one day make a little magic of her own—and might even meet her namesake.
Katie snuggled contentedly in my arms on the car ride home, tuckered out and sleeping soundly.
CHAPTER FOUR
From Bow to Wow
When I got home, with Joe, Robert, and Dinah in tow, I carried Katie out of the car. The neighbors in the lobby oohed and aahed at the new blond puppy.
Katie was limp in my arms half-asleep, wrapped in her pink blanket, with her head resting sideways. That exhausted pup would have slept through anything.
“Who could this be?!” asked Nancy, my animal-loving neighbor whom I’d nicknamed “Bird Lady.” Perched on her shoulder, as always, was the resplendent Mojo—a stunning red-and-blue greenwing macaw who knew how to talk.
“Pretty girl, pretty girl—want some chicken?!” crowed the bird, eyeing Katie by poking his head around Nancy’s shoulder, his beak jutting forward. Katie half-opened one curious eye, then lazily closed it again, having had enough stimulation for one day. In due time, she’d
recognize and come alive at the word chicken.
Entering my apartment, we went right into the kitchen, and just as Joe had predicted, Katie viewed the cushiony kennel as a welcome retreat. As soon as I bent down with her in my arms, she climbed right into it, sniffing her new blanket and cushions and pushing them all around with her paws, arranging everything to her liking. She then positioned her head on a blue pillow and fell soundly asleep, her two favorite toys placed next to her. She was home.
After a while, Joe suggested that we leave the room, giving Katie a chance to acclimate. But a minute after we’d disappeared into the living room, Katie started whimpering, then howling. It was pathetic. She was, after all, just a baby.
As I began heading back into the kitchen to comfort her, Joe stopped me. “No. No! You’ve got to let them howl. You need to teach them a lesson right from the start.”
You do?
“Leave her alone and let her get used to it. Otherwise, she’s always going to be a crybaby whenever you go away.”
To me, Joe’s advice seemed harsh, especially on day one, when Katie was disoriented and, no doubt, insecure without Sweet Sue or the farm environment to comfort her. I had no intention of following Joe’s advice, though I pretended to.
I thanked Joe and Robert profusely for everything they’d done for me that day. And as soon as the door closed, I ran back into the kitchen, opened up the kennel door, and lifted Katie out of it, holding her snugly against me.
I had to show her off and couldn’t wait another minute to introduce her to my neighbors Pearl and Arthur. I headed right down the corridor to 3C.
“Ohhhh, a special delivery!” Pearl cried, as she opened the door, entranced with the little pup. After we sat down at her dining table, I lifted Katie up and passed her over to Pearl, who cradled her in her arms. She started rocking her like a baby—and Katie was limply compliant and completely at ease, enjoying the attention.
Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family Page 3
