I stacked him up on the counter to look at his structure. I examined every spot on his body, having become what is known in the breed as “a spot counter,” and I asked Dawn, in a ridiculous fashion, to help me determine how large those spots would spread. I was determined not to have too colorful a dog ever again, and it was obvious that from the amount of bone in his forelegs and the size of his paws that he would be big—but I liked big males. He had his mother’s beautiful head shape, though one ear had a lot more spots than the other, which I knew would create a certain unevenness when it filled. I didn’t really care. He stood up square and proud on Pat’s countertop when we stacked him, and I knew that I would be taking him home.
I could not know it then, but his name would be Gulliver, and he was about to become the most important dog in my life.
•••
PART IV
dog of my heart
{IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE}
Literati’s Show Biz Mister Swift, a.k.a. Gulliver
ten
WE HAD TO GIVE him a literary name, of course. Ultimately, it was Jim who came up with Gulliver’s show name, because he knew he would be nomadic, moving around the country to dog shows: Literati’s Show Biz Mister Swift, after Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver’s Travels. It took a little while for “Gulliver,” his call name, to grow on me. There would be many nicknames to come: Gully, Gullster, Baby Dog Baby Dog, Gullstiver, Gullsterama, Gulldog, Gullmeister, Mister, Dogoletto, Snoops—and a host of others I can no longer remember. Each endearment took firm hold and then after a while was inevitably less and less used as a new name was added, or it worked in new combination with those that followed. All of them meant “I love you.”
For the first time, I was really running the show, although because I did co-breed the litter with the Maciejewskis, their kennel name, Show Biz, had to be part of the mix as well, but they followed my lead on every other decision.
Gulliver was the first dog we had who began to speak, and he did it a lot of the time. In full sentences, with real words. Through our mouths. Maybe this was one reason he had such a good sense of humor. His voice was like a little boy’s, and it never got deep, even as he grew up and went through adolescence. He had a merry face with expressive brown eyes, one ear blacker than the other, and a beautifully shaped head.
On hot summer days, the pool in the backyard should have been a lure as powerful as the tree sticks he loved to gnaw on—even though he cracked a few back teeth. At least, that was what we heard from numerous friends whose goldens were clogging up their pool filters with thick fur. So on a warm day while Gulliver was still only a few months old, we dropped him into the shallow end to ensure that he knew how to get out at the broad circle of steps there—a ritual that all the dogs who came to live with us had to endure.
The pool was warm that first day, but this didn’t seem to matter to Gulliver. Churning through the water, he looked for all the world as if he were drowning; with both his front and rear legs flailing away, he held his body in an upright position, his head barely above the small wake he was creating. He didn’t skim the water with his snout flat and all four legs pumping below the surface like a Lab would have done. His eyes were panicked. I had to step down in my shorts and haul him out by the collar, even though by that point he was within reach of the stairway. After that, he refused, quite adamantly, to learn how to swim.
He would use the pool for only one thing: sitting on the wide top step to cool his bottom off in any kind of summer heat. Often he would sit that way for quite some time, looking around peaceably while all of us bent over with laughter.
Like any Dalmatian, he was always hungry and became a terrible thief. Anything within reach was fair game for counter cruising, and because of his height, everything was. When he went to stay with Dawn on some of our vacations, her kids nicknamed him “Pony Boy” because he could actually rest his chin, flat, on the top of their kitchen table.
After several months of losing pots of mashed potatoes and bowls of fruit—and especially hamburger—I began to set him up to catch him in the act. Though common dog wisdom said you couldn’t punish a dog for something unless you caught him in the middle of the naughty behavior because they wouldn’t remember even five minutes later, I rejected that notion, thinking privately that they managed to remember “cookie” perfectly well.
And so, up on the counter went mousetraps smeared with peanut butter. With my old riding crop in hand, I hid in the adjacent living room. After a while, sure enough, Bang! I raced in to see the mousetrap on the floor, sprung shut and kicked aside. I made a good show yelling, “Bad dog!” and of hitting the counters with the leather crop—but he was not to be fooled into thinking that I was about to smack him with it.
Despite my irritation at the mission having been foiled, I couldn’t help but laugh at the spectacle he created with his long tongue licking in and out, his mouth nearly stuck shut with peanut butter, in a desperate attempt to dislodge the thick patch of goo sticking to the roof of his mouth. I gave up and learned to keep food at the back of the counters.
But this didn’t keep him from the garbage cans: cleverly he balanced on his hind legs, tipping over the garbage—though the lids were fastened tight, or so I thought—to raid them for forbidden chicken bones or to spread clumps of used Kleenex all over the yard.
Any patch of sun was his to conquer, unlike the water in the pool—be it atop the big chair in the family room, or on the tile of the bathroom floor—or, most predictably, in our bed, especially when it wasn’t made, so that he could snuggle his dirty paws and little white hairs down deep under the quilt. Often he could be found asleep in the white chaise lounge farthest from the pool, or even happily ensconced on his own in the hammock with a pillow. After that, the hammock became known as “Gulliver’s swing.”
He was growing into his big paws and would turn out to be sizeable. I liked that, because though he topped out at the standard’s limit of nearly twenty-four inches at the withers, he looked substantial—and at that time, it was the fashion to have dogs small enough to look more like big bitches. Personally, I liked a dog to have size.
Gulliver’s markings held true to what I’d seen when he first got his spots: he was reasonably open, with only a few secondaries, and his ears were coal black. His eyes were a good deep brown, though not as dark as some I’d seen, but I didn’t really care. His structure was very good, and I had high hopes for him.
I held him out of the show ring until later the next spring, May of 1998—the National. I was nervous about starting out at the top, but I thought him exceedingly handsome, and so it seemed that a bit of a splash (no pun intended) was in order. The show was held in Kentucky that year, and Dawn and I flew out together, piling our suitcases and crates onto the plane, and once again sharing a room and a car rental.
As I dressed carefully that morning, trading off in the bathroom with Dawn for our showers, and then crowding in to put on our makeup in tandem, my nerves were getting the better of me. I slid into my suit, combed my hair, and gave Gulliver a final once-over. He was soft and clean, as I’d bathed and brushed him thoroughly before we left home, even though Dals require little care in that regard. Still, brushing was a calming therapy for nerves. He loved it and always leaned into the rubber curry. If he could have purred, he would have. It appeared that he wasn’t nervous at all.
As Gulliver and I flew around the ring that day, anxiety continued to course through me. I never lost the nerves, no matter how many times I showed. Part of me just believed that I would never have a top-winning dog. Ashley was the closest I had come, and even then, John and Pat had put a handler on her.
Gulliver and I were the last in line in all our classes that day, just by luck of the draw—but I was superstitious. I didn’t think being at the back of the class, where the judge had to go over your dog after all the others, was such a great place to be. I liked being at the head of the line. First impressions count, I’d discovered, and sometimes, when a judg
e was confused by a big draw, he or she might just pick the first because it was easier. At least, this was what I, and some others I knew, believed.
As we flew past on the last go-round, me trying to keep up with this adolescent who could trot so fluidly, with plenty of reach in the front and lots of drive in the rear, I saw the judge pivot, and then point. At us! Gulliver gave me a two-legged hug when I bent to pat him in triumph and love. And then I gave a little jump, a caper that became known among my friends as the “Linda dance.” I did it every time I won, out of sheer joy. As Gulliver hopped around while I hopped up and down, I realized something important: he loved the ring, and that quality was as important in a show dog as was sound structure or a pleasing spotting pattern. Attitude played an enormous role in how the dog appeared to the judge.
Gulliver won all three of his classes at the National: Futurity and Sweepstakes, as well as his regular puppy class. And a long-timer in the show world told me that it had been a long time since this had happened. Usually you were lucky to win one—it was rare to land all three. That night, Gulliver was able to continue Marty’s tradition of a dog show hamburger after a win. I actually gave him three—one for each class.
As we took a photo with the judge to document the win so that I could run an ad in a dog magazine later, I had trouble stacking Gulliver. He kept moving his feet around, and I was getting frustrated. So were the photographer and the judge, who was well-known nationally and of whom I was a little bit intimidated. The judge always was included in the photo from a win, and I knew they had other photos to appear in and didn’t like to be delayed by inept owners. I bit my lip and tried again.
“Move his left front foot forward,” the photographer instructed, peering through his lens.
I did so, resetting it with care.
“No,” he said testily. “The left foot.”
Once again, I reset the foot. And the photographer sank back on his heels and sighed. It still wasn’t right, though I couldn’t have told you why.
“No, the other left foot,” said the judge with a smile, and everyone began to laugh. Only then did I realize that I had been moving the right front foot back and forth. At last, I took up the left and moved it forward, there was a flash from the camera, and he clapped me on the back as we all left the ring, regaling Dawn and me with a bad joke that we promptly forgot.
Throughout the ensuing months, Gulliver’s show career was a joy that penetrated the darkness of deepening personal problems at home: the beginnings of marriage trouble, the difficulties of parenting adolescent children, and the renewal of my long battle with depression. Yet, I often traveled with Pat and John in the RV, and Gulliver soon loved curling up in the sun with the other three dogs on the dashboard of the bus, as John motored down the long stretches of highway. The rest of us listened to Stephen King, Tom Wolfe, and John Irving on Books on Tape. Nights, John barbecued filets wrapped in bacon on the grill and Pat made pasta salads and invited everyone they knew—and increasingly they knew more people, as they traveled the circuits frequently in those days with Max, Ashley, Butler, Seren, and now Gulliver. Daytimes we entered classes and were gratified to find our dogs winning. What a wonderful distraction it was from the parts of my life I didn’t want to look at.
eleven
SOMETIME BEFORE I WENT off on the show circuit with Gulliver, many aspects of my home life started to go awry. Just prior to Ashley’s whelping and Gulliver’s birth, Rhiannon and Tia had begun to fight intermittently. It began in 1998, with a disagreement over a bagel that Nathaniel was waving enticingly over their heads, which quickly developed into a squabble. No one could tell me which dog had started it. A week later, there was a more-lengthy contretemps with teeth bared: it began with a warning growl, then a snap, and then an explosion of noise that made both me and Gabe first draw back and then plunge in, quelling it within seconds by pulling the two dogs apart. It had sounded fierce but in the end drew no blood, and thus seemed minor to me at that point, a disagreement between two dogs who had simply grown momentarily weary of one another. The episode was not repeated, and six months went by, quietly.
And then, suddenly, for no apparent reason I could discern, the dogs were at war. First it was quarreling, and then, with an explosion, it was full-blown fighting. It could be over something as simple as a toy, but then it was over nothing any of us could perceive—perhaps just a glance, even, that only a dog would interpret as a challenge. But Tia was growing, an adolescent now. Rhiannon, not an aggressive dog, had grown possessive of me and of her place as the head of the pack, and Tia was threatening that dominant position.
Having added a new puppy to the mix probably didn’t help, as he, too, drew my attention away from Rhiannon. As the fights developed into more and more confrontations, I grew alarmed, even more so when Gabe was traumatized and frightened by one that happened right at his knees. Increasingly, the fights ended with trips to the vet to stitch up both dogs.
I was at a loss. I’d had no experience with aggression or how to read the signs of an imminent altercation. All my dogs, back into my childhood, had always prospered together and been glad for one another’s company. All the dog fights I’d ever seen had been between dogs who were strangers, as when my Aunt Joan’s Boston terrier, Jingo, had come home covered in bloody welts after a run-in with the neighbor’s poodle. And so we entered a period of time during which I was on constant alert, filled with anxiety that something would set Rhiannon and Tia off again into another event from which the family would have difficulty recovering. Where dogs had always served as a comfort for me in the years of my childhood, now they were the source of anxiety. Now I could not trust them the way I had trusted Daisy, Penny, Gidget, and Clover, and this was a loss.
I decided that everyone would be safer if they were crated in separate rooms and were let out only individually until a solution could be found, but I knew that safeguards like these were imperfect at best. There was too much that could go wrong, too many ways that a mistake could be made.
At this point, I resorted to consulting a “dog psychic,” something that would have seemed humorous if I hadn’t been so desperate. I needed to understand better: hoping for insight into why Rhi and Ti were fighting and what I could do to solve it, I nevertheless kept this move a secret from everyone except Jim and the kids, and Kathryn, Pat, and Dawn. It felt perfectly reasonable to me, considering the dire nature of our situation; sometimes you needed to take extraordinary measures when it came to solving the extraordinary problems of your dogs. I wouldn’t have hesitated to take my kids to a psychiatrist, so why did taking the dogs to a psychic seem so strange? The two dogs and I huddled together around the phone, as their proximity was apparently required, and despite a healthy dose of skepticism, I somehow wasn’t at all surprised that she seemed to know a great deal about my dogs and their emotions. I found myself accepting all her advice easily.
One day, Pat and I went to a local show, and as I took both Tia and Rhiannon out of their car crates while keeping careful distance between them, I stumbled and went down. With a growl, the two were off and fighting. Pat, restraining Ashley at the same time, reached down to try and separate them. As she put her hand into the mix, one of them snapped, hard, and her finger was caught in the vicious tangle. The bite broke no skin, but she was in pain nevertheless.
It was clear to me now that something new had to be done with the two dogs. In desperation, I finally called a behaviorist in canine aggression recommended by one of the members from DCNC. Julia Barrows dug deeply into her bag of tricks. We tried all sorts of things to establish each dog’s submission to me, emphasizing that I was the alpha dog directing the household, not either one of them.
At first, many of the exercises did work. We tied black trash bags of shaker cans (soda cans filled with pennies) to the knobs of every door in the house, in case an altercation developed. The bags did help, as they made a tremendous racket that the dogs found unnerving, but despite this, the intervals between the fights were shorteni
ng—even though with people, both Rhiannon and Tia continued to be exceedingly gentle and friendly. Neither of them ever raised a hackle to a human. This conundrum led me to the conclusion that they could, with time, be rehabilitated. Julia agreed.
However, nothing seemed to have an effect for very long. After a while, over my fears and strong reservations, Julia convinced me to try shock collars. The collars delivered an electrical pulse preceded by a warning beep when you pushed a button in reaction to any onset of aggression, such as the mere vibration of a growl. I wanted to know exactly what my dog would feel, and so I strapped one of the transmitters on my upper arm. It was a shock indeed, but not a drastic one, and I convinced myself that it was a necessary step.
At first, it seemed to deter them, but ultimately it backfired, provoking them to attack, as each thought the other was sending the stinging jolt. It only made them angrier with each other, and I realized then that I needed to listen better to my own instincts. I insisted that we remove the collars, and we went back to straight behavioral modification. My hope was waning.
Gulliver had watched all the aggression from the sidelines and tended to hide beneath any nearby piece of furniture. I could see no obvious effect on him from the fighting. He still seemed a happy-go-lucky dog who got along with everyone in the house, including the two older dogs, and I fantasized that he would help resolve the situation.
But finally, after many more fights and thousands of dollars spent on the surgeries required to stitch Rhiannon and Tia back up, Julia and I came to the terrible decision that should another fight occur, I would have to put the dogs to sleep. In the meantime, I began, with panic, to try to find them new homes. But inside, I didn’t really believe that they would have to go. And I started going over the possibilities in my mind.
Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair With Thirty-Eight Dalmatians Page 9
