Sleeps with Dogs

by Lindsey Grant

  I posted my note in the same spot on the fridge, kissed the pups goodbye, and locked both doors behind me. A few feathers escaped the clanging outer door, gusting across the dirty patio toward a mammoth sleeping marmalade cat, his blocky head resting on giant paws.

  I took a deep breath, trying to put the events of the last hour out of my mind so that I could focus on the rest of the day and the dogs on my schedule, and not stew about Maddie and the chicken and the brooms and the feathers. At least Dave was nowhere to be seen; I didn’t trust myself to be civil at that moment. I could only hope the afternoon ahead had few surprises in store. And that, when I arrived here tomorrow around this time, everything was in far better order for the little wolf pack of two.

  To: “Tom”, “Patty”

  Subject: Daily update

  Hi guys,

  Thanks for the update on Boo and his bum salve. I’ll be sure to apply it and send along any updates after my visit. I had another dream about Blondie and Buster last night: they bit each other’s tails off in a dog version of a scene from Kill Bill. I think I’m losing my mind.

  End-of-month invoice to come shortly!

  Your (questionably sane) subcontractor,

  Lindsey

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Farting Greyhound

  Around the time that I shacked up with Charlie, the overnight gigs were starting to wear on me. I felt like a doggie date. A call girl for the canine contingent. Pretty Woman for pooches. But the overnight jobs—aside from being my niche within the local industry—also provided a roof over my head. Unless I radically altered my business model and client base to center around the more lucrative group, off-leash walks, I couldn’t afford to give up the slumber parties. Never mind the difficulty of drumming up that many new clients, the greatest obstacle between me and the group-off-leash paradigm was actually me.

  I’d heard too many horror stories of colleagues getting fined for running afoul of park rules, or getting sued by a client because the dog bolted into traffic and died. No matter how much voice control a walker claims they have over their dogs, something is bound to happen at some point. I much preferred the control a leash afforded me.

  Charlie and his owner, Katherine—some kind of advertising executive, single, late thirties—lived in an ultra-manicured corner of Piedmont. At our introductory meeting, Katherine had said to me, “My house isn’t even that nice. I hope you won’t mind staying here.”

  Her single-level home was nestled among the expansive mansions of the Oakland hills: a neighborhood of flawless lawns, long driveways punctuated by luxury cars, high fences, and even higher mortgages. Porta potties dotted the sidewalks, accommodating the countless contractors that swarmed over the estates by day, to perfect what was already arguably perfect.

  So by some standards, one might have called her house, without a second floor or five-car garage, humble. But the long hallways of shining hardwoods, the monogrammed towels and sheets, the French-provincial living room and meticulously landscaped terrace garden, and even the dog, all smacked of quality. And a cozy relationship with some well-paid interior designer.

  At roughly six foot two, Katherine was one of the few women taller than me that I’d ever met. I was inclined to forgive her feigned modesty about her house and like her for being one of us. “Large and in charge,” as my sister says. Katherine surely understood the plight of the outrageously tall woman, and I took note at our meeting how she did it with such class. She was clad in ballet flats, jeans, and a luxuriously soft-looking cropped sweater. Cashmere, probably. Her short chestnut hair was shiny and bobbed, and she had very creamy skin—something I’ve aspired to and still fall horribly short of. I’ve always sported more of a well-scrubbed Scottish complexion. Florid, one dermatologist called it.

  I thought Katherine and her greyhound made a handsome pair; equally long, lean, and refined. For his part, Charlie had a glossy sand-colored coat, great teeth (another thing I could only dream of), and a spring in his coltish step. He could have stepped out of one of the old English paintings in the dining room.

  At that first meeting, Katherine had started the tour in the living room.

  “This is Charlie’s teddy bear,” she said as she gestured toward a slobber-dampened lump on the green tartan dog bed. “Make sure he has it when he is outside during the day, and at night when he is in his crate. He needs his teddy with him.”

  Katherine glided from the living room, through the formal dining room, and into the kitchen. She opened the freezer to reveal an array of homemade dog treats. There were jerky sticks and dog biscuits hidden in frozen cottage cheese, peanut butter–filled toys, and cheese-stuffed kongs.

  “But his favorite,” Katherine said as she opened the refrigerator below, “is egg. There are two egg crates here with hardboiled eggs. He eats them with his morning and evening meals, crumbled over three cups of kibble. Then he can have a treat from the freezer.”

  Listening to all of this, I couldn’t imagine the havoc it wrought on Charlie’s digestive system. All that dairy. And on top of the outrageous amount of food he was fed in a day! His craps had to be the size of smart cars. I was no stranger to dogs’ unorthodox dietary habits, but usually the questionable food wasn’t being pushed quite so forcefully by the owners themselves.

  I followed Katherine down the hall to the guest bedroom.

  “This is where you will sleep,” she said as she gestured to the matching twin-sized sleigh beds, dressed in monogrammed yellow gingham. “Charlie’s bed is through here.” She continued down an adjacent hall into the master suite, where Charlie was already waiting for us. He was sprawled across Katherine’s unmade king, his head on her pillow.

  “His crate was too heavy to move, but perhaps he’ll be happier sleeping with you in the guest room. You can put his cushion in there if that works.” She turned off the light in the bedroom, and I followed her back through the maze of hallways and into the laundry room.

  “This is where you’ll find his leash, his fleece, doggie bags, and his toothbrush and toothpaste. I brush his teeth once a week—he loves it—so if you’d like, you can certainly do it while I am away. Twice, if you can.

  “There’s just one other thing. The previous sitter broke the washing machine. Apparently she was doing her laundry while she was here with Charlie and the washer overflowed.” Katherine rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively, like laundry was something she’d rarely dealt with and definitely wouldn’t tolerate of someone living in her home while she was away. I wrote in my notes, NO LAUNDRY, triple underlining the words.

  “I’m traveling through Italy—Venice, Florence, Rome—and the only way to reach me would be through my travel agent. That information is by the telephone, but I don’t expect you’ll have any reason to use it. If there’s an emergency, just call Charlie’s vet. His office and home numbers are by the phone as well.” I wrote, Unreachable, but mentally I was scribbling, Don’t touch anything! Don’t eat any of her food, don’t use the towels, don’t drink on the furniture, and don’t drool on the pillows. Don’t screw this up!

  So there I was in the palace of perfection. When I arrived the first night, I brought Charlie in from his private courtyard where he was lounging on the stoop of his custom doghouse. It had a ramp up to the wraparound porch, eaves, and even contrasting trim paint.

  When I gave him his three cups of kibble with egg, he shoved his long snout through his bowl, eating every last big of egg and leaving the rest behind. He walked away with bits of yolk on his face. Judging by the loosely formed piles under the bonsai trees outside, he really did take monster shits.

  After dinner, Charlie trotted around the house with his bear fixed in his jaws, making a strangled whining sound. For a while he sprawled across Katherine’s bed with his teddy next to him. He didn’t show any interest in me until I pulled out his leash from the basket in the laundry room.

  I strapped him into his hunter-green fleece, and I had to admit, he looked handsome in his walking outfi
t. Given my experience with other greyhounds and their finicky reaction to rain and chill, I figured he’d probably appreciate this extra layer. The February evening was crisp, though certainly not as cold as it could get in late winter.

  With daylight savings still months away, the street lights were already on at seven o’clock, bathing the hushed street in a tangerine half-glow. The construction workers had gone home. The porta potties stood at intervals along the sidewalk like crooked teeth that needed pulling. Charlie stepped over the threshold willingly enough, onto the mossy cobblestone path that led to the street. At the curb he stopped short, though. He lifted his long snout to the air, nostrils flexing.

  “What’s up?” I asked as I tugged gently on the leash, already a little chilly and ready to get my blood pumping with a vigorous walk.

  This was the very best neighborhood to walk in, during the day or in the dark. It seemed utterly inoculated against anything threatening or unsavory. No garbage, no overgrown grass, no tacky mailboxes or junky looking cars. This bucolic pocket of the city was a far cry from those neighborhoods littered with broken bottles and the occasional needle, used condom, or KFC box full of chicken bones that just begged to be choked on by a sniffy, curious dog. Which all dogs are. There, daylight provided no assurance that bad stuff wasn’t going down.

  I clicked my tongue at him. “Giddy up, Charlie boy. Come on!” He stood completely still.

  All I could think was that all the egg and cheese and kibble must be blocking him up. I’d be constipated, too, if I ate like that. He had to walk it off—get it out—before he went to sleep. But he was clearly not in a walking mood. I engaged him in a brief tug of war, cooing soothingly. I was nearly parallel to the ground, pulling with all my might, before he budged an inch.

  I settled for walking him up and down the cobblestone path over and over again, hoping each time when we reached the sidewalk that he’d relent and continue on down the road with me. After about the eleventh lap, I tried another pull-a-thon with him. But as he skidded across the pavement toward my firmly planted feet, I was afraid that I’d hurt his neck or break one of his toenails or scuff his footpads.

  Charlie ended up fertilizing the bonsai in the courtyard, and then we sat on the kitchen floor while I tried to get a blob of tree sap out of his velvet fur. I’d already tried using a soapy paper towel and was still rubbing at the sticky fur, trying to scrape the resin off his short, fine hairs. In my determination, I yanked out a pea-sized patch of fur along with the sap. Charlie yelped and pissed a little on my leg before skittering down the hall into Katherine’s room.

  The next morning, I found Charlie huddled in the back of his crate, his cushion soaked in pee. Not even one day gone and I already had to use the washing machine. Ignoring my all-caps note to myself about not doing laundry, I stuffed the waterlogged cushion into the washer. I added a healthy scoop of liquid detergent and flipped the temperature to hot.

  The laundry room flooded in no time. Frothy waves of piss-tainted water belched from the lid of the washer, spilling over onto the floor and making its way closer to lip of the laundry room door toward the hardwood floors beyond.

  Clean as her house was, Katherine seemed to live without any cleaning supplies—no mop, broom, rag bag, bucket, or sponge—save two ultra-absorbent rolls of paper towels under the kitchen sink. The paper towels were soft enough to bathe with, and I used every last one as I tried to stop the flood that was now starting to leak down the hallway. I weighed my options: call a travel agent, or a vet?

  I’d quit the business before using one of Katherine’s fluffy monogrammed towels to such a filthy end. And it, too, would have to be laundered. There was nothing towel-like in my car, just some Starbucks napkins and a fleece hoodie. With the recent reprieve from rain, I’d washed all the rags and towels for wiping down the dogs and never returned them to the trunk.

  Back inside the house, I found a faded beach towel in the back of the hallway linen closet. After squeezing and re-squeezing it into the laundry-room sink, I was able to clean up most of the water. Half an hour later, sweaty and a little sudsy, I stood back and surveyed the reasonably—manageably—soggy floor. The hardwood floors, at least, were dry.

  I hand washed the beach towel in the deep sink adjacent to the washer and threw it in to dry with Charlie’s bed.

  Soon after getting into animal nannying, I started having anxiety dreams about work. The common theme of all the nightmares was that all the animals were in grave peril and it was my fault. In most scenarios, I realized the error of my ways when it was too late to make it right. One night, a parrot’s feet fell off from neglect. He couldn’t stay on his perch because, below the feathers, he had only stumps. I tried to glue his feet back on to no avail. Before that, it was fish. I forgot to condition their water, and they immediately started floating to the top of the bowl. Then the tanks tipped over and there were fish everywhere, gasping for air. I couldn’t get them back in the water fast enough. In one dream, hamsters were getting crushed beneath their exercise wheels. As soon as I got everything upright, the lid fell in and pinned the hamsters beneath its weight. In yet another nightmare, I was in a haunted house one night and stabbed a corgi with a fork before realizing he was my friend and would lead me to safety. I couldn’t get the fork out, and he bled to death.

  These dreams made my job a twenty-four-hour ordeal. During the day, I tried to avert normal disasters, but it seemed I couldn’t ever be prepared or creative enough to anticipate the amazing array of mishaps that could occur. So at night, my subconscious went wild with the possibilities. I battled the inconceivable. Just as other people dreamed of missing a final exam or showing up to work without pants or forgetting they had a baby, I dreamed about killing hamsters and neglecting dogs; killing dogs and neglecting hamsters. As yet, the dreams didn’t include domestic disasters within the households I was staying. I was sure it was just a matter of time.

  On the second night, I planned to leave Charlie’s crate and my bedroom door open. That way, he could get up in the night and let me know when he needed to go out.

  Or so I assumed.

  My sleep was fraught with the sound of toenails on hardwood and agitated yips from the hallway. I got up some time in the night, stiff-limbed and off-balance, to take Charlie to the garden for a potty break. I stood in the courtyard in my trout-print boxers and a tank top, teeth chattering while Charlie posed in the moonlight and stared at me. He didn’t pee. He just stood there.

  I brought Charlie’s freshly laundered bed into the guest bedroom. If he was in the room with me, he’d have nothing to distract him from the seemingly simple task of sleeping. If he had to go outside, he could let me know with a polite nudge, or maybe a lick.

  Instead, I woke up to Charlie’s big black nose in my face, snuffling little flecks of dog snot into my mouth and—when I reluctantly opened them—my eyes. I only resorted to this scenario as a last-ditch attempt at all because Charlie, for all his many charms, had another habit that was distracting, to say the least.

  Given his unusually protein-rich and dairy-laden diet, it shouldn’t have been any surprise that Charlie was a stunningly gassy animal. His MO in my short time with him had been to fart and then leave the room. The smell was so potent that I had to leave the room also. No big mystery, then, that when he was in the bedroom with me, he gassed us both.

  Sleeplessness seemed inevitable.

  It was back into the crate with Charlie. On the third night, we went out again before bed, and instead of trying to engage in any kind of walk, I just waited. And waited and waited. At last, Charlie found something of interest to sniff on the monkey grass by the mailbox and finally delivered.

  In the morning, he was curled on the hard black plastic molding of his crate, the cushion shoved to the front against the door. It was soaked.

  To the Laundromat I went, his bed in a trash bag I found under the sink. It was a scented garbage bag, of course, and so sturdy you’d think it was made of stretchy fabric instead of p
lain old plastic.

  That night, I gave Charlie free rein of the house, leaving my door firmly shut and the kitchen door to the patio cracked so he could get in and out as he pleased. I’d brought my own pillow from home to cover my ears, blocking out the tap tap tap of his nails as he trotted through the house.

  And, glory be, it worked! I slept, deeply and uninterrupted, though I had another nightmare. I was supposed to keep two dogs separated—one on the porch, one in the house—or else they would kill each other. Then the maids came to clean the house and opened the screen door. By the time I figured out what had happened, the dogs were beyond repair. I had to send them downriver, like those Viking funerals where they float the corpse out onto the water in a boat or atop a twiggy raft.

  In the morning, I couldn’t find any evidence that Charlie went out in the night. But neither could I find any evidence that he went to the bathroom anywhere in the house. So long as he wasn’t wetting the bed, though, I was growing less and less concerned about the regularity of his BMs.

  On one of our limited morning jaunts around Katherine’s front walk, I met a neighbor picking up her morning newspaper. She was embarrassed because I caught her in her pajamas. She chatted with me in a cryptic but very friendly manner: “How is your work going?” “I love your new shutters!”

  Finally, in response to my puzzled silence, she said, “You’re Katherine, right?”

  “Oh, I am just the dog sitter. Katherine is in Italy.”

  “Oh, god! I’m sorry. You’re both so tall, and with short hair. I thought …”

  I was flattered that she’d mistake me for the elegant Katherine. But perhaps this neighbor in her cowboy-print pajamas, standing in front of a multimillion-dollar mansion with a newspaper in her immaculately manicured hand, did have cause to be embarrassed after all. How do neighbors living across the street not even recognize each other?

  At the other end of the leash was Katherine’s best friend, and wherever she was—probably staring at a relic from antiquity—she probably wished that this fickle, gassy beast were there at her side. For the first time, I saw her life with Charlie as isolated and potentially very lonely. Like Katherine, I had a single candidate for companionship, and he had four legs and a collar—a scenario that was all too familiar to me of late.