Then there was Foxy, an Australian shepherd I walked in the area. She was a lamb with humans—all toothy smiles and submission. She only displayed bad behavior in the presence of other animals, going all snarling, slobbering psycho on anything else with four legs and a tail. It was quite a transformation. For Abbie and Tucker—and most Australian shepherds, German shepherds, and other working dogs—plenty of exercise and ensuring they felt like they had a purpose in the family structure helped tremendously to mitigate their tendency toward being overwound.
Combining these aforementioned elements of irrational and irascible were my greyhounds in the warehouse district of west Berkeley: poor wire-crossed retired racing dogs, whose versions of deranged made them equal parts dangerous, sad, and disgusting. Sometimes I looked into their eyes and it was like no one was home; they acted out of a bizarre, squirrely instinct that involved crapping on each other’s heads and snarling at anyone in uniform.
And then there was Felicity, of course, whose bite had been worse than Foxy’s bark—or any other dogs’, for that matter.
There were countless other dogs and corresponding depraved behaviors (the Mulcher, the thong-eater, or my flatulent friend Charlie), but Abbie’s recent antics took the crazy cake. True, she was only a danger to herself, but, in terms of completely bizarre behavior, she was the winner winner, antidepressant dinner.
It all made me wonder if I was perversely attracted to clients—or they to me—with emotionally and/or mentally challenged pets. Or maybe this was par for the course with all animals. It was conceivable that each came with at least one problematic aberrance. Humans certainly seemed to be built that way. And most had more than just one glitch in the system—I certainly did.
Most troubling for me was the slow realization that many of the dogs I’d encountered over the past year were proving to be as opaque and unpredictable as I’d long found humans to be. When reading a dog’s emotional state or anticipating their likely reaction to a stimulus, I was guessing wrong as often as I guessed right. When dogs are your full-time job, with a side of cat or fish or bird thrown in for good measure, being wrong 50 percent of the time was bad news. The truth was, they could easily turn on each other—or me—with little advance warning or justification that I could intuit. It wasn’t always, or only, fear-based. Or was it? More beneficial than becoming an expert in animal behavior, it seemed, would be specializing in animal misbehavior.
Without that first beautiful and perilous walk with Abbie and Tucker, I went straight to the bottom-of-the-hill clients. First was Morgan, who occupied a cozy little cottage with her owners in a neighborhood of similarly small and charming starter homes. The owners were young, maybe early thirties, and Morgan was as yet their only child. They left Animal Planet on the TV for her while they were away and insisted I sing to her to get her to poop. They swore it worked and didn’t want to run the risk of her getting backed up, so I obliged. Though I sort of cheated, taking her in the backyard before our walk and singing to her there, for some measure of privacy. I didn’t exactly want to be standing on the sidewalk in full view of God and everyone saying, “Moooorgan, make a poo poo,” in a high falsetto. It was my poor luck that their neighbor was a big gardener, often in his yard on the other side of the fence and serving as my frequent and unwitting audience.
Next, I continued on up the road to Spence and Doodle’s. Doodle could not be cajoled, bribed, trained, or physically dragged to move any faster than a leisurely amble. If I went too fast for his sensibilities, he’d just lie down right there, whether we were in the middle of a crosswalk, trying to avoid the reach of a sprinkler system, or giving wide berth to a car that had been circling the block and slowing as it passed me and the dogs. As a result, we spent much of our time together in their backyard. Their owners were the kind that treated their yard as a big grassy bathroom, never cleaning up after the dogs, so I had to be constantly vigilant not to step in one of the moldering mines that freckled the lawn.
There was one phone call I always took with pleasure, which never required that I put out a fire, rearrange my schedule, lie about my health, or elide my financial woes. With my sister, I could be completely candid. There wasn’t a single topic I had to avoid or sugarcoat. We could openly discuss, for example, how bad my skin had gotten since I started dog walking. I could tell her that, when Annie took me to the neighborhood nail salon for my birthday, the technician said, “What happened to your face? You used to be so pretty.”
On the phone, she and I contemplated whether the sudden and intense outbreak of painful cystic acne could be a result of my weight loss since I’d started walking dogs. Was it stress? Or because I was sweating more? She signed me up for Proactiv and paid for the shipments, rejoicing with me when my face started to revert to its usual ruddy but relatively smooth complexion.
She kept me on birth control, sending me free samples from the Atlanta infertility clinic where she worked. The pharmaceutical companies kept them well stocked. I took the birth control less for its contraceptive qualities than because it kept my otherwise painful and erratic cycles regular and comparatively symptom free. If only she had access to free samples of Celexa or Prozac, I’d be all set.
She didn’t judge me when I confessed that I was using MySpace to search for eligible bachelors in the area because I didn’t know how else to meet guys. She encouraged me to join a local group of newcomers to the area. This was a Yahoo! Group where the members posted get-togethers: bowling in Albany, karaoke night in downtown Berkeley, pizza-making parties at someone’s house, or pool parties at a complex in Pleasant Hill. I’d never been a joiner in my life, but I was getting desperate for friends, for companionship beyond Ian’s nocturnal occupation of our living room.
When I met a guy there who made me laugh, but to whom I wasn’t especially attracted, my sister suggested I just take the plunge and make out with him. It could be great! I didn’t take her advice, but I appreciated her enthusiasm.
Her calls usually came while I was out with the American bulldog. Ace belonged to a fireman, and his walk fell on my way back toward my own neighborhood from the Richmond dogs. He took the most enormous dumps—the dog, not the fireman—and I’d have to put my sister on hold, balancing my scuffed flip phone while scooping the steaming pile in one quick movement.
“Yuck! Done,” I’d say as I came back on the line, and we’d continue on with the truth telling.
For her, I broke my cardinal rule of not talking on the phone while walking a dog. Better that we should talk while I was petting a dog in a shit-speckled backyard, and not out on the street walking one, but she called during her lunch break. Her window of availability was very specific, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to shoot the breeze with her. Ace wasn’t the best dog to break the no-talking-on-the-phone rule with, either. He was incredibly strong and certainly possessed the strength to drag me down the street should he so desire. Thankfully, though, he also responded well to voice commands and didn’t seem to be aware of his own incredible strength.
My dear sister loved hearing stories from the front lines of pet care, sometimes asking me to retell her favorites. She cackled through the receiver as I related the latest association meeting in which we observed a Reiki demonstration on a kennel dog, a pit mix named Peanut.
“I don’t think he was relaxed; I think he was paralyzed by fear. Twenty-five dog walkers watching him have his life force energy get moved around on a folding table? I dunno, maybe I’m high and it totally works. I’d probably benefit from some Reiki right about now.”
Her laughter buoyed my spirits and gave me hope that this was amusing, and interesting, and worthwhile, what I was doing out here, a country away from her, the rest of my family, college friends, and familiar southern sensibilities.
While interesting in a puzzling and perplexing way, canine suicide attempts weren’t something I’d normally chuckle over. Nor were my precarious finances, slipping serotonin levels, pizza face, shiftless roommate, and overarching fe
eling of isolation. My sister helped me immeasurably in gaining a little bit of perspective on my problems, and, after a conversation with her, there was little that felt so hard or so bad after all.
Though my family was far away from me, and I kept my parents only partially informed about the reality of my situation, I knew they all three had my back no matter how dire the times, how shitty the situation, how desperate the measures.
Journal entry: Friday, 6:00 PM
TGIF. Today has been an unmitigated disaster. I dared to snooze for an extra thirty minutes, so my first two dogs had accidents in the house. I think Louie intentionally ran in circles, mid-crap, just to make as big a mess as he could. (Lucky thing about oriental rugs is all the fleur-de-lis patterning … I challenge anyone to find the stains!) The rest of the day went downhill from there—got locked out, the dogs ate something off the counter and barfed all over the bathroom rug—and now I have an interview with that 150-pound mastiff client. I’d really like nothing more than to get out of these muddy, wet clothes, crack a giant bottle of wine, and fall asleep in the tub.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rain or Shine
The contracts I had with my clients stated that the dogs go out rain or shine. Depending on the dog, though, their need to piss and shit did not necessarily mean they ventured out into the weather willingly. This was true of the dogs I was scheduled to visit first that day: the thin-skinned and neurotic greyhounds.
Flannel and Salvador lived in a three-story industrial loft in an up-and-coming, semi-industrial business and shopping district. As the hired help, I was allowed to park behind the building in the No Parking—by threat of death parking spot reserved for the tenants. When I stepped out of the driver’s side, I had to squeeze myself and my giant fanny pack between my car and their motorcycle, parked alongside the back fence. I wasn’t sure whether it was Matt or Darlene that biked, but suspected it was a shared passion, like adopting retired racing greyhounds.
To get into the loft, I first had to get through the tall wrought iron gate that opened into the small courtyard. The “dog room” looked out onto the courtyard, and I always took the utmost care not to wake the slumbering greyhounds when I came to the front door. The moment they sensed my presence, they went into a wild frenzy. I’d been cracked on the jaw by Salvador’s bony head before, and, ever since then, I was very careful to keep the dogs as calm as possible.
On this particular visit, the dogs must have heard my car or the clang of the gate. Both dogs were jumping and yipping madly before I even unlocked the plate glass front door. Salvador was the larger of the two, white with mottled gray-brown markings on his body. Flannel was more petite, but just as excitable. Her brindle coat stretched alarmingly over her frame. Her skin was so thin, I sometimes thought I could see her organs, pulsing and shuddering as they worked.
Flannel and Salvador’s owners were a rare case, in that I preferred the humans to their dogs. Matt and Darlene always paid on time, and in contrast to their hyperactive dogs, they were measured and approachable people. But, cool as they seemed, I never got over the squalor that their dogs lived in. Even though they got a whole room to themselves, which was separated from the rest of the sprawling interior by a wooden baby gate, the polished concrete floor was filthy, and their food and water dishes always looked as though they hadn’t been washed in ages no matter how recently I may have given them a good scrubbing. Wet food congealed around the rim of the stainless steel, and the remnants of the dry kibble were scattered all across the floor. More than once I’d arrived to find that an army of ants had discovered the feast. When the dogs drank, they splashed as much water on the floor as they consumed, leaving a lake of water dotted with swollen soggy kibble, which they tracked all over the room.
I couldn’t help myself and often grabbed a roll of paper towels from the kitchen and did a quick wipe down to get the worst of it up before we headed out on our walk. Usually, I stopped short of washing their dishes, too, as that felt like an obvious judgment and might have been insulting to Matt and Darlene. But I was always sorely tempted. The ants gave me a welcome excuse to wash down the whole area, all bowls included. I don’t know if it made the dogs feel better, but it eased my mind.
Each dog had a handmade cushion sewed by Darlene, which they spent much of their days lounging upon. The large island in the center of their room was heaped with mounds of mail and cryptic knickknacks. There was a six-pack of dusty, empty root beer bottles, a pile of costume jewelry, and a Rubbermaid container filled to overflowing with doll clothes. At the edge of it all sat Dog-Walker Barbie. This was the conduit through which I communicated with the owners, though it was usually with Matt.
The Barbie had shown up on the table months ago, blond hair braided, dressed in a green cargo skirt and rain boots, all strikingly similar to an outfit I’d wear to walk the dogs. I wasn’t quite sure whether to be amused or offended, whether this was a friendly joke or a creepy slight. Tucked within the mini messenger bag was a note that read, Flannel doesn’t like to go out in the rain. If you can’t convince her to go out on a walk, take them into the backyard instead. –Matt.
In most cases, it wasn’t the dogs that minded the rain, but their owners. I’d been visiting a Jack Russell named Kimchee, whose humans were about to have their first baby. The husband was very explicit that he wanted his dog thoroughly rubbed down and blow-dried after a walk in the rain, his paws washed of all mud, his sweater hung up to dry in the laundry room. Their house was decorated in shades of eggshell and ecru, so I could see where dirty paw prints might mar the aesthetic. For Kimchee’s part, he enthusiastically romped through the rain, getting as filthy as he could without actually rolling around in the swampiest puddles. Best of luck with that baby, I thought as I blew Kimchee dry, the two of us sequestered to the front doormat until all evidence that he’d been outside—that he was an animal, after all—was expunged. I wondered if Kimchee’s dad knew he was getting a dog when they brought home the Jack Russell, or if he thought he was bringing home an extra-animated throw pillow.
Flannel’s aversion to getting wet was just one of an encyclopedic list of quirks I’d noted about these greyhounds in their crowded file. Foremost on that sheet of idiosyncrasies was her unusually placed urethra, which caused her to pee straight backward instead of down onto the ground. More times than I care to recall, I’d been following too closely and had my Chaco-shod foot sprinkled with hot urine. She also pooped between three and four times on a walk, and it was rarely, if ever, solid. On Salvador’s list of bad habits was his proclivity to walk with his snout permanently placed between Flannel’s hind legs, which had resulted more than once in Flannel pooping directly on the crown of his head.
I had long ago given up on getting the dogs to walk in the rain. Flannel especially could only be coaxed out if I held an umbrella over the dogs. Juggling both leashes and a polo umbrella large enough to accommodate two fully-grown greyhounds in their doggy ponchos left me out in the rain and without much leverage to manage them. And managing them was critical. The dogs lunged at anyone in uniform, subjecting the mailman, UPS delivery people, even the poor kitchen staff at the nearby bakery taking their cigarette breaks, to their sudden, bug-eyed snarls. I could rarely predict what new and obscure moving object might trigger them. Skateboards, strollers, bicycles, rollerblades, and the dollies used by delivery people had all set them off at some point.
Compounding all of this was their aggression toward other dogs. Luckily, the shopping district was more commonly populated by well-dressed professionals, tourists, or wives and mothers spending their day out doing their vestigial gathering duties. But other dogs certainly weren’t unprecedented.
Early in my walking relationship with the twitchy beasts, we were returning home past the ceramics gallery two doors down from the loft. In what felt like an instant, Flannel had slipped backward out of her collar and escaped my rein on her. Lest I ever forget that she was once a racing dog, her speed was unmatched. She charged through the op
en door of the gallery, her target the proprietor’s geriatric toy poodle. Salvador and I charged after her, bringing the total of dogs in the small display room up to three.
“Flannel, no!” I bellowed. I used one foot to bar Salvador from joining in the mayhem, using my other leg as a wedge between Flannel and her tiny victim. Somehow I managed to slip her collar back over her head and pull her away from the prized centerpiece of the room, a giant raku vase on a pedestal, which she had been savaging the poodle beside.
From the threshold, the dogs behind me strained for more action within. I shakily apologized to the owner, who seemed miraculously unruffled.
“This dog has escaped death more times that I can count. When I found him, he was out on the tracks. Been hit by a train!”
Looking at the shivering handful of kinky cream fur, I found this hard to believe. Yet this death-defying poodle seemed largely unscathed, despite Flannel’s best efforts. No blood or broken bones that the owner could detect in her rather cursory examination. I’d been so sure in those frantic moments of separating the dogs that I was looking at a broken neck—and some pretty pricey broken pottery—on my record.
Apologizing again, I retreated with my charges, returning them to their holding area before they could do any more damage. I walked away with a bloodied toe from Flannel’s untrimmed nails and the residual chest pains from a minor heart attack, but no lawsuit. My toe was still attached, and my poor heart would surely recover. I would certainly request special greyhound collars for both dogs, too. Since greyhounds’ bony, narrow heads are smaller than their necks, the specially designed collar constricts as they pull, and escapes like Flannel’s are thus prevented. I cursed myself for not suggesting this to Matt and Darlene sooner. It should have been first on my list when I signed them as clients. That was a bona fide bush-league error. After that, we always walked across the street from the gallery, eliminating any possibility for a rematch between greyhound and immortal poodle.
Sleeps with Dogs Page 13
