On the seventh day after our evacuation, we were let back into the area, and we were amazed to discover that our house had survived. Firefighters had foamed the house down and mounted a successful defense of the structure, and we will be forever grateful to them. Other nearby homes had not been so lucky, and the entire area seemed charred.
Two days after that we were back in the house, the whole family, shedding and panting away. But it had started us thinking about how we were going to execute the move to Maine when Debbie retired. It would be a voluntary move then, but just as difficult.
That was almost five years ago, so in terms of the length of time it took to plan our trip, it made the D-day invasion look like a spur-of-the-moment decision. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the planning was another matter altogether.
The way I figured it, we could have used another five years, minimum.
Charlie
When volunteers work at mobile pet adoptions, they are generally assigned a specific dog to sit with and care for. They are expected to introduce potential adopters to the dog and explain its appealing traits.
Debbie sat with a dog named Charlie at a mobile adoption in Century City for an entire day, getting increasingly annoyed as the hours went by and no one showed any interest in him. He was listed in the shelter records as an Australian shepherd mix, but there was really no way to know his breed. Charlie was a mutt, in the best sense of the word.
His age was also a total guess. Vets make the judgment by looking at the condition of a dog’s teeth, but it’s an inexact science in the best case, and especially so with shelter dogs. They’ve likely lived outside a good portion of their lives, and could have done things like chew on rocks. They’ve also rarely had their teeth cleaned. In Charlie’s case, the guesstimate of his age was nine, which meant that he was going to be very difficult to place in a home.
So Charlie sat in Debbie’s lap all day, blissfully unaware that his euthanasia date was approaching. By day’s end, she had fallen in love with him, and had decided that there was no way she was going to put him back in a shelter cage. The idea that they might kill a healthy, wonderful dog like this seemed unfair to the point of being absurd. So we adopted Charlie ourselves and took him home.
The idea was better in theory than in practice.
The problem was that “home” was an apartment we had moved to on Ninth Street in Santa Monica, one in which dogs were prohibited. So Debbie called the landlord and gave him a poignant speech about a dog she had taken off “death row,” and he relented. Debbie can pretty much convince anyone to do anything; by the time she got off the phone, the landlord had probably sworn off veal.
Charlie was ours.
And so was Phoebe, a husky mix we fell in love with the following week in the shelter. Her time was up, and we watched as a potential adopter debated for two days whether to take her, and ultimately decided not to. We could not bear to watch her die, so she became ours.
And so did Sophie, a nine-year-old golden retriever who redefined sweetness in a dog, and who we were not about to let suffer in a shelter. In fact, when we arrived at the shelter that day and saw her there for the first time, I immediately took her out of the cage and announced to anyone who would listen that she was officially our dog.
And so was Harry, a Newfie/Lab mix who was hilariously psychotic—way too crazy and huge for anyone else to want.
So we had four large dogs in an apartment that didn’t allow any, though we had dispensation for one. We decided to be sneaky about it. We’d take one dog at a time for a walk, sometimes going down the stairs, in off hours using the elevator. We smiled and chatted with anyone we met, never letting on that we had more than one dog and hoping they wouldn’t notice or care.
If they did catch on, they didn’t say anything, except for one tenant, who people called “Mr. Jack.” He was in his seventies and completely blind, so I can only assume he could smell the difference between the dogs.
“They let you have that many here?” he asked, and we said that they did. He smiled and said, “Great.”
I was the one who finally suggested we move. Football season was approaching, and halftime was simply not going to be long enough to walk each dog individually.
So we went looking for a house to rent, and we found a great place not too far from the apartment. We signed a lease that was silent about allowing pets; though the pets in that house would prove to be as far from silent as is possible.
In any event, we knew we had reached our limit. More dogs would be unmanageable; even the four that we had made the house feel small.
Four dogs were certainly more than enough.
One year later we had twenty-seven.
Pong the Dalmatian
The West Los Angeles animal shelter was our home base of sorts, and it was where we did most of our volunteer work. As I mentioned, while it’s one of the better shelters in Los Angeles County, that’s not saying much.
For the most part, the people who work there try hard to do what’s best for the animals, but it’s a tough assignment. They aren’t given enough space, resources, or funding. So they do what they can.
One of the things they do is hold special adoption days, usually on the weekend, and they attempt to drum up publicity for them. They provide incentives for adoption, usually reduced costs, and there are giveaways for the kids.
The shelter is located off Bundy Drive in West LA, but it had the disadvantage of being behind other buildings, and therefore couldn’t be seen from the street. This tended to discourage drive-bys from stopping in, though in some ways that can be a positive. It cuts down on spur-of-the-moment impulse adoptions, which often don’t work out.
People who work with dog rescue organizations are overwhelmingly female, probably 90 percent in my experience. As one of the token males at the West LA shelter, I was given some of the unenviable assignments, and on one particular special adoption day, it was a beauty.
In order to attract passersby who couldn’t see the shelter from the street, someone would dress up in a Disney-type animal costume and go out on Bundy Drive. On this day the costume was of Pong the Dalmatian, and the sucker they dressed up was yours truly.
The major disadvantage to the job, other than the fact that I looked and felt like a dope, was the midsummer heat. It was ninety-five degrees outside, which was chilly compared to inside the Pong suit. I felt charcoal broiled within five minutes of the time I put it on. I will never again say, “Get lost, creep,” when approached by a character at a theme park.
But I dutifully went outside in my costume and started attracting attention. There was a traffic light on the corner, so I would approach stopped cars and go into my act.
I would get on my knees and assume the begging position, as though I were imploring people to come in and adopt a dog. I would dance like an idiot, wave my arms wildly, and do whatever else was necessary to get people to notice me. Because in Los Angeles, just dressing up as Pong the Dalmatian doesn’t get it done.
And to a degree I succeeded, in that people definitely paid attention. They would point at me and laugh, yelling things and getting into the spirit. Kids were most enamored of me, and for the hour that I was out there, the Bundy traffic light was a fun place to be.
Except, of course, for me. Though no one could know it by looking at me, I was fully baked and miserable. You can’t tell a fake Dalmatian by its cover.
But the really annoying part was that I was completely ineffective. While everyone was noticing me and was laughing both with me and at me, I wasn’t getting people into the shelter. When the light turned green they would move on, leaving poor Pong behind. I wasn’t, as they say, putting asses in seats.
So my time ended with my not having gotten a single person to come to the shelter who wasn’t already going there. I went inside to peel off the suit, though by that point everything was so hot and melted that it was hard to tell where the suit ended and my skin began. I had probably lost ten pounds in that hour, which
is to say that I should get a few Pong suits for my regular wardrobe.
There was one other sacrificial male lamb in the shelter, and he was tasked with going out as my replacement Pong. After my performance, he was going to have big rubber shoes to fill. On my suggestion, he hosed down the suit with cold water inside and out before putting it on, and after he did so, he asked, “Where’s the sign?”
And then it hit me, as well as everyone within laughing distance of my discovery. There had been a sign prepared for us Pongs to carry and wave around, announcing ANIMAL ADOPTION DAY and directing people into the shelter.
I had forgotten to bring the sign outside with me, so people passing by had no idea what the hell I was doing out there. To them I must have been just an idiot in a Dalmatian suit, a humorous if bizarre diversion, but not an invitation to enter the shelter.
Ever sensitive, Debbie laughed the hardest at my humiliation, and was instrumental in “Pong” becoming my nickname for the remainder of our time at the shelter.
Hanging Up the Tacos
In July 2010, Debbie decided to retire. She informed her colleagues at Taco Bell and agreed to stay on until February 2011 to help in the transition.
The decision contained both positives and negatives for me—and after all, isn’t it all about me? The overriding positive was that Debbie would be home, not working twelve-hour days. She’d worked hard her entire life, and now she’d get to do whatever she wanted, which included relaxing. And best of all, we would be free to move to Maine.
On the negative side, among Debbie’s areas of responsibility at Taco Bell were sports media and sponsorships. As part of that, we went to virtually every big sporting event that interested me … every Super Bowl, World Series, All-Star game, et cetera.
We even used to go to all the BCS Bowl games; within three days we’d go to Miami for the Orange Bowl, New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl, and Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl, and then a week later we’d go to the championship game, wherever it might be held. And as the happy spouse, I had absolutely no responsibility at these events other than to smile and look pretty.
There are worse ways for a sports degenerate like me to live.
But suddenly the die was cast. The move that I had been unsuccessfully planning for five years was soon to be upon us, and I still had absolutely no idea how to do it.
So I decided to get some opinions.
I sent a mass e-mail to every reader who had ever e-mailed me, and the number was well into the thousands. Then I posted on Facebook, asking everyone to please send me their ideas and to solicit suggestions from their friends.
I got in excess of four thousand responses. Mostly they were things that I had already thought of and planned to check out … planes, trains, buses, vans, horse trailers, RVs, et cetera.
Someone on Facebook said that since I had worked in Hollywood, I should get John Travolta or Oprah Winfrey to lend me their plane. This triggered a flurry of comments, most from people who thought it was a damn good idea. None of those commenters, unfortunately, was Mr. Travolta or Ms. Winfrey.
First I called the “pet airlines,” so named because their sole function is to transport pets. Not only were they prohibitively expensive, but it just didn’t feel right for our dogs. The way they did it meant that the trip cross-country involved quite a few stops, so many that the entire thing would take twenty-four hours.
The idea of our old dogs being away from us for so long did not sit well with Debbie or me, for a number of reasons. They would be terribly stressed out, and we didn’t want to put them through it.
Plus, the amount of medication that they receive daily is mind-boggling. Eight of them are on pain meds for arthritis, both in liquid and pill form. We also have two epileptics, two suffering from incontinence, one with Cushing’s disease, and never fewer than two with ear infections or some other ailment. Administering all of these meds is a major project, and I was afraid it wouldn’t be handled correctly by anyone other than us. For instance, if handlers accidentally misidentified two dogs and switched their meds, it could be a disaster.
Since these were all dogs who had been abandoned prior to coming to live with us, we never wanted them to worry about that possibility again. Twenty-four hours in cages with strangers, shuttling on and off of airplanes, might make them fearful that we were gone from their lives for good. At least that’s how our human minds figured it.
Additionally, the closest the airlines would leave them was Boston, which presented all kinds of other problems for us. So pet airlines were not going to work.
Next I tried the regular airlines. Continental told me that the cost of flying a dog one way was somewhere in the $450 range.
“We are a special case, so you might want to make an accommodation,” I said. “We have twenty-five dogs. How much would it cost us to move all twenty-five?”
If the agent seemed surprised by the number, he hid it well. “Well, each one would be four hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You might get some good publicity out of it,” I said.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said, and I certainly believed that he didn’t.
In any event, this wasn’t going to work either. We’d have to buy carriers for each of our dogs of a size that could cost two hundred dollars apiece. Then only one or two dogs could go on each flight, and we’d have to be at the airport each time to meet them. And if we wanted to fly them nonstop, it would have to be Boston. The closer Portland airport would require switching planes.
The whole thing was way too expensive and unwieldy.
Nothing else seemed like it was going to work. Horse trailers aren’t air-conditioned, cargo vans could not be rented one way, we didn’t have enough drivers for rented SUVs, party buses were bizarrely expensive, and I was sure no RV rental company would be crazy enough to allow twenty-five dogs on their vehicles.
So I expanded my solicitation of ideas. I was doing a book tour the summer that Debbie decided to retire, so rather than bore my audiences with talk of my books, I spent time during my talks asking everyone how the hell we were going to get to Maine.
I went to Arizona to do signings in Tucson and Phoenix. When I arrived, it was 115 degrees in the sun. I’m not sure what the temperature was in the shade, because there is no shade in Arizona.
While driving to Tucson, I got caught in a monsoon. People, including me, will sometimes refer to a heavy rainstorm as a “monsoon,” but that isn’t technically accurate. This was actually and literally a monsoon, and it was unlike any rainstorm I had ever been in.
Then, on the drive back to Phoenix, I was caught in a haboob. That’s the name they give to massive dust storms, as if a funny-sounding name will make them seem less awful. It doesn’t work; this haboob was unbelievable and very frightening. It was fifty miles wide, and I would estimate that it reduced visibility on the highway to maybe six or seven inches.
The haboob that I was in actually made the national newscasts. It was surreal; the entire world turned dark, and when it was finished, the entire world was covered in dirt. It would remain that way, baking in the 115-degree heat, until another monsoon came and washed it away.
So when I got to the signing in Phoenix, I told everyone we were moving to Maine, and asked if anyone had any ideas on how to move the dogs.
They didn’t, and spent most of the time expressing their amazement that we would move to Maine.
How, they asked, would we be able to stand the extreme weather?
The Tara Foundation
The only way to survive being in dog rescue in Southern California is to focus like a laser on the victories and block out the defeats. It’s not an easy thing to do, since the number of defeats is simply overwhelming.
When you volunteer in a shelter, you try to get to know the individual dogs. That way you can provide them with affection and comfort, and you can also more effectively persuade potential adopters to take them.
The unhappy flip side is that getting to know them leads to l
oving them, which leads to terrible pain if they are subsequently euthanized, as so many are.
It’s as if each dog has a clock attached to it, and the time remaining on that clock inexorably clicks down. If someone doesn’t come in and adopt the dog before it gets to zero, then the dog will die. And the moment that time runs out is unpredictable; usually it’s directly related to the number of other dogs that are turned in or found stray, and the previously available space that is therefore occupied.
The rescue problem in the Los Angeles animal control system is simply a function of supply and demand; there are many more great dogs than there are good homes that want them. A deficiency in spaying and neutering is obviously one of the causes, but that isn’t nearly all of it. There are a great many people who possess what in my eyes is a disturbing mind-set toward animals. They view them as possessions, as discardable as a piece of furniture. Unfortunately, the law takes a similar position, though that is finally changing in many localities.
I’ve met plenty of dog owners who made me wish their own parents had been spayed and neutered.
One day my daughter, Heidi, was looking for a dog, and she went with us to a mobile adoption in Century City. There she met Gigi, a one-year-old Australian cattle dog mix who was pretty much as sweet as they come. They bonded instantly, and Heidi took her home that night.
Debbie and I met the woman who runs Perfect Pet Rescue, the group that saved Gigi and placed her with Heidi. Her name is Nancy Sarnoff, and she is as dedicated a rescue person as exists on the planet. Debbie and I talked with her for an hour, and by the time we left, we had come to a conclusion.
We could do this. We could start our own rescue group.
Debbie and I approached the task with slightly different viewpoints. For her it was a solution to her recently expressed desire to do more productive things outside of her job, and she relished the prospect. And if she could help animals in the process, all the better. Her commitment was total and instantaneous.
Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure Page 3
