Saving Gracie

by Bradley, Carol

  One sunny afternoon in April, the techs escorted six of the dogs to a grassy area at one end of the Rescue League building and—for the first time since their arrival—turned them loose. The dogs sniffed one another. They’d been in close proximity to their former kennelmates, but were seldom able to actually see one another. The dogs began checking out the soft, cushiony grass. Their paws were no longer tender; it had been weeks since they had been forced to stand on wire. Still, the spongy ground must have felt miraculous. And the smells! Dogs’ noses are up to 100,000 more sensitive than humans’, and the grass offered a cornucopia of aromas to investigate.

  Minutes passed. The dogs seemed baffled. They watched and waited, perplexed. The grass felt wonderful, but now what? If this were a Disney movie, Dog 132 would have picked up her paws and begun to frolic in the warm spring sun. She would have rolled on her back and mouth-wrestled a playmate as her dangly ears lay stretched on the ground.

  But in truth, no one remembers the tricolor Cavalier doing anything dramatic that day. Only that she mingled. She sniffed her surroundings. In her own quiet way, she seemed to enjoy the chance to explore a tiny patch of the outdoors.

  “Who knows?” Bair thought to herself when her colleagues herded the dogs back inside. “Maybe she’ll come around someday.”

  Chapter 12: Deciding on a Dog

  Linda jackson had never been crazy about dogs. She’d tried to overcome this; four years earlier, she’d given in to her kids and purchased a celebutante–style Yorkshire Terrier puppy. It hadn’t worked out. At two and a half pounds, Spike had an ego the size of a Bull Mastiff. He soiled the carpet, chewed holes in Linda’s sixty-dollar leather sandals, and bolted out of the house every chance he got. And he yapped incessantly. One night, when a friend called, the kids were hollering and Spike was barking so loudly that Linda could barely hear herself. “What is going on?” her friend asked.

  Finally, Linda had had enough. She returned the Yorkie to the neighbor she’d bought him from, and Spike ended up with a new owner who was much more forgiving of the little dog’s high-maintenance personality. But 15-year-old Ryan, 12-year-old Erika, and 9-year-old Julia were furious that Mom had given Spike away. Linda felt horrible.

  When Julia announced that the family was going to get another dog to replace Spike, Linda refused to consider it. “No, we’re not going to get another dog,” she corrected her daughter. “We failed this one.” Besides, the family still had a cat, an affectionate gray shorthair with green eyes. Kitty would have to do.

  But Julia was relentless. She constantly played Nintendogs, a video game in which players feed and walk virtual dogs, even guiding them through obedience training. And night after night, Linda watched her youngest sprawl on the couch with a children’s book about dogs, researching the perfect breed for their family. “How about this one?” Julia would ask, showing her a picture of a Corgi. “How about this?” pointing to a demure-looking Dachshund. All three kids lobbied for an English Bulldog.

  “I’ll know the right dog when I see it,” Linda told them.

  By the time Julia showed her a picture of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Linda’s resolve had begun to soften. She had to admit, the little dogs with the large, expressive eyes and dangling ears were appealing. They were the size she preferred—twelve to eighteen pounds—and their personality seemed ideal. Cavaliers were considered intelligent, loyal, cheerful, and even-tempered. They were renowned lapdogs, said to have so captivated Britain’s King Charles II in the mid-1600s that he’d issued a decree allowing the diminutive spaniels to enter any public building in England. Cavaliers’ charm was indisputable.

  “Breed buzzwords: Gentle. Affectionate. Sporty,” the chapter of the book on Cavaliers said. Accompanying the description was an illustration of a Cavalier and a bubble of words above it that had the dog saying, “I get my best exercise getting on and off laps.”

  All right, Linda told the kids, she would check into a Cavalier. But ten minutes of research on the Internet and she wished she’d never opened her mouth. Cavaliers were a flavor of the month, it turned out. A registered puppy from a reputable breeder could easily run $1,500 or more. There was no way Linda could afford to spend that kind of money.

  Scrolling online one evening, she stumbled across what sounded like a good deal: Cavalier puppies for sale for $700, plus $200 for shipping. But the breeder in Texas acted evasive when Linda contacted her to ask about her kennel. And the idea of shipping a dog sight unseen made Linda uneasy; friends warned her against transporting a puppy hundreds of miles. If something went wrong with the puppy, what recourse would she have? Suddenly, what had sounded like a bargain now seemed too good to be true. “Face it,” she told herself, “a Cavalier just isn’t in the cards.”

  She was debating how to break the bad news when, on her way to work the next morning, she stopped, as she usually did, at a local coffee shop in her hometown of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and reached for the Harrisburg Patriot-News. The rack was empty; the paper hadn’t arrived. She picked up the Reading Eagle instead—the local paper for a bigger metropolis thirty-seven miles east of Lebanon. Linda rarely went to Reading and had no interest in news from that area. But as she flipped through the paper, a large photo on the cover of the Lifestyle section caught her attention. It showed a woman surrounded by Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, all of them standing on their hind legs and clamoring for her attention.

  The Cavaliers were among 337 purebred dogs and other animals who had been rescued from a puppy mill—a shoddily run commercial kennel forty miles away. Some of the dogs were being housed at the Animal Rescue League of Berks County shelter, south of Reading. The breeder had pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and agreed to give up his dogs. In a matter of days, once the legal hurdles were cleared, the dogs would be available for adoption.

  Linda thought quickly. Her job as development director at the local YMCA didn’t pay a fortune; she was always trying to figure out how to pay the bills. Getting a dog would be another expense. But she wanted to make her kids happy. A puppy mill rescue might just be the way to go. She couldn’t afford a purebred dog any other way.

  This Reading Eagle photo of shelter employee Pam Bair surrounded by Cavalier King Charles Spaniels caught Linda Jackson’s eye. (Susan Angstadt/Reading Eagle)

  She jotted down the number for the shelter and dialed it as soon as she got to work. The woman who answered confirmed that the dogs would be available in a matter of days for a small fee. She directed Linda to the shelter’s website, where she could download an adoption application form. Linda should submit the form and keep calling back to see when the dogs were available, the woman told her.

  Linda filled out the application, sent it in, and was notified a couple of days later that she qualified to take one of the dogs home. The shelter had one Havanese, two English Bulldogs, and nine Cavaliers from the puppy mill. If she got in line soon enough, she could choose one of the Cavaliers. For several days she phoned the shelter every morning to see if Adoption Day had arrived. Not yet, she was told. Try again tomorrow.

  On Thursday, June 29, she phoned again, expecting to hear the usual “Sorry, keep calling.” To her surprise, the woman told her that the dogs were ready to go. “First come, first served,” the woman said, “so get here as quickly as you can.”

  Linda glanced at her watch. Fund-raising season was in full swing at the YMCA; this was hardly a convenient time to disappear on personal business. But the chance to adopt a Cavalier took precedence. She ducked out of the office, backed her sedan out of the parking lot, and threaded her way east through town and out onto Highway 422.

  The shelter was only forty miles away, but the highway was narrow, just two lanes, and traffic was stop-and-go the entire way. Two-story brick houses lined the road. Along certain stretches, turn-of-the-century row houses sat only a few feet from the pavement, so close you could practically reach out and shake
hands with people relaxing on the front porch. The drive would take an hour or more.

  When she reached the town of Sinking Springs, ten miles out, Linda called the shelter to make certain some Cavaliers were left. The voice on the other end sounded apologetic. “I’m so sorry,” the woman told her, “we just adopted out the last one.”

  There has to be a mistake, Linda thought. She hadn’t driven all this way for nothing. She stepped on the accelerator. She had to see for herself that all the Cavaliers were gone. If they were, she’d think about getting another breed of dog. Any dog; by now it didn’t matter what kind. She was on a mission that day to bring home a pet.

  As she got closer to the shelter, she asked herself again if she really wanted to bring home a new pet. Dogs were work. You had to walk them. You had to board them when you went away. “The kids want a dog, sure, but I’ll be the one who winds up taking care of it,” she thought. “There’s no getting around that.”

  It was noon when she turned off the bypass, followed a curving road for a few hundred yards, and drove up the driveway to the Animal Rescue League facility. She parked her car and entered the main door. She’d never been inside an animal shelter before, and the pungent aroma of the place—a combination of disinfectant and smelly dogs—filled her with second thoughts. Linda was buoyed by the sight of a shelter tech holding a red and white Cavalier. “Is that one of the dogs you’re adopting out today?” she asked.

  The woman nodded.

  The receptionist had been mistaken after all! The Cavalier looked healthy for a puppy mill survivor, and she was beautiful—just like the dogs Linda had seen in the Reading paper.

  Immediately, though, another tech who overheard the exchange called out that that dog had been spoken for. But they did have one left.

  Pam Bair had left to run some errands, so Linda missed the chance to talk with the staffer who knew these dogs best. The tech came around from behind the counter and invited Linda outside, where the last remaining dog was waiting in a fenced-in, graveled run. Linda knelt down and peered through the chain-link fence. Looking back at her was a black and white lump with coffee brown eyes. She wasn’t anything like the striking animal Linda thought she would find. Her coat might have been pretty once—her back and sides jet black, her chest and front legs the color of snow—but her hair had been clipped short and was bone dry. One of her eyes bulged out slightly and looked cloudy, as if she had cataracts. And her nipples were so distended they nearly touched the ground. Linda had never seen anything like them.

  The shelter tech opened the door, reached in, picked up the dog, and set her down in the aisle next to Linda. “Ugh,” Linda groaned to herself, “this dog stinks.” She smelled like a combination of fear, confusion, and despair.

  Wilma, as the staff called her, was believed to be 6 years old. Part of the puppy mill’s breeding stock, she’d had one litter of puppies after another, and an absence of veterinary care had caught up with her. She had a recurring skin infection. Her ears were clogged with mucus. She suffered from dry eye and needed eyedrops every day. The cloudiness in her right eye had permanently damaged her eyesight. And her teeth were so rotten that the shelter’s veterinarian had pulled most of them. She had only five teeth left.

  Those were the problems the shelter had been able to diagnose. The Cavalier could always develop more. “Be aware you may have to spend thousands of dollars on this dog,” the shelter tech warned.

  Linda said nothing. She had just gotten rid of one problem dog. Now she was contemplating another dog who sounded like a medical train wreck. One more thing to complicate her life.

  The Cavalier turned slowly and approached Linda. Fleetingly, the white tip of her black tail swung to one side and then the other. “At least she’s friendly,” thought Linda. “She’s not cowering.” She petted the little dog gingerly. In a gentle voice, the tech reached out to caress the Cavalier, too. “That a girl.” A moment passed and Linda, hesitating, picked up the dog and sat her on her lap. Almost by instinct, the dog leaned against her. Linda was struck by the endearing way her feathery ears framed her face.

  Linda thought about her promise to the kids. She had assured them that if and when the rescued Cavaliers were available, she would get in line to adopt one. Now, here she was, cradling the last dog left. How could she think of leaving the shelter without her?

  She looked down at the dog. The Cavalier’s cloudy brown eyes gazed back. Something about her petite little face was pathetic but also endearing. Linda couldn’t resist it.

  “You know what?” she heard herself say. “I’ll take her.”

  The tech nodded, pleased. “You hear that, Wilma?” she said. “You’ve just found a new home.” She lifted Dog 132 out of Linda’s arms and clutched her to her chest.

  Linda had already completed the paperwork. She’d stated in writing that she owned her home, that the dog would live inside, and that she agreed to have her spayed. She listed the name of her veterinarian and a reference. The information filed that day noted the vaccinations Wilma had been given, but left some questions unanswered.

  Housetrained? Unknown.

  Good with children? Unknown.

  Good with other animals? Unknown.

  This was no time for second-guessing. Linda excused herself, walked to her car, and retrieved the small plastic cat crate she had brought from home. The shelter tech carried the Cavalier to the lobby to wait for her return. As soon as Linda stepped back inside, the employee handed her Dog 132. She watched as Linda first tried to coax the dog into the crate and, when that didn’t work, gently push her inside. The latch on the crate was broken, but the little dog made no attempt to step back out. She’d spent most of her life in confinement. She knew the drill. She crouched for several seconds and then laid down obediently and stared out.

  “If you decide you don’t want her, you can always bring her back,” the tech said.

  Linda thanked her and said goodbye. She crossed the parking lot, placed the crate in the rear seat of her car, got in behind the wheel, and started the engine. Almost instantly the dog’s putrid odor filled the car. The shelter’s groomer had bathed all the dogs in preparation for Adoption Day, but this one was going to need another bath, maybe two or three, before she smelled good enough to hug close.

  Linda drove out of the parking lot and retraced her route down the winding road. She had just pulled onto the fast-paced bypass when she felt the Cavalier’s presence next to her. Silently the dog had scrambled out of her crate, climbed down off the backseat, and scampered on top of the leather console between the front seats. She was standing at Linda’s elbow, wobbling. Before Linda could stop her, the dog half-jumped, half-fell into her lap.

  Linda grimaced. The papaya-colored sundress she was wearing—the all-cotton sheath that was such a chore to iron—would have to be washed now. She thought about setting Dog 132 down in the passenger seat, but the little dog dug in her nails. She wasn’t going anywhere. Linda, touched by her tenacity, let her stay.

  Halfway home, she decided to drop by and show her new find to her friend Cathy, a former colleague of hers at the Y who lived just off the highway. Linda had kept Cathy up to date on her search for a dog, and Cathy, an ardent dog lover, was eager to meet her friend’s new pet.

  On the outskirts of town, Linda phoned Cathy and moments later pulled alongside her house. Cathy was waiting. She had read about King Charles Spaniels on the Internet. The long-eared, multicolor dogs were adorable. Cathy loved the history of the breed, too. Linda was incredibly lucky to have found this dog at no cost, Cathy told her.

  Then Linda stepped out of the car holding her new dog, and Cathy winced at the sight of the dull-coated creature with the distended belly. Linda knew what she was thinking: She looks like a cow. “She’s going to need a breast lift,” she said aloud, and the two women laughed.

  Months later, Cathy confessed that the
Cavalier had looked so sickly that she wasn’t certain the dog would survive. But outwardly she forced a smile. “Maybe she’ll come around,” she said finally, and Linda smiled back. Leave it to Cathy to put a sunny spin on something she clearly thought was a mistake.

  The two friends chatted briefly before Linda got back on the road. This time she didn’t bother putting the Cavalier in the crate. She had to admit that, despite the smell, the warmth of the dog’s scrubby little body on her lap felt good.

  Linda had never thought of herself as a dog person. Growing up in Cumbola, a village in the thick of Pennsylvania’s coal country, she, her sister, and their mother had owned a couple of Toy Poodles, first Gigi and then Tina. But while the dogs were allowed inside the family’s modest row house during the day, they were forbidden from jumping onto the furniture, so the girls never cuddled with them much. At night, or any time the family left the house, the dogs were locked in the basement, often for long stretches. They were paper-trained and didn’t have to go outside. In hindsight, Linda was struck by how much of the dogs’ lives were spent in the dark.

  For reasons she couldn’t explain, Linda had always preferred cats. She’d doted on Puddy, a striped tabby she and her ex-husband had adopted from the pound when they were still dating. Before her own children came along, Puddy was her baby. Uncharacteristically for a cat, he loved to go on car rides, and consequently he went everywhere with Linda. When, years later, he was struck by a car and crawled under a neighbor’s porch to die, Linda was overcome with grief.

  Still, something felt right about taking this needy little dog. Linda thought back over the events that had led to this moment. The fact that the Harrisburg paper hadn’t been delivered to the coffeehouse that morning, for one; if it had, she never would have learned about the rescued Cavaliers. Then, when she’d called the shelter that morning, she had been told it was too late. Yet she’d driven there anyway to discover Dog 132—the puppy mill survivor no one else wanted—waiting.