Another Good Dog

by Cara Sue Achterberg

  Wheat Penny was the puppy you saw on greeting cards. She wasn’t the least bit hound-like, but more closely resembled a miniature golden retriever, if there was such a breed. She was loose-hipped, happy, with four white socks, a soft golden coat, and ears that flopped in different directions.

  When Wheat Penny was released from quarantine a few days later, she happily took over our house. Her puppy prowess was remarkable. There was nothing she wouldn’t chew (including the cats), and the housetraining was sketchy at best. She developed a penchant for pooping in the kids’ bedrooms and was consequently banished to the kitchen after I spent a morning scrubbing poop stains that had been tracked from one bedroom through the hall on an otherwise unaware foot.

  I did find a job for Wheat Penny. She was excellent at reveille. Each morning when the appointed hour came and went and no teenagers emerged from their rooms to get ready for school, I knocked on each bedroom door, and upon hearing nothing, opened the door and released Wheat Penny. She would stand frozen, ears perked and muscles tensed, as she scanned the room. The moment the unsuspecting teenage victim made the mistake of rolling over or moaning some lovely greeting like, “Go away,” she leapt on her victim in a flash, licking, pawing, nuzzling. There was no way to sleep through a Wheat Penny alarm.

  Another excellent ability she had was that of carpet and corner cleaner. No popcorn kernel, bread crumb, or errant piece of pasta was left behind. She tried very hard to secure the position of assistant dishwasher, climbing into the dishwasher to lick the plates.

  But one of her most amazing talents we called “shock and awe.” She would creep into the living room and launch herself over the side of the couch into the face of unsuspecting readers and TV viewers. She did this at full speed and took great pleasure in surprising her victims.

  Once she mastered house training, we released her to explore the house. Ian followed her and reported back, “She’s really good at the lava game.”§ Wheat Penny could spring across four- and five-foot spans to avoid touching the carpet, and always aspired to the highest perch in any room.

  “No dogs on the furniture,” called Nick from where he was working on the computer in the next room.

  I chased her into the kitchen. I looked around to see where she’d gone, completely missing the fact that she was sitting in the center of the kitchen table, chewing on a pencil. She looked up at me, cocked her head to the side in that classic-puppy pose, and the pencil fell from her lips before she launched herself off the table to clamor for my attention.

  Gracie was not impressed with Wheat Penny, even if they did make a nice matching set. On my blog, I posted a picture of Gracie as a puppy beside a photo of Wheat Penny. They could have been siblings. The cats never hesitated to smack Wheat Penny when she came within reach, but even their hostility did not deter her exuberance.

  After the rough introduction, Addie fell completely in love with Wheat Penny, taking endless pictures and scratching Wheat Penny behind the ears, crooning, “Who’s the cutest puppy ever? Who? You are!”

  Even Ian, who grew very tired of Wheat Penny’s overtures, couldn’t hold his hard line for long. Whenever he sat down to eat, she circled his chair, occasionally jumping in his lap or nipping at his feet or licking his toes (if they were available). He ate almost constantly, as he was playing baseball, soccer, and throwing shot put and discus on the middle school track and field team that spring. Usually he grumbled and put her in her crate before taking his plate to the table, but it wasn’t long before he was speaking in the baby-language we all adopted around her.

  As expected, Wheat Penny had an approved adopter in less than a week. After all the ups and downs of Galina’s adoption, we weren’t expecting Wheat Penny to be swooped out from under us in mere days! She couldn’t leave immediately though, because the Puppy Guidelines dictated that she had to remain in the foster home for two weeks before she could be adopted.¶

  I fielded plenty of emails from her excited adopter who referred to her as “Wheat Berry” and me as “Clara.” Wheat Penny’s impending adoption changed the status of our little darling. No longer was she a potential long-term guest, now she was more like a visiting grandchild. We indulged her, allowing her on the couch for wrestling, tummy scratches, and ear kisses.

  When her adopter arrived to meet her that Saturday, she was instantly smitten. She told me she’d already been interviewing dog-walkers so that Wheat Berry wouldn’t be alone all day long while she worked. It appeared that Wheat Penny had found her sugar mama.

  After the visit with her adopter, I met my friend, Mer, for a hike. I brought Wheat Penny along to entertain her ten-year-old daughter, Shannon, who had been petitioning for a new puppy.# “Don’t worry, she’s already adopted,” I told Mer before Shannon could even ask. I gave Shannon the leash, and Mer and I followed the two of them up the trail.

  Mer also had a college-bound son. We commiserated about the crazy cost of college and our boys’ seemingly unrealistic dreams. We’d been friends since our own college days, and roommates briefly after college, so she was someone I could trust with my fears about our finances and the reality of making a living as a writer. We didn’t solve our problems, but if felt good to air them. We were both baffled how so many people were sending kids to colleges that cost upwards of $50,000 a year. When we had our babies three weeks apart eighteen years ago, college was expensive but the in-state tuition costs had more than tripled since then.

  We arrived back at the parking lot and Shannon reluctantly turned over Wheat Penny’s leash. “Guess we’ll be dog shopping soon,” said Mer, with a roll of her eyes. “Thanks.”

  The next day I ran into a friend at the grocery store. She’d read on my blog about the damage Galina had done to our ottoman, and about Wheat Penny’s “poop hallway” incident and she asked if I was still glad we were doing this. I told her I was. One of the best things about fostering was something I hadn’t anticipated. When my kids became teenagers there was less and less we could together as a family.** We laughed and complained about Wheat Penny and still reminisced about Galina. Fostering might have been my idea, but it was something we were doing together as a family. Brady would graduate in less than two months, so family time was especially sacred. If uniting against (or in favor of) a destructive, adorable puppy was something that put us in the same room laughing together, I’d take it.

  With Wheat Penny/Berry’s imminent departure, I couldn’t resist a plea that came across the OPH wires to foster a dog being returned by her adopter.†† Carla was a Treeing Walker Coonhound‡‡ being returned after four years for numerous reasons, none of which had to do with Carla in particular and all of which had to do with a large coonhound living in a suburban home with three children under the age of six (and one on the way).

  I took one look at Carla on the website and had to have her. She was my dream dog. When we moved to our present home, we had daily visits from our neighbor’s gorgeous Treeing Walker Coonhound named Trailer. I loved Trailer’s long ears and beautiful, deep bay. I loved his goofiness and his amazing nose and his unrelenting friendliness. I was lonely those first few years—missing my old friends and struggling to find friends in a community that was more insular and conservative than the one I’d left. Many days Trailer’s visits were the highlight of my day. His deep hound bay would echo across the hollow announcing his arrival. The kids and I would hurry outside and he’d greet us with unbounded enthusiasm and his big goofy smile. His presence kept the foxes away from our chicken pen and scattered our cats.

  That first Thanksgiving, Trailer stole the turkey carcass my mom left on the porch.§§ When I asked the neighbors where they got him, they said they bought him at a gun show. I couldn’t imagine me and my Quaker husband heading off to a gun show, and I had serious qualms about buying a purebred dog, so I figured my Treeing Walker would have to be Trailer. Luckily, our neighbors shared him happily. Trailer died a few years ago, and I’ve missed him ever since.¶¶

  When Carla’s sweet face appeared
on my computer screen, I yelled to Nick, “Look at this dog!” He was a fan of Trailer, too, so it took no convincing to get him on board. I’d said all along, “One dog at a time,” but if I stuck to my guns, I couldn’t take Carla. As it turned out, Carla was the gateway drug. For the very first time, we had three dogs in the house.

  *Not that Gracie isn’t still cute—in fact, that is probably her saving grace, so to speak.

  †Pun intended.

  ‡As much as it’s possible to settle a seven-month-old puppy who has just been released from an entire day spent in a small crate.

  §The Lava Game is the age-old game of moving about the house on top of the furniture—jumping from coffee table to couch to end table to ottoman and never touching the “lava” (floor).

  ¶OPH requires a two-week hold on puppies, to be certain they are healthy and don’t break with parvo, an extremely dangerous and contagious virus. Parvo risk is also a reason for the quarantine.

  #Nick said this was like taking crack to an addict.

  **Without a credit card or a beach house.

  ††Per OPH adoption contract, if an adopter decides they can no longer keep a dog they’ve adopted through OPH, they must return the dog to the first available foster home.

  ‡‡Treeing Walker Coonhounds do not walk up trees. They’re bred to chase and tree racoons and get the walker part of their name because they are descended from walker coonhounds.

  §§She takes home our turkey carcass every year and returns it in the form of turkey noodle soup.

  ¶¶Not to mention a month or so after he was gone, a fox became a regular visitor stealing our chickens one by one.

  THREE

  Hooked

  Carla arrived a few days before Wheat Penny left. She weighed seventy-five pounds and stood nearly as tall as the counter. Her beautiful tricolor coat was short and smooth. She had thoughtful eyes and gorgeous, silky, long ears and a large, busy hound dog nose.

  The email explaining why they were returning her after four years said, “Carla is just existing here, she’s not living.” Basically, she was an enormous hound dog trying to be a suburban pet in a busy household that increasingly had no time for her. I couldn’t resent the owners for surrendering her. I was sure it wasn’t an easy decision. Carla deserved a better life and they knew that. It’s very tempting to get angry about much regarding dog rescue, but anger doesn’t help. I was quickly learning that if we wanted to help the dogs, we had to look past the people.

  Carla had picked up a few nice suburban dog habits. Unlike your typical coonhound, Carla had wonderful manners. She waited patiently while I prepared her dinner, she walked nicely on a leash rarely pulling, and she was polite with the other dogs.

  On our walk that first Saturday morning, she froze in her tracks at the sound of a neighbor’s rooster. I coaxed her along and she followed me, scanning the treetops for the danger. What self-respecting coonhound was afraid of a rooster? Perhaps, one raised on a street with a neighborhood association. We rounded the bend and came upon another neighbor’s rusted out Chevy sitting on blocks, she shied from it warily, but couldn’t take her eyes off it.* I’d been watching this particular car melt into the hillside for years. The vinyl roof was nearly gone now and weeds grew through the windows, but there was a fresh sign in the window, NOT 4 SALE.

  When we got home, I took Carla with me up the hill to the barn. I opened the gate to let the horses out of the paddock and they took off across the pasture at a gallop. Carla yelped and practically dragged me off my feet in her fright. “No horses either?” I asked. Next, we fed the chickens. She circled the chicken pen, nose to the ground. We’d lost more chickens to foxes again, and Nick had recently lined the pen with boulders. I checked for any evidence of attempted break-ins. The chickens fussed at Carla as we passed and she barked back at them. “There you go,” I said. “You tell ’em!”

  Back in the house, I put Carla in her crate. She seemed to like her crate, but when she wagged her tail it thumped the sides creating a noise so loud you had to wait for her to stop to hear the person sitting next to you. Brady was eating cereal at the table. He watched her tail-wagging, and said, “That looks like it hurts.”

  The biggest thing about Carla was that she was big. She took up a lot of space. I loved the solidness of her. She reminded me of Trailer and was nearly as big as he had been. The night before she’d peed on the living room carpet, and let me just say that when a seventy-five-pound dog pees, it can fill a bucket. That had been a serious cleanup job and I wasn’t anxious to repeat it, so we would utilize the crate until she adjusted to her new surroundings. To be fair, Lucy had peed on that carpet often her last year when she struggled with incontinence. We’d shampooed the heck out of it, but my guess was that dogs could still smell the pee, even if we couldn’t.

  After breakfast, I left to volunteer in the OPH booth at a festival in York—Green in the City.† I brought Wheat Penny along even though she was already spoken for; I knew her cuteness would be a draw, and I was certain she would rock the kissing booth where visitors could receive a puppy kiss for a donation. Wheat Penny did not disappoint; she was so exhausted after her morning of happily slobbering faces, fingers, and strollers, that when I pulled her out of the booth and attempted to set her on her feet, she collapsed to the ground instead. I carried her to the car and she snoozed the whole drive home.

  I enjoyed having three dogs for the weekend, but it was a full-time job. What with keeping shoes out of Wheat Penny’s mouth, taking Carla out for frequent walks, and admonishing Gracie to “stop being such a bully,” very few chores were ticked off my list. Still, I loved the whole weekend and it made me wish I worked full-time at a doggie day care.

  The biggest problem with three dogs was that I only had two hands, so inevitably someone was always missing out. It was the same issue with three kids. Ever since Ian was born, I’d felt scattered and unorganized as a parent. I was outnumbered. What I hoped, though, was that instead of feeling neglected, the fact that my kids had to share their parents’ affection and attention with two siblings had made them more self-reliant.

  At the OPH booth, I listened to other fosters talk of their households of four and five dogs and thought—maybe that will be us someday. But somehow I doubted it. We might have physical room for that many dogs, but I wasn’t sure I had emotional or mental room for that many.

  On Monday, I said goodbye to Wheat Penny. It was easier this time, maybe because of Carla’s presence or maybe because puppies are a lot of work. That morning, I’d had to fish a dried cat turd out of her mouth, and I thought, “That’s the last time I’ll have to do that!” Just after lunch, Wheat Penny (now Ladki—Hindi for “lady”) left for the high life as a spoiled only child of a young, single executive. I couldn’t help but think Wheat Penny had a wind at her back. And I was glad for her.

  With Wheat Penny gone, Carla seemed to deflate. I wondered if she had only just realized that she wasn’t going home. She began to sleep all the time and we rarely heard her beautiful hound bay. After a few days of this, I decided that she was mourning. She missed her family. To be fair, she was a hound, and forlorn is the default expression on most hound faces, but the appetite we were warned about was not in evidence. She barely ate her meals and refused all treats. She never attempted to counter-surf (although she had the height and reputation to excel in this sport). When I was sad I didn’t eat either, so I understood. I gave her space and plenty of petting, but let her be sad.

  Near the end of the week, she began to “talk” more. She made a few hound mutters when she first woke up and then one afternoon she stood on the deck barking at the woods, letting her beautiful hound bay echo across the hollow. From that day forward, the soundtrack of our days included coonhound bays and barks and mutters and whines. Maybe she’d decided we were worth protecting or maybe she had simply found her voice.

  I took her for a run and was delighted to discover that she was an excellent and inspiring running partner. We did the fastest
3½ miles I’d done in months. She was focused, never stopping for her personal business, and only a few times tugging toward an errant squirrel. I hoped her forever family would include at least one runner, and maybe a fisherman.

  On our way home, we passed close to the creek that snakes up the hollow following the road. Carla pulled toward it, so I allowed her to pick her way down to the water’s edge. She hesitated only a moment, and then plunged in. Deer Creek is not a big or deep creek, but Carla waded out as far as the leash would allow and it was up to her chest. She splashed with her front paws until she was thoroughly soaked and then put her mouth in the water and drank deeply. She looked across to the other side of the creek and back at me.

  “No way, girl, we’re not going that way,” I told her and tugged on the leash. She obediently followed me back to the road, but her step was lighter as we headed home.

  At a party that week, after sharing news of our latest foster dog, several people confessed to me how much they wished they could foster, but didn’t think they could stand to give up a dog. “I’d end up with a whole houseful,” joked one friend. I’d thought a lot about that. After all, that was why we’d fostered in the first place. We could have been happy with Galina or Wheat Penny or Carla, but then what? We just go back to ignoring the fact that so many dogs just like Carla were being euthanized every day?‡ A few tears? I could handle that if it meant I could save another good dog. No, I wasn’t ready to stop yet. We could offer our home as a sanctuary for a few more dogs, even if sometimes it left a lump in my throat.

  What was really making me rethink the foster idea, though, was Carla. She was almost exactly the dog I’d been looking for before we started fostering, the one we spent all those hours visiting shelters in search of. But I didn’t want to foster fail§ just yet. It was very tempting to hold on to Carla. I knew we could make her happy here, but I was also certain that there was a forever home out there waiting for her. Someone else was looking for a dog just like Carla.