Kylie was over-the-top excited to be here, but I soon learned that Kylie was over-the-top excited to be anywhere, meet anyone, or do anything. She was one overly enthusiastic two-year-old foxhound mix. She was mostly white with a few brown patches, about Gracie’s size, and had a tremendous hunting drive.
Hitch was a small, dachshund-shaped dog. He was black with a white bib, and he shrank from my hand when I reached for him. Hitch’s foster, Erika, explained that Hitch was very timid and “hand shy.” If he got loose he would run from you.
The first few hours went fine. I walked both dogs around the yard.§ Carla was not impressed with either dog and spent the afternoon lounging on the porch, occasionally lifting her head to watch the antics of Kylie when she spotted a BUG! or a BIRD!! or a CAT! or a OMG—A SQUIRREL!!!!
Because Kylie was so demanding of my attention and arm strength, I decided to take Hitch out on his own. The little guy was excellent company. He had perfect manners on the leash and was happy to go wherever I wanted to go, so we toured the gardens and yanked a few weeds. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I made my way to one of the Adirondack chairs at the top of our hill. Nick and I liked to sit in these chairs in the early evening to do what we called, “surveying the manor,” which means relax with a glass of wine or a beer from a distance far enough away from the house that we can escape the chaos. We sit in our chairs watching the bats dart across the pasture in search of bugs, making their wild zigzag flights from the barn to the woods. We discuss our present life and imagine our future. We talk about the kids, the gardens, our work, and, of late, the dogs. Sometimes we just sit quietly and pretend we are only guests at this quirky out-of-the-way B&B.
Hitch laid down beside me and we watched the birds try to figure out a way through the net that covered the blueberries. He seemed to be relaxing, but when I reached down to scratch his ears, he leaned as far away as the leash would allow, his eyes filled with fear. Poor little guy. I couldn’t imagine what circumstances of life brought him to this point. We sat in the sunshine for a bit, side by side, but me keeping my scary hands to myself, and then it was time to get back to work, so we headed to the house.
As we approached the door, Hitch balked. He was wearing a nonslip collar so when he stopped and I pulled, the collar didn’t slip over his tiny head. Rather than pick him up (since he was afraid of my touch), I pulled a little stronger on the leash and stepped into the house. Hitch didn’t move and I tugged again, this time the collar snapped and Hitch took off like a shot up the hill away from the house.
Bizarrely, the nylon nonslip attachment had simply broken off. Hitch weighed all of ten, maybe twelve pounds, so it wasn’t his brute strength or size that snapped it. I didn’t have the time to wonder about it. I grabbed Kylie, figuring Hitch knew her, and we took off up the hill after him. I could hear Erika saying how hard it was to catch him in a fenced yard. Now, I’d have to catch him in southern York County, unless he made it to Maryland, since that was the direction he was running. I was already picturing me and the rest of the search party out with our flashlights that night tromping through the surrounding fields. And then tomorrow the Girl Scouts would organize search teams and maybe bring us bottled water . . .
Dreading making the call, but knowing I had to, I dialed Erika. She didn’t know me very well, so her first thought was probably, “Why did I leave my little dog with this idiot?” To her credit, she didn’t say that, she said something like, “He won’t go far, he wants to be with you. I’m sure he’s scared. Just try to get him to follow Kylie.”
We spotted Hitch at the top of the pasture just on the other side of the fence. As Erika predicted, he ran gleefully toward us, tail wagging. Erika stayed on the phone and talked to me as we walked back to the house with Hitch running big looping circles around us, and Kylie practically levitating on the end of the leash in her joy at the adventure.
Following Erika’s advice, I led Kylie into the house, leaving the door open for Hitch to follow. We kept walking without looking back and I hid around the corner in the hall, leaving Kylie in view. Hitch appeared in the doorway for a moment and then backed out and dashed away. I took Kylie back outside. Gracie joined us on this run and for once she didn’t snarl at the new dogs, just played along with our game of Please-Follow-the-Leader. Carla, who was lounging under the crabapple tree, couldn’t be dragged into our drama and just thumped her tail as we passed. After several tries, Hitch finally followed Kylie and Gracie inside and I quickly closed the door.
When the kids got home from school, I told them about my afternoon’s adventure and said, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES were they to let this dog out of his crate. Then I went to the store and bought a small blue harness for Hitch.
Later, I was in the kitchen preparing food for our impromptu cookout that evening. Nick was picking up his new-to-me tractor that afternoon and we’d invited the family that helped haul it plus a few other friends to come for a cookout. Because I knew I’d have to keep Hitch in his crate all evening, I’d put up the baby gate to block the doorway and brought him in the kitchen with me so he could have an hour of freedom. He sat nearby and watched my preparations, always moving quickly out of the way when I approached.
Brady appeared in the kitchen to inform me that he was going out for the evening to meet friends at the Comic Shop for something called a “draft.” I nodded as if I knew what that was. Being eighteen and already accepted to college and about to graduate, hanging out with the family wasn’t a priority for him. I remember being eighteen too, and so I didn’t hold it against him. I couldn’t get away from home fast enough. I was still thinking about the summer I graduated as Brady headed out the door. “What time will you be home?” I asked, realizing too late that as Brady paused to answer my question, he’d left the door wide open. Hitch shot out the door in a blink and took off up the hill.
This was not on my agenda. I had people arriving in thirty minutes, shrimp to marinate, a kitchen to tidy, dishes to find, veggies to cut up. I did not have chasing down a slippery, crazy-shy dog on my agenda. And yet, it is the tyranny of the urgent that dictates our days, isn’t it?
I spent the next forty-five minutes trailing Hitch while trying to maintain control of Kylie. Of course, the moment we almost had him back in the house was when a van full of kids pulled in the driveway and off he went again. I asked all our guests to hide in the kitchen¶ and led Kylie and Gracie back out to lure Hitch in. After two or three# tries, he finally followed us inside. After that, the evening went off without a hitch.** Everyone enjoyed playing with all the dogs, even Hitch, and it was a fun night.
Actually, it was a fun weekend. We took our little guests on several adventures and Carla discovered they both liked playing in the stream with her. Gracie watched their antics with disdain from the shore. Hitch turned out to be a major-league snuggler and everyone got a little time with him, even Carla.
I wasn’t sure I’d be ready for four dogs again any time soon, but the weekend did teach me a few lessons.
It’s a GREAT idea to have an ID tag on your foster dog with your address and cell phone number. As I followed Hitch over hill and dale, and occasionally lost sight of him, it was no small comfort to know that Erika had tags on both dogs.
I have wonderful, flexible family and friends who don’t think I’m nuts to invite all these dogs into our lives.†† Our party and our weekend went great even with two extra dogs and a few unexpected hikes thrown in.
Dogs just want to be loved and they are more forgiving than most people. Hitch had obviously been treated badly by humans in the past, yet it only took him a few hours to begin to trust us. Even when he was running away and terrified, he kept looking back over his shoulder to be sure we were nearby, and anytime I was out of sight, he stopped and circled back to me. He wanted to trust me.
And finally, four dogs is WAY too many for me. The weekend turned out alright, but I’m pretty sure if Erika hadn’t come back for them I might have lost my mind and the compassion of my family by Wednes
day.
In some ways Brady was already gone. Even the hours when he was here, he was somewhere else—earbuds in listening to music I didn’t understand, texting with people I didn’t know, reading books I’d never heard of, and surfing websites certainly not meant for parents. I was proud of the fact that he was so independent and obviously ready to be out our door. Yet, my heart broke at the thought of him being gone.
I watched him walk across the stage that week, accept his diploma, grin for the cameras, toss his hat in the air. He celebrated for two days straight—eating every manner of junk food, laughing, throwing frisbees, solidifying memories to take with him when he goes. More than likely, that was the last he would see of some of those people, but he won’t feel that truth until decades from now.
It seems like only moments ago, he couldn’t remember to hand in homework and lost his shoes and jacket on a regular basis. Learning to drive stressed us both and I wondered if he’d ever be able to find his way without me or his father in the seat beside him. And now he came and went, driving to school, the tennis courts, and following the GPS to a friend’s house on a lonely, dark back road. Undoubtedly, he made a few wrong turns, but he figured it out eventually.
He will negotiate the world in much the same way, like the rest of us. I can’t imagine the day when he won’t barrel down the stairs noisily, tease Gracie, chat with the latest foster dog, and leave the open milk container on the counter and his socks on the porch.
His leaving was just one more example of the pain of parenting no one warns you about. The other stuff—sleeping through the night, potty training, starting kindergarten—there are entire books warning you about these trials, but no one points out that one day this person who has taken up residence in your heart 24/7/365 for eighteen years is going to leave. And it will hurt like nothing you can imagine. There was no metaphor for this pain that was already casting its shadow on my heart even though I still had three months—three months!—before he left. I thought the dogs leaving one after the other had been preparing me, but I was realizing that it wasn’t the same. At all.
The end of the school year came and went, and Carla did not leave. Despite the fact that I knew there would be plenty of tears when she left, I wanted her to go. The longer she lingered here becoming entrenched in our lives, the harder it would be on her when she finally left. More than that, the longer Carla was here, the fewer dogs we could help save. We’d had Carla for nearly two months. There were weekly, sometimes daily, emails asking for foster homes for so many deserving dogs that I’d taken to deleting the emails without even looking at them. It hurt too much not to be able to help. It made me want to turn my horse pasture into a dog pasture.
In two months my first novel would be published. Some days this seemed surreal. When you want something for so very long, once it finally happens inevitably it can never measure up to your dream. In my most insecure moments, I wondered if it was all a hoax. I couldn’t imagine anyone paying money for a story I made up on my mornings running through our hollow and my afternoons with my laptop.
Books have always been sacred to me. Just the sight of a stack of books sitting on my bedside table waiting to be read makes me giddy. My Amazon wish list is pages long—my mother complains that it is all books. But those books were real books written by real authors. What if my book was horrible? What if people read it and thought—Boy, who is she kidding? I can’t believe anyone published that! Or what if, worse yet, no one read it? It felt a little like that dream of being caught out in public in your underwear. My heart and talent or lack thereof, exposed for everyone to see. I grew anxious and snappy, food stuck in my throat and when handed one glass of wine, it usually led to four. I found it difficult to concentrate on even the simplest task.
When my first review came in from an advance reader and it was positive, I finally began to relax. Maybe the world would like it. Sure, I knew not every review would be as shining as that first one, but at least one person who’d never met me and had nothing invested in my book had liked it! Maybe, just maybe, I was a real writer too.
June began and already I was tired of kids home all day doing nothing unless I prodded them into it. I took away the screens to get their attention, and then they spent the hours growling at me before resentfully picking up a book or drumsticks, and sometimes even a bicycle. Dishes grew on the counter like mushrooms in the dark corners of our barn. No one knew where they came from. Food disappeared from cabinets, laundry multiplied, the recliner was left forever in the open position. Even when it was quiet, it was never really quiet. It was hard for me to think and my writing came to a standstill. The rhythms of the house were off and my brain grew fuzzy every time I sat down at the keyboard.
Carla sensed this. That morning she had missed her run so that I could meet with the horse/house sitter to go over the notes of caring for not only Gracie, the cats, horses, and chickens, but Carla too. The sitter listened politely to me explaining everything and followed me through all the gardens that would need to be watered if there was no rain. She nodded as I talked, but I’m pretty certain she was really thinking, You are crazy lady. Bonkers. Nuts. I just hope your check doesn’t bounce.
Later, I struggled at my keyboard, distracted by Carla on the back deck barking at Brady and a pack of teenage friends who were huddled over a strategy game of some sort, oblivious to her barking. Finally she was quiet, but a moment later the pizza delivery guy roared up the driveway and she began barking in earnest again. Who had ordered pizza at 2:00 P.M.?
I sighed and shut down my laptop. I tidied my desk. We were leaving the next day. I wouldn’t be back to my writing for a week. Time to pack. I called to Carla, but had to drag her away from the boys; after all, there was pizza. I took her upstairs with me to finish packing. She walked toward our bed, but I pointed at the pile of dirty clothes on the floor and she settled there instead, sighing her unhappiness. It would be a tough week for her while we were gone. She would be one more worry for me while I attempted to relax on the vacation that seemed like such a good idea six months ago. I loved to camp and I loved the beach, why not do both? And then why not invite any kids who wanted to come? It would be fun.
It would be fun. Once we were there. It was getting there that was tricky. Nick listened to me list all my worries about Gracie and Carla, the cats and horses (I wasn’t worried about the chickens, they could eat bugs), and then he asked, “You do remember they aren’t people in little furry suits?”
*Everyone told me I should lie if I wanted to adopt a dog, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. See what truth-telling gets you? Instead of one dog, I’ve now had fifty.
†Brady told me to “just buy food” and leave the rest to him.
‡Sounds very much like a movie title, doesn’t it?
§Basically, Kylie walked both Hitch and me around the yard in a dog-human-dog train.
¶Not just stay in the kitchen, but seriously HIDE—no sounds, no moving. I didn’t want anything to spook my little friend.
#Or maybe ten.
**So to speak.
††Or if they think so, they at least don’t say it out loud.
FIVE
The Dangers of Winnie-the-Pooh
Our vacation turned out to be anything but a vacation. Camping for many people does not constitute a vacation, but for me, sleeping outside, roasting marshmallows, disconnecting from technology, and being with friends has always been my favorite vacation. In fact, we’d been camping every summer with these same families for at least ten years. It had rained on us a few times and more than once someone’s kid had a meltdown, but the fun certainly made up for the unfun.
Not this time.
This time we settled into side by side campsites, tucked into a grove of pines within hiking distance of the beach. There was even a paved bike path for the kids to use. The bathhouse was close, but not too close. What’s not to love?
How about the excruciating heat? Or the suffocating humidity? Or the nearly nonexistent land br
eeze which brought with it biting flies? Seeking relief on the shoreline resulted in several blistering sunburns. Add to this the worst torture of all—teenagers deprived of Wi-Fi. And we were paying for this?
By midweek, we were all miserable at our hot, fly-ridden, sandy campsite so we decided to take a ride on the ferry that connected our beach in Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey. We had no intentions of going into Cape May, we simply wanted to sit on a boat for a few hours. We were in desperate need of air-conditioning, Internet, and food prepared by someone other than us. Once aboard, the kids gathered in the air-conditioned lounge, ordered junk food, and gorged on free Wi-Fi. The adults enjoyed frozen cocktails and the fresh breeze on deck.
Rum drink in hand and kids nowhere to be seen, I took advantage of the free Wi-Fi to check email. I could blame it on the alcohol or the heat or the momentary high of escaping the campground, but when the pictures of four adorable puppies appeared, I knew I had to have them.
“Oh my gosh!” I squealed to my friend Amy. “Look at these puppies!”
The puppies were named after Pooh characters—Pooh, Kanga, Piglet, and Rabbit. Amy decided she wanted Piglet.
“I want them all,” I told her.
I didn’t ask Nick. I didn’t consider the seventy-five-pound coonhound at home. I didn’t work through the logistics of where we would keep four puppies. I just acted. I remembered the fun of Wheat Penny—her puppy breath and her silliness and the way she made all of us laugh. I was miserable at the moment and puppies seemed like the perfect solution. I had to have them. Before I could stop myself, I had emailed Mindy, “I WANT THEM!”
Then I went in search of Nick and found him on another deck enjoying a cold beer watching the seagulls chase our wake.
“Nice, huh?” I said.
Another Good Dog Page 7
