A Bad Feeling

I was suspicious of the black dog from the start. Who gives away a dog whose tongue hangs out the side of his mouth like Astro from the Jetsons? Supposedly the guy, let’s call him Manny, had run into some financial difficulties and just had too many mouths to feed, what with the new baby and the other kids and dogs (not clear on the exact number) already eating him out of house and home. Something had to give. So he picked Sebastian to give away because he was the one who ate the most. I would think the difference between what a big black mutt eats and what a German shepherd eats (one of the other dogs—one of the keepers) would be negligible (if anything you would think the shepherd ate more), but this is what he said was the reason for giving him away.

There had to be more to it than that. Sebastian was just too cute. Manny claimed they were keeping him on the porch because he was big and he’d knock over the kids, inadvertently of course, and they had the new baby and all. He didn’t look that big to me. He was probably a biter. Maybe he bit someone and they wanted to unload him before the newspaper articles came out about the lawsuit. But if he took off a small child’s finger who was poking it through the fence, or disfigured the babysitter so badly she couldn’t go to prom, this guy wasn’t going to volunteer the information. He’d never find him a home if he told people he bit. So I acted like a biting dog was no big deal to me. I pretended I was stifling a yawn and asked, “Does he ever nip?” real casual.

He said, “Oh yeah.” My heart dropped. “He licks. He licks alright.”

Hmm. So he was a licker.

I asked if he was housebroken. He said when he used to let him in the house, before he was worried about his waggedy tail whacking the baby, he would put wee-wee pads down and point. Ew, that wasn’t good. A two-year-old unhousebroken dog. I have brand new carpet. But I know how to do crate training so unless he was some kind of a problem case, I was pretty confident that if he was crapping on the Orientals, I could fix it. I had a crate. I just had to get it out.

Supposedly he didn’t chew couches or bark when he wasn’t supposed to, though he would bark when a stranger knocked on the door. But he’d stop as soon as you told him it was okay. He was pretty good off the leash too—would come right back when called—and got along with cats and of course, kids, since Manny had a number of them and there was no mention of missing digits or ripped off lips.

Apparently there was nothing wrong with this dog other than he would eat me out of house and home. Which, of course, didn’t rattle me one bit being that I have horses who really know how to bankrupt a person with their demands for food and new saddles and the newest headstalls encrusted with Swarovski crystals on hand-painted leather.

We made plans to go see him on Sunday when Kurt was off. Someone else was interested but Manny promised he wouldn’t let them come until we saw him first. We had first dibs. (Yeah, right.) I asked for his address so I could MapQuest it ahead of time to see exactly where we were going but he said let’s wait until Sunday. No offense. It was Craigslist. Who knew who I was and what I could be up to? I could be a robber. Though robbing people who posted ads for dogs who needed homes would be stupid. Unless I wanted to rob the actual dog. Robbers usually post their own ads for expensive things they are selling and then whip out a pistol when some unsuspecting rich kid from the suburbs arrives, pockets full of cash after having made a stop at the bank, to buy a five thousand dollar four-wheeler that doesn’t exist in the middle of the ghetto. They don’t answer ads for dogs. Or maybe I was a rapist. I just read about an Angelina Jolie lookalike who raped a cabbie multiple times. He didn’t scream because he didn’t want anyone to think he was raping her. Jennifer Aniston was more his type. Okay, bad joke. No one said I was a comedienne. But it’s a true story.

Anyway, on Sunday, after he got back from church (yeah, right), Manny texted me the address. It was the address to a park. Supposedly we could see the dog in action running in the grass, playing with sticks and whatnot, when I knew the real reason was he didn’t want us to see where he lived. The dog was probably a biter after all. The kids would scream bloody murder when he looked in their direction. Or he destroyed the entire porch he was being kept on—the doorjamb was all chewed up, there were claw marks gouged in the woodwork and dark stains on the floor—and the couch on the curb with all the stuffing coming out of it would have caused us to pretend we were someone else and keep right on driving.

I had a bad feeling. I said to Kurt, “Let’s promise that if there are any red flags about this dog, we don’t take him.” Because if I wanted a dog who wasn’t quite right, I would have just kept the Doberman. That was a nice dog. And I was afraid I would weaken, even if the torn up couch was out there, seeing the tongue hanging out the side of his mouth looking so cute and dopey. I even got Kurt to stop at the local dog pound, since we were early and had some time to kill, just for one more look. But they were closed. So we found ourselves the only white people sitting in a gravel parking lot next to a basketball court where a couple of dozen folks of color were playing ball and glancing over at us suspiciously. Kurt promised he would be strong. He would not let me take any Dobie-wa-was or a snarling, growling dog, and we would definitely not take him if he lifted his leg and peed on my or Kurt’s new shoes. That would be a bad sign.

But Manny wasn’t showing. Maybe we were at the wrong park. I texted him. I didn’t want to text him. He wasn’t coming. We could go while the goings good. But it was the right thing to do. What if the guy was caught in traffic or something? It wouldn’t be right if we just left. No reply. We waited longer. Obviously he was up to something after all. This was our chance to hightail it out of there and forget the whole thing. Who needed a dog anyway? Life was pretty peaceful the last few months without a dog. I have to say, I was really enjoying not having all the work from a dog and the original idea was to wait until after the summer anyway, after we got back from vacation. Why take one now and have to deal with the whole dog sitter problem? I never know what’s worse—getting someone to come to the house and him being home alone all day till the sitter gets here or putting him in a private dog sitter’s home where he’ll get scared because her Great Dane looks like our pony but doesn’t smell like our pony? Or is bringing him to a professional kennel where they have outbreaks of kennel cough that they don’t tell you about worse? And what happens when they want me to give the dog more shots like what happened with Motley and then I’ll worry that his kidneys are going to fail like Motley’s because I wasn’t going to give him shots at that exact time and if I give the shots I’ll worry and if I don’t give the shots, I’ll worry. Whenever we go away, I spend most of my time worrying about the dog. I should just wait. I was about ready to say, “Com’on, let’s go,” relieved Manny was a no-show, when a guy came out of the woods with a big black bear on the end of a leash who was bounding around like a puppy. He was prancing, tail waving, and falling over his own feet, he was so joyous over being out in the park. From the distance I could see his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, blowing back behind him. And I knew that we were taking him.

The Mission

As soon as my friends found out we were in the market, my inboxes and Facebook page were flooded with links and posts and emails about dogs who needed homes. It was a literal smorgasbord of cute canines—little dogs, big dogs, young dogs, old dogs, purebreds, mutts; you name it—with an emphasis on pit bulls because the shelters are loaded with them, and brindles, because that’s what Motley was.

My friends were on a mission. They’re animal lovers like me and if you can’t get another pet yourself because you have too many already, the next best thing is helping your friend get one. It’s like shopping by proxy. It’s not the real thing but you can still get your rocks off. This happens in the horse world all the time. We’re always finding horses for each other and going out on shopping expeditions together. One of us will say, “Hey, you want to take a ride and go look at a horse?” and the next thing you know, you’re driving three days to Texas.

The problem was, I didn’t like any of the dogs. I’m sorry, but after Motley, I want it all. Motley spoiled me. I want a dog with a nice disposition. I want a dog who, when people come and go on the farm, they won’t get scared when he runs up to greet them but who will make someone think twice when they knock on the door and hear him bark if they had any intention of robbing me. I want a dog who I can let loose to trot alongside me as I go in and out of the house to do my chores and who will follow when I ride my horse around the pasture and come when I whistle. I want a dog who, even if he is untrained, is willing and trainable. I don’t think Marley and Me was very cute at all. Yeah it was sad at the end and it brought a tear to my eye when they buried him but I would have been burying that dog about ten minutes into the movie because I would have killed him right around the time he ripped up my couch.

So we ruled out the high energy, couch-eater types. And the ones who looked like they belonged behind an eight-foot fence with a curl of razor wire on top in Nazi Germany or in a drug den in Camden. We ruled out the ones who hated cats and small children. Little dogs because we’re big dog people, though we wouldn’t rule out a little dog as the second dog. And all the ones with pushed-in faces because we want a dog with an actual snout.

My friends were getting frustrated. They kept sending pictures. What about this one? Nope. What about him? Nah. How about her? No, I want the ears a tiny bit floppier and the tail just a little more waggedy.

Yes, I discriminated based on looks. I don’t want any Dobie-wa-wa in my pocketbook. (See Dobie-wa-wa here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZQogu_rt9Y&feature=player_embedded) I want a good looking dog. The grim reaper in the dog pound doesn’t care what it looks like. I can just as easily save a pretty one as I can an ugly one.

Plus, getting a dog is a big commitment. It’s almost like adopting a baby. You’re going to have this animal for ten or fifteen years and you will never again be completely free. You certainly won’t be able to go out all day and all night without making a pit stop home to let the dog out and that can be a pain in the ass if you’re in the middle of having fun, say, you’re at a barbecue and your ex is about to walk in with his new wife who you heard gained quite a bit of weight since the baby and now you are going to miss that. You have to go home and let the dog out. And they can be expensive. You might even purchase the new pool for the vet’s summer home if you get a sickly dog or a dishonest vet who takes advantage of you because now you are paranoid since you lost the last one, and you keep running to the vet every time the new dog looks crooked.

And what if the dog doesn’t measure up to the best dog ever? What if he pees on the floor or steals a steak out of the garbage or doesn’t stop to let you wipe all four feet, patiently lifting one at a time, because, it’s a dog after all. And you realize, perhaps, Motley was not a real dog.

I felt bad, ruling them out left and right, especially since my girlfriend was trying so hard, texting me pictures of dogs when she should have been cooking dinner, and keeping an eye on Craigslist for new posts like someone waiting to make a run for it when there’s a break in the traffic. She forwarded me new ads at all hours of the day and night, at midnight and dawn, whenever they popped up. She was relentless. It was a lot of pressure. So in a moment of weakness, I threw caution to the wind and I just grabbed one. I knew it wasn’t going to be the right dog like a drunk girl knows it’s not going to be the right guy but she does it anyway. Plus I was afraid the dog was going to freeze to death if I didn’t.