Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul (17 page)

We kept him. Steve named him Patrick, in honor of the day he’d found him. We didn’t know how he’d ended up a homeless pup. But it didn’t matter. He was safe now. The vet estimated that he was about six months old and that he’d been on the streets only a few days. He was healthy, but awfully hungry.

I fed him boiled chicken and rice, easy on his stomach, and determined to start putting some meat on the ribs that were a bit too prominent. After that meal—and after every single meal I fed him for the rest of his life—he thanked me with several sloppy kisses on my hands.

Things were hectic that March. The kids were growing and we were in the process of moving into a larger apartment.

Patrick watched with an odd expression; but it was an odd move. We didn’t really pack. We simply rolled everything into the hall, loaded it in the elevator, went two floors down and rolled the stuff off and into the new place.

The new apartment gave our kids their own rooms. Patrick’s space was an alcove at the end of the hall leading to the master bedroom. I cut a piece of carpet to fit his “room” and piled his toys in one of the corners. I bought “Dawn Lane” and “Michael Lane” signs for the kids, so of course I bought a “Patrick Lane” sign for him. I think he liked it. When I put it on the wall he licked the sign, then me.

March 17 became his birthday. On the first anniversary of the day he found us, I threw a “Patty Party,” inviting all the grandparents. I’d done it tongue-in-cheek, but it became an annual event. We got Patrick a kelly-green birthday hat and a big matching bow tie. Another dog might have been embarrassed; Patrick wore them with pride.

To repay us for rescuing him, Patrick protected us with zeal and an unerring ability to tell good guy from bad. He could pick the “perp” out of a lineup a block long. He knew guns, too. When Steve cleaned his service revolver, Patrick would eye him strangely, from a safe distance, as if to say, “What’s a nice guy like you doing with a thing like that?”

In 1992 Steve retired. We bought a house in Jersey near my folks, but couldn’t close until October. The kids stayed with my parents so they could start the year in their new school. We brought them home on alternate weekends. Michael’s room now became the “Box Room.”

Every day I knelt in that room, placing breakables on the pile of papers, wrapping them up and tucking them into boxes. And every day Patrick watched from the room’s other doorway. I told him all about “our” new house and described the fun “we” would have.

Our last night in Brooklyn approached. We’d lived in that apartment four and a half years, and in the building for fifteen. Though excited about moving into our own home, wewere a bit sad to leave the citywe’d lived in all our lives. Patrick understood. He patrolled the apartment restlessly, sniffing every nook and cranny as if to commit to memory the security of the only loving home he’d ever known.

We closed on the house on Friday, then drove back to Brooklyn with the kids. The “Box Room” was nearly full, but the packing paper still lay on the few square feet of remaining floor, ready to protect our last-minute treasures. I gave the kids their “Dawn” and “Michael” boxes, instructing them to finish packing their toys. We had something quick for dinner. I don’t remember what. I only remember what happened after.

I walked into the kitchen and happened to glance into the “Box Room.” I was stunned.

“Hey, guys,” I called. “You won’t believe what Patrick did.” They followed me through the kitchen. Patrick poked his nose in from the living-room doorway, a very worried expression on his face.

There, nestled in the canyon of cartons, lying right on top of the newspaper used for wrapping breakables, was Patrick’s favorite toy.

I said, “Patty, are you afraid we’re going to move away and leave you? Is that what those other people did to you?” He didn’t need words. His eyes told me.

“Well,” I told him. “You don’t have to worry. We’re not going to leave you. You’re coming with us.”

Then I rolled up his toy in the paper. I’d planned to put his things in the “Patrick” box. Instead, it went in with our dishes. It seemed the thing to do.

His bushy blond and white tail wagged like mad, and if asked under oath I’d have to swear he laughed. We all wound up in a heap on that stack of papers, getting licked to death by one very happy—and grateful—dog.

I’m sorry to say I’d never considered Patrick’s feelings through that whole tumultuous process; never thought he was worried as he sat day after day, intently watching me wrap up and pack away our things; never realized he didn’t know he was part of the “we” I kept mentioning. After all, he’d been with us four and a half years and we’d moved with him before. But I guess the vast amount of packing required for this move dredged up old memories and threatened his sense of security. Elephants never forget; dogs don’t either.

When I think about Patty now, all I can say is: I’m thrilled he picked Steve. He brought joy to our lives that we would have sorely missed otherwise. He left us in November 1997 andwe stillmiss him. He’swith us, though, in a pretty wooden urn—and he smiles at us every day from his picture, dressed so smartly in his kelly-green birthday hat and matching bow tie.

Micki Ruiz

Refrigerator Commando

E
ver consider what they must think of us? I
mean, here we come back from a grocery store
with the most amazing haul—chicken, pork, half
cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters
on earth!

Anne Tyler

A golden barrel on legs—that was our first impression of Max when my wife and I saw him at the AnimalWelfare League. His unique ability to inhale a full cup of dog food in less than seven seconds had enabled Max to enlarge his beagle-mix body into the shape of an overstuffed sausage. Even after Heather and I adopted him and helped him lose weight, we were continually amazed at his voraciousness. His escapades became the stuff of family legend: his seek-and-destroy mission involving several pounds of gourmet Christmas cashews, his insistence on chasing birds away from the feeder so
he
could eat the seeds, his discovery (far too gross to discuss here) of the yeasty joys of Amish Friendship Bread batter. And of course the refrigerator story . . .

One day during her lunch break, Heather called me at work. “Did you shut the refrigerator door tight thismorning?”

“Think so. Why?”

She paused just enough to let the suspense build. “Max raided the fridge.”

We got off lucky: we were overdue to go to the grocery store, so there hadn’t been much in there. He’d gotten the last couple of pieces of peppered turkey and maybe a third of a bag of baby carrots—no surprise there, Max loves carrots (then again, Max loves potting soil). Still, no real damage done. We wrote it off to a sloppily closed door (probably my doing), and the next morning I made sure everything was shut good and tight before I left. After all, we had just loaded up with groceries the night before, and we wouldn’t want my carelessness to help Max get himself into trouble, right?

Turns out Max didn’t need my help at all.

Again a phone call to me during Heather’s lunch hour, this time straight to the point: “I think he knows how to open the refrigerator,” she said.

“What?!”

Max had made himself a sandwich. A
big
sandwich: a pound of turkey, a pound of Swiss cheese, a head of lettuce, half a tomato and an entire loaf of bread. He’d also ripped open another bag of carrots and polished off the remnants of a bag of shredded coconut (for dessert, I assume). Heather found him lying amid the flurry of destroyed plastic bags, tail desperately thumping at her displeasure, as if to say,
Please don’t be mad, it was just
SOOOO
good . . .

Still, we didn’t really believe it. He couldn’t reach the handle, and the door seal was tight. How was he doing it? I caught him that night, after putting away our second load of groceries in two days. I just happened to be passing by the darkened kitchen when I saw his stout little body wiggling, pushing his narrow muzzle into the fridge seal like a wedge. Then, with a quick flick of his head, he popped the door open.

Apparently, Max, while not understanding the gastrointestinal distress that results from eating sixteen slices of cheese, had a full understanding of the concept of the lever. Where was this dog when I’d been in science class?

This was serious. He now had the skill, the determination and, most important, the appetite to literally eat us out of house and home. The next morning, as a temporary fix, we blocked the refrigerator with a heavy toolbox. Surely he couldn’t move a barrier loaded with close to twenty-five pounds of metal, could he?

Another lunchtime phone call. I think I answered it: “You’ve got to be kidding!”

The moving of the toolbox still remains a bit of a mystery. I’m guessing he used that lever principle again, wedging his muzzle between the box and the door and then just pushing for all he was worth. And once that barrier was gone, he got
serious.

More bread, more meat, more cheese. The rest of the carrots. Apples—many, many apples. A packet of cilantro, smeared like green confetti across the kitchen floor. He’d also popped open a Tupperware bowl of angel hair pasta and had been working at its sister container of tomato sauce when Heather found him. The only items left on the bottom two shelves were beer and pop, and the only thing that saved those was his lack of opposable thumbs.

That night we decided to hit the grocery store for a
third
time and invest in a childproof lock for the fridge. Before we left the house to buy it, we hovered anxiously around the refrigerator for a while. There wasn’t
much
left in there, but still, what if he tried to climb to the top shelves? What if he conquered the freezer?

But what could stop him? The toolbox had been no match. Finally, I half lifted, half dragged the seventy-five-pound safe from my office closet, dragged it to the kitchen and thudded it onto the floor, flush against the door.

Max sat behind us, watching. Calculating.

Heather leaned into me, almost whispering. “Do you think it will work?”

I said, “Well, I think we’ll find one of three things when we get back. One, everything will be fine. Two, the safe will be budged a couple inches, and we’ll have a beagle with a very red and throbbing nose. Or three, we may come home and find he’s rigged up some elaborate pulley system that’s lifted the safe out of his way. If that’s the case, I say from now on, we just stock the bottom two shelves with whatever he wants.”

We dashed to the store and back in record time. We practically ran into the kitchen and found him lying there, thinking deeply. No sore nose, no pulley system. We sighed big sighs of relief and got the plastic and vinyl childproof strap installed. So far it’s done its job. So far . . .

Sam Minier

“Well, at least he’s not begging at the dinner table anymore . . .”

©2005 Art Bouthillier. Reprinted by permission of Art Bouthillier.

The Offer

We were both pups when my parents got her—I about eighteen months old, she somewhat younger but older by far in wisdom and experience. She had already had a brief career in the movies, having played one of Daisy’s puppies in the Dagwood and Blondie films. But now, too old for the part, she had been given to my father in lieu of payment for a script he had turned in. He was a comedy writer for radio, and occasionally, movies, and excelled in writing jokes and scripts but not in collecting the fees owed him.

Her name was Chickie, and she was a wonderful mix of Welsh corgi and bearded collie. A white star blazed on her chest, and she had four white feet and a white-tipped tail to complement her long black fur. Even though she was scarcely over a year old, she was already motherly and sat by my crib for hours on end, making sure that no harm would come to me. If I cried, she would be off to my mother, insisting that she come immediately. If I wanted to play, she would bring toys, hers as well as mine.

My dad caught on that this was a special dog with high intelligence plus something else. He taught hermany tricks, learned from the dog trainers at the movie studio. Lassie’s trainers gave him pointers on how to get Chickie to respond to hand signals, as well as to climb ladders, bark on cue, walk on beach balls, dance on two legs and jump rope with a willing human. This she did readily and well, but there was more to her still—perhaps one could call it a deep sense of ethics. She seemed virtue incarnate, a Saint Francis of Assisi of dogs, who took on responsibilities of saintly cast. I thought of her as my sister and, what with all our travels, my constant companion and closest friend.