The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout (7 page)

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Authors: Jill Abramson

BOOK: The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout
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As we learned more about dog training we realized that, although we had started late with Buddy, we had been wrong to give up on him. This time Henry and I vowed to stay the course, and we even set up a few between-classes sessions with Diane. During one such tutorial, Diane spent an hour with me on the road in front of our house teaching me how to pull Scout along on a leash. Though I was an attentive student, Scout was not. She alternated between nipping at the leash and trying to pull ahead of us when she saw something interesting.
As Diane’s classes continued, I found myself, once again, immersed in the early education of a family member. Scout made rapid progress, and at some point I admitted to myself that I was hell-bent for my brilliant pup to earn her American Kennel Club basic puppy manners certificate. As part of a generation obsessed with getting our kids into the right schools,
I recognized that I was taking these puppy classes a little too seriously. But when Diane told me, “Scout is trying so hard to be a good dog, and I’m sure she’ll get her certificate,” parents everywhere would have appreciated the mixture of pride and relief I felt. And luckily for Henry and me, after Scout passed kindergarten, we wouldn’t have to worry about her getting into college.
 
 
Now five months old, Scout was completely housebroken, well socialized with all kinds of dogs and people, and the delight of our lives. Our summer of Scout had been full of stresses, but whenever I took a moment to watch her be a puppy in full—paddling in the waves of Long Island Sound or racing for Louis the Lobster (a favorite toy) so that we could play a morning game of chase—I knew we had been right to bring this loopy bundle of energy and love into our lives. When I wasn’t with Scout, I missed her. When she was by my side, I felt happy and connected. A walk with Scout was always a good excuse to get outdoors and get outside of myself. And even though she
no longer had the floppy ears and irresistible soft fur common to all very young puppies, I couldn’t go anywhere with Scout without being stopped by someone who wanted to inquire about her breed or remark on her gorgeousness.
Goldens are known to be great family dogs because of their sweetness and their love of human company. Buddy had been much more independent. He liked to sleep downstairs, near our front door, and he actually preferred being left alone as long as he could patrol our yard and chase critters away. (Westies were originally bred to hunt rats.) But Scout rarely let us out of her sight and liked to curl up at our feet. Lately we had begun allowing her to sleep outside her crate, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, she bounded upstairs to check if we were still there and to give me a lick on my face. “She’s a bigger presence than Buddy was,” my sister observed one day. “She’s needier and more human-focused than Buddy was.”
But we were needy, too. After the departure of our children, Buddy’s death, and my accident, our home lives had become a little narrow and thin. A new day didn’t always bring a fresh store of energy and excitement, nor did we have anyone to baby or spoil. When Scout arrived, she undoubtedly began taking a lot of emotional cues from us, and she eagerly filled the spaces in our lives that used to be dedicated to our
kids and, in recent years, had been filled up by work, going to the gym, and other activities that we each did separately.
Thanks to Scout, Henry and I were doing more together as a couple. We took long walks with her and often planned special outings we knew she would delight in, like hiking on the trails near our house in Connecticut. Henry and I had been together for more than thirty years by the time Scout came into our lives. Both caretakers by nature, we had enjoyed having various members of our extended families and friends of our children live with us for lengthy periods at different points during our long marriage. Bringing into our empty nest another living being to make happy and care for of helped put our relationship back on its natural axis.
Scout still attended Marian’s pool parties almost every afternoon, and as she grew bigger and more confident in the water the hour at Marian’s was usually followed by a visit to the beach. She never tired of dashing into the waves to retrieve sticks or balls. When she swam back to shore carrying her prize in her mouth, her very earnest expression always made us laugh.
More than anything else, she loved swimming into deep water with one of us, though we had to teach her not to scratch us with her front paws. She learned
that when we said “Turn” she should swim away from us. She absorbed verbal cues quickly, and I taught her to swim laps in the ocean and stay in her own lane. When I said “Race,” she would pick up her pace and almost always beat me across an imaginary finish line. This was terrific exercise for both of us.
But now the waters of Long Island Sound were cooler and summer was coming to an end. September often brings a crush of news, which I love. It gives the
Times
a back-to-school atmosphere after the sometimes quieter days of summer. I was a bit worried, though, that Scout-time would eat too much into my work. Somehow Scout seemed to sense this: in the morning, she patiently allowed me to sit at my computer to check the headlines and drink a cup of coffee. But then she would approach with one of her toys and head to the door, indicating that it was time to go outside and play. She was particularly attached to a toy called Crazy Henrietta, an indestructible rubber chicken wearing a purple and white polka-dotted bikini. With Henrietta in her mouth, Scout was pretty much impossible to resist.
September also meant that it was time to introduce Scout to Manhattan. We had always planned to bring her into the city after Labor Day; besides, Henry was working on a big report that was due at the beginning of October, and he needed to be in New York for the
final writing and editing. We knew the transition would be difficult for her. Beyond our house and yard, the only places she had known were Marian’s backyard, the farm, and the beach.
We planned to drive with Scout to New York right after Labor Day weekend. On the night of our departure, we invited the Spiros over for an early dinner of Italian sausages in a stew with white beans. This was their first visit to our house since Scout’s arrival, and Scout was giddy with excitement when Marian walked in. Henry had to sternly insist that Scout not jump on our older friends, but the Spiros seemed little bothered by Scout’s exuberance. When everyone was finally seated in our living room, Scout lay down at Marian’s feet.
“I love what you have done with this dog,” Marian said as I beamed with pride. Since Marian was so good at relating to dogs, her approval meant everything to me. But I knew the biggest test of Scout’s newly acquired puppy manners would come when we sat down to eat. I silently prayed that she would not disrupt our meal with begging or barking.
Amazingly, she was perfectly behaved during dinner. Once again, she lay down obediently near Marian. Nothing, not even the tantalizing aroma of the stew, disrupted her tranquil demeanor.
When we had finished the main course, I cleared
the table and left the dishes—including a platter with a few leftover sausages—perched on a counter behind Marian’s chair. Just then, Scout stirred, and before I could stop her, she hoisted her front paws onto the counter and, with lightning speed, jumped up and snatched a sausage. To my horror, Marian had witnessed the theft.
“Oh, that is very bad,” Marian muttered, but then she couldn’t help but giggle. “It’s really our fault for putting such temptation within reach and not watching Scout carefully.” She looked at Scout and said, “You are trying really hard to be good, baby.”
 
 
After we said good-bye to the Spiros, Henry and I gathered up a few last things. We had already packed Scout’s crate, a large bag of dog food, a pile of toys, food bowls, and other basic dog equipment. As the three of us piled into the car, I felt as if we were getting into a moving van. Happily, Scout seemed perfectly at ease. Except for her homecoming to Connecticut in June, Scout had never been on a long car ride, but she slept for most of the two-hour trip to Manhattan.
While Henry unloaded everything in front of our building, I took Scout for a walk. I hoped she would relieve herself, but she alternated between pulling on
her leash to chase leaves and stopping dead on the pavement. I had forgotten how few actual patches of grass there are in downtown Manhattan. Moreover, the trees in front of our building are surrounded by two-foot-high wrought-iron fencing to keep dogs off of them.
Once inside our building, Scout sniffed everything nervously. She was reluctant to go inside the elevator, but we pushed her in. On the fourth floor we led her down the hall to our loft apartment; foolishly, we hadn’t made the time to do any proper puppy-proofing or cordon off forbidden areas. As soon as we opened the door, Scout bounded straight for our room and did something she never did in Connecticut: she jumped on our bed.
This wasn’t just any bed. It was a Swedish Duxiana bed, certainly the most expensive piece of furniture in our apartment. With its customized spring mattress and down topper, the bed had been a lifesaver after my accident, when finding a comfortable position for sleeping with a shattered left leg proved almost impossible. Everyone, including my doctors, encouraged us to buy the Dux, though initially we resisted such a costly luxury. Now, I watched in silent horror as Scout did something else she had never done: she squatted on the bed and peed, a big “I’ve been holding it for two hours” pee.
Henry and I rushed to the bed, and fortunately we were able to get the topper off before the lower mattress was saturated. After a rigorous washing by hand, the topper was clean again. By the time we all settled down for sleep, we were exhausted. But the street noise outside our windows rattled Scout, and she had a hard time getting to sleep and staying asleep. Like most puppies, she was frightened by the unfamiliar sounds and the barrage of new smells.
The next day, Henry got little work done at home because he was preoccupied with the effort to anticipate when Scout needed to go outside. Understandably, she hadn’t yet learned to go to our door and bark, which is what she did in Connecticut. As a result, he was constantly on high alert, watching for any move Scout made that resembled the beginning of a squat, and often mistaking a sit for something more alarming. It was a little like being a new father again, when he would lie awake listening for his newborn’s cry to be fed. By the time I came home from the office late that evening, Henry was crabby and anxious about his deadline. “This isn’t working,” he said, before shutting himself in our bedroom to do some reading, away from Scout.
I put down my things and looked at her. She was happily dozing, having recently eaten her dinner. I remembered Jane Mayer’s wise words: “She wants to
please you.” If we insisted that Scout spend part of her week in Manhattan, I knew she would eventually learn to like it. Besides, she had learned so much during her three months in Connecticut. But I knew it would be hard for her to be a city girl when she had been such a happy country girl.
Taking a cue from all the movies about girls arriving in the big city for the first time, I decided that it would probably help if Scout met a savvy city friend. She could be the canine version of another one of my favorite blondes, Jean Arthur, who in the film
Easy Living
plays a plucky, working-class gal who follows Ray Milland to the fancy penthouses of New York swells and finds true love and good fortune.
The only handsome guy I knew who lived in an almost-penthouse was Charlie, a tiny black and white Havanese who belonged to my pal and neighbor Ellen Pollock. Although it was already 10 p.m., I called Ellen, who had worked with me for years at the
Wall Street Journal
, and convinced her that she and Charlie needed to join us on a late night stroll. Since they lived right across the street on the thirty-fifth floor of an apartment building, they joined us on Greenwich Street not five minutes later. Scout joyously began sniffing Charlie, who was a twentieth of her size.
We walked toward the river and soon passed a neighborhood dog run that Ellen and Charlie frequented.
The lights were still on and, since it was a hot night, so was a sprinkler. There was also a wading pool, so even if this wasn’t Marian’s pretty backyard, I hoped that Scout would find the water familiar and fun. Sure enough, the second I unleashed Scout she ran straight to the water.
While Ellen and I caught up on journalism gossip, Scout and Charlie splashed and played in the water. Their huge size difference didn’t seem to get in the way of their bonding, which is almost always true with dogs, and it was after eleven o’clock when we called it quits, humans and dogs alike panting and tired. We all felt a little like teenagers out after curfew. And on the way home, the best thing of all happened: Scout peed curbside. I felt like turning a cartwheel.
 
 
After a fairly peaceful sleep, I woke up the next morning to a horrifying crime scene. Scout had chosen our red velvet living room couch as her sleeping spot. That was bad enough, but as I passed the couch I saw a little pile of broken glass and what looked like a knot of twisted brown plastic on one of the cushions. Upon inspection, I realized that this debris was the remains of Henry’s replacement glasses, the ones he had ordered after Scout destroyed the first pair. They were
his only pair of glasses; without them he was pretty much blind. The timing of this disaster couldn’t have been worse: I knew that Henry was already about to explode under deadline pressure and frustration with Scout.
I walked into the bedroom to deliver the very bad news. I had rarely seen Henry lose his composure, but after he raced to the living room to survey the damage, I saw my fifty-five-year-old husband lying flat on the floor, pounding the wood, sobbing like a three-year-old. “I will never get my report done,” Henry wailed. Scout crept into the adjacent room, seemingly ashamed to be the cause of such human misery.
I knew what my husband needed, besides replacement glasses, was a break from Scout. Ellen had told me that she often sent Charlie to spend the day at a day-care center for dogs in our neighborhood called Biscuits and Bath, so I got the phone number from her and immediately called the place. As long as Scout was six months old and we had proof of her vaccinations, she could come in for the day. Her age wasn’t a problem, of course, and fortunately we had brought a copy of her health records with us to New York.
I had never thought about putting a dog in day care. In Buddy’s time, when Henry and I both had to travel, either my sister or Jane Mayer usually took care of him. After we moved to Tribeca, when Buddy
was being stubborn on his walks, I would sometimes tease him by telling him that I was going to leave him at the Wagging Tail, a day-care and dog-boarding place that we often passed on Greenwich Street. It had a plate-glass window that allowed you to watch the dogs, whose tails were rarely wagging. Most of the forlorn faces pressed near the glass looked worried, as if the dogs doubted they would ever be picked up and taken home.

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