The Second-Chance Dog Page 2

  I am one of those people who go through life without ever seeing a wounded bird or animal. Maria can’t stop by the grocery store without spotting one. I can’t imagine picking up a wounded rabbit from the roadside and taking it home. Maria would never pass such a creature by. She is a whisperer; I saw that right away. She talks to animals, and they talk back.

  The rescue impulse has always fascinated me. It’s a powerful prism through which people see—or don’t see—the world of animals. Ever since Maria was a child, she’s been bringing home stray kittens, crippled birds, mice, rabbits, even wounded squirrels. Maria notices the needy things in the world, and identifies with them. When she was a vet tech, she brought home one-winged seagulls, a blind cat named Music, and a three-legged dog named Pitcher. Maria identifies with the outcast creatures of the world and sees herself in them.

  At the time she adopted Frieda, Maria and her husband both felt that their remaining dog, Skunk, an affable ten-year-old border collie, would like some company. It didn’t take Maria long to find the dog she wanted. In fact, the dog she wanted had been waiting for her for a long time, sitting in a kennel in a nearby animal shelter.

  Country shelters tend to be different from city shelters. Here, the idea of a “no-kill” shelter where taxpayers foot the bill for dogs and cats to live out their lives in crates is not considered a rational prospect or a humane act. People who live in the country know that animals do not inhabit a no-kill world. They know animals to be violent, selfish, and ruthless in their natural worlds.

  In the country it is considered cruel and unnatural to put animals in crates for years. In underfunded shelters, dogs find homes or they are euthanized. People like to say that some dogs and humans were meant to find one another. That seems to have been the case with Maria and Frieda.

  Maria got Frieda the way so many Americans get dogs these days. “I wanted to do some good, but I didn’t really like people at the time,” she told me. “I wanted a dog that nobody else wanted. I’ve always been like that. I’ve always wanted the animals nobody else wanted. I wanted to be useful. This was something good that I could do.”

  In the shelter that day was a beautiful white husky that Maria was sure would be adopted soon, but also a large, intimidating three-to-four-year-old rottweiler-shepherd mix who had been in the kennel for nearly a year. Maria feared that Frieda might be put down if she was not adopted soon.

  The shelter workers had named the dog ACC because she had roamed the grounds of Adirondack Community College for a year before a student contacted the shelter. Then it had taken them nearly a year to catch her.

  Hundreds, if not thousands, of people had seen ACC in the shelter and decided not to adopt her. For one thing, the two breeds in her makeup—rottweilers and shepherds—both have a reputation for being aggressive. People found Frieda unnerving. She was a large dog, with a keen hunting instinct, and she had a challenging stare, big, scary teeth, and a formidable demeanor.

  For Maria, it was a simple decision. She remembers looking at Frieda—who sat still, looking quietly back at her—and thinking that she was just adorable. This makes me smile, because even though I’ve grown to love Frieda, “adorable” is not a word I would ever use to describe her.

  Maria never saw Frieda as menacing, then or now. This, I reflected upon hearing the story, was probably a good harbinger for me. Maria had a high tolerance for craziness, and a fondness for animals and people other people avoided. Maybe she would one day find me cute.

  Mostly, Maria’s decision came down to her reasoning that the husky would get adopted and ACC wouldn’t. So she took her home. Inspired by the dog’s distinctive eyebrows, she renamed her Frieda as a tribute to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who’d had famously dark and luxuriant eyebrows.

  Before we met, but not too long after Maria got Frieda, I too got a new dog. I went to meet a breeder, Gretchen Pinkel, and decided to get Lenore, the black Lab I dubbed “the Hound of Love.” The way I got Lenore could not be more different from the way Maria got Frieda.

  I spent months researching Labrador retrievers, reading books and other materials and talking extensively with trainers and breeders. This was followed by hours visiting Lenore’s breeder, seeing her dogs, discussing my needs and wishes, comparing our philosophies of dogs, pondering the implications for my writing life, and then, after more visits and consultations, I finally decided on Lenore, who was eight weeks old. She came from a much decorated and grounded line of prize-winning Labs, and had never skipped a meal or worried about one in her life.

  Just before I met Maria, I was beginning my tailspin into a nearly total breakdown. My marriage was falling apart, and my long history of avoiding responsibility for my own life was starting to have devastating consequences. I had become disconnected from my world, my family, my life.

  I did not go to a therapist, not yet. Instead, I went to a breeder in Argyle, New York. I did the same thing Maria did, yet in a completely different way.

  I got Lenore. And she was very different from Frieda. She really was adorable.

  Lenore changed a lot of things in my life, especially my intellectualized idea about dogs. She stole my heart and shattered my detachment, and more than anything else, she kept love and the idea of love alive for me.

  Alone on the farm, with my marriage dissolving, veering toward bankruptcy and collapse, I was living as unhealthy a life as one could live. You don’t see too many movies about sixty-year-old men rebuilding their lives and finding love, and especially not while isolated on a remote farm in the country. I had dug the biggest hole for myself, and unsurprisingly, I had just fallen into it.

  It is difficult to sort out all of the different impulses that explain why we do the things we do. In the years before I came to Bedlam Farm, my writing career was foundering. I wasn’t sure what to write about. I wanted to learn more about animals, so I got donkeys, cows, goats, chickens, barn cats. But my focus was dogs. I found myself drawn to working dogs, dogs who would want to do things with me and help me explore the human-animal bond. Dogs who could go places, behave appropriately, accompany me to readings, share my life, be safe. Dogs I did not have to worry about. Dogs that were not Frieda.

  I was fascinated by dogs, and by the intense ways in which people attached to them. It was a subject that drew me powerfully as a writer, and that I suspected could never be exhausted. Some literary critics sniff and grump about the proliferation of dog books, wondering why there are so many. I have always wondered why there aren’t more. Americans own more than seventy-four million dogs, according to the Humane Society, and people love them more than ever.

  Maria’s needs and approach were very different from mine. She wanted to save and nurture something. She wanted the companion that the lonely and fearful child yearns for. As analyst Dorothy Burlingham wrote, “The child takes an imaginary animal as his intimate and beloved companion; subsequently he is never separated from his animal friend, and in this way he overcomes loneliness.” The animal, she adds, “offers the child what he is searching for: faithful love and unswerving devotion. There’s nothing that this dumb animal cannot understand. Speech is quite unnecessary, for understanding comes without words.”

  Maria brought Skunk to the shelter, and the workers there brought Frieda out to them. The two dogs sniffed each other warily but seemed to get along. The next day Maria called the shelter and said she would take Frieda home. When she arrived, they brought the dog out on a leash and collected the $75 fee. Maria signed the adoption papers and put Frieda in her Toyota. Much later, a shelter worker would tell me they had given up on Frieda ever being adopted, and they were desperate for space. She didn’t have much longer.

  Maria remembers that Frieda defecated and vomited the entire way home, and it was the worst mess she had ever seen. It seemed like Frieda had never been in a car before. When they got to the house, Frieda went off into a corner and slept.

  When she awoke, she was Maria’s dog, as simple as that. We like to think we know everyth
ing about dogs, but we don’t. Frieda, who was suspicious of everyone, who had to know someone for months before she would take a biscuit from them, trusted Maria and attached to her instantly and completely, and there is no one in the animal universe who can really say why this powerful soul connection was made. Rottweilers and German shepherds are both notoriously loyal and protective breeds. Frieda had found her mission in life. There was a great need inside of both of them, and each saw it in the other.

  Maria recalls that Frieda was very quiet the first few days, rarely barking or growling. She had a brawl or two with Skunk, but the two dogs worked it out. Frieda followed Maria everywhere, watched her closely, obeyed her as long as no strangers or new dogs were around. And Maria quickly learned to make sure there were no strangers or dogs around when Frieda went out. She never brought Frieda to work at the houses she was helping restore, as she couldn’t trust her to be safe. So Frieda stayed in the house all day, barking at mail carriers, trucks, bicyclists, and anything else that went by.

  Maria also remembers being concerned that Frieda was almost too quiet those first few days in the house. Clever girl, she was just adapting. The real Frieda—the terror—emerged shortly, when she busted through the front door and nearly ran down a pickup truck with a loud engine.

  From the first, there was a schizophrenic quality about her. As explosive as she could sometimes be outside, inside the house she followed Maria everywhere and did what she was told.

  And then, as so often happens when people get dogs whose backgrounds are unknown or unknowable, Maria began learning things about Frieda:

  • That Frieda was fiercely protective of Maria and their home, throwing herself at doors and windows when anybody came near.

  • That Frieda was untrained and responded to few, if any, commands.

  • That she didn’t like other dogs, especially small ones, or female ones, or dogs that moved fast. All of these she would try to run down and eat.

  • That she loved to chase motorcycles, ATVs, and trucks.

  • That she was a fierce hunter who would take off in a flash after chipmunks, raccoons, skunks, and deer. And, often, catch them.

  • That she had a powerful sense of boundaries—she patrolled doors, windows, and fences like a Special Forces sentry dog. That was her job: to keep the world out.

  The main thing Maria noticed was that Frieda was very protective of her, and partly as a result, she became very protective of Frieda.

  One Sunday, Maria brought Frieda to her mother’s house for a family dinner. Her nieces and nephews were there. Frieda was lying on a bed in a guest room when one of the girls reached over to stroke her belly. Suddenly, Frieda snapped at her hand. She didn’t bite the girl, though she easily could have. She didn’t even growl a warning. It seemed a split-second, defensive reflex. The kids were okay with it, but Maria wasn’t. It was a fateful moment for Frieda. After that, Frieda was kept away from all children and stayed in the bedroom by herself during family dinners.

  She was kept away from most adults, too. Maria is not one of those people who can turn a blind eye to the possibility that her dog might harm or maim someone. It was not a risk she was willing to take, despite her great love for her dog.

  Like many people who find themselves with difficult dogs, Maria’s response was emotional, loving. But also confining. She stopped taking Frieda places, stopped socializing her. Maria doesn’t have it in herself to hurt or frighten anyone or anything, and she made sure that Frieda would never again have the chance to nip at a kid, or run down an ATV, or attack another dog. If she couldn’t bear the thought of Frieda dying alone in a shelter, nor could she bear the thought of Frieda hurting another living thing or being hurt herself.

  Training was never conducted in the places it was perhaps the most necessary—out in the world. I wasn’t there, but I suspect Frieda was reinforced in the idea that she had to keep the world away. She was successful. The world stayed away.

  So Frieda froze in place, with all of her troubles. She obeyed Maria inside the house and kept close to her on walks, as long as she was on a leash. And from that point on, she was almost always on a leash. Maria had no fear of Frieda, and Frieda was nothing but affectionate to her. She left the world, and her bond with Maria grew tighter. With dogs like Frieda, either they get out into the world and become socialized or they have to be withdrawn from the world and find it confusing and alien, something to be kept out. Maria didn’t really have much time to train Frieda—her job required long hours and was physically draining. And she didn’t really know how to train a dog as wild as Frieda. Most people don’t. The drama of dog rescue is that it is sometimes hard and difficult work. People get dogs whose backgrounds are murky, and often they simply conclude that the animals were abused or mistreated and leave it at that.

  Frieda was kept from failing. But she was also not given a chance to succeed.

  You can’t look at a human-dog relationship and not consider the context in which it occurs. Maria had long suffered from anxiety and depression, much of it swirling around her aborted life as an artist, and she had largely withdrawn from the world, in just the way Frieda now did. She acknowledged that she was in hiding. She had no computer or cellphone, and very little contact beyond a small circle of friends.

  Maria was seeking a friend she could trust, one who might protect her from an alien and sometimes frightening world. Frieda was looking for work, and her work seemed to be watching over and protecting a human who needed her.

  In a way, Frieda owes her life to the very curious ways in which Americans choose their dogs.

  Normally, we make hardheaded, rational decisions about what comes into our homes and lives—houses, cars, appliances, furniture. We carefully consider things like price, reviews, warranties and guarantees, a company’s track record. Nobody wants a sofa that’s going to fall apart in a few years or a toaster that doesn’t brown the bread. We pore over online sales histories and ratings, weighing our purchases thoughtfully and grilling salespeople mercilessly.

  But when it comes to an unpredictable animal entering our homes and sharing a life with us and our kids for many years, the decision is often emotional, visceral, from the heart, not the mind.

  In America, the notion of how to help people has become politically charged and bitterly divisive, like so many things. We seem to feel as a culture that it isn’t really our job to help flawed humans; they have to help themselves.

  Helping animals is not controversial. This work seems acceptable, culturally and politically, across the spectrum of age, race, income, gender. Helping animals is much simpler, a quicker way to feel good and to do good, at least in theory.

  To many people, acquiring a dog has become a moral decision. There are lots of dogs in need, so the proper thing to do is bring one of them home. When people tell me they are getting a dog, I always ask how. “Oh, from a shelter, of course,” most people respond, as if any other option were unthinkable. Or they say, “I’m not spending money on a dog,” which to me is a baffling way to think about bringing an animal into one’s home for years, often to live with children, as opposed to, let’s say, a sofa, or a $1,500 backyard barbecue grill, or a $3,000 HDTV.

  Many dogs pay for this curious approach with their lives, returned to shelters or euthanized when morality (feeling good) conflicts with reality—peeing, barking, chewing, biting, expensive vet bills.

  Getting a dog that way is a crapshoot, a gamble. But sometimes this chaotic and random process works, and it works so well it is almost beyond imagination. Sometimes, a person in need meets a dog in need and the two of them fit together like missing pieces of a puzzle, their lives melding seamlessly and powerfully. I like to say that if we are lucky, we get the dog we need. And that if a dog is lucky, he finds the human of his dreams and needs.

  I have avoided dogs like Frieda because they are intimidating and, if not carefully trained, unpredictable. Certain breeds—pit bulls, German shepherds, rottweilers—are widely feared in much of
America. This is partly because of the disproportionate media attention these breeds get when they injure somebody. Labrador retrievers are much more likely to bite people than rottweilers or pit bulls, yet they are simply not as frightening to people, and they also tend to do less damage when they do get aggressive.

  I know that these stereotypes are simplistic and unfair. Pit bulls and rottweilers can be the most loyal and safe dogs to be around. Yet sometimes bad people get good dogs, and for the rest of the population, there is no simple way to know who is who.

  I take my dogs to public appearances and readings, and I can’t afford to be surprised by anything they do. While I have always had rescue dogs—Orson, Izzy, two other border collies who were rehomed—I also feel that getting a dog from a good breeder is one of the most satisfying and successful experiences in the human-animal spectrum. For me, getting a dog is not a moral decision but a practical one. Not a way of making me feel good about my morality, but about getting a dog that can live comfortably and safely in my life. It’s an increasingly minority view.

  Our cultural notions of dogs and how to get them have changed over the years. A lot.

  I grew up with a German shepherd named King. King lived in the pre-sensitivity, pre-lawsuit, pre–culture of fear era of American life. King did not eat dog food. My mother would have been horrified at the notion of buying food for a dog. (I often wonder what she would think of the twenty-five-pound bags of imported holistic dog food priced at $74 I see in the pet stores. Or how some people consider feeding table scraps to a dog abusive.) What King didn’t get from us, he fished out of the neighborhood trash bins.