It can’t be helped. I have become one of those batty middle-aged dog ladies.
It started innocently enough with a casual perusal of the City Animal Care and Control (CACC) website. On a whimsy I filled in the “breed request” and pictures of plaintive bedraggled huskies started appearing in my mailbox. “Lets just go and have a look,” I told the long-suffering husband. Foolishly he tried to dissuade with logic. But then he made the fatal blunder of forgetting our 25th anniversary and guilt forced him to capitulate. We trekked up to 110 and 2nd Ave, the Spanish Harlem neighborhood that houses many waif and stray organizations.
No one with a heart enters the CACC and leaves without a dog. This is exactly how we got our old friend, Jack, seven years ago. The city has an impossible task. A long queue of kittens in boxes and puppies on bits of rope preceded us to the sign-in. Once upstairs, forlorn dogs gazed out from row after row of cages. Mishka was in the corner, unkempt, rail thin and according to his card owner abandoned. Even I was a little taken aback and nervous about his wolf-like stature but we took him out – he licked our faces - the die was cast.
We picked him up the next day.” Dazed and confused from the anaesthetic for his “operation” he stumbled out into the bright lights of the crowded waiting room like a convict on a perp walk. We removed his “cone of shame”, bundled him into the car, and arriving home attempted to stow him quietly in the bedroom. He let out a long and plaintive wolf howl. Jack sensing the intruder gave us a look of betrayal.
The main problem was that Mishka stank to high heaven. Soon, so did we, and every room we put him in. Even the vet said he had never met a dog this ripe. But baths were banned for 10 days and so we were relegated to sneaking in and out via the service elevator along with the garbage. Unfortunately, Jack caught wind of him too, and, his suspicions now confirmed, he let it be known by throwing a 48 hour hissy fit that “the guest” had overstayed his welcome. Haggard from sleepless nights spent comforting one dog or placating the other I called our daughter the dog groomer for advice. Sensing her mother, who is generally a well-seasoned expert in self-inflicted crisis management, was at the end of her tether she refrained from the “I told you so” and, like the alpha female that she is, took charge and prescribed a crate for each dog. It worked like a dream. Dogs love dens and as the crate was half the size of the average NYC studio the new arrival thought he was the Hilton.
With their territories now amicably staked out the more serious problem emerged that Mishka continued to starve himself. Noting his runny nose the vet prescribed smelly foods, but his cold turned to kennel cough and then to sneezing blood up the walls and all over us – the vet warned us it could turn to pneumonia that would require hospitalization if he didn’t eat within three days. Of course it was a weekend followed by a bank holiday. We boiled up vats of liver all to no avail. As the 11th hour approached and hospitalization looked inevitable I decided on one last tactic and planted Jack in front of Mishka’s crate. The sight of Jack scarfing down a big plate of liver dripping with Heme caused pack instincts to click in. Recognizing it’s eat or be eaten, Mishka sat up and promptly wolfed down a bowl of dog food. We spent the next two days feeding him up, scrubbing the apartment and finally bathing the homeless man.
Now that Mishka has settled in his cantankerous young husky personality is emerging. For example, he responded to being briefly shut in the bedroom by gnawing the bottom off the door. Last week he shredded a wicker dining room chair (after 25 years of service – it was a mercy killing). Yesterday he ate the Calvin Klein bedspread.
Of late he’s shown a literary bent – first he cut his teeth on “Treasures of Cheshire” and then took a fancy to “A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Costa Rica”. I plan to channel his urge to recycle books, creatively, to rid myself of all the authors I don’t like. To this end all works by Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner have been relocated to an appetizing level. Then, of course, I'm trying to interest him in Dave’s pile that’s been gathering dust in the corner for twenty five years. Dave shares with Hans Castorp, the hero of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, a love for excruciatingly boring books of the “Great Steam Ships of the World” genre – food for thought just waiting to be gnashed to smithereens.
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