Twas Two Days Before Christmas
I've been busy decomposing in front of the tube, eating Christmas cookies, playing with my daughter's new toys, watching The Seven Days of 007 on Spike, and watching countless bowl games.Laziness has a compounding effect. Hense, no posts.
The only thing post-worthy in the past week-or-so was the sweet, sweet, sweetness of the Christmas eve victory over the bitchqueens. It was good to win, good to own the division, ...but what made it sweeter than chocolate covered almond cookies was crushing the Christmas hopes of all Viking players and fans everywhere. No redemption for you.
So, last week Wednesday I was typing away at work, minding my own business when I get a call from the wife.
"Hello?"
"Hi. WND is GONE. She got away!"
"What?"
"She's gone. I put her out in back for about an hour, but when I went to get her, she was gone."
"Did she break the leash?"
"Yes."
"Which direction did she go?"
"It looks like she went into the alley."
3 seconds later I was on the freeway, speeding for home. We live a few blocks away from a very busy street. Also, the street that borders us to the North is well traveled, and I don't mean it's the boulevard to conformity, it's just a long strech of road with only one stoplight, and therefore quite popular.
Anyway, I could just picture the worst. Days before my first Christmas with a new wife, a new child, a new house, ...and my beloved dog gets crushed on the street.
As you know, WND is very smart, but also very, very dumb. She would walk out in front of moving car without hesitation.
When you are panicked and hurried and desperate, you start to realise how open the freeway really is. You aren't confined by lanes, two-second-cushions, or speed limits. I tailgated, swerved across three lanes, used the shoulder, leaned on my horn, all the time sweating, swearing, and assuming the worst. My only goal was to get home as fast as possible and save my dog.
I thought a lot about how I came to meet and adopt WND. I thought about what my life was like back then. This was before I stepped back into a world of social interaction, before I came out of musical retirement, before I moved back to Milwaukee.
I was still living in San Diego, still licking the wounds from my last affair. I deliberately lived in near isolation. Speaking only to co-workers about work or where to get lunch. From Friday at 5pm to Monday at 9am, I would often not speak to another human being.
I thought a lot back then. Meditated. Learned to paint. Wrote. It was a vacation from the world. It was comfortable. I liked it. But there was always the other side of me that dreaded this life. That side could usually be subdued by turning off my brain with a movie, video game, book, or TV show.
But on Saturdays, when nothing good was on, when the hours until Monday looked more like a sentence than a vacation, the other side of me would wake up. I was filled with dread on Saturdays. I hated them. As time went on, no amount of distraction could overcome this feeling.
My lease was coming due at about this time, so I decided to spend my Saturday's looking for a new apartment where I could have a dog, and also to look for said dog.
Each Saturday I'd drive up and down the coast, filling out applications, picking up community newspapers, and visiting animal shelters. In the same week that I was accepted as a tenant in a small house about 8 blocks from the ocean, just on the border of a lower-middle class neighborhood and a slum, I met the WND.
She was skinny as a rail, frightened, and confused. Her black fur was dull with grime and dust, her shaggy mane hadn't been brushed in ages. She was a stray at the North County Animal shelter. Her run was a tall, dark, cement hallway with large metal bars at each end. When I walked up to her run, she came towards me briefly, then scampered away into the shadows.
I knelt down and called her over, and she came. Slowly.
One of the metal bars was bent, providing enough room for her to stick her nose through. She sniffed me, then licked, then put a paw through and placed in on my knee. I now know that this was her way of pleading with me. She wanted out.
She was obviously tired, and soon laid down on the other side of the metal bars. But she kept her paw out, touching my knee. I gave her a treat, walked over to the administrative trailer and put in my name to adopt her.
They told me they had picked her up only recently. She was wearing a dog tag with a phone number on it, but the number was out of service. Also, her tall pointy ears had been damaged. She suffered from fly strike, which is what happens when flies eat away at sores on a dog's ears. They keep eating away at the hair and skin and flesh until the dog gets sick and dies, or get's treatment.
To this day the tips of her ears are in the shape of a V.
Anyway, the shelter told me that I could not take her unless her owners failed to pick her up. I had to wait the alotted number of days. So, each day I visited her on my lunch. I'd pet her, give her a treat, and sit with her. I prayed that her neglegent owners would not show up.
I finally got the call shortly after labor day of 2000, she was mine. I had been avoiding calling back the landlord for the house near the slum, ...but I needed a place that would accept a dog, so I took it.
I've always credited her as the reason for my first steps back into the real world. Weekends were now spent taking her to the beach, watching the sun set, going for jogs, visiting parks, cleaning up her trail of destruction ...
I needed a little craziness added to my life, and she certainly brought that. Often I would come home to find bookcases tipped over and tables moved. Once she even knocked down the bird cage and tore apart the bird cage lining, speading bird crap and bird food all over the house.
But she got used to me and I got used to her. She's been with me every day since then, and no matter how bad she can be, she owns a huge piece of my heart.
That really hit home as a careened through the city last week, desperately trying to get home. I was convinced that it was all going to end, that I'd find her ont he side of the road. The 25 minute drive home was narrowed to 15. An accomplishment considering the heavy, drive-time/Christmas traffic.
It was bitter cold that day. I called the shelter and put in a report on her, put on my thickest winter parka, and bundled myself up for an all night seach. I was completely prepared to walk the streets until I found her. I walked out the back door and started tracking her paw prints in the snow.
I had spent about 6 seconds trying to figure out which direction she went when she came trotting out of a neighbor's yard across the alley, one house south of mine. She was literally 100 feet away, completely oblivious.
After a scolding and a hug, we went out and got a new leash and new tags for her collar at the pet store. I could tell this was a great day for her. An unleashed romp in the neighbor's yard and a trip to the pet store where she could sniff dog butts and steal treats from the bin. She often gets ignored because of the baby, and rarely gets to go anywhere with me. We used to go for weekly walks, but now she's lucky if she goes once a month. I vowed to pay more attention to her in the coming year.
So, it was a happy ending and a happy Christmas in my house. Everyone accounted for. Everyone safe.
Everyone together.
As it should always be.
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