Dog Stays in the Picture Page 4

  The rescue association really grills you; the application was like being handcuffed in a dark room with a harsh light shining in my eyes. They try to trip you up with all kinds of suspiciously loaded questions:

  Why do you want a greyhound? (Excuse me, but this is purely a humane and selfless gesture of fellowship to an animal in need. I utterly resent the implication my interest has anything to do with Empty Nest Syndrome, or creepy midlife crisis fetishism of any kind whatsoever.)

  List all previous pets you have owned, how long you owned them, and the reason you no longer have them. (Arrow had to be put down; she had a tumor, honest. Okay, okay, please don’t hurt me; the tumor wasn’t actually inoperable, but the vet said it was going to burst any second, causing her horrible agony and certain death, and Arrow was too old to take a chance on surgery, I swear!)

  Where do your animals sleep? (This is about the cats, right? Look, the cats kept waking the children up when they were little, so we made them sleep in the basement. Not the children, the cats; jeez! But that was in our old house, and they had really comfy beds. …)

  You have children? (I don’t think these teenagers count as children; they’re taller than me. They’re almost gone anyway. I’d rather not talk about it.)

  Greyhounds’ reflexes are like lightning. They can never be let off the leash without a fence (meaning a physical fence—when a greyhound takes off, the electric jolt from an invisible barrier will kick in too late). And the biggest issue of all is Joey the cat, Arrow’s black-and-white hunting partner. Greyhounds can go from zero to just over forty miles per hour in three strides. They are sprinters: bred, trained, and rewarded specifically for chasing little fluffy rabbitlike prototypes at top speed for about thirty seconds at a time, with intent to kill. It’s what they live for at the track, literally, and the rescue people have told me that because of Joey they’ll only give us a “cat tested” dog without a strong prey drive.

  —Wait, you’ll give us a dog? I passed the test? I can have one? Oh my gosh, when? Oh thank you, thank you, okay I’ll go straight to Pet Value—what kind of food—oh and a coat. They need coats in winter, right? I’ll get a coat—

  —No. Please don’t buy anything till we’re sure you’ll make a good match. We’ve just e-mailed you pictures of a three-year-old female named Lilly—tell us what you think.

  What I think? I’m having a fit. She’s skinny as a rail, sweet brown eyes, ears a little cockeyed—oh my gosh, how adorable—and she’s brindle! My favorite! Greyhounds come in all different shades (the rarest is gray, oddly, which they refer to as “blue”), but I didn’t dare spoil my chances by specifying. Brindles are striped—one of the O’Brien dogs, King, is a brindle, but King’s a bit darker than Lilly, who is fawn with black stripes, like a tiger—perfect! In one picture she’s chomping on some kind of stuffed animal, looking happy, so of course I have to rush out to the store. My dog needs toys!

  4.

  Lilly [sic]

  DECEMBER 2009

  That mean black-and-white rabbit is up in the tree again.

  In Crate-land they wet us with a hose, not the sky. In this place there is no us. There’s only you, and the wet here is an unknown outside thing that will hurt you. It freezes up your insides so you don’t feel like doing it at all; you just can’t, even though it’s your first time out today and you have been walked (dragged) around several times until you are shivering like crazy.

  She says, “Awww poor Lilly.”

  And then you can go back inside and shake it all off. She laughs, and dries you some more (her scent is perfect!). Then you can have your breakfast and wait in your crate and think about it.

  You can still see her. Good. You keep a close eye while she talks to her box.

  “Hi, Linda, it’s Susan again, sorry. How about I dip her paws in hot water to make her do her business in the rain?”

  She pulls out the brown thing with all the hooks and wraps it around you. It must be all right, because she is from heaven. She has treats. (And oh, the scent of her! You could die for her.)

  She says, “Do you think you can do it with your coat on, Lilly?” and she takes (drags) you out again.

  She says, “We won’t go back in until you are not afraid of being out here.”

  And THEN she lets you off the leash in the big yard, and you decide to sniff all over it, as long as she is right next to you.

  Big wind never happens in Crate-land. She says, “Crikey,” and you go hide with her under the mean black-and-white rabbit’s tree. And because you are less cold with the brown hooks thing on, it begins to feel more like an adventure.

  She says, “Okay, Lilly, seriously.”

  You just ignore her, because what an idea, trying to squat when you’re trapped in this crazy brown thing. And you walk around some more with her, and then she bends over (that scent!) and takes it off. And suddenly you feel like doing it, so you do both kinds.

  She says, “Glad that’s over for f^%#’s sake,” and finally you can go back inside.

  I’m not quite clear how this happened. I remember a minivan pulling up to the house, and I know a dog hopped out of the back. It came into the house with me, and I immediately presented it with a toy, which it accepted with great enthusiasm, and everyone cheered. The rest is a blur. I think I fell into some kind of enraptured trance, muttering under my breath, Yes keep her yes yes yes. The rescue people spent a long time inspecting the height of our fence, but they must not have been concerned by my condition, because now they’re gone, and Lilly is not. She’s landed, like a disoriented tiger-striped neutron bomb.

  A waist-high crate is taking up half the dining room. Every floor has a huge dog bed now, because a greyhound’s skin is too thin even for carpets. You have to put coats on them when the temperature dips below 40 degrees, and I bought all kinds: lightweight fleece for everyday, turtleneck for snow. My favorite is a brown barn-type quilted raincoat I found. It has hooks, like a horse blanket—and it goes perfectly with Lilly’s new braided leather leash. The rescue lady was very stern and ceremonial about that leash. I had to promise to put the handle over my wrist and wrap the strap twice around my hand before she would let go.

  Greyhounds use specially elevated food bowls—their giraffe necks might get a crick from bending all the way to the floor.

  We’re keeping the name the rescue people gave her when she first left the track. It’s likely the racetrack staff didn’t teach this dog to respond to the sexless, impersonal professional name on Lilly’s papers, CL Lighting. My feeling is she’s had her share of upheaval. It’s not like me to pass up an opportunity to be snotty about that double “l” (What exactly did they have in mind, a flower or a preppy dress designer?) but something tells me this dog has already been through enough change for a lifetime. She’s Lilly, and that’s that.

  I think James Cameron’s designer must have used a dog like Lilly as visual inspiration for the creatures in the movie Avatar. Her brindle stripes are a dead giveaway—black-on-fawn eyeliner fanning out Cleopatra-style from the outer corners of her eyes. Every rib shows—you can literally see daylight through skin stretched over the tendons on the backs of Lilly’s hind legs. At night, picking her way around the yard, slipping in and out of shadows in the moonlight, she really does look like a mysterious creature from another world. She’s missing part of one ear and most of the fur on her haunches, and she is going to take a while to settle in. I am beside myself with delight.

  And boy is Joey pissed. Lilly’s still on cat probation; wearing a muzzle when he’s around. Joey spends most of his days glowering out at me from deep inside the mattress frame of a guest bed on our third floor.

  It’s Christmas vacation. Eliza’s been home from her semester in Tuscany since Thanksgiving, and there’s not a single scratch on her. David is happily between jobs. The boys are working systematically through masses of college applications. Joey’s found a
nice, safe tree in the yard, and Lilly—well. Lilly is trying. For some reason, she can’t bear to let me out of her sight.

  The rescue people told me I had to aggressively bond with her at first, and I think I may have overdone it. Lilly is even more infatuated with me than I am with her, if such a thing is possible. I’m extremely flattered—it’s sort of like being befriended by the coolest kid in your fifth-grade class—but I’m also feeling a little like a hostage. I can’t leave her much, because if David or the boys are in charge, Lilly barks incessantly no matter how nice they are to her. (Mama, she won’t shut up. She thinks we’re going to kill her.) She definitely senses the difference between men and women—she will tolerate Eliza, but if one of our men so much as looks at her she will literally get up and run out of the room. David says Lilly actually cringes when he reaches to pet her.

  For a greyhound rescued off the track, everything is a first, and it’s overwhelming. Lilly has no reference point for the simplest things. She’s not dimwitted; quite the opposite—the rescue people gave me her racing records and Linda O’Brien is impressed. Dylan and King were retired from racing almost immediately, whereas Lilly actually won a few races over the years.

  I’m sensing Lilly’s career success is part of her problem. She’s three years old and now she has to learn a whole new way of life. She’s been handled a lot by humans, but not in a domestic situation. They say her trainer was one of the good ones, but still, there are these haunting scars—the slightly shredded ear, and a bald patch on her shoulder that looks like the result of a particularly nasty accident. A total mystery. She’s spent her entire life in a crate, only turned out a few times a day, and raced, raced, raced, always in the company of other greyhounds, so this new lifestyle must be overwhelming; even something as inoffensive as the brrring of a doorbell can throw her in a tailspin. And when these dogs are stressed, they go rigid; they’re incredibly strong. When they freeze in place, the greyhound people call it “statue-ing up,” and that’s exactly right. It’s like trying to coax an iron statue that’s psychically bolted itself to the floor.

  Stairs were the worst. The rescue people recommend Lilly sleep in our bedroom, which is fine with us. But at first, maneuvering this creature up to our second floor was ridiculously hard. There are no stairs at the track, and greyhound bodies are not built for them anyway. You can’t blame them; it’s a matter of engineering. I heard about this one lady who couldn’t lure her new greyhound up stairs for anything. If she tried to sleep in her bedroom, the dog would cry all night, so she slept downstairs on their sofa for months. She finally caved and adopted a second greyhound to keep the first one company at night.

  I can’t get a second dog. David is thinking about doing a television series once the boys go to college. A television series would take months out of every year with a six-year commitment, and I have promised I’ll go on location with him. I might be able to figure out a way to bring one dog, but two? And besides, a second greyhound could come with a whole new set of problems, making everything even more complicated. I’ve heard of this happening from rescue people. Forget it. This lovely animal deserves a good retirement, but there are limits. We’ll figure it out.

  She says, “Here we go Lilly, it’s bedtime,” and she goes up that thing that wants to break your legs, leaving you down here with THEM, and they are all standing waaay too close.

  They’re saying, “Go on, Lilly,” and you just ignore them, so she starts to come back.

  But the one, the one with the hairy face, says, “Stay up there, Susan, she’ll follow you.”

  She says, “She will NOT, David. Lilly never does. I have to put her feet on the stairs one at a time all the way to the top like they showed me.”

  And oh, you will not, you will not.

  She takes your front paws and forces them up there. She gets behind you and says, “Aargh, my back,” and shoves your haunches up so you have to move your front paws ahead.

  She says, “That’s right, keep going, oooh I stubbed my toe, dammit,” and gives you another shove and Whoops, you’re climbing, and it’s too slippery and your toenails can’t find anything.

  She says, “Man, her legs are so skinny, I’m scared she’ll fall backwards and break something but she’s so frigging strong!”

  “Keep going, Lilly, YES!!! Good girl!!” All of them are cheering—horrible.

  She yells, “Sam and Ben, I can’t come back down there now or she’ll follow me. I’m counting on you to finish your college supplement essays.”

  And then you go in this quiet place and here’s your bed. Phew.

  Someone remind me why this was a good idea.

  E.T. has arrived from his planet and moved in with us, like a gift. But our E.T. is strong as an ox, she weighs almost seventy pounds, and she is completely fixated on me.

  5.

  Nothing Is Broken

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 2009

  What is it about the twins’ impending departure that feels so particularly stressful? Is it because they seem to have such devastating confidence about leaving home, or is it because they’re our last? The final two dazed rabbits pulled out of a magician’s hat at the end of a show, shooed offstage to face Lord knows what kind of rabbitish perils?

  It definitely helps having Lilly for company. She’s still deeply reserved, which fascinates me—clearly she wants to see where I am at all times, but actual interaction is not really a priority—an odd combination of need and detachment. I think her clinging has to do with being afraid this new, quiet, comfortable life with carpets and beds is all about me, and if I disappear she might have to go back to the concrete work camp. She sort of handles me the same strategic way I do the boys these days, come to think of it; determined to keep tabs without interfering too much. Every day there’s some new obstacle for her to decipher. Snow has been a major challenge, which makes perfect sense on reflection—Lilly has never lived anywhere but Florida and Texas. We’re having an extreme winter this year, and it’s been tedious figuring out how to convince her to even step in snow when she’s not forced by a leash, let alone relieve herself, given she has to be bundled up Charlie Brown–style, to protect her thin skin. (You know she is waiting for you to do it, but where? The ground is gone!) A work in progress.

  David is doing his best to woo her. He reports that as long as he pays lots of attention to Lilly when I’m out, her panic eventually shifts and she sort of accepts him as a poor substitute, following him around the house the way she does me. But as soon as I’m home, she goes back to being utterly indifferent to him, if not actually hostile. We are trying to help Lilly associate David with pleasure, so whenever possible, he prepares her meals. She’ll accept food from him with some reservations, but petting is not permitted, which is very sad for David. He’s determined to win her over, though, and through trial and error, he’s figured out one special trick. Lilly will leave the room if David approaches her from the front, no matter how unthreateningly. But if he turns around and backs up to her very, very slowly, one tiny step at a time, she doesn’t retreat. And once he’s backed up enough to be standing beside her, she’ll actually let him touch her, which, she is learning, can be quite pleasant. David gives great backrubs.

  One step in the right direction: Lilly doesn’t need the muzzle anymore around Joey. During the prescribed three-week muzzled introductory period, Joey pretty much spent all his indoor time either locked in my office with his food dish and litter box, or tangled in those bedsprings up on the third floor. We’d occasionally drag him out, sit them down next to each other, and tell them both what great friends they were going to be. Neither seemed to buy it.

  The muzzle business was weird for us, even though Lilly appeared to take it in stride. It helped to know that greyhounds always wear them when they race—they’re pretty much an athletic­ accessory, like shin guards or a jock strap—but we did look forward to the night we could finally take that muzzl
e off. It was dinnertime. Joey, who has been a little peckish lately, was dining­ in my office as usual. Everyone else was gathered around the kitchen table, Lilly napping unmuzzled on her bed by my chair. At the end of the meal we decided it was now or never, and Ben was dispatched to release Joey from the office. We all held our breath, waiting to see what would happen.

  Joey seemed to know something was up as soon as he reached the kitchen. In fact, it was as if he’d spent the whole muzzle period plotting exactly how to make the most of this first teachable moment. What he did was creepy, but in hindsight quite brilliant.

  First, Joey paused briefly at the threshold to assess the situation (silent audience of humans at the table, unmuzzled killer dog asleep on the floor). He then pivoted smoothly off to the right, walking most of the kitchen’s perimeter so as to approach his target from behind.

  I’ve been around plenty of heated first encounters between dogs and cats. I thought I knew what to expect, but I’ve never seen a cat do anything like what Joey did to Lilly that night. He’d clearly figured out he was dealing with more than your average housedog. He was practically rehearsed, and utterly confident. Joey didn’t growl, spit, or puff up his tail; no blood was drawn—he never had to unsheathe a single claw. Instead, he marched right up to Lilly from behind, and—Squish! Joey rammed his little nose directly into Lilly’s butthole as far as possible.

  Greyhounds’ tails are very skinny. There’s hardly any fur back there, so their buttholes are easy to locate. This was not your average animal-handshake-type thing; there was nothing even remotely sociable going on. Joey performed with surgical precision, as if he really meant it, in a creepy S&M prison-rape sort of way, causing Lilly to bolt awake with a yelp and shoot out of the room. (There is something wrong with that rabbit!)