I have been quite neglectful in my updates, and the only excuse I have is that finding Home – for both pets and people – can quickly consume writing time. Oh sure, when it’s meant-to-be it’s easy, but even so, something as life-changing as acquiring your forever home can take hours and days of your life.
For the Skyline kids, Linus and Sky, they went to their forever homes a couple of weeks ago. As for Quincy, she’s a downtown girl now, living with her young hip mom and dad in a loft in Los Angeles. She didn’t even need to go to a new foster after her two week retreat with me; she went straight to her forever home.
So what have you been doing? you ask. Why no great pictures of the bumbling pup racing around the apartment or tales of struggles on the sidewalk as my canine charge and I wrestle for domination? Well here they are now, albeit more than fashionably late, because while I accompanied Quincy on her journey home, she led me to mine.
Quincy and my time together was spent snuggling, playing, and learning. She even gave me the disillusion that I might be a decent dog trainer. Certainly a trainer’s communication skills are something to be noted, but even more so is the dog’s ability to read and adapt to that communication.
My fear of “breaking her” after she was with the trainer was short-lived. I didn’t care to fight over the couch, so when I wasn’t there, she had free reign, and when I was, she had to ask and I had to permit her to share my space. As for the bed, despite her daily arguments to the contrary, she did indeed sleep in her own bed on the floor—except on her last night. (Come on, it’s the last night: it was a special occasion.)
Quincy came equipped knowing “Sit,” “Down,” and “Paw.” By the time she left me, she had added to her vocabulary (she knows what the words mean; whether or not she cares to oblige is an entirely different matter): “Stay,” “Come,” “Other Paw,” and in an enormous coup, she even did the long distance “Down, Stay” (she sits, stays, I walk away, turn, tell her down, and she lies down.)
( Learning is exhausting!)
However, I am convinced that it was less about learning the definition of words for Quincy and more about her trying to figure out what I wanted. In the long distant “Down” if she came instead, I brought her back to her starting position, she huffed and puffed frustratingly, not certain on why she didn’t get the cookie. I explained what I wanted, then clearly commanded, “Sit. Stay.” But before I could even get to my spot and turn to give the Down command, she was already Down. “It doesn’t count unless you wait for me to say it,” I explained.
That’s the trouble with impatient, smart souls (canine or human): they don’t want to be told how to get a result; just tell them the result you desire and they’ll get there themselves. Hmmm... that sounds familiar. So often the things we find most annoying in other people (and our pets) are the traits we hate to admit are our very own.
For being a six-month old puppy, Quincy is actually a very patient girl. For being a thirty-four year old woman, I am not. This comes as no surprise of course; I’m merely owning up to it. My patience threshold varies from day to day, but Quincy’s is right on par with a well-adjusted two year old. She could be polite and patient, but if she was hungry, bored, or the worst yet: needing her nap, then she became a little hellion that then tripped up my patience meter and we both became cranky, impatient children having an all-out wrestling match on the front lawn as Quincy gripped her leash in her mouth and tugged (I often didn’t use the harness for quick walks, so this meant she was yanking the leash that tightened her Martingale collar, thereby choking herself.) This exasperated the situation as I worried for her safety as well as mine as she flipped onto her back, wiggled her forty-five pound body in spastic contortions, choking herself and then thinking it all a great game as I angrily tried to get the leash out her mouth and she put my forearm between her jaws.
All of this is not a pretty sight—especially when it transpires at midnight under the spotlight of a streetlamp.
Only forty minutes prior, Quincy was my star pupil, giving me the impression that I actually knew what I was doing in communicating commands to a dog. Once in the frenzied rolling and tossing on a lawn I suspected would come to life with a sprinkler system momentarily, communication was murky—yet loud—between us.
Maybe she had just gotten to that point where she was testing my limits. Or, perhaps she was feeling my stress and releasing it out into the world—and back at me. I don’t know how I would have survived the month of May without this grand beast beside me (beside me, on top of me, under me, and all around me.)
How is that comfortable?
At the end of April, I received word that a bid I placed on a foreclosed house I had fallen in love with had been accepted. When Quincy joined me on this journey, it was inspection time. Quincy accompanied me to the house to meet with inspectors, hang out in the living room and expansive backyard, and keep me company while they gave the house a once-over and reported back all the things I needed to be concerned about.
This house is a shelter pup to me. I felt an instant attraction to it, as if it was calling out to me. It had been spruced up as if on a mobile adoption, but I know shelter dogs have a spotty history and are just shined up for the day—just like this house. You never really know what to expect: heartworm, fleas, ticks, neglect, bad manners—anything is possible. And you really don’t know until you take that pup home, allow it to curl up inside the caverns of your heart and by then, it’s way too late to give up on it regardless of what you find.
And so it was with this house. As each inspector gave bad news of the menial crap (that adds up as fast) I would have to deal with: updating the electrical, the plumbing, finding out what really lay beneath the shiny new layer of paint, I had already accepted that this house was mine. I would bring this house back from the neglect and abuse it had suffered. It felt like Home. The inspectors all agreed that “it has good bones,” much like the adoption counselors will tell you about the scruffy, cranky terrier in cell four: “He’s a good dog. He just needs some love.”
I spent my days at the house with Quincy who was mostly patient until she morphed into that cranky two-year-old child, at which time I put her in the truck and ran the AC while she snoozed.
In the evening, Quincy and I played,
watched TV,
and created the illusion that I was capable of convincing a dog to do as I asked.
Quincy didn’t know what this human adventure of house-buying was; she simply came along for the ride. For that, I thank her, as she helped me to realize that in some ways, I too was just along for the ride. I had to relinquish control, trust those around me, and in my heart of hearts, I knew this was my house to care for, but I had to let the journey unfold. And while it did, there was much fun and snuggling that could be had.
Quincy’s journey toward her forever home was far less traumatic—for both of us. In a strange synchronicity of mis-information, a couple engaged to be married (one of which had owned a pit bull years ago and the other a border collie) saw Quincy’s ad reflecting “Border Collie/Pit Bull Mix,” and said this would be a perfect dog to be their “first child together.” It also happened that Christy was Cody’s (the husband-to-be) counselor at the university where he was attending grad school.
The meeting went wonderfully and as Blake (the wife-to-be) asked me to take the first family photo of the three of them together, I looked up at what in all possible universes looked meant-to-be. They “fit.” I can’t explain it any better than that.
One week later, I drove Quincy downtown to meet up with Christy and hand over the leash—and the life—to this young couple.
Quincy had arrived at her home, leaving me to be without a faithful canine partner to accompany me on the rest of my own journey home.
She didn’t balk, she didn’t even really notice when I went to leave. Maybe she wasn’t as attached to me as I was to her. Or maybe she knew that this was the crossroads. Quincy had her new home and I was only days away from mine.
Quincy is getting along well in her new home, being the goofy yet intelligent pup for her adoring mom and dad.
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And my shelter pup is going through an overhaul as I make it healthy and well-groomed. My house needs a lot more work and isn’t as trainable as Quincy, but I know it’s mine. And not just mine, but it belongs to a whole host of wayward canines who will make it their first stop out of the shelter on their journey to their forever home.
Quincy got the sneak peak at the place, seeing it as it was in its mobile-adoption equivalent: tousled fur overgrown and matted, smelly, dirty, and in general disarray. She is the last dog to find refuge in the apartment I have called home for nearly 14 years. Quincy will return to my new abode once it’s dog-ready to visit. Blake has made it very clear that I am a part of Quincy’s life and always will be, so I have an open invitation to visit any time.
Before I invite Quincy (or allow any canine off leash in the backyard), I have fences to repair and a gate to build. Currently the house is getting more important internal deficiencies taken care of (i.e., plumbing, floors, doors, windows.) Just as when a dog needs to come back from neglect, you start with the necessities, all the while embracing it with the love that will build a solid foundation.
This house will be a home filled with love and peace, joy and laughter. It will be a place of refuge and retreat for canines, a stop on the Underground Railroad from Death’s Door to their boundless futures with loving families. This shelter house will be a true shelter for all who come here: having come from neglect and abuse itself, it will welcome in all that need the love and repair needed to move on.
After almost half a decade of taking dogs home, Quincy, you are the dog who took me Home. Thank you for being by my side on the journey. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
