Never a Good Time, but Always the Right Time

“It’s not a good time,” is an excuse quite overused in this society, whether the topic be something as joyful as having a baby or falling in love, or as tragic as someone dying or breaking a limb. Is there really a good time for anything?

The past few months haven’t been a good time for me to take in a dog. As much as I wanted to, and it pained me each time I had to turn one down, my house and I were simply not ready. Contractors were in and out completing floors and windows; I was rushing between them at the house and being back at the apartment packing up the last 15 years of my life.

And I was exhausted. I just couldn’t do it. It was supposed to be a joyous time of finally getting what I’ve wanted for so long: a house. But it was stressful at every turn: from securing the loan, to saying yes to the house despite its flaws, to then dealing with one flaw after another and wondering how anyone could possibly neglect and abuse a house in this manner over the years.

I had high hopes, but the money ran out quickly. Fixing the backyard just isn’t in the cards right now. I need the inside completed first. And when Katya emailed me early last week to take in a special dog she had met at South LA, my place was far from completed and it was simply "not a good time."

But how could I say No? I know about special dogs—dogs like Tia and Harry—the ones you don’t just love, but fall in love with. Such it was for Katya and this little beagle/spaniel mix she christened Lennon (after John Lennon of course.) I slept on it, and then replied the next morning that I simply couldn’t take him. The contractors still had to finish drywall and put up the casing around the new patio doors, and my place was a hazard for any being who likes to put inanimate objects in his or her mouth. Outlets didn’t have wallplates, screws and nails were on the floor, and my moving boxes were in various states of unpackness. I couldn’t even sequester a dog in one room of the house as I hadn’t put the doors back up yet, and the doors that were going up didn’t even have doorknobs to keep them shut.

In lieu of being Lennon’s foster, I offered to transport him to wherever he needed to go. And of course, she could put me as the very last resort because although my place was dangerous for a dog, a dog was less likely to be killed here than at the shelter.

Another foster came through, and I was lined up to transport. However, due to some fumbling of paperwork and whatever goes on at the shelter, Mary Ann at Tails of the City (the rescue Lennon was being placed with) found out that Lennon was pulled by another rescue. As it was, there were odd discrepancies in information: he was sick, he wasn’t sick so he could be neutered, and now he was just plain gone. I hoped for Lennon’s sake that he really did go to a good rescue.

The non-event of helping Lennon kicked me in the ass to get back on top of things and keep working toward a safe home. I had to overcome my exhaustion. I had to make this, at the very least, a safe place for canines. The yard would have to wait (I just don’t have the money for a new fence, deck, and driveway gate), but I didn’t have a yard at my apartment and that never stopped me.

It was simply ludicrous to me that a dog might die because I didn’t have doorknobs. So, I got to work on hanging doors, buying doorknobs, cleaning up the drywall dust, unpacking what I could and containing the hazardous material in safe places.

Then on Saturday morning, I got the call. “You’re not going to believe this: Lennon is back at South LA.” It was Mary Ann. The rescue he had gone to either didn’t want him or had received him in error.

The poor little dog who was sick, had been sent to a vet to get neutered, then to a rescue, then to who knows where, and now was sicker than ever and probably wouldn’t make it out again unless someone took him. Unfortunately, the foster Mary Ann and Katya lined up was now booked.

“Well, if he needs a place to go, I can take him for a week,” I heard the words coming out of my mouth before realizing I had spoken. Mary Ann had only asked if I could transport him, although she wasn’t sure where to quite yet.

“Really?”

“Well, I have doors now. And doorknobs. I just need some time to clean up and get situated. When does he need to be out?”

“Well if you’re taking him, any time is fine. They close at 5pm. Thank you so much! I just need some time to find a new foster for him. I can do that in a week.”

I hung up the phone and rushed around, putting the final touches on getting my house ready. My first canine houseguest, and I hadn’t even finished painting the interior or putting away my office. Not the best of times, but in truth, my house was way safer and less stressful than South LA animal shelter.

Four hours later, I was kneeling down on the floor of the shelter, smiling at the little boy who cowered and buried his head into the animal control officer’s chest. “No. No more adventure,” he seemed to say. He looked more exhausted than I had felt in the past month.

 

“Oh come on,” the officer said kindly petting Lennon. “The last place just wasn’t right for you. This is much better.”

Lennon let me put a collar and leash on him, and even allowed me to walk him out of the receiving area.

Once outside he took not one, not two, but three dumps, all of which contained little white squirmy worms, as if he had deposited little coconut-covered candy bars along the shelter’s walkway. So the runny nose and messy neuter job (his balls—not a pretty thing to begin with—were just plain wretched-looking), were not his only problems.

Once inside the truck, I gave Lennon the exemption card—the one that says he doesn’t have to adhere to the passenger seat only on his ride from the shelter. The moment I sat down, the kid crawled up my shirt, glued himself to my chest, and hung his head over my shoulder. I couldn’t drive in that position, but a modified situation was doable.

Once on the road, I wondered if the guy had played me. He looked all too comfortable and happy behind the steering wheel.

A trip to the vet to get some meds for that cough, snot, and oh yes the worms (he wasn’t going on my bed or couch until that much was taken care of), yielded other results. I had noticed that Lennon’s back leg was twitching. He was trembling all over, so I didn’t think much of it, but the vet took his upper respiratory condition and leg twitching as possible signs of distemper.

Really?!?!

Distemper is—and don’t quote me on the specific percentage but I must be close—is about 90% fatal. The only dogs that get it are puppies not yet vaccinated. It’s as uncommon as measles in people—and in fact, is the canine equivalent. The virus attacks the respiratory, then gastronomical, and then hits the nervous system. It’s a full body shut-down and death in only a couple of weeks’ time.

Did Katya just have a knack for finding those about to die? I thought as I remembered Stella. No. This kid just has a cold. I was strangely calm. Granted I had known the little guy for about three hours, but seriously, he just had a cold, was stressed out, and maybe has a nervous twitch. Let’s give him some time to settle down and then we can start diagnosing fatal diseases.

Mary Ann decided to go ahead with the distemper test, and because that was a possibility his antibiotic wasn’t just a normal doxycycline that kennel cough kids get: it was some crazy broad spectrum antibiotic that although boosts the survival rate of dogs with distemper, could give me bone marrow cancer if I touch it.

Later that night, I looked it up online. Yes, it does cause DNA or RNA modifications, but guess what? It’s still given out to people in third world countries. A little precaution like not touching it with my fingers is acceptable but I’m pretty positive that not going end up with cancer for having it in the house.

Now that Lennon’s medical was taken care of (and I could ponder the distemper test for four days while we awaited results), it was introducing my first canine houseguest to the house.

Lennon appears to be an outside dog. He enjoys the outside, and enjoys looking at the outside when not actually out there. Once outside, he enjoys the art of lawn-diving as much as Harry did. 

Inside, he learned about television and seems to enjoy it. When it was time to take him out for his before-bed bathroom break walk, I had to shut off the TV; he couldn’t be torn away from it.

I had to explain to him about dog beds. He tried to avoid them, perhaps thinking they were off limits. Although, perhaps given the extreme temps in the valley as of late and him running a fever, the hardwood floors were just way more comfortable.

Strangely, he appears to be housebroken. I don’t worry that he’ll piss on anything inside the house, and he always waits until he gets outside to do his business. In fact, after only a couple of days, he understands that the quick walk midday into the heat is just to pee at the far end of the backyard and then quickly run back inside.

Having him here has proven one thing: that the yard is indeed a priority over remodeling the interior of the house. My major project of converting a stand up shower into a laundry closet will be put on the back burner. Not having a washer and dryer has caused me two hours of annoyance by going to the Laundromat once in the past two weeks; but not being able to open up my sliding glass doors and allow a dog to go bounding outside to the backyard to pee, to chase a squirrel, or do anything—that irritates me about fifteen times a day.

Lennon didn’t know his name anymore than his namesake. Day two I awakened after a fitful night listening to him sniffling, reverse-sneezing, and trying to get comfortable on the beds and floor, to a name in my head: Norman. I looked over at the sleeping guy and said, “Lennon?” No response. I hesitantly then questioned, “Norman?” To which he raised his head. “Your name is Norman? Okay. Norman it is.”

And so, the peaceful Lennon became Norman... Norman the Nut.

As Norman regains his health he comes out of his shell more, but he still hasn’t quite gotten a hang of cuddling yet. He still prefers to lie next to me, rather than on my lap. 

And no matter what happens, if he’s confused on what I want or he’s not sure how to get what he wants, then his default move is to simply show me his balls (or what’s left of them.) He likes to lie on his back, but the man needs some common decency sometimes.

Norman is quite smart, and now that he’s agreed to his name, he’s taking to training a bit. Hardwood floors do offer their own set of problems, but he seems okay with it. He walks well on them, but when he awoke the other day and instinctually shook himself, I didn’t even see his body fall through the air—one shake and boom, he was down on his side in a collapsed heap of canine. (He wasn’t hurt and recovered quite well.)

Now that Norman is no longer leaking green fluid from his nose or worms from his butt (and the distemper test came back Negative – yay!), I’m starting to take him out into the world. His first Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream went well. He watched, as he does with TV, or snoozed when things got boring. He didn’t bark as some other dogs did in the audience, and people commented on how well-behaved he was.

I did learn one thing: the boy needs boundaries. He has no qualms about trying to take a bite out of whatever you have in your hand while it’s also in your mouth. So, we’ll be working on that.

Oh, and of course there’s a change of plans. The fact is, moving a dog who’s been sick can lead to another bout of sickness. If I have no job (although I really really need one), there’s no reason I can’t keep him until Katya comes back on the 28^th. He’s a super easy foster, and now that I have my own house, I don’t mind leaving for a few hours at a time. He’s not destructive, and since I haven’t finished unpacking, there’s not much out for him to destroy even if he wanted to. He’s proven to be a quiet companion for events as well we an easy dog to leave at home should I need to go out for a bit.

So the house wasn’t ready for a guest. It wasn’t a good time. But it was the right time. Because the right time, not matter if it’s good or bad, is when someone needs you. Norman needed me. And, let’s face it, I needed him.

Norman, congratulations on being the first guest in my house. May you be one of many in a long line of canine guests to find peace, solace, and fun, here on the Ave of the Beautiful View.

Here is the link to Norman’s ad on adoptapet, should you know someone who would like this nutty, yet peaceful, little guy as a companion:

 http://www.adoptapet.com/pet7649741.html

Quincy Takes Me Home

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. 

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.