A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BUYING A DOG
Step 1: Be Lucky.
There are varying theories as to how one may accomplish luck. By far the most popular is the reverse psychology method, by which one vocally & obsessively expects the worst. For instance, by gazing on the traffic ahead while trying to get to an appointment or trying to get out of town for the weekend, and exclaiming "DEAR LORD! THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER!, one hopes to influence the fates & thereby create a break in traffic that will allow one to bypass the traffic & travel smoothly to the desired location. This method can also be employed in retrospect as an act of contrition to avoid future disasters. For instance, the neighbor of mine who, after a hastily placed glass shattered a glass-topped patio table during a simply wonderful party late one Autumn afternoon, exclaimed "Oh, I just knew it. We were having too much fun!" We can readily assume that this act prevented her husband from failing to know when to say when, having one too many drinks, and making a sloppy if heartfelt pass at the 24-year-old neighbor wife that everyone knew he had a very silent and affectionate crush on. (This is lucky for me, too, since the 24-year-old wife in question happens to be mine.
When we began looking for a dog, my wife employed this method very early on, with a result that the 30 days we spent looking for a dog seemed more like 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. In order to further improve the odds, she doubled the efforts; not only was she lamenting "I'm never going to find a dog" after every adoption meeting, show, and shelter visit, she began to let it affect her work, so that she couldn't concentrate properly, decreasing the average of 12 weekly writing excercises graded per hour to roughly 6.3, which in turn affected her sleep, keeping her up late grading papers and then tossing and turning over the dog dillema. Thus, my wife became the punchline to an old joke: the dyslexic agnostic insomniac, lying awake nights wondering if there's a dog.
Step 2: Be Picky.
Remember that not every dog is your dog.
For instance, if you have a small apartment, you want a small dog. If you have a big, empty house, clearly, you also want a small dog. The reasons for this are legion:
1. Big Dogs = Big Messes. Big dogs get out of fenced areas & overturn trash cans. Big dogs chew things, & the bigger the dog the bigger the target of chewage. Big dogs do not clean up after themselves. Okay, small dogs don't either, but the messes, it follows logically, will be smaller & easier to clean up.
2. Big Dogs Eat More. This isn't as important, naturally, as big dogs tend to be less picky about their food, & thus will eat dry kibble without complaint. But imagine if your large dog ate with the distinction & discrimination of a small dog. Dear Lord! The food bills would be OUTRAGEOUS! And, to be sure, there's no way to tell what a dog's feeding habits will be until after you have gotten the animal home.
3. Our Dog Is A Small Dog. This might seem a bit specious, logically speaking, but proof, I promise, is forthcoming.
My erstwhile pal, Robert, who is really just a pal by virtue of living 2 doors down & being willing to drop by and chat between chores on Saturdays, has two Great Danes, both of which have been trained to attack an intruder. He made this plain to us by instructing us that we should never, EVER go into his yard if he is not visibly present, because the dogs will very likely attack us despite the fact that they know us. His view is that our dog is not a worthwhile animal, in fact even once exclaimed that our dog wasn't a dog. My view is that if you need trained animals to fend off would-be intruders, you're probably the kind of person that ought to be assaulted, whether by friends or strangers.
(Notice I said "probably." Robert and I don't always agree on the issues, but, truth be told, he's really a nice guy. Salt of the earth. When you write things down, you take the chance that someone might someday read them.)
Step 3: Look For A Dog.
For us, this meant re-employing step #1, so that it was not sufficient to simply read the classified ads & visit the occasional adoption meeting. We went all over the place, from the University area to Gastonia to Concord to Huntersville, weekend after weekend, to every shelter, happening, event, or gathering that even remotely might offer the possibility of a dog. Additionally, if there were opportunities to cap a full day of work with an hour-long lecture about the virtue of being a Good Pet Owner (such topics as "Don't Let Pet Out On Side Of Road & Abandon" & "If Pet Is Sick, Take Pet To Vet" were covered exhaustively) in order to view, for possible adoption, eight mangy, injured, sick, unkempt, and very sad-looking dogs and/or cats, then said opportunity must be seized, and seized with gusto. After all, it gave my wife the chance to lament, yet again, the absence of a dog in our house. It was at some point during this process that the search for a dog became the search for my wife's dog.
To be completely fair, the Lecture People meant well, but I simply wan't the kind of person who needed to be reminded that, having aquired a pet, dropping it at the side of the highway & speeding away into the night is the WRONG thing to do (and, for the record, I'm still not that kind of person). And the dogs, sad as they were, were certainly not to blame for their conditions. But once an animal has been abused, especially if the animal has been seriously damaged, the chances the animal can be rehabilitated are slim, & said treatment takes a very, very long time & a great deal of commitment. Just seeing the dogs had been traumatic enough, and on the way home my wife was so convinced (Step 1) that we were never going to find the right dog that she was teetering on the brink of an abyss of despondency. I tried to reason with her: "C'mon, hon, we'll find a dog, we just haven't found the RIGHT dog yet."
But she was unmoved. "By the time we find the right dog, I'll be a year older & you will have divorced me. I'll be doing nothing but looking for a dog. I'll be a nomadic dog-seeker, carrying all of my posessions in a grocery bag & travelling with the seasons."
From there on out, I made it clear that it was my wife, not myself, who was reallly looking for a dog. I'd slip it in, casually, in conversation, "Yeah, we're looking for a dog-- or, at least, my wife is." Not that I didn't want a dog, but more than anything, at this point in her life, my wife wanted a dog. She wanted a dog the way some women want kids, the way some men want cars, the way dogs want owners, so I figured, logically, if step 1 was to be effective, we should leave that position to our stronger player.
I grabbed her hand off her lap & gave it a quick squeeze. "Don't worry," I said, smiling, "we'll find your dog." I tried, and, I think, suceeded, in not letting on how goddamned tired I was getting of this whole thing.
Step 4: Never Never Never Stop Looking.
This we did, but we were smart enough to remember step 5:
Step 5: Stop When You Find Your Dog.
Otherwise, you have to repeat steps 1-4 ad infinitum.
We found our dog in what we thought was the least likely place: the pound. And I don't mean an animal shelter, I mean the pound pound. It's the place where they destroy the animals that haven't been adopted after 30 days. These weren't the dogs that people gave up for adoption, or that people rescued from bad homes; these were the ones that they picked up off the side of the road, the ones they chased out of neighborhoods tethered with noose on the end of an 8 foot pole. We had put the pound deep in the rotation for a number of reasons: the pound was on a side of town long known to be a high crime area, and thus the animals there were more likely to be crack addicts, spouse abusers, & petty theives. Also, we assumed, the animals were more likely to be in rough condition, & therefore in need of special care. As it turned out, this was the day the Fates said "Eh. What the hell. They've done their bit. We shall smile upon them."
Still, it wasn't a completely foregone conclusion. When Gabbie saw us-- that's the dog's name, Gabbie, the name she came with when we got her-- she ran up to us, panting & wagging her tail, as if to say I'M YOUR DOG! RIGHT? YOU CAN SEE THAT, THAT I'M YOUR DOG, RIGHT? WHEN ARE YOU TAKING ME HOME? I was not quite as easily convinced as my wife was; she bought Gabbie's argument lock, stock, & barrel, but it took a good ninety seconds of petting, playing, & generally rousting about before I began to concede that, yes, in fact, this very well could be our dog.
(About a week later I came to the conclusion that Gabbie, being a gregarious little dog, greets pretty much everybody that way, with certain & distinct exceptions, about which more follows.)
We adopted Gabbie on a Sunday; for whatever reason, something to do with paperwork that I can never remember, we weren't allowed to take her home until the following day. My wife picked her up after school let out, and, just for a lark, brought her by my office, where she was instantly a hit. I might mention here that she is a small, black terrier mutt, with probably a bit of labrador in her. She has pointy ears that flop down on occasion and a curly tail, and she was cooed over & petted by everyone in the office, with the exception of Jim. Jim was on his way out and had put on a hat; as some dogs are, Gabbie was initially scared of men in hats, something she has since gotten over. On this occasion, on seeing Jim, Gabbie cowered. Jim, being the kind man he is, then raised his hands over his head and said words to the effect of "WRROOOAAAAAWWRRR!" It was at this juncture that Gabbie crapped on the office carpet, to the delight of all.
That brings us handily to:
Step 6: Spoil Dog Rotten.
Otherwise, you see, your dog will never really be Your Dog. Gabbie goes where we do, sleeps where we do, eats what we do. She doesn't go to work with us, but she is rewarded for 8 hours of solitude 5 days a weeks with having the run of the house & yard at all times. When we first got her, we made rules: don't feed the dog at the table, don't give her people food if she hasn't eaten her dog food, but the very first time we had people over after we got her, that went right out the window: Gabbie was just so damned cute that our guests simply couldn't resist giving her a tidbit from their plates. So, in short order, it became a tradition for us to toss Gabbie bits of food while we were cooking, during meals, after meals, during movies, at parties... Actually, pretty much anytime.
In return, Gabbie, who weighs 25 pounds and is now fully grown, guards our palace.
Some dogs can sense evil; some are naturally atuned to pain. These dogs are best employed as police dogs or search and rescue dogs. There are dogs that can sense when people are in need, and these dogs very often are specifically trained to help the elderly and the infirm. Very early on, Gabbie's particular talent became apparent: she can sense, in fact can anticipate, proselytization.
Mormon, Baptist, Presbyterian, even Jewish (I suspect, because I've never actually seen a Jew go door to door proselytizing, or even know if they would call it that), it matters not, Gabbie can smell 'em coming. From the time they enter the yard to the time they hit the sidewalks again, Gabbie voices her displeasure with a bark that sounds, I kid you not, like WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! Despite How are you today? WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! I know you're busy, but have you considered WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! In today's world, so many of us are concerned with the state of WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! We have a program to keep our young people off WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! WRAP! She chased a pair of Mormons off our porch in a minute flat, and as for the Baptists, well, they haven't a prayer.
Atta girl.
With any luck, if you've applied our program properly, you will have found your dog. If not: repeat Step 1.
James MacFarlane Williams