Heel, Dog!

Foxy, our German Shepherd mix, died in 1996, eight months before what would have been her sweet sixteen, and six months before Pat’s and my official move from Ohio to California.

For close to ten years after moving, I tried to talk Pat into getting another dog, but with no luck. There was always some excuse. Probably the strongest excuse was the work schedule both of us maintained. It wasn’t really fair to adopt a dog only to have it be alone all day and sometimes well into the evening.

One Saturday afternoon, I finally convinced Pat to “just look” at the dogs at the Monterey County SPCA. “We owe it to Doris Day,” I said, because she was a big supporter of that particular shelter.

Walking through the corridor of kennels that day was like walking down a row of prison cells, with convicts yelling obscenities to get your attention. I’ve seen Silence of the Lambs. All the noise! Barking from the left, barking from the right. It was like a Foley family dinner with everyone talking at once.

The hallway is poorly lit with cement floors and cinder block walls, gray everywhere. But more than that, the mood, beyond the cacophony of excitement, is gray. All these dogs are confined and want out. They’re imprisoned without having done anything wrong.

My heart is breaking. I want to take all these dogs home with me. Well, all except that skinny rat dog that can’t stop shaking. He’s kinda weird. (That’s mean. I’m sorry, weird, shaky dog. I hope you find a good home.)

The dogs have all been surrendered, sometimes by families that have had them for years. How terrible to be “given away” by the only family you’ve ever known. And for what reason? Typically, the family is moving and they “can’t” take the dog with them. Some family. In other instances, maybe the dog’s person has died. Can you imagine how heartbroken these dogs are?

Pat and I stop and read the mini biographical information sheet that is attached to the kennels of all the dogs we think are cute. We’re both thinking we want a bigger dog, similar in size to our dog Foxy.

It’s not until we reach the second to last kennel on the right that I see our future dog. Her name is Roxy and she has a strong resemblance Foxy. It was meant to be – especially because the dogs have such similar names.

Roxy is estimated to be about one year old and her former family kept her outside most of the time. Roxy was left at the shelter because her family decided their yard wasn’t big enough to accommodate the ever-growing Shepherd-mix. No doubt they had acquired Roxy as a puppy not realizing that she was part German Shepherd and likely to grow as big as she is now. Very sad and unfair. Imagine if your so-called loved ones booted you out of the house after you grew too fat or too tall? I wouldn’t have lasted long anywhere.

Pat and I don’t make any decisions yet. There’s no way we can adopt a dog today anyway because we have other plans as soon as we leave here. We’ve decided not to put Roxie “on hold” at the SPCA, but in the car we agree to come back next week and if she’s still at the shelter, we’ll adopt her.

Two weeks pass before we return to the SPCA. And Roxy is still there! We ask an SPCA volunteer if we can take Roxy for a walk. The Monterey SPCA facility has an impressive front yard with a gradual incline that extends about a hundred yards before it meets the two-lane highway.

Roxy is terrible on a leash. It took several minutes for the volunteer to settle Roxy down sufficiently to hook the leash onto her collar. Roxy kept scrambling through his legs, feinting this way and that, bucking like a bronco. Everyone was sweating by the time the metal hook and ring finally connected.

“Jill, I think this dog is too big and strong for you,” Pat said. He should know better than to say something like that to me.

“No, she’s not. She just needs some training.” I take the leash from the volunteer and we take off. Whoosh! Roxy pulls me wherever she wants to go – which is everywhere. Zigging this way. Zagging that way. I’m holding on for dear life but not willing to admit to Pat that this dog is way too strong for me. I feel like I’m waterskiing around fast approaching buoys, too terrified to let go of the tow rope.

The skiing over, I let Pat walk Roxy back to the facility while I stretch out my landlubber legs. Enough skiing for me today.

I tell Pat that Roxy’s our girl. It is Saturday, April 8, when we become the proud people to Roxie Foley. (We change the spelling of her name in the adoption proceedings.) Because the SPCA does not know Roxie’s exact birth date, they recommend that we make her adoption day her birthday, which happens to be two days earlier than Foxy’s birthday, April 10. Another sign.

The SPCA is kind enough to give us a large crate that had been donated to them. The crate is huge and won’t fit upright in the back of my Jeep Grand Cherokee. Because we don’t know Roxie well enough to let her loose in the car, we attempt to wrangle her into the slanted crate. After several minutes and with the help of an SPCA staffer, we are finally successful. This dog is exhausting.

We know Roxie’s uncomfortable in the crate, but we can’t go straight home. We have to stop at PetsMart and get dog food, dog dishes and other supplies. We also want to schedule Roxie’s first shampoo. I stay in the car with Roxie while Pat goes inside the store. There’s a lot of whimpering coming from the back and despite my loving conversation and delightful singing, it doesn’t stop.

Roxie cries for the entire forty minutes it takes us to drive home from PetsMart. It is both heart-wrenching and nerve wracking.

Finally, we’re home. Pat attaches a leash to Roxie’s new collar and escorts the dog out of the crate, which is no easy task because Roxie is one hyper girl, anxious to reclaim her freedom.

For now, without a fenced-in yard, we will have to take Roxie out to our backyard on a leash for her to do her business. I believe all three of us understand that Roxie’s business is outside business – not inside business. I will learn soon enough that I am mistaken.

Roxie does not like her leash. Not this one or the two others she will eventually chew through. One minute you’re daydreaming as you hold Roxie’s leash, waiting for her to poop and pee, and the next minute you become aware that the leash is dangling from your hand and Roxie is clear over on the other side of the yard ready to make a run for it.

Her business done, Roxie follows Pat into the house. Roxie is a terror. Like a two-year-old, eager to touch everything she sees, though in Roxie’s case, she’s sniffing at everything she sees. Before even two minutes have elapsed with her inside the house, Roxie has her front paws on top of our kitchen counter, scouring the area with her snout, looking and smelling for food. (I give Roxie credit because we only had to correct this behavior about three times and then she never had her paws up there again…at least, while we were at home…as far as we know…)

It doesn’t take us long to learn that Roxie despises her crate. We really only have a day to get her to love it because on Monday Pat and I both have to go to work. Our plan is to keep her in the crate all day until we can trust her in the house alone. We place the crate at the end of our bed and line it with a nice blanket. We coax her inside with a treat. As soon as we close the crate door, the crying begins. Oh, no! We have adopted ourselves a great big crybaby! She’s hardly stopped whining since we left the SPCA!

The crying is soon replaced with incessant barking. Isn’t the crate supposed to be a refuge for a dog? How are we supposed to sleep?

Fine. We’ll pretend this was just practice. We’re not ready for bed yet anyway, right? We open the crate. Roxie the missile, explodes out of the crate and out of the bedroom. Hmm. Hopefully she’ll do better in fifteen minutes when we will be ready for bed.

Roxie does no better later on. She has mastered the ability of retrieving the snack we have thrown in the back of the crate without getting her body in the crate. From outside the doorway of the crate, Roxie can successfully maneuver her paws to pull the blanket out of the crate and eat the treat that lay atop. We decide that we’ll crate-train her tomorrow, Sunday. She’ll be good to go by Monday, I’m sure.

We have no better luck on Sunday. On Monday we decide that we’ll lock her in the garage and hope for the best. After coming home from work we discover that Roxie has made a mess of our garage. Not only are things knocked over and taken off shelves, Roxie has bitten through a jug of antifreeze which has spilled all over the garage floor. We are lucky she didn’t drink the poisonous liquid, or she’d be dead. (Yes, it’s been ten years since Pat and I moved to California and yet we still have antifreeze in our garage. In our defense, California has all sorts of regulations regarding the disposal of certain chemicals. We haven’t gotten rid of the antifreeze because we actually don’t know how. In the end, I guess we’re saving the environment while risking the life of our dog.)

Tuesday, we throw caution to the wind and let Roxie spend the day on her own in the house. There will be a price to be paid, we are sure. We come home to poop in the first floor living room. We really can’t be mad at her. She obviously had to go somewhere while being cooped up in the house. Other than the poop and pee, there doesn’t seem to be anything broken or chewed.

The rest of the workweek passes. It’s Saturday. We’ve had Roxie for one week. We’ve scheduled her for a shampoo at the PetsMart in Sand City later in the morning. While Pat and I are getting ready in the upstairs bedroom, Roxie is freely wandering around the house. She has clearly taken to this new life as an indoor dog and she responds well to our voices, at least when we’re in the kitchen or making noises that sound as though we’re opening a package of food.

I have to admit that Roxie seems eager to please Pat more than me. I’m a little bit bothered by this. By now she has heard Pat’s angry voice on several occasions and yet Roxie still seems desperate to get on his good side. Should I start yelling at her too?

We’re right on time, we just need to take Roxie out again to pee and then get her in the car. Roxie hasn’t been in the car since we brought her home from the SPCA, but we’re not concerned because we have ditched the crate. She’ll do fine.

I’m upstairs when I hear the loud cursing from the first floor living room. Uh oh.

(To be continued…)