Giant George (4 page)

If I were being brutally honest, I thought to myself darkly, this puppy of ours shouldn’t have been
bought
yet. We should have done the sensible thing and left Project Puppy till Christie had gotten herself settled in her new job, and we’d found ourselves a house to live in.

It took
about three weeks for the problems with George to come to a head: three weeks in which the problems of looking after
him not only failed to get easier to deal with but, day by day, they simply got worse.

It wouldn’t become entirely clear to us for a couple of years yet, but our puppy, who’d started out the size of, say, a six-month-old baby, was growing at an absolutely incredible rate. By early
March he had, literally, doubled in size. He was only about fourteen weeks old—still a baby—yet he already weighed thirty-four pounds. Thirty-four pounds is an awful lot of puppy, especially if that puppy is living his life incognito and needs to be carried in and out secretly.

It was obvious that his days of going anywhere in a crate were over, as thirty-four pounds of puppy takes one hell of
a lot of lifting, but he still needed a crate for use at home. We’d researched it, and it seemed that crate-training a dog—particularly a large one—was pretty much considered essential. You needed to have a place where you could safely park your mutt during times when he’d be in your way. At this point the notion of “being in your way” was one we were only just encountering—the full impact would
come a bit later—but he certainly needed a place to sleep. So I spent a good amount of time researching various dog crates, and I found one—the biggest dog crate then available on the market, which was appropriately called the “Colossus.”

The specs for the Colossus was pretty impressive. “54" long, 37" wide, 45" tall—or 137 cm long, 94 cm wide, 114 cm tall,” said the package. It also said it
would be good for large dogs—up to one hundred and fifty pounds. Perfect, I thought. That should last us pretty well. An adult male Great Dane, I
remembered from my research, weighed in at around that weight, didn’t he?

When our Colossus arrived, it took the UPS man three separate trips to get all of it into our apartment, which set Rosie’s curtains twitching. We assembled and set it up in the
corner of our bedroom. It was some piece of furniture: it was
enormous
. If I’d had any lingering notions that we might move it with George in it, they were, in that moment, dispelled.

It was also perhaps that day (or the next one, if not) when it occurred to me that I was at the end of my rope—I was stressed out and cranky and getting snappy with poor Christie. It felt like the whole thing had
been
her
big idea, yet I was the one with all the headaches. I couldn’t help feeling resentful, however much I wished I didn’t, that I was dealing with so much stress and inconvenience, whereas she could come home from work and pet him and have fun.

This was
all
utter madness. I had really had enough, and I couldn’t get the irritation out of my head. It had been a mad idea, clearly. It wasn’t
that I was against having a dog—we’d agreed on that—but to get this kind of dog, and at this time, felt wrong.

And once the idea took root, it quickly gained strength; it drilled a taproot right in and began to flourish. Yes, we’d been looking at houses, but we were a long way from finding one, let alone buying and moving into one. In the meantime, was it fair to either of us, not to mention
George, to live daily with all this hassle and tension?

It wasn’t fair to any of us. It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t sen
sible. And, most of all, I’d discovered—however much I hated to admit it—everything about owning a dog had become one big 24-7 problem.

And the problem was growing. It wasn’t that I didn’t like George—he was a cute guy, he was funny. It wasn’t his fault he drove me nuts. But
this wasn’t going to get any easier; it would only get harder. With every pound he put on, my resolve grew a little stronger. There was no balance here—not like there would be one day with kids. You went through all the stress with babies, or so my raddled thinking went, but then they grew up and became… well, grown-up, I supposed. It was
worth
it. Everyone knew it was worth it. But this? Well,
I wasn’t sure this was. I felt like an ass, but I had really had enough.

“Christie,” I admitted one night, when we both got home from work. “I can’t do this anymore. I really can’t.”

Her expression told me everything her silence didn’t. She put her bag down on the counter and regarded me coolly, in much the same way as a teacher might look at a student who’s disappointed her, who’s failed her,
who’s let her down.

Seeing Christie’s reaction, I felt like even more of an ass. After all, I’d made a promise. And this was a puppy who was very much Christie’s baby, even if I did do all the day care. She’d really thrown herself into being a mom to him too. Hell, he already had his own photo album and growth chart up and running—as if we needed reminding. Reading it, we’d stand there and gawp
in awe.

I opened the fridge and pulled out a soft drink for her. “Aren’t you going to say something?” I asked her.

She took the drink and shrugged her shoulders. “What’s the point?” she answered. “It’s not like it’s going to make any difference, is it? You’ve obviously made up your mind…”

She didn’t need to go on. I knew exactly what she meant. We were both strong-willed, both stubborn, both
keen to get our way. And she knew me better than anyone. Once I was set on something, I couldn’t often be shifted from doing it. But I was still surprised. This mattered to her, didn’t it? Mattered a lot. So why wasn’t she trying to change my mind?

I asked her.

“Because I don’t want us to do something that doesn’t make you happy,” she said simply. “If I try to talk you out of this, what happens
next? You resent him, that’s what.
And
me, for making you keep him when you don’t want to. And that won’t work, will it?” She picked up her bag and put down her drink. “So if your mind’s really set, honey, then I guess you’d better go ahead and find him a new home.”

I think that “honey” was the lowest point of all.

As low points go, the evening I told Christie I wanted to get rid of George still ranks as pretty low indeed.

I felt wretched about it all. I had reneged on a promise. I had proven myself to be not up to scratch as a husband, and I had exhibited the sort of devotion to selfish pleasures that made me feel like
a real ass. But after I’d made the decision to keep him, and made the calls to those disappointed people who had answered the ad and wanted him, and apologized to him and to Christie, I felt great. I felt like I’d stepped up to the plate as a man. I even felt a tiny bit heroic. My commitment to keeping George—keeping him willingly, not grudgingly—was something that made me feel a whole lot better
about myself.

As luck would have it, fortune was kind to us; only a week after I’d let down the people from the small ad, we finally found the perfect house—not that it would have appeared perfect to many people. It was a “fixer-upper”: a house that needed a lot of renovation, and would prove difficult to live in for many, many
months. But having been holed up in a rented apartment with an illegal—and
rapidly expanding—puppy, any house with a yard, however dilapidated and sad looking, would feel like the palace of our dreams.

Finally, we were going to make a proper home in Tucson, and it felt like the right time, the right place, the right everything. Sure, California had plenty to offer, but our corner of Arizona was a pretty neat place as well.

Since I’d left it, my hometown had grown a
lot, and it now has nearly a million residents. In fact, one of the best lures I’d hoped to use on Christie was that this place, once a dusty desert town full of cacti and cowboys, had—and still has—some great malls and theaters and plenty to do. It’s also, by any yardstick, beautiful.

For a time a part of Mexico (Tucson joined the USA only in 1854), the city sits amid five separate mountain
ranges, where the cacti (this is Arizona—we still have a
lot
of cacti) form eye-popping spiky forests in the foothills. It’s also iconic: right after it became a part of the United States, the ranchers, settlers and miners who flooded in clashed badly with the indigenous Indian populations—the Apaches—putting Tucson at the very heart of the bloodbath that was the “Wild West.”

There would be no
more clashes with the locals for Christie and George and me, though. We waved goodbye to Nosy Rosie and to the hassle and the headaches of subterfuge, packed up all our stuff, including the Colossus, and moved into our new home in February 2006.

The house we’d fallen in love with was a sprawling single-
story property, situated in a pretty residential part of the northeast of the city, in an area
where friends of mine from high school already lived. It was the kind of place where you knew the owners took pride in their homes; all the yards were well manicured and the homes looked well cared for. It seemed like a nice place to put down some roots.

In the middle of all this stood a house—our new home—that looked like it needed some loving. The previous owner had kept his motorcycle parked
in the living room and the oil from it had badly stained the carpet. It also had a 1960s chrome Fabulous 400 model oven/cooktop, which would have had that real “wow” factor when it was installed fifty years ago, and was, if you were into that kind of thing, a real antique. Though it might have sounded fabulous—if a little quaint—to an enthusiast, the house was basically old and dirty.

And it
wasn’t just the house either: the front yard had an extended family of rats in the bushes, and there were numerous moving boxes littered everywhere. The structure had a leaky roof, questionable plumbing, a take-your-life-in-your-hands electrical system, and the interior air hummed with the smell of pet urine. The front yard fountain was in disrepair and no longer worked, and the trees and bushes,
lacking both water and care, were on their last legs, and were being choked by all the weeds, which were thriving. It looked less like a home than like a Walt Disney backdrop for the sort of horror ride that had everyone terrified before they started at the very thought of what horrifying sights and events might be in store for them. Undaunted by the dramatic visuals, however, we immediately got started
making plans for it.

We’d decided it was perfect for many reasons. Being right in the center of town, the location was highly desirable, but at the same time it felt quiet and residential. The whole place was green and pretty, with big mature trees, plenty of flowers and open spaces. It was also on a cul-de-sac, well away from big busy streets, so it was a great place for kids to get outside
and ride bikes. Best of all, though, was that the lot the house stood on was large, allowing freedom for George to run around and have fun, and there was space for my grand home demolition and construction plans.

But grand plans of any kind require time and commitment, and though I was about as committed as could be, time was something I was a little short on. Having persuaded Christie of my
credentials as a brilliant home remodeler, right away I fell short in terms of actually getting going and doing it. By now I had almost finished work on my first rental property in Tucson, and had already started work on a new one, so it was difficult to balance the demands of creating our new “dream house” with all the ongoing rental property work. Naturally, the rental properties were getting most
of my attention, since this was the way I was earning my living, but, clearly, Christie wasn’t happy with this. It wasn’t because she didn’t understand and support me in my work, but because it was taking so long and she wanted this bedraggled house of ours to begin to feel like our home.

Here we were, living in an oil-stained, weed-infested dump of a place with an antique kitchen, a dilapidated
bathroom and no light at the end of the tunnel. We’d created a tiny makeshift sleeping space out of one of the original bedrooms, and into it
crammed our bed and George’s Colossus crate, which, between them, left barely enough room to walk in and out the door.

During the construction work, we had to remodel the kitchen too, which meant moving our temporary kitchen—essentially a microwave and
refrigerator—into the other little bedroom, and it occurred to me (I didn’t like to dwell on this too much) that the conditions were more cramped and unsuitable than they’d been in the apartment we’d just left.

But, despite all, I was happy. It didn’t matter how difficult and tiny our living quarters were, I was loving it. I loved fixing up houses; it was work that made me happy. I was finally
doing the job I felt suited me best, even if I’d taken my time getting to it. After leaving college, I’d done a whole bunch of things, but I’d spent the last decade making a living in retail. I’d set up a small business—a health food store in Long Beach, California—and enjoyed a fruitful ten years expanding, setting up five more stores in Southern California. I’d done okay, and on the whole had
enjoyed running my business, but perhaps I’d always known that it wouldn’t be forever. I wasn’t afraid of hard work (I thrived on it, mostly), but there was a real seven-days-a-week culture—as there always is in retailing—and additional responsibility for an ever-growing team of staff.