Sleeps with Dogs (14 page)

D
usk was already falling, the sprinklers clicking on in the front yard with a hush, when I arrived at the stately mansion nestled among the quiet, wooded hills of north Berkeley. The Benjamins lived below street level, the garage set atop the multi-story house like a hat. Their dog, Felicity, always waited for me on the love seat by the front window, the creak of the gate at the top of the stairs announcing my arrival.

From her perch, she watched me descend through overgrown rosemary that flanked the stone steps. She remained there until the very last moment, body tense, moaning gutturally with anticipation. As the key turned in the lock, she was off, bounding around the corner to greet me with an exuberance unmatched by any of the other dogs I cared for.

Even after months of walking Felicity, my heart leapt a little when this eighty-pound German shepherd came at me. Her
enthusiastic welcome—massive mouth open in a dog grin and fist-sized paws pounding the hardwood—would be truly frightening if I didn't know her so well. Rationally, I knew she would never do me intentional harm. She loved me. She was generally quite fond of all humans. But my knee-jerk reaction was to turn my back and protect my neck.

When I spent the night at the Benjamins', I traveled light. Unlike some of the other clients, they always had food for me in the refrigerator—leftover pork tenderloin, or a slice of pie baked in the oven of their beautiful Viking range. They kept the hot tub turned on and plenty of clean towels left out for my use. The DVD collection was vast (if a little heavy on the action flicks), and the guest bed was comfortable enough that I never needed to pack my own blanket or pillow. Nights at the Benjamins' were just fine.

I'd intended to arrive with enough daylight to walk Felicity, but my clients that Friday had run uniformly over schedule. Even with the later sunsets, heralding the coming of summer, it would be fully dark by the time I got Felicity all trussed up for her walk. In a neighborhood as nice as this one, I wasn't concerned about the criminal element. I doubted anyone would give me a hard time under any circumstance, tethered as I was to an animal as imposing as Felicity. Rather, when walking her, I needed the full visibility of our surroundings that daylight afforded for the safety of others.

Deciding her exercise would have to wait until morning, I dropped my bags and received the compulsory licking from head to toe.

“Let's see what they left in the fridge,
hmm
?”

Felicity preceded me down the hall and into the kitchen. The soaring ceilings were dark, the only light coming from the houses visible through the bank of windows at the back of the house, which overlooked the hills. I hit the switch and flooded the adobe-tiled
room. The sub-zero fridge gleamed in the far corner. I fed Felicity first, filling her bowl with a heaping portion of medicated kibble. Felicity, like many German shepherds, had a sensitive stomach and either needed chicken breast with rice or the outrageously expensive dog food equivalent.

In the fridge, I found a gallon-sized Ziploc with a note:

Here is some fried chicken I made this week. There is tiramisu in the Tupperware. Help yourself. And thanks!

I'd lived my whole life in Atlanta before moving to California at twenty-one, and I still appreciated few things more than homemade fried chicken. Not bothering to heat it, I sank my teeth into a thigh, savoring the exquisite comfort of peppery skin. I thought of my dad and the proud way he showed me how his mom had always fried her chicken. “Pepper is the key,” he'd say, dumping half a container into the paper bag that held the flour mixture.

Felicity finished eating before me and sat at my feet, expectantly waiting for a crumb to fall on the floor. When I was finished, I let her lick my fingers clean. I threw my paper towel in their industrial-strength compactor and went to put on my bathing suit.

It was during these visits with Felicity that I best understood the function and value of the overnight stays. Dog and cat hotels hadn't hit the big time yet, and boarding your dog or cat at the vet didn't closely resemble the customized, luxury pet vacation that is now the standard. Our poor dog would get so stressed when we put her in the kennel, she'd come home pounds thinner, her eyes gluey from lack of sleep, with a kennel cough that started to feel synonymous with Grant family vacations. If we knew of any live-in pet sitters back then, we'd likely have become faithful customers. Even though we had an outside-only dog, she'd have been able to sleep in her familiar doghouse, and gotten walked regularly, and not had to suffer the unfamiliar and likely uncomfortable enclosure,
the other dogs' ceaseless barking, and the unnatural fluorescent lighting that didn't closely emulate the sunshine and fresh air she was so accustomed to.

While the standard of living at vets and kennels had surely improved since Biscuit's day, and pet hotels were starting to become more common and affordable, I still hated to think of Felicity being cooped up in some impersonal pen, getting perfunctory walks. She'd languish there! I was so glad there was someone like me who could come and share her bed and tell her how pretty she was. She deserved it.

Soaking in the Benjamins' aboveground hot tub was a strange mixture of anxiety and relaxation. The hot water and jets on my body felt miraculous, working away the soreness from days spent walking miles on unyielding concrete with dog after dog. The darkened yard where the sauna sat shielded me from any neighbor's watchful gaze, making my privacy complete. But no matter how much I tried to soothe Felicity or convince her otherwise, she seemed certain that I was in dire danger of drowning. She ran in circles around the hot tub, barking and whining, occasionally going so far as to walk up two or three of the molded plastic steps in order to save me from that mean, treacherous hot tub. I dangled my arm as far out of the tub as I could reach, stroking Felicity's head in an effort to calm her while the rest of my body floated weightlessly in the churning water.

The guest bedroom once belonged to the Benjamins' son, who had long ago left for boarding school and rarely came home for visits. From what I gathered, they went to visit him instead. Sitting on the hunter green bedspread, I gathered Felicity's massive head in my arms, kissing the dog between her gold-flecked olive eyes.

The first time I had ever stayed overnight at the Benjamins', so many months before, I mistook the master bedroom for the guest room. I'd marveled at the king-sized bed and the fine furnishing, assuming they took their guests' comfort very seriously. And I'd slept soundly, with Felicity curled at my side on the ample mattress. The next morning, I explored the house further and found the actual guest bedroom tucked under the stairs that led up to the garage. Embarrassed at my trespass, I stripped the master bed of its sheets and carefully removed any strands of blond hair from the decorative pillows and silk-embroidered duvet. When the sheets were clean, I tried to reassemble the bed exactly as it had been before I slept in it. I hadn't paid very close attention, having assumed I was meant to sleep there. I'd felt like a Goldilocks, moving my things from the gorgeous “too big” room into the “just right” guest room under the stairs.

Sleepy after my soak in the hot tub, I climbed between the nubbly flannel sheets of that “just right” bed, familiar to me now after so many sleepovers with Felicity, and fell almost immediately to sleep.

Nights at my own house hadn't been so restful of late. I am not sure what I'd envisioned living with Ian might be like. I think I'd fixated on the bliss of having my own bedroom, an ashram of sorts that was filled with the comfort and familiarity of my own things and not a stranger's. The roommate component was a means to that end. I hadn't taken into account the reality of the arrangement: that we'd actually be sharing the kitchen, living room, and bathroom, and that we'd be in constant negotiation over the use of those spaces and the items within. Or that he didn't have a job lined up when he moved, and still hadn't found one.

On the nights when I slept at the apartment, I'd lie awake, the TV turned up so loud that the mirror on the shared wall between
my bedroom and the living room vibrated. He turned the volume up so he could hear his shows from the front stoop where he chain-smoked, a habit from college that had intensified for him in grad school, while I'd dropped my social smoking out of necessity when I started dog walking. I had no social life into which that casual compulsion might fit, anyway.

Of course, when I emerged from my room to ask him if he could turn the TV down a bit, or not smoke with the front door open, he'd silently comply. The next night he'd crank the volume again, and the smell of smoke would seep beneath my door, and I'd steel myself to ask him once more, hating myself for seeming like such a nag. Hating him for being so obstinate. Quickly tiring of this passive-aggressive do-si-do we danced every evening.

I never saw him before I headed out for work in the mornings, but evidence of his presence abounded. A row of beer cans decorated the kitchen counter like trophies, pubic-hair tumbleweeds scudded across the bathroom floor, his psoriasis creams crowded the lip of the sink, and the fug of cigarette smoke lingered, especially in the bathroom, where the vent fan had inhaled his prodigious nocturnal exhalations. Crack-backed, dog-eared copies of his well-loved books lay spread across the coffee table and couch:
Him with His Foot in his Mouth, The Berlin Stories, Lucky Jim,
bound to be replaced in coming days by another selection of cloth-bound, hardback first editions that lined the sagging bookshelf he'd claimed from the curbside in our neighborhood.

I'd been on my own, isolated from normal interpersonal interaction, for long enough that these idiosyncrasies of his felt far more intrusive and intentionally aggravating than they should have. Beyond my constant requests to lower the volume and smoke well away from the door, I didn't know how to convince him to change his behavior.

Thus, the pristine silence at the Benjamins' house—and Felicity's non-verbal, non-smoking companionship—felt like a welcome respite from my new reality.

Later that night, I woke in a claustrophobic panic, sweating and unable to breathe. I was trying to escape a dream of being nailed to a board covered in coarse hair. As my eyes adjusted to the light and I got my bearings, I realized that I was face-to-face with Felicity, who had me pinned in a lovingly aggressive straddle.

“Get off me,” I groused, weakly shoving at her. She rolled clumsily off and curled at my back, one heavy paw thrown over my neck.

In the morning, she leaped onto the bed with enough force to push the mattress slightly off the box spring. I turned away from her, blearily contemplating a breakfast of strong coffee and tiramisu in my immediate future. The Benjamins' Cuisinart coffeemaker, when filled with the magic of Peet's freshly ground beans, produced an irresistible reward for getting out of bed. So long as I didn't mistake the salt for the sugar. They inexplicably kept their salt in a porcelain bowl by the range, and I'd been duped more than once into ruining my coffee with a heaping spoonful.

After feeding Felicity, I opened the kitchen closet, where the dog's various walking equipment was stored—“her jewels,” Mrs. Benjamin called them. Because she'd missed her walk the previous evening, Felicity was wired. Her eyes were locked on me in anticipation, her butt wiggling with excess energy.

“Sit!” I said in my most commanding voice.

First, I hooked the pinch collar around Felicity's neck. Then came the black vinyl muzzle, which slid over her snout and hooked around her erect, velvety ears. Finally came the shock collar, positioned around her neck so that the small rectangular box that delivered the shock was located at her throat, the most vulnerable spot.

The muzzle and the shock collar were recent additions. With all
the straps and chains, I thought she looked like an S&M dog; all she was missing was the ball gag. As much as I hated the concept (not to mention the use of) the shock collar, I understood why it had been added to the armor. I didn't necessarily agree, but that seemed immaterial.

Felicity, trussed up and cinched into submission, walked down the hall in a tight heel, her head adjacent to my left thigh. At the front door, we paused.

“Sit!” Felicity sat.

“Heel!” She heeled.

We proceeded up the stone steps and out the gate onto street level, waiting for the steady stream of SUVs and convertibles whizzing by to subside. Finally a blond in a Jetta stopped, allowing for us to cross and head up into the hills.

The irony of my decision to walk dogs one or two at a time, always on-leash—avoiding, I thought, about 90 percent of behavioral or liability issues—was that the only clients who signed up for the one-on-one walks had dogs that couldn't be around by other dogs. Dogs with behavioral and control issues. Dogs like Felicity. In some cases, the leashes even exacerbated the dog's aggression. By eschewing the more popular—and better-paying—dog-walking paradigm of managing many dogs at once, I'd unwittingly backed myself into specializing in difficult dogs.

I had to learn quickly how to make my voice loud and deep, and raise my shoulders and spread my arms to seem as imposing and in control as I could. At six feet tall, this was easier for me than some of my more diminutive colleagues. Dogs have to believe you are the alpha. My height helped, but my ingrained submissive nature and reflexive passivity was a hindrance. Becoming convincingly assertive, aggressive even, presented a steep learning curve. It wasn't that I was unfamiliar with alpha females, but I'd never ever been in a position—or had the inclination—to act like one.