Sleeps with Dogs (8 page)

This precarious scenario was bound to devolve into disaster on one of those wet pre-winter days, and disaster did indeed strike. No doubt anticipating their imminent treats, both dogs went crashing past me into the house, completely filthy with mud up the lengths of their legs and drenching the underfur of their bellies. They'd decided to take a tour through the bedroom, past Slinky's crate, up onto the unmade bed and across the sheets, and back down and into the living room, wagging their tails proudly. Luckily, the office door was closed, and the bathroom was barricaded by a baby gate to keep the dogs away from the cat's litter box. If there was a silver lining to this quick and dirty deed, it had to be the relatively limited scope of the muddy mess.

Slinky had not yet had her walk, and the bed was destroyed, smeared with dirty paw prints and wet dog hair. Before I tackled that, I cleaned the dogs, grumbling the whole time. At least the owners had the forethought to leave out a pile of old towels for this purpose. Generally, I supplied the towels for wiping down rain-soaked dogs, and I was always grateful to owners who offered their own for my use. It often seemed like there weren't enough towels in the world for a day's worth of wet, muddy dogs. The resulting laundry piled up all too quickly, stinking up the car with a fug of damp, dirty dog hair.

I spent the next half hour wiping down the bedding with soapy paper towels, as I had foolishly used up all the provided cloth towels on the dogs. By the time I'd removed all visible traces of dirty dog, the bed was pretty wet. After some thinking and digging, I found a Conair blow-dryer under the bathroom sink and set about drying the sheets and pillows. Slinky watched the whole spectacle, patient as a saint. Once the bed was mostly dry, I tried to affect the disarray of the blanket to look casually unmade, as I thought it had looked before. I felt reasonably sure the owners would never know the difference.

I attacked the muddy trail of paw prints with some multipurpose cleaner from the kitchen and more paper towels, beginning at the backdoor and scuttling along the meandering trajectory through the rest of the house.

Only then could I release Slinky from her crate to get her fair shake at a walk and her chance to get wet and dirty herself. The visit was running outrageously long and would undoubtedly throw the rest of my walks off schedule, never mind the extreme traffic delays that always came along with a little rainfall in the Bay Area. There was nothing to be done for it except to keep moving forward as quickly as possible.

Walking Slinky through the neighborhood was by far the easiest part of the visit, even if it was raining. Our greatest challenge proved avoiding broken glass on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. Her leg was healing quickly, and she pranced along without any indication of a limp, sidestepping the bigger puddles gracefully.

When we finished, I took my time with her on the front stoop, using one of my own towels from the car to dry her off and clean the street grit out of her paw pads. She tolerated me burying my face in the downy fluff behind her ears, still so soft even though it was damp. Zipper could hear us out on the porch, and she scratched at the front door impatiently. But if I took Slinky inside right away, she'd be quickly overwhelmed by the bigger dogs angling for attention. We had to enjoy our one-on-one time apart from the others.

I commanded Zipper and Rascal to wait while I gave Slinky her treat—this one a dietary supplement with ample vitamins for her healing foreleg. We both had to be on point in order to execute the transaction without any thievery of said snack. As I shut Slinky in her crate, I slipped her one extra treat on the sly for being such a good girl.

I had a bad and very embarrassing habit of making up songs about my dogs. I had no reason to feel self-conscious singing to them or making silly professions of love because—unlike my previous bird charges—the dogs weren't talking to anyone. And no one else was around. I often didn't even realize when I was singing to them, so second nature had my one-way conversations with the animals become.

Slinky's little ditty was to the tune of Robert De Niro's song for Jinx, the cat in
Meet the Parents:
“Slinky dog, Slinky dog, I love you, yes IIIIIII dooooo.”

As was increasingly my custom, I sang to her in farewell. I didn't have a special song for Rascal or Zipper, so they were subjected to Slinky's serenade as I took my leave.

It wasn't until the next week that I saw the webcam, its telltale red light glowing from atop the dresser, trained on Slinky's crate and the room beyond. This was an early model, the Ping-Pong-ball-sized camera set on flexible rubber legs. I couldn't say whether it had been there all along, or whether this was a new addition. The owners' had left no note, and I genuinely could not remember ever having seen it there before.

Had they witnessed the whole bed-blow-drying debacle? I certainly hadn't mentioned it to them, nor they to me. And how much of that would have been visible within the frame of the camera? And if it was new, had they installed it because their bed was weird when they got home last week? Or had they noticed an entire roll of paper towels wadded up in the trash? Was this a live feed, or were they also recording, like CCTV? Could they hear me? How many times had they witnessed me singing that ridiculous song to Slinky?

In a panic over what her owners may have seen or overheard, I wondered if they were watching me that very moment. I smiled and
waved at the little robotic ball on its flexible rubber legs, hoping I looked completely at ease on candid camera.

I'd started keeping a running log of insider secrets, a sort of, “Things I wish I'd known then . . .” list of tips. It had started with, “BYOB: Bring your own bedding. And coffee!” This was followed by “Birds can be assholes,” and, “No matter how ready you think you are, reread those instructions.” More recently I'd added, “Don't go over the fence; go around it.” (So many months later, I should've known better than to try going
under
the fence. Same principle, with an even more humiliating outcome.)

And at the end of the list: “Even if the owners aren't home, they are always watching.”

 

Hi Susan,

Has Maddie been getting into the cat food? When I arrived today there was some mystery kibble on the kitchen floor next to her water bowl, and her runny stool suggests she ate something she shouldn't have. I cleaned up the food and put the bag of puppy chow out of reach, but I know she's a smart girl and has her ways of finding forbidden things to eat . . .

Lindsey

CHAPTER FOUR

Wolf Pack

I
unlocked the wrought iron outer door and then the second wooden door, leaning my weight against it until it gave a groan and opened. A swirling cloud of fine white feathers greeted me at the threshold.

“Maddie?” I called, confused by what or who might have caused the explosion of down that I was now wading through. I knew Susan's son Trevor was not there, given the absence of his ancient Datsun from the gravel parking pad out front. According to plan, Maddie should've been crated in the back corner of the kitchen when he left.

In response to my voice, Ash, the new puppy of the house, came charging into the living room. He slid into my feet,
Risky Business
–style, setting off another flurry of feathers.

“What are you doing in here?” I reached down and rubbed his tummy. Ash was supposed to be sequestered in the backyard, not loose inside the house.

Ash and Maddie were cousins. Or half siblings. Or just siblings. Though Maddie was full-grown and Ash just a pup, both were descended from the wolf mother and German shepherd father who lived in a chain-link partition behind the house across the street, along with an ever-changing assortment of their offspring.

Ash was all white, like his dad. Maddie took more after her mother, the wolf unmistakable in her face and frame and coloring. The wolf mother had a permanent sneer from an old bullet wound—whether it was inflicted there in Oakland or before she was domesticated, I didn't know. It gave her a sinister look, in contrast to Maddie's sweet face and gentle, intelligent eyes.

For all of her good-natured playfulness and irresistible lovability, Maddie was not an easy charge by any stretch. The wolf in her introduced all kinds of complications not faced by most other dogs. At least not in such an extreme combination of characteristics. As was common in wolf dogs, she was way too smart for her own good, strong as an ox, and a superior escape artist. She also had a highly sensitive stomach. Her digestive issues were not necessarily endemic to this hybrid but were further compounded by the specific and often divergent dietary needs of a half-wolf, half-canine. All of these challenges were intensified by the recent introduction of Ash, also a wolf dog, into the household.

“All right mess-maker, did you get into a pillow fight?”

Ash padded behind me into the kitchen, the feather storm making us both sneeze. I could only assume that he got ahold of a bolster or a blanket while he was on the loose that morning, and then did what any self-respecting wolf pup might: destroy. Whatever it was he got into, the feather-fall grew thicker the farther into the kitchen we ventured.

In a small dining nook off the back of the kitchen, Maddie was indeed crated. She looked like a canine version of the Abominable
Snowman, her mottled dove-gray and cream coat further lightened by a head-to-toe dusting of fine white down. Looking adorably innocent, Maddie dipped her head again to tear at the remains of what was, until recently, a mattress pad or comforter.

“Oh, you're the mess-maker!” She nuzzled at my fingers through the bars of her crate, licking them with a feather-flecked tongue.

“Did your silly mama give you a feather bed? Those don't really mix too well with wolves, huh?”

I was quickly trying to calculate the next best step in this mess. Every time Ash moved, he sent another plume of feathers floating even farther afield. I could put him back in the yard and leave Maddie crated while I cleaned up, but I really needed Maddie out of her crate and out of the way so I could bag the remains of the cushion. She and Ash weren't really supposed to be outside together unsupervised, though.

“All right, kiddos,” I said, resolved to leave the cleaning until later. I unlatched the door of Maddie's crate, and she tore down the hall to the flight of stairs that led to the bottom floor and backyard. I knew proper procedure would have been for me to make them both sit and stay at the top of the stairs and wait there for me to give them permission to proceed. Sometimes you have to pick your battles.

At the base of the stairs that led to the backyard was Trevor's room. His door was always shut, leaving the small landing in gloom. Today, however, the door was wide open, and I thought for a moment that Trevor was perhaps home after all.

“Hello?” I ventured, suddenly feeling self-conscious about talking to the dogs so freely. I mentally reviewed what I'd been saying, hoping none of it was too ridiculous. Or openly critical of Trevor or Susan. The dogs were clamoring at the back door and wouldn't be ignored.

“Okay, okay, out you go,” I said, sneaking a glance over my
shoulder into the dimly lit room as I unlocked the back door and released the hounds.

His room was spartan, almost alarmingly so. Mattress on the floor, thin blanket thrown aside, guitar leaning against the wall, plain curtains closed. And no Trevor in sight. I relaxed a little.

Interesting that their dog got the feather bed and he had a bare mattress on the floor. Maybe his squatter aesthetic was by choice.

His open door had distracted me from noticing the window to the right of the back door, and Ash's only point of entry from the yard into the house. The window was broken—and had been for a while—so Susan or Trevor had propped two brooms in an X over the opening. Ash clearly figured out that he could knock these aside in order to climb through the window. I scoffed under my breath at the notion that broomsticks were sincerely intended to keep a wolf pup outside.

This client—Susan and her son—were not clients of my own, but one of the many jobs I took on in a subcontracting capacity. Thus, I didn't have a direct dialogue with them but deferred to the authority of the colleagues I was working for. I know, however, due to my coworkers and my near-constant communication about these dogs' well-being, that they'd requested many times that Susan fix the window. Word was that Trevor was supposed to take care of it.