Sleeps with Dogs (25 page)

As supportive as they were of my temporary career as a dog walker and animal nanny, graduate school had always been required in their minds. It certainly offered me an alternative to my current conundrum. So long as I got accepted to any one of the highly competitive programs to which I was applying.

I'd sought acceptance to every single university and college that offered a nonfiction option, and that I could realistically attend.
Montana, Colorado, and North Carolina were added to my obvious and original first choice of California. It had initially seemed silly and wasteful to have established residency only to attend a program in another state, but I was soon to learn that getting into a program anywhere at all was a long shot. The supply of aspiring writers—in all genres, not just nonfiction—far overwhelmed the allotted spaces in the available programs around the country. Ultimately, in an ironic twist, the only schools in California that offered an MFA in creative nonfiction were private, so my established residency would do little good in reducing the tuition anyway.

I'd already visited Saint Mary's College, a private Catholic college north of Berkeley where I'd been waitlisted for admission. I sat in on a class and was gratified that they were discussing
Out of Africa,
one of my very favorite books. That might have been an omen of good news to come, but between the warm, dry classroom, and the soft lull of the discussion happening around me, I kept nodding off. It was just so nice to be indoors and not exercising canines or being covered in wet dog fur, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I didn't even realize I was dozing until the moment my head fell forward, startling me back into wakefulness. The professor carried on as though nothing had happened, but I knew it hadn't gone unnoticed. The tables were situated in a circle, and I was one of only nine people in the room. And then it happened again, despite my best efforts to remain alert and engaged. I tried everything—pinching myself under the desk, taking extensive notes on everything the professor was saying, and even playing a game in which I silently recited every phrase I could think of in the voice and cadence of Meryl Streep saying, “I had a farm in Africa.”
I had a snake in college. I ate some cheese this morning. I took a nap in lit class.
It was all to no avail. I could not stay awake.

The specter of grad school rejection and ever-more rain aside, the longer I didn't get out of bed, the more difficulties I'd face in the day ahead. The higher the likelihood that all those dogs I was to scheduled to visit were peeing on the oriental rugs and burnished hardwood floors of their homes, pooping in a closet where it might go undiscovered for a day, or barking until the neighbors called the owner to complain, saying, “No, I haven't seen the dog walker arrive yet.” I told myself I was needed. There would be hell to pay if I didn't get my ass out of bed and get going. And still I lay there, loathing the idea of stepping into my ripped galoshes, the mud-caked ski suit that served as my rainwear, and the man-sized blue raincoat that never fully dried out these days and was losing its capacity to repel even the lightest rain.

My visits with each dog were carefully scheduled to prevent accidents in the house and optimize their exercise time, calibrated between the owner's departure and arrival back home. The resulting schedule could be so easily derailed by something as minor as constipation (my own or a dog's) or hitting too many red lights on the way to a client's house. In fact, I'd begun to compress all business and basic needs (going to the bathroom excepted) into my driving time, as dangerous as this could prove. Burritos and subs were the most hazardous foods to eat on the road. After a few near misses, I'd conceded that chasing a runaway black bean or piece of lettuce that had fallen into my lap was not worth a traffic accident. I only made phone calls that required talking—no writing or referring to credit card numbers or calendars or my clipboard with the daily schedules and dog profiles. In the backseat, I had a makeshift pharmacy of tissues, tampons, painkillers, Band-Aids, and an emergency gallon of water. The car was effectively an office on wheels.

My first visit of the day had backyard access through a dog door, so there was no danger of an accident there at least. When I
came through the kitchen door, Foxy was lying on her back in the living room with her paws curled toward the ceiling. Her kong chew toy and a roasting pan lay side by side on the kitchen floor, both licked clean.

The living room was packed deep with dusty hardcover books about anatomy or biology. These piles, three or four deep on the end tables and coffee table, seemed to serve as the permanent décor. The front of the house was perpetually cast in a pleasing dusky-hued gloom—in contrast to the bright and organized kitchen—that was inviting rather than oppressive. I had grown up in a house full of books. In my home, the tomes had always been neatly organized on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, first by genre and then by author's last name. The smell of the books, organized or not, was the same: musty and strangely warm.

Foxy's shadowy form always drew me across the beige linoleum and into the dim living room, where I knelt beside her on the thick pile of the rug. Upside down, her toothy smile was especially comical. I pressed my face into her downy belly, which was partially obscured by a pink-sleeved baseball shirt, split up the back to fit snugly around her middle, leaving her tummy free for my rubs.

Her shirt is nicer than mine,
I thought as I fingered the scissor-cut cotton. I had to admit, I'd subjected Biscuit to the occasional headband, but it never went beyond that. She'd never had outfits. As a child, I barely had outfits myself. I was ever clothed in my sister's hand-me-downs, which were usually from thrift stores anyway.

Foxy was a blue merle Australian shepherd, her fur mottled black, gray, and white. She had pert, floppy ears that felt like moleskin. I often rubbed my nose against the soft slickness of them. I particularly favored Foxy's smell, which was like warm corn tortillas.

The note on the counter that day read,
Fox chipped her tooth
—
she ran face-first into a telephone pole on our walk yesterday. Now
her smile is that much cuter!
Anyone not indoctrinated in dog expression would interpret Foxy's grin as a menace, but I knew it was a compliment when she showed her gums. This was a typical expression by Australian shepherds—always a means of communicating, whether in greeting or acknowledging they'd been naughty or just a way to connect with you. Foxy's smile was devastatingly cute to begin with, and the chipped front tooth lent that particular charm of a child with dirty hands and scraped knees. It pleased me to no end that her owners didn't intend to have it capped like Tucker's mom had.

Foxy had torn her footpad the previous week and was wearing a white ankle sock over her bandaged paw, the lacy trim lost in the fur of her foreleg. The sock resembled those that I used to wear with my denim jumper—the nicest piece of clothing I owned—to Quaker meetings when I was young. The shirt she wore was supposed to keep her from worrying a hot spot she'd been licking on her shoulder, but she'd been in shirts for over a week, and it didn't seem to be dissuading her at all. Foxy's owners were both med techs, which meshed well with her tendency toward accident and injury. She was absolutely the clumsiest and most oft-injured animal I had ever cared for. It made me adore her all the more.

The endless rain was still coming down, so I wrapped a plastic bag around Foxy's sock. I secured this with the medical tape left on the counter next to the fresh shirt and sock her owners had left out for after the walk. Foxy craned around to lick my face while I worked, the two of us moving in a tight circle through the kitchen; I was trying to tape while Foxy tried to lick. By the time I had bagged, taped, and leashed her for her walk, I was sweating inside my raincoat.

As soon as we hit the sidewalk, Foxy became far too busy to acknowledge me. I might as well have been an inanimate object weighting the end of her leash. The shepherd bounded a few
steps ahead, her docked tail unmoving, her nose to the ground. She was at work.

We followed the same route as always, up through the sloped and tree-lined streets of the Albany hills. I loved the daring colors of the humble adobe homes, many with elaborate gardens in front. I was forever ducking low-hanging branches and dodging the roots that busted up the old concrete of the sidewalks. We emerged from the residential cluster at the top of a long commercial street stretching west toward the bay. This was one of few urban dog walks I did, second only in foot traffic to the dicey shopping-district walks with Flannel and Salvador. Walking among businessmen and businesswomen out to lunch or off to the bank made me feel connected to humanity in a way that the neighborhood or trail walks, removed as they were from the bustle of workaday life, could not. Instead of deer or other dogs, I got to observe my own species at work and play.

As it turned out, the commercial drag was a great place to walk in the rain because the storefronts almost all had eaves or awnings deep enough to shield me while Foxy bobbed and wove down the sidewalk, pissing on a fire hydrant or up a tree trunk. Even in the weather, pedestrians rushing around in their business suits with jerking umbrellas would stop and notice this dog, comical-looking with her plastic-wrapped paw and pink baseball tee. It seemed a unanimous consensus that she was cuteness embodied.

Though she had a dog door with access to the fenced backyard, I always felt better if she pooped at least once on our walk. It was—with all dogs—a sign that all is well; the system is up and running. Monitoring the consistency for any aberrances, too, was a great litmus test for overall health.

As she made her ritual tight circle in a sparse tuft of grass in front of the high-end deli, dancing a little before she committed to a
squat, I realized that I'd left the doggie bags on the counter. I could see them there in my mind's eye, slowly uncrumpling next to the roll of medical tape. Trying to clean up poop without a bag was always a pain and just plain unpleasant, especially on a crowded thoroughfare with so many well-dressed witnesses.

I'd been in this situation plenty of times, and it called for quick thinking and creativity. Sticks, leaves, receipts, chip bags from the garbage—whatever worked. If I was really lucky, I had a leftover napkin or tissues somewhere on my person. At least on this street, the trash cans were plentiful, and I wouldn't have to carry the bundle for any distance before I could dispose of it.

As Foxy did her business in front of the suited men and women coming out of the store, their roasted salmon and quinoa salad or handmade farfalle packaged in heavy paper bags, I cast about for something, anything, I could use. I needed a piece of one of those nice paper bags.

As I was contemplating using the plastic wrapped around Foxy's paw, I spotted a corner of cardboard under a utility truck a few cars down. With the rain coming down harder now, I only had a few seconds before the poop was too soggy to scoop. I grabbed the cardboard, which was still stiff and pretty dry. While Foxy shook out her butt fur and trotted gaily away, I bent down and swiped at the pile. Success was mine, and I flung the mess into a garbage can with relief. These maneuvers didn't always go so quickly and cleanly.

The trash can was right in front of a pet adoption center, and I realized with a sinking heart that there was a bin of recycled bags there on the wall, available for anyone's use. How I'd missed that detail, I couldn't figure. I grabbed a few for insurance, shoving them into my fanny pack.

Foxy loved to bark and lunge at the little Chihuahua mixes and terriers out for a quick pee break. With Foxy in tow, I could never
pause for too long to admire the kittens in the window, piled onto each other like pancakes. “Foxer, come on! No dogs for lunch,” I chided as Foxy gave a particularly abrasive yip at a dachshund that came waddling through the bottom half of the green barn door. He was wearing a yellow rain slicker one size or so too small for him, making him look like a little canine Chris Farley.

Once, Foxy had gone after one of these shelter dogs with such ferocity that her leash, going taut, took down a plastic table at the adjoining Mexican restaurant on the corner. But every time, no matter how wound up she became, Foxy would get to the park, only fifteen feet or so beyond, and seem relaxed again, bounding homeward without a trace of aggression.

Foxy's owners left one or two threadbare towels just inside the door for me to dry her with. With the recent weeks of rain and mud, I could've easily made washing my collection of well-soiled towels a second job. I had repurposed any absorbent material I could justifiably destroy, quartered into functional shapes and sizes. This included a terry cloth shower curtain that the dryer had inexplicably burned, a pair of hospital hand towels I got at Goodwill for a quarter each, an old bed sheet ruined by a blood stain, and one of my nicer towels that had been bleached by Ian's many creams and tonics for his psoriasis.

Despite my best efforts to keep a clean stockpile in the back of the car, I was fresh out at the moment. I knew it was inexcusable to be unprepared like this; it was just so hard to wash those towels every evening when I returned home, soggy and soiled myself. I convinced myself that I was allowed to wash me before washing them.

The washer and dryer down in the basement of the apartment building were housed in a cozy, cobwebby room jam-packed with every variety of laundry detergent imaginable. All the bottles and boxes were nearly empty, many so dusty and neglected that they
presumably belonged to tenants who had long ago moved out. I'd worked my own economy-sized box of All down to the rock-hard remains in the bottom corner and was not at all above pilfering the dregs of others' easily accessible soaps. I was also a firm believer in the power of hot water to get something mostly clean, soap optional. Each load of laundry cost $2 to wash and $1.50 to dry—meaning the clothes came out hot and damp. I'd been liberally pilfering quarters from the impressive bowl of change, a mix of American and international coins, that sat on Ian's desk.