Sleeps with Dogs (7 page)

I've never passed as an athlete, though I gave many a sport my best try. Given my height, most people assumed that I was a basketball or volleyball player. My sister was accomplished at the former, my mother the latter, but I never tried either. Instead, there was the field hockey camp I attended with my childhood best friend; two years on the high school cross-country team, for which I was consistently the slowest runner; and soccer, which was always my very favorite, and which, of all the sports, I was obviously and painfully the very worst at. My parents joked that I spent most of my time on the YMCA teams chatting up my mark on the other team and apologizing to her when I got possession of the ball.

I wasn't much of a runner, which, combined with my height, made me an obvious choice for the position of goalie. But try as I might, I couldn't help ducking and covering when the ball came my way. I was notoriously benched for the duration of the junior-varsity season because I grabbed the ball out of the air while playing halfback. No amount of polite (then increasingly desperate) requests, followed by outright begging, would change the coach's mind in this matter.

This was one indication of many in my developmental years that I neither was physically gifted in sports nor had a competitive bone in my body. It didn't help matters that my best friend was a natural star, recruited to the varsity team almost immediately. Her easy success served to highlight my incompetence all the more glaringly.

Considering that, along with my unconquerable fear of the ball, loose grasp of the rules, and lack of a powerful kick or any approximation of aim, running speed, or ability to challenge my opponent convincingly, it was with a heavy heart that I quit soccer after my failed freshman year. But I never stopped loving the game, watching professional matches on the television and my friend's games from the sidelines instead of playing.

I was glad these dogs couldn't mock my unimpressive handling of the ball. As long as I was moving it around the yard, and quickly, they were happy.

Sometimes, as they tore around after the ball and each other, they'd come straight for me, dodging only at the last minute as though I were one of their training tools, a post to be sliced past as precisely and closely as possible. Many a time, I involuntarily yelped in fear for my vulnerable knees, not knowing if I dodged at the last moment whether that would actually put me in the path of an also-dodging dog, causing us to collide. I stood firm, trusting that they knew their own velocity.

I worried for Slinky, too. In play, she was uncharacteristically willing to give chase right alongside the other dogs, going for the ball just as enthusiastically as they. She was just so small and unpracticed next to her larger and more aggressive cohorts. In the thirty minutes or so we spent playing in the backyard, I tried my best to devise ways that Zipper or Rascal would get to the ball first. But Slinky was young and fast, and those times that she won the ball
first, my heart stopped as the others crashed into her with all their weight, trying to wrest the ball away.

In one of my failed bids to aim the prize at the big dogs, I sent the ball sailing over the back fence, striking the neighboring house with a hollow
thwack.
The dogs looked expectantly at the fence, as though the disappeared ball might come sailing back over from the other side. I, too, hoped the solution might be that easy, but no such luck. I had twenty minutes left with them, and nothing to kick or throw.

The fastest way to get the ball back was to scale the fence and throw the ball back over from the adjoining yard. My only other alternative was to walk all the way around the city block and try to eyeball the likely house from the front—assuming I could figure out the right street. These were early days, before smartphones and Google Maps could show me via satellite data where in the world I stood in relation to that ball. I only had my middling sense of direction to rely upon.

I didn't relish the notion of going door-to-door and explaining that a big purple kickball may or may not have landed in their backyard, and could I have it back? The likelihood that anyone would be home in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday was slim to none anyway, and I wanted to limit the number of backyards I was snooping through.

In my career as an animal nanny, I'd have plenty of practice trespassing. It's something no one really tells you; I suppose I had to figure this lesson out for myself. Had I done the math, factoring in how many clients' pets I visit over the number of daily, weekly, and monthly appointments, I'd have known a lot sooner that accidents like a lost ball (or dog or house key) are bound to happen. It's unavoidable that things will eventually go awry. Things that can be righted by stealth and a high threshold for unorthodox behavior.

My first mishap of this sort was relatively easy to solve. During an overnight visit, I was taking a grocery bag full of soiled cat litter from the house to the trash cans in the garage, and the kitchen door locked automatically behind me. Lucky for me, there was a pet door that led into the office. A door big enough to accommodate the Bernese mountain dog with whom I was spending the night. Painfully, cursing my wide hips, I was able to squeeze through the opening headfirst, my successful entry into the darkened room rewarded with a pile of cat barf that I army-crawled through.

In another instance, I left my lanyard of clients' keys on the kitchen table while hooking the dogs up to their leashes. And there the keys remained when we exited the house, the front door locking solidly in our wake. A fence separated the client's front patio from the back deck. Luckily, the house was set down a steep hill, concealing my suspicious behavior from any neighbors who happened to be peering out their front window. I'd tied the dogs to the staircase leading up to street level while I hoisted myself up and over the fence, dropping first onto a wooden railing, and then down onto the wraparound porch. I willfully ignored the sheer drop-off into the boulder-strewn shrubbery beneath the deck, entering the unlocked back door with a pounding heart.

Perhaps most memorably was the time I got stuck under a garden gate. My charge, an overwound terrier, had slid past me as I'd entered the house and proceeded to leap through a hole in the orange construction netting encircling her owner's front garden. The speed with which she executed this maneuver made it seem like she'd been planning her escape for hours beforehand. Maybe she had been. After calling for her from the front yard and then the street, I spotted her in the next-door neighbor's backyard. She was lithe enough to wriggle through the wrought iron bars of the formidable enclosure. I was not. Each fence post was topped with a pointy
finial that served double-duty as decoration and intruder-deterrent. I was certainly deterred. I knocked on the neighbor's front door, prepared to admit, hat in hand, that I needed to retrieve a dog from the back lawn. Alas, no one was home. But my vantage point from the front stoop did allow me to spy with my little eye the rather wide gap between paving stone and bottom rung of the gate just adjacent to the house.

It started well. Having removed my fanny pack, I scooted myself faceup and feetfirst underneath the iron gate. And then, in the vicinity of my upper thighs, I got very stuck. My slightly larger-than-average ass was firmly lodged betwixt ground and gate. I felt like Peter Rabbit, dreading the appearance of Mr. McGregor.

I stupidly kept trying to push myself through the opening before I conceded that that was folly, and I then set about unsticking myself in reverse. At the height of my despair, the terrier herself climbed beneath the gate and licked my face. I considered grabbing her and holding her tightly to me so she couldn't get away again, but then I would be without arms to aid in my own escape. I prayed fervently that I could get myself out and that I'd be long gone before the homeowner returned to find me prostrate on her garden path. And, too, that I could recapture the dog without involving the owner or any of my fellow dog walkers. The shame of calling on your colleague to get you out of a stupid and avoidable mishap has little equal.

Painfully, and with great effort, I was able to reverse my way out from under the garden gate, but I still had to call for assistance in recapturing the dog. I was humiliated to admit to my colleague that I had no treats in my fanny pack, and so nothing with which to tempt the terrier. She came to my rescue, her own fanny pack loaded with treats of all shapes and flavors and sizes, all delicious enough to lure the dog back into my arms. This rookie error on my part
added insult to the injury of getting trapped under the fence, and never again did I set off for work without an array of dog biscuits on my person.

In these and other unfortunate incidents, I unwaveringly concluded that, as long as there were no witnesses and no one—especially not the owners—found out, only the dogs and I were any the wiser. And the dogs certainly weren't talking.

New as I was to the industry at this moment in time, with three dogs awaiting the reappearance of a ball that they might continue to vigorously chase, and a mere two months into my fledgling small-business ownership, I had no knowledge of these future exploits. I was as yet naive to the necessity of a little B&E, a touch of trespassing, to keep things moving along smoothly.

There was a crossbeam about halfway up the fence, and thanks to my long legs, I was able to get a foot up on it. With an ungainly lurch, I hooked my fingertips over the top of the raw pine planks. I hauled myself up, noting, once I'd gotten both legs over the top of the fence, that there was no crossbeam on the other side. I hung there, doubled over, watching the dogs watching me while my feet scrabbled for any kind of purchase above the sheer drop behind me.

As I swiveled my head around to survey the scene below, I got that distinct sixth-sense feeling that the dogs weren't the only ones watching me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw someone standing in the picture window of the house that backed up to this portion of the fence. He was looking directly at me, arms crossed as he assessed my precarious situation. And laughing. I held onto the top edge of the fence and pushed off with my feet, crashing through a few young limbs of a spruce tree.

Dusting myself off hastily, I pointed to the ball resting at the foot of the tree.

“Ball!” I mouthed, pointing emphatically. The neighbor, probably in his late twenties and still laughing, could likely hear me through the window.

“This is my ball,” I said, loudly this time, holding it up as evidence.

Taking the slobbery ball in both hands, I turned and hurled it over the fence to the waiting dogs on the other side. Not looking back to see if he was still watching, I tackled the fence like Mowgli climbing the coconut tree in
The Jungle Book.
After a few failed attempts, I figured my best bet would be to use the tree as a ladder of sorts. I shimmied up the tree high enough that I could reach out for the fence, first with one armpit braced over the top, then a leg slung up, allowing me to painfully hoist myself up and away from the tree. I was lying atop the narrow span as if it were a surfboard. I pushed myself up such that I was straddling the fence like a horse, ignoring the sharp pain in my groin.

Before pivoting around to descend the far side into safety, I chanced a look at the window, and my heart fell. He was still watching. He gave me a thumbs-up. I dropped out of sight. In front of the dogs, I shook my pants vigorously to dislodge the pine needles that had accumulated there, and then kicked the ball viciously. Next time I'd go the long way around.

Once the dogs (and I, too) were worn out from the running and leaping and chasing and dodging, they took a big messy drink from their kitchen water bowls, which I then refilled and mopped around with a wad of paper towels.

Trying to reward the dogs was an exercise in bravery. I'd learned early on to give Rascal and Zipper their snacks at the same time, tossing them as precisely and simultaneously as I could at their spring-loaded jaws. The scuffle of teeth snapping and treat stealing that ensued when I tried to feed them one at a time usually meant
one dog won all the snacks and the other got none. And I'd risk losing a hand in the process. In the brief moments that they were occupied with scarfing their rewards, I gently presented Slinky with hers, which she wisely gobbled with great efficiency. I wondered if, by the end of her training and corresponding puppyhood, she'd be as cutthroat as the others.

Weeks later, the inevitable finally occurred. I arrived to find Slinky crated as usual, but her right front leg was wrapped, and she wore a cone to keep her from worrying the bandage. She'd been railroaded by one of the big dogs during play—thankfully not on my watch, at least so far as I knew. The owners left a note that she'd have to be separated from Rascal and Zipper until she was fully healed. I'd split my time there evenly between backyard play with the big kids, and a gentle and gradually lengthening neighborhood walk with her.

The autumn of Slinky's separation from the others was a wet one. Getting the older dogs cleaned up before they came bounding inside was a near-impossible trick. Standing outside the back door with a towel, we all got soaked by the rain while I tried to get the worst of the mud off their paws. There was no way to keep both dogs quarantined in the mudroom for a cleaning—the three of us wouldn't all fit in that space anyway. Rain-soaked was better than a mud-splattered house, I figured. If I could manage to get one dog's paws clean enough, it had to go right inside, lest it decide to go muddy itself again in the backyard while I cleaned the other. But letting only one dog in the house meant that I had to push him or her through the narrowly cracked door while barricading the other from entering with my body. Trying to get us all in the house in a semidry and clean state evoked for me the riddle about trying to cross the river with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage.