The Dog with the Old Soul

TRUE STORIES OF THE LOVE, HOPE AND JOY THAT ANIMALS BRING TO OUR LIVES

Jennifer Basye Sander

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Dog with the Old Soul

Finley Taylor

Simon Says

Katherine Traci

Where the Need Is Greatest

Tish Davidson

Too Many Cats in the Kitchen

Maryellen Burns

Transforming U

Suzanne Tomlinson

A Nose for Love

Dena Kouremetis

Mother Knows Best

Kathryn Canan

Spotty’s Miracle

Charles Kuhn

The Nursery

Robyn Boyer

Frank Observations

E. G. Fabricant

Little Orange

Trina Drotar

The Old Barrel Racer

Elaine Ambrose

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Bark

Meera Klein

In Touch with One’s Felines

Ed Goldman

Kissing the Whale

Pam Giarrizzo

In the Nick of Time

Sue Pearson

Wednesday in the Wall

Chris Fowler

Hammer

Morton Rumberg

Quiet Vigil

Sue Pearson

A Life Measured in Dog Years

Hal Bernton

The Green Collar

Sheryl J. Bize Boutte

Growing Together

Louise Crawford

The Improbable Cat Lover

Jennifer O’Neill-Pickering

Psychic Cat

Kathryn Canan

Maggie

Jerry and Donna White

Roxanne

Gordon M. Labuhn

High Energy

Mark Lukas

About the Contributors

INTRODUCTION

“An animal anthology? Really? You?” new friends may ask upon hearing about this book project, looking around my well-ordered house, devoid of cat hair or a wet-dog smell. What gives? There are no bags of pet food in my garage. My newspaper is recycled promptly, never placed at the bottom of a birdcage. Older friends nod in understanding, though, since they knew the Airedale that lives on forever in my heart.

Animals take up residence in our hearts, sometimes consuming all available space and leaving no room for another dog, cat, horse or bird to be added to the mix. I love dogs, but I haven’t had one myself in years. Just like some people have only one perfect love in their lives and, once it is over, don’t feel the need to replace it, my dog Big Guy spoiled me as an owner. I delight in having others’ pets around me, though, and I love to watch the affection and interaction between animals and people.

We are devoted to our animals, and they can be just as devoted to us. A recent news item touched everyone who stumbled upon it—the story of a man in China who passed away, leaving only a yellow dog behind. The dog refused to leave his grave, lying atop it day after day. Villagers brought the dog food and water, and one resident told reporters that the sight of the grieving dog “made my heart smile and cry.”

The stories in The Dog with the Old Soul will also make your heart both smile and cry. There are stories of joy—the thrill of a new puppy, the excitement of a young girl’s first horse show ribbon, the silliness of a room filled with cats. But life isn’t always joyful, and there are stories of the comforting role that animals can play in our emotional lives. There are times in life when reaching down to pet a familiar fuzzy head can help ground us in a way nothing else can.

It is my hope that these stories touch you deeply, and that more than once while reading, you reach out and pull your pets in closer to you on the couch. Enjoy!

Jennifer Basye Sander

The Dog with the Old Soul

Finley Taylor

Sometimes people—or in my case, a dog—come into your life at just the right time.

Even before we were married, my husband and I talked about the dogs we would get someday. I wanted a Scottish terrier; he wanted a basset hound. Both of us liked both dogs, and neither of us minded which one we got first. We eventually decided that since bassets were known for being calm, low maintenance and child friendly—and since we were planning on having children soon—we’d get a basset first. Only problem was, for the first year and a half of our marriage we lived in a tiny apartment in Midtown.

When we moved to a larger home in 2009, it was time to start thinking about getting a dog. Well, actually, it was time to start thinking about having those children. Getting a dog was something we might push off till after the first baby was born, we thought. But the months went by and the pregnancy tests kept turning up negative.

The thought of including a different type of being, one with four legs, as part of our family never was far from our thoughts. As much as we talked about baby names and family vacations and how we would not give our eight-year-old a cell phone, we also talked about hiking trips and strolls along the river and what we’d name our dog.

Three days after my twenty-seventh birthday, my husband sent me a seemingly innocuous photo from a local shelter’s website of a perky-looking tricolored basset hound with intelligent, old-soul eyes. Her name was Chloe.

I work from home, so the squeal I let out fell on an otherwise silent house—a silence that over the months had developed a pitch of frustration, sadness and worry that became more palpable with each Facebook pregnancy announcement I saw. I called my husband and asked if he was game to go look at the pup with the world-heavy expression.

That night we stood outside the kennel of a loudly barking Chloe, who seemed to be conveying her frustration at being cooped up for so long, and at life for being a little rough on her as of late.

I didn’t blame her. A kind but frazzled shelter employee told us this was the second time Chloe had been brought to the shelter.

Chloe let out a characteristic basset bark that rumbled deep in my bones, rattling loose feelings of compassion and a desire to care for another living being—feelings I’d lately been walling off in an act of self-preservation. My husband and I looked at each other. “Let’s go home and sleep on it,” I said.

When we told the front-desk clerk that we needed a night to ponder adopting Chloe, she said, “You know, a family adopted her and brought her back ten days later because she had a cut on her leg. A cut.” The disdain in her voice stung my ears. It appeared this pup would not be given away again without the blessing of some very strong gatekeepers.

The next night we were back at the shelter, ready to adopt Chloe. My jangled thoughts and emotions zipped about my brain as if I were a kid in a bounce house. Are we ready for this? Can we be good enough guardians for her? Our lives are about to change.

“She’s a very vocal dog,” said a frazzled employee, this one with a platinum blond ponytail, while opening the kennel.

Chloe aoooffed nonstop out of impatience.

A cage that had not been cleaned out recently and a pen in which a matted microfleece blanket lay on the cold concrete were evidence of what the staff had already told us: the new shelter was struggling to survive, even as it tried to house a growing number of animals.

We were allowed to let this feverish canine out and to walk her, and she immediately put her nose to the ground with the loving familiarity of a mother tracing a finger over her child’s face. Within minutes, our hearts were completely won over by a panting, slobbering, smelly tank of infectiously lovable dog.

“We’d like to adopt Chloe,” we announced at the front desk.

“Adoptions ended a half hour ago,” said the front desk person, who was a different woman than the night before. Her name tag read “Staci.”

Crushed, we went home, nonetheless determined to be there right when the shelter opened the next day.

We arrived ten minutes before the shelter opened, and a coldness that didn’t come from the damp December air enveloped me when I saw about a half dozen other people in front of us in line.

“Are they all here to adopt?” I whispered to my husband. “You don’t think someone here wants to adopt Chloe, do you?”

My husband gave me a look. “Well, we’d better hightail it to the front desk as soon as possible,” he said.

When the front doors opened, we were the first to the desk. Staci, the woman who had turned us down the night before, was working again today. She smiled, pushing a lock of cocoa-brown hair out of her face. “You’re here to adopt the basset hound.”

We nodded like fools.

“I’ll go get her.” She rose to leave the desk, then turned to face us. “You know, she’s very vocal.”

We made assuring noises and stepped back when she sent a volunteer to get Chloe. A mother and two teenage girls came up to the desk. The mother said to an employee behind the desk—the one with the platinum blond ponytail who had allowed us to open Chloe’s pen the night before—“We’re here to adopt Chloe, the basset hound.”

Our eyes went wide. Wait, not our basset.

“We were here last night,” the mother explained, “and started to fill out paperwork, but they said we couldn’t adopt her, because it was too late.”

The blond employee, who had not heard our conversation a moment ago with Staci at the front desk, said, “Okay, I’ll go get her.”

My husband went up to Staci, who had just sent the volunteer to retrieve Chloe. “I don’t want to cause a scene, but we just heard someone say they wanted to adopt the basset that you’re getting for us.”

Staci looked at us. “Oh.” She got the attention of the blond employee, who came back to the desk and listened as Staci told our story.

“Yeah, I remember you,” said the blond woman. “But this family did start the paperwork.” They looked at each other, and then the blond woman hurried to the back, where the volunteer was supposedly getting “our” dog.

How could this happen?

We had tried twice to take Chloe home, we knew we were ready for her, and now our little addition might be ripped away from us before we even had a chance to have her. We looked at the other family discreetly. They looked nice enough, with their perfect white smiles and their matching sweatshirts with their private high school’s name emblazoned on them. But she was supposed to be our dog.

Finally, the blond woman came back, holding the leash to Chloe, who was elated to be outside her kennel. We and the other family stood there awkwardly. The blond woman walked up to me and held out the leash. “Here you go,” she said.

I looked at the leash in my hand. And smiled at it.

Twenty minutes later, after filling out enough paperwork to apply for a home loan, we walked out of the shelter the proud new guardians of a vocal, four-year-old basset hound, our hearts still stinging a bit at the image in our minds of the disappointed teenagers as they dejectedly walked past us to go home empty-handed. We never found out why the shelter chose us over the other family.

On the way to the car, we called our newest family member by the name we had chosen the night before, Bridgette—a name we felt encapsulated her unique, sweet yet spunky nature. We later found out that the name means “the exalted one” and “one who is strong and protective.”

“Do you think she’s happy to be out of there?” my husband asked, trying to get a look at her through the rearview window as he drove. I looked at the backseat, where Bridgette, with her long, thick body, flung herself onto her side like a breaching whale and breathed a contented sigh.

Four months later I was diagnosed with infertility, and we discovered that the only way we could have a biological family of our own was by in vitro fertilization. As I underwent testing and surgery, Bridgette was steadfast. And as I await a risky and uncertain treatment, she remains at my feet, showing a constancy that throws into sharp relief the actions of those in her previous life, those who had been entrusted with her care—a constancy that challenges me to return what she has given me. I stand at a threshold, facing an uncertain future of my own, and her old-soul eyes serve as a daily reminder of grace as I am brought through the doors of a temporary holding place that I hope will eventually lead me home.

Simon Says

Katherine Traci

November. Dark. Cold. I was driving home from a late-night writing workshop, a brutal night of fellow writers casually critiquing what was my own heart typed out neatly on the page. The exact same heart that had been trampled on by a liar three weeks prior. We’d gone to Venice to fall more deeply in love, cement it all in ancient stone. But no. Instead the medieval city was the scene of a modern breakup.

“Good plan, Kate,” I scoffed to myself in my car, gripping the wheel and picturing what I should have done instead—pushed him into the dirty Grand Canal. I hadn’t pushed him in. I’d gotten on the plane home like a good girl and flown back to an empty house, an empty heart. Tonight I’d hoped that writing it down and sharing it, letting others know how I felt, would help me heal. And maybe it would in the long run; but right then, alone, surrounded by strangers, empty and at a loss, I sat waiting to turn left onto the dark on-ramp, headed home. My head turned to follow a tiny cat that streaked across the road as it crossed my line of vision.

Feral, I thought as it headed toward the freeway. Odd behavior for any smart feral that lived in the area. I watched as what I now saw was a kitten run up the embankment toward a busy freeway overpass. It was almost 10:00 p.m. and the street was empty. I was tired… I was hungry… I was sad… I wanted to be home. The light changed. I stayed where I was.

Hmm, well timed on behalf of the cat, I thought. I had left class at the right second, had driven the right speed, had paused just long enough to turn at the exact moment that the little cat decided to sprint across six full lanes of the street in front of my truck.

Sighing, I felt the full weight of my own empty life hit me. If I couldn’t push a man in a canal, at least I could rescue a kitty on the side of the road. I pulled over as far as possible onto the left shoulder and hit my hazards. There he was, hunkered down in the greenery far above me. I rolled down my window. I watched the kitten. The kitten watched me. I got out of the car.

I looked up the steep embankment at him. Ice plant. Damn. It was cold. I am a 911 dispatch operator. For me, hazards lurk everywhere, even in the safest of homes. A slippery shower, a frayed electrical cord. So many of the calls we take are the result of foolhardy behavior. This would fall easily into that category.

I have nothing to put a cat in. I don’t even have a blanket. I have no idea what I am doing, I thought as I looked around. And I’m mostly a dog girl. I’ll go out of my way to rescue dogs. But a cat? I shivered and tried to focus on a workable plan.

I decided to try and approach him. If he ran up toward the top of the embankment, I’d have to back off. I didn’t want to be responsible for a cat on a busy freeway. I started up the steep embankment and the kitten didn’t move. He blinked at me. He sat in the ice plant near the freeway on-ramp and slowly blinked his big teary eyes, open, shut, open. The light shone down from the streetlamp and his eyes glowed. Open. Shut.

I clutched at the fence along the embankment with one hand and made my way up the slippery ice plant. It was a good slope. My clumsiness well known, I tried to keep out of my head the images of me tumbling back down to the asphalt below.

I could hear the morning news in my head: “An unidentified woman tried to climb ice plant in an attempt to access the freeway for unknown reasons. She was unkempt and messy, and all evidence suggests she suffers from broken heart syndrome. The authorities have hesitated to confirm or deny this, and it is unknown at this time if this syndrome is related to last night’s incident. She is in critical but stable condition today at the medical center, after falling twenty feet. Doctors say she fell sometime late last night and was not discovered until morning.”

I was one foot away. I could touch him if I reached out. Should I take off my hoodie to grab him and wrap him up?

Nooo, I thought as I zipped the hoodie up further. It’s too cold.

I pulled the hoodie’s wrist cuffs down over my hands, minimal protection against claws at best, and stretched out toward him. I aimed for the back of his neck.

Cat scratch fever, cat scratch fever…cat scratch fever! My dad’s voice reverberated in my head. Whether it was a warning or the lyrics to a song, I couldn’t quite remember.

I reached out once…twice…three times. Each time the kitty turned his head around to look at my hand but didn’t move.

Oh. I’m going to pick him up and he will be a bloody mess, badly injured, I thought, feeling sick to my stomach in addition to feeling cold. I could see only his tiny head. And those big blinking eyes.

Really, this was too absurd. Remember, I see potential danger everywhere. Yet there I was on a dark, cold night, perched on a slope of ice plant near a freeway overpass in the middle of a part of town you really shouldn’t slow down in, let alone pull over and stop in. I was alone, trying to rescue a damn kitten.

I needed to get this over with. “Now or never. Just do it, Kate!” And with that rallying cry I grabbed him and pulled him to my chest. His claws held on to me and I felt his body vibrate with his purrs. I looked down the embankment. Now I had to make my way back down. This time with no hands to hold on to the fence, as both were clasping this mess of a cat. Tense, I carefully picked my way with each step down the slippery ice plant on the steep embankment, arriving at the bottom without incident.

In what felt like a one-take action sequence, I threw the car door open, tossed the kitten in, grabbed my keys, started the car, rolled up the window—before the rescued cat escaped! I turned to look at him. He was perched expectantly on my center console, waiting and watching my hurried antics. He was bones. Skin and bones…and purrs.

Next morning at the vet’s office, they insisted on a name. I stood in front of the receptionist, shaking my head.

“I’m not going to name him. I don’t want to name him.”

The receptionist raised her eyebrows and cocked her head, her fingers hovering over the keys of her computer.

“Please don’t make me name him. I can’t keep him. I have a very small house.”

She waited. This same scene must have happened a lot here. I wondered if it always turned out the same way. “Okay, we’ll just type in k-i-t-t-y.”

“No, don’t write ‘Kitty’ on the chart. I don’t want to call him Kitty.” Something told me his name was Simon.

Simon spent the next two weeks sequestered in my bathroom, my only bathroom. I gingerly opened the door whenever I needed access, pushing my foot in ahead of me to keep Simon from rushing the door, nudging him out of the way if he made an attempt to escape. I needed to keep him away from my other pets, the vet said, until the lab results came in and they gave him a clean bill of health.

So until that approval came through, I had a four-pound, voraciously hungry, frustratingly messy roommate. A loud roommate who lived exclusively in my bathroom. His tortured cries reverberated off the tile when he heard me stir in any part of the house. In an effort to calm him, I’d visit for long periods of time, just sitting on the edge of the tub. Talking seemed to quiet him down, so I talked. The look in his eyes made me feel that he could answer back.

“My mom died, Simon,” I whispered.

“When?” he would purr, rubbing his cheek against mine.

“Two years ago, but it still hurts.”

“I know,” he would squeak, “but then somebody comes along and helps.” He reached out a paw to tap my nose.

Simon talks to everything and everyone. He has a sweet meep, high pitched and soft, when looking up at me; a brrrrr chirp when he asks my older, “can hardly be bothered” cat relentlessly for playtime; and he gives a merrwrrrow to the dog whenever their eyes lock. All very different sounds, very specific and very Simon.

Simon believes he has an imaginary friend. When he plays with crumpled-up paper, he growls and chirps and looks around and plays…with somebody. Not me. Not my other cat. Not my dog. He is alone. It is the craziest thing to watch. The tiny noises he makes scare the bejesus out of my big, scary dog.

Since I found him on the way home from a writing class, perhaps he is a writer, too. He has a special fondness for laptop keyboards. The first time it was the letter x. I found him batting something small and black—the key off the keyboard—around the floor, like a hockey player practicing with a puck. The next time it was the t. He leaps up and pounces on the unattended keyboard. No letter is safe as he picks whichever one he pleases to pry off and play with. The third time it was b and e, double the fun. They recognize me now at the computer repair shop.

The little ice-plant kitty was the most loving creature I had ever met. I thought I’d left my capacity for love squashed flat on the cobblestones in Italy, but Simon taught me my heart was still there, strong and healthy, after all.

Sometimes I look at Simon and think back to that night on the side of the freeway. I think I saved Simon, but maybe he saved me.

Where the Need Is Greatest

Tish Davidson

I have been a volunteer puppy raiser with Guide Dogs for the Blind for ten years. Donna Hahn has been raising guide dogs for at least twice that long. She has shared tips on socializing puppies, has helped me with difficult dogs and has encouraged me when my dogs failed to make the grade as guides. We have traded puppy-sitting chores and dog stories. Donna has loved every guide dog puppy she has ever raised. But one dog was special. This is Donna’s story.

Donna could hardly control her tears as she mounted the platform at the outdoor graduation ceremony. A light breeze ruffled the flag. The audience waited, polite and attentive. The graduates sat, alert and poised. The flag had been saluted; the speeches made; the staff and students congratulated. Now it was time to take the final step and send the graduates out into the world to fulfill their mission.

Donna stopped beside one of the graduates and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Raising a puppy is an act of love and faith,” she began. “When a puppy comes into your home, he comes into your heart. He is a part of your family. You give him all the time, care and love you can. Then, almost before you know it, that curious, wriggling, uncoordinated puppy has changed into an obedient, mature dog, ready to return to Guide Dogs for the Blind and take the next step in becoming a working guide.

“I’m thrilled and happy that Llama—” she indicated the golden retriever next to her “—has become a working guide. But I’m sad, too, because it is always hard to say goodbye to someone you love.” She picked up Llama’s leash and handed it to Gil, Llama’s new partner. “Goodbye, Llama. You are a special dog.”

The crowd murmured in appreciation, and some in the audience sniffled audibly and reached for their tissues. Then the graduation was over. Soon Llama and Gil were on their way to Vancouver, Canada, and Donna was on her way home to Newark, California, knowing there was a good chance she would never see Llama again.

Llama was the third puppy the Hahn family—Donna, John, and their daughters, Wendy and Laurel—had raised for Guide Dogs for the Blind, but he was the first to complete the program and become a working guide. He had come into their life fifteen months earlier, a red-tinged golden retriever with white hairs on his face and muzzle that gave him a washed-out, unfinished look. “An ugly dog,” Donna had said at the time. But soon his looks didn’t matter.

At first, Llama was as helpless as any new baby. “Neee, neee, neee,” he cried when he was left alone. He woke Donna in the night and left yellow abstract designs on the carpet when she didn’t get him out the door fast enough. Donna patiently cleaned up the accidents. Soon Llama learned “Do your business,” one of the early commands that every guide dog puppy learns, and the accidents rapidly decreased.

Like all guide pups, Llama was trained with love and kind words, rather than with food treats. Soon he would follow Donna through the house on his short puppy legs, collapsing at her feet when she said, “Sit,” happy to be rewarded with a pat and a “Good dog.”

Llama seemed to double in size overnight. By the time he was five months old, he was accompanying Donna everywhere. It wasn’t always easy. Llama had to learn to overcome his natural inclination to sniff the ground and greet every dog he met on the street. At the supermarket he learned not to chase the wheels on the grocery cart. At Macy’s he learned to wait while Donna tried on clothes. With a group of other puppies in training, Llama and Donna rode the ferry across San Francisco Bay and toured the noisy city.

In May Donna was summoned for jury duty in superior court in Oakland. Of course, she took Llama. Privately, she hoped that his presence would be enough to get her automatically excused, but the plan backfired. For a week, Llama lay patiently at Donna’s feet in the jury box while Donna attended the trial.

All too soon, a year was up, and the puppy that had wagged its way into Donna’s heart was a full-grown dog, ready to return to the Guide Dogs campus in San Rafael and start professional training. There was only a fifty-fifty chance he would complete the program. Working guides must be physically and temperamentally perfect before they are entrusted with the life of a blind person. Donna had given Llama all the love and training she could; now his future was out of her hands.

Llama passed his physical and sailed through the training program. When it came time to be matched with a human partner, the young golden retriever was paired with Gil, a curator at an aquarium in Canada. Matching dog and human is a serious and complicated ballet in which the dog’s strengths, weaknesses and personality are balanced against the human’s personality and lifestyle. When done well, an unbreakable bond of love and trust develops between human and dog.

Gil and Llama were a perfect match, and their bond grew strong and true. Gil had never had a guide dog before. Once home, he found that Llama gave him a new sense of confidence, independence and mobility. Every day they walked together along the seawall to Gil’s work at the aquarium. In time, everyone grew to know Llama, and Llama grew to know all the sights and sounds of Gil’s workplace. For ten years, Llama was at Gil’s side every day—at home, at work, on vacation, and on trains, planes and buses.

Meanwhile, at the Hahns’, Wendy and Laurel grew up and moved away from home. John and Donna continued to raise pups. Their fourth dog became a family pet. The fifth became a working guide in Massachusetts, and the sixth a service dog for a physically handicapped teen.

While they were raising their seventh pup, Donna’s husband, John, a fit and active air force veteran, began having stomach problems. An endoscopy revealed the bad news. John had advanced gastric cancer. Thus began a long series of treatments and operations to try to catch the cancer, which always seemed one step ahead of the surgeon’s knife. It was a grim, sad, stress-filled time. Soon John could no longer take any nourishment by mouth. With John’s strength waning daily, the family came to accept that he had only a few months to live.

In October, with John desperately ill, a call came from the Guide Dogs placement advisor. “Donna, we just got a call that Llama is being retired. He’s been working for ten years, and all that stair-climbing and leading tours at the aquarium have caught up with him. He has pretty bad arthritis. Gil is coming down to train with a new dog. I know John is terribly sick, and the last thing you might want to do right now is take care of an old dog, but Gil specifically requested that we ask you if you could give Llama a retirement home. He can’t keep Llama himself, but he wants him to be with someone who will love him.”

“Of course we’ll take him,” said Donna, never hesitating.

Several days later Donna drove up to the Guide Dogs campus to pick up Llama. She paced back and forth across the receiving area as she waited for a kennel helper to bring Llama to her.

“Do you think he’ll recognize me after ten years?” she anxiously asked an assistant in a white lab coat.

When Llama arrived, moving stiffly in the damp morning air, it was not the joyous reunion she had imagined. Llama seemed pleased to see her, but in a reserved, distant way. An hour and a half later, Llama was back at the house where he had spent the first year of his life.

Donna pushed open the front door. “John, we’re home.” Llama didn’t hesitate for a second. He walked in, turned and headed straight into John’s bedroom, as if he had been going there every day of his life. From that moment on, he rarely left John’s bedside. Although he was too old to guide, Llama had found a place where he was needed.

Llama was a careful and gentle companion for John. When John got out of bed, pushing the pole that held his intravenous feeding bottles, Llama was beside him, ready to protect him, but careful never to get in his way or get tangled in the medical apparatus.

“I don’t know how that dog always seems to know exactly what you need, but he surely does,” said Donna more than once.

“He was sent to take care of me,” John replied.

By the end of the month, John’s condition had worsened. The hospice nurse administered morphine. Donna was afraid the drug would make John disoriented and that he would try to get out of bed and would fall over Llama, so she ordered the dog to leave the room.

“Llama, out.”

Llama, who had never disobeyed a command, didn’t budge.

“Llama, out.”

Llama didn’t move a muscle and remained planted by John’s bed.

The next morning, however, Llama began to pace frantically back and forth through the house.

“What’s wrong with him, Mom?” asked Wendy, who had come home to help her mother.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s sick.”

The pacing continued all day and into the evening. At 9:30 that night, John passed away. Llama stopped pacing and lay quietly by the door.

“He must have known the end was near,” said Wendy.

Llama lay at the door, refusing to move, forcing people to step over him. For three days he grieved, along with the rest of the family. On the fourth day he got up, went to Donna and placed his grizzled head in her lap. He had found someone else who needed him.

Today Llama and Donna are rarely separated. They visit neighborhood friends, both dog and human, daily. They go to Guide Dogs meetings, take walks around the lake and occasionally go to the beach. A neighbor has made Llama a ramp so that he can avoid stairs and get in and out of cars. The dog Donna had given a home and her heart to, and then had sent out into the world to help another, had brought that love back to Donna when her need was greatest.

I cried the first time I heard the story of Llama. The second time I heard it, I knew it was a story that needed to be shared. Give yourself to a dog, and you will get love and loyalty in return. Dogs know when you need them most.

Too Many Cats in the Kitchen

Maryellen Burns

Knock! Knock! Knock!!

Six-thirty in the morning! My husband, Leo, and I wake up. Someone’s incessantly knocking on the door downstairs. I panic. Who is it? A loved one had an accident? A neighbor found one of our cats dead in the street? I try to shake off my anxiety and the five cats that had rooted themselves to my lap and legs all night.

We stumble to the door. My friend Angela is there. “I’m sorry to come over so early,” she says, “but I’m supposed to shoot a commercial for Safeway grocers at seven-thirty and my scheduled location is kaput. You have such a wonderful kitchen. Could I possibly bring a film crew here in an hour?” Her British accent adds an extra note to this early morning request.

My first thoughts are, Leo has to teach and the kitchen is a mess. We haven’t cleaned up from dinner last night. Piles of dishes are in the sink and on the stove. We’d need to hide cat bowls and kitty litter, and vacuum up mucho cat hair.

Second thought? Yes! We spent two years restoring our kitchen and are proud of its 1910 Craftsman features: a six-burner, double-oven Magic Chef range, lush redwood-veneer cabinets, a black-and-white soda-fountain floor and old-fashioned comfiness.

We look at each other. A lot needs to get done. Leo rushes to the kitchen to feed cats, clean and make coffee before dressing and going to work, while I attempt to de-cat the living room.

An hour or so later a crew of eight gathers on the front porch—producer Angela; three men with camera gear; Rosa Nosa, our fluffy tortoiseshell, who has rushed out to greet them; and three outdoor cats, who scramble to hide.

Opening the front door is a struggle because Nishan, our little disabled, back-legs-all-tangled-in-on-themselves cat, is parked in front of it.

I finally get the door open, and a sullen-voiced man, the director, asks, “How many damn cats do you have?”

“Nine,” I tell him. “Or possibly more. You never know who they brought home last night.”

“There aren’t going to be any cats in the kitchen, right?” he asks.

I assure him that the kitchen can be shut off from the rest of the house and it won’t be a problem.

Brushing cats away from his legs, he hurries through the living room and into the kitchen, as if he knows the way.

“We need to set up. No time for niceties,” he says.

I follow him, and there is Rosa, sitting on the butcher-block island, looking every bit the superb hostess she is.

He picks her up and plops her roughly to the floor. “I said no cats in the kitchen!”

I pick her up, reassure her and take her outside.

“What have you done? Angela said your kitchen had a slightly messy, warm, lived-in look. You’ve cleaned it. Now we’ll have to dirty it again!”

Angela and I look at each other. I can tell that this guy is a major pain in the neck, and I hope I can get through a whole day with him in my house. He gives the room a cursory look.

“I like the stove. I want a pot of water, steam rising from it. Mess up the counters. I want fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes, a flour sack spilling out. Move the butcher block to the center of the room. It should be the focal point. What’s that cat doing here? I thought I told you to remove all the cats!”

Angela picks up the cat. It’s Rosa Nosa again. She starts to purr, presses her red nose against Angela’s face. Meanwhile, Hephzibah and Honky, the two oldest cats in the household, wander in, looking for food and water. They jump up on the kitchen table, demanding attention.

For the first time, the director spots Nishan hiding under the kitchen table. She scurries out, dragging her useless hind legs. The director looks disgusted. “What is it with these cats? Get. Them. Out. Of. The. Kitchen. Now!”

“Oh, Terry,” pleads Angela. “The talent won’t be here for an hour. Let the cats be. We’ll clear them out before we start filming.”

He looks as if he might relent, but something in the tone of his voice spooks the cats. This is not a cat person. They scatter. Except for Rosa, who insists on taking up residence beneath the butcher block with Nishan, her shadow.

To understand Rosa and Nishan’s relationship, you need to know a little about how we came to keep them. Rosa was born about three months after my mother died, one of six kittens from Little Guy, Mom’s faithful companion throughout her illness. Of all the kittens she was the prettiest, the liveliest, a furry lump of playfulness with an air of responsibility, a dignified poise and a beautiful red patch across her cute little nose. Everything about her reminded us of my mother, Rose. We wanted to keep her but couldn’t justify it, because she had so many offers of a home and we had so many kittens to place. We gave her to Monica, a little girl who lived down the street.

Within twenty-four hours, Monica was on our doorstep, a squirming kitten in hand, face and cheeks swollen and red. She was allergic. Would we keep her until she could give her to a new home on Monday? My mother had always said she’d return one day as a madam of a cathouse or as one of Leo’s cats. There was a reason this cat had come back to us. We were meant to keep her.

A year later Rosa and Giselle, a loveable stray we had taken in, bore kittens within a few days of each other. A couple of weeks later Giselle moved her kittens atop a bed in Mom’s old room, except for the runt, a tortoiseshell that looked a little like Rosa. Leo picked her up. For the first time we realized she had twisted, deformed hind legs. “I don’t know if this one is going to survive,” he said, carrying her to Giselle and placing her at a teat. But Giselle rejected her and moved the other kittens again. This happened two or three more times.

Leo is softhearted. He hates to see any little critter suffer. Obviously, Giselle didn’t want her. Something had to be done. The next day we took her to our vet.

“If her mother refuses to nurse her, she could die in a couple of days on her own, but she looks like a survivor to me. It’s a big responsibility, but why don’t you try again? You could feed her by hand, and in a week or two we could put a cast on her legs and try to straighten them.”

Home she went. Giselle wouldn’t nurse her. That night she moved the others yet again. Next morning we’re lying in bed. Rosa is nursing her kittens under our desk. We see a little face peeking in at the foot of the doorway and then watch the disabled kitten scurry across the floor to Rosa and push all the other kittens out of the way, looking for sustenance. Rosa begins licking Nishan all over and looks up at us as if to say, “What’s one more?”

When almost all the kittens had new homes, my niece Penny showed up with six more, barely three weeks old. Someone had abandoned them. Would Rosa nurse them? Rosa didn’t hesitate. All kittens were welcome, but Nishan was her favorite. She never grew beyond the size of an eight-week-old kitten. Rosa continued to nurse Nishan for almost two years. Wherever Rosa went, Nishan followed.

They are together now, watching the crew ready the kitchen for filming. The actors arrive. Rosa runs to the door to greet them and lead them into the kitchen.

Everything is ready for the first take. Spaghetti pot boiling on the stove, lettuce washed and dried by hand, husband and wife intimately touching shoulders as they laugh and make dinner together.

“Cut! Where did that damn cat come from?”

There is Rosa, perched majestically on the lower deck of the butcher block, taking a keen interest in the proceedings. I pick her up and put her on the back porch.

The director sets up the shot again. “Camera’s rolling,” he says.

The salad is being tossed; noodles are placed in boiling water. I see Nishan, who had remained hidden, peer out from behind a butcher-block leg. Within minutes Rosa is back in place, following every move of the camera. The director doesn’t seem to notice at first. When he does, he silently picks her up by the scruff of her neck and tosses her out.

Minutes later she is back, arching her back against the director’s legs, as if trying to seduce him. Again, he picks her up and tosses her out the French doors.

Before you know it, she’s back again, under the stairs. Neither the director nor the crew has noticed there is a cat door. As I wonder if I should block it so Rosa can’t get back in, she suddenly leaps from the floor to the kitchen table and then takes another flight to the butcher block.

“There are too many cats in the kitchen!” the director barks and stomps out of the room.

Angela follows him. I hear muffled voices, his strident and nasty, Angela’s soft and lilting as she tries to calm him. One actor has picked Rosa up and is tickling her under her chin. She responds with a rumbling purr and a gracious movement of her head.

The director comes back, temper under control, but barely. Angela follows, a catlike smile on her face. “A few more takes and we’re done,” he says. “I give up.”

Rosa remained in place for the rest of the morning, looking like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard demanding her close-up.

“That’s a wrap,” the director called.

He never broke a smile or thanked us for giving up our house and our time. He just watched silently as the rest of the crew packed up the camera gear, the lights, the food, petted Rosa one more time and left.

A week or so later Angela called to say that the commercial was going to air at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday and would be rebroadcast for a month or two.

We set up the television recorder, gathered all the cats on the bed and waited to see Rosa’s debut. The commercial ended. The editor had left all Rosa’s scenes on the cutting room floor! The ad was okay but we thought it lacked the emotional punch Rosa might have given it.

Rosa, in one of her rare acts of petulance, jumped off the bed. In solidarity the other cats followed her. Only Nishan remained to ease our disappointment. A strong union household, we boycotted Safeway for a while but realized it wasn’t their call; it was the call of a director who didn’t realize that the biggest joy of all is too many cats in the kitchen.

Transforming U

Suzanne Tomlinson

As a longtime journalist, I never imagined a writing assignment from a popular horse magazine would lead me to personal transformation. But that was exactly what happened when I met a horse with a giant letter U branded on his well-muscled neck.

I’d been asked to write a piece about how to have a successful match when adopting a horse from a rescue center. A lifelong horse-crazy gal with horses of my own, I was excited about the assignment.

I interviewed the Grace Foundation director, Beth DeCaprio. She provided some solid information and great tips on how to find a perfect equine partner at a rescue organization. Then she told me about an upcoming project—the HELP Rescue Me Trainers’ Showcase. It had grown out of a crisis involving wild horses.

In the Midwest about two hundred of the Bureau of Land Management’s mustangs had gone through three auctions with no bidders. When that happens, the BLM brands the horses nobody wants with a big letter U to identify them as unwanted. They are no longer the responsibility of the BLM. Most of the horses with this sad scarlet letter go to slaughter operators. These particular two hundred U horses were sent to a ranch in Nebraska, where a rancher placed them on his property and then left them to fend for themselves.

The Humane Society of the United States rushed in to help but not before many of these horses died from starvation. Horse rescue groups, including the Grace Foundation, traveled to a rehab center where the surviving mustangs were being held in the hopes that they could be helped. Beth and her volunteers agreed to take thirty-one of the U horses back to her center in California, near Sacramento. Other rescue organizations took on the remaining unwanted horses.

Beth came home with the daunting task of finding these horses forever homes. Suddenly an inspiration hit her. Why not pair professional trainers with each of her thirty-one mustangs to give these wild horses seventy days of training and make them more adoptable?

Local trainers took to the idea. They came to the Grace Foundation and each picked out a mustang. At the end of the training period Beth brought the whole gang—mustangs and their trainers—to the big annual horse expo in Sacramento to show off. She called it the Trainers’ Showcase. Each trainer demonstrated to the crowd what had been accomplished in those seventy days of training. I watched in the audience as thirty-one horses and thirty-one trainers entered the arena to show what an untrained wild horse could learn in a very short time. The crowd in the stands was moved to standing ovations again and again. Many of the horses were under saddle and seemed at ease with the chaos of the arena, the lights and the noisy crowd. Some of the U-branded horses had learned impressive dressage movements; others jumped obstacles with confidence; all had the beginnings of trust with humans, despite the fact that all the humans they’d met in the past had brought them nothing but hardship and pain. At the end of the event the mustangs were offered for adoption. Would they still be unwanted?

I wrote my story about adopting a horse from a rescue organization, plus a sidebar about the unwanted horses at the horse expo. Editors at the magazine suggested I check on the U-branded horses in a few months and find out what had happened to them.

In the meantime my life suddenly, unexpectedly, turned upside down. My seemingly solid twenty-four-year marriage crumbled, damaged beyond repair. For a time I thought the shock and the pain would kill me. I fled to the guesthouse on our property to be alone. In those first few days of facing the ugly truth about a marriage I had thought was based on faithfulness, I asked God for help. I remember praying, Dear God, if what I feel now is going to kill me, please take me now. But if I am supposed to survive it, please let me rest and feel your peace. Show me your light and I will know I can get through this.

For the first time in several days I slept for many hours. What awakened me was not the jolting remembrance of the nightmare I was living. It was the brightest light of morning I had ever seen, streaming through window blinds that were closed…the light so bright, so lovingly piercing, it woke me up. Something had shifted in that dark night of the soul. In the recesses of my mind there was a knowing—I am deeply loved by God and the divine that dwells within me. The pain, the anger, the unbearable grief just dissolved away. God’s peace was all around me and in me. Thank you, God, I said to myself. I have my answer. I can go on.

In the days that followed I began to count my blessings. Our children were grown and on their own. I had financial resources. And I had strength beyond anything I could have imagined. Upon filing for divorce, I moved out. I found a nice house on five acres with a perfect setup for horses and moved in, along with two dogs, one cat and my two horses.

Complete healing would take some time, but I was no longer afraid to face the truth. I also knew I had to plumb the depths of my own emotions to try and understand why I had been burned by the scorched earth of betrayal time and time again throughout my life.

I thought of the U-branded horses and realized, though I didn’t carry that letter outwardly, I carried it inwardly. To most people, and even to myself on a conscious level, I was a happy, optimistic, career-driven woman with lots of love in my life. I had children I adored and many relationships I treasured. But I had been drawn to men who seemed to love me on one level and hate me on another. I would start out with the warm glow of feeling cherished. But invariably over time the relationships brought a cold, sad message—I was unwanted.

My mother delivered that scarlet letter U for “unwanted” when I was just a girl. She was a troubled person, depressed and addicted to alcohol, which further twisted her mind. Underneath it all, there was always a spark of meanness. I tried to steer clear of her sting and just let it drift past, but the day came when her darkness changed my life.

I don’t remember what I asked of her. It could have been a ride to a friend’s house. I know it wasn’t much. She sneered at me, a suspicious, small smile curling her lips. Already I was on alert. Nothing good is going to come out of her mouth, I thought.

She said, “Suzanne, dear, you are such a lucky girl, aren’t you? You’ve had the security and safety of feeling loved all your young life, haven’t you?”

Why is she saying these things to me? There is something sinister brewing.

“Yes, poor dear, the truth will confuse you, but here it is. I have never loved you, never wanted you, never cherished you. You are unloved.”

People underestimate the power of words. These words, her words, devastated me. It was the deepest betrayal from mother to daughter—an intentional fire set to burn down the trust of an innocent, unsuspecting child.

Looking back over my life, I think my mother loved me. I also think she very much wanted to hurt me. It’s hard to reconcile those feelings and actions—loving and hurting seem so discordant. But I have come to understand that her desire to hurt must have derived from some deep wound of her own. Over the years and after her death from the effects of alcoholism, I thought I had forgiven her. What I didn’t know was that I carried that wound of her words deep in my subconscious mind, and it colored my opinion of myself. Unwanted. Unloved.

Again I had walked into the fire of someone else’s loving and hurting. Had I stayed married to a man for twenty-four years because in my subconscious he replayed my mother’s themes?

I had to try and heal this deep hurt, or I was destined to invite betrayal into my life for unlimited visits. But how to heal? How to forgive? That seemed like a tall order. There was another way to keep betrayal from my door and it seemed easier. Just never love again, I thought. For a short while that seemed like the best answer. Then I met the plain brown horse with the big U on his neck.

I had checked back on the unwanted mustangs from the Grace Foundation’s Trainers’ Showcase. There on the website I found a listing of the U-branded horses. As I scrolled down, I could see in bold letters next to their names the word “adopted”! It was exciting to see that so many of these most unwanted of the unwanted had found forever homes—except one horse, at the bottom of the list. They called him Vigilant. He was a plain brown ten-year-old mustang with a sturdy-looking body and a kind eye. The vet had noted that he had been gelded and was healthy, with no apparent problems other than the trust issues that went along with being severely neglected. There was no happy, bold “adopted” next to this horse’s name.

I wanted this unwanted horse. It just felt right to start my new life wanting the unwanted. It would help remind that little girl who resided in my subconscious, she was wanted and loved very deeply. I made a promise to bring that kind of sacred love to my life in any way I could. I had rescued two abandoned dogs, so why not this horse? And this is how Vigilant found his forever home with me. I spoke with the trainer who had worked with him, and she told me that he had a willing attitude but definitely did not offer automatic trust to all who approached. She suggested I start all over again in his training…being careful to first establish that trust.

And so the two U-branded souls began their work together. The first week I fed him only over the fence and let him settle into his new space next to my other two horses. He didn’t seem nervous but I could tell he was wary. The second week I went into his pasture and tried to approach. He ran from me each time. I didn’t try to catch him. I just stood as near as he would let me and talked to him softly.

And then like a tightly closed bud protecting itself from winter’s frost, the horse, like the flower, began to open to me. He let me approach and stroke his neck, moving my hand over that awful U, wishing I could erase it. The following week, when I opened his pasture gate, he trotted over to me, inviting me to pat him. When it seemed time to put a halter on, he lowered his head into it willingly.

Still, I moved very slowly with him—one little success at a time. In a month I thought he was ready for some round pen work on a lunge line. I discovered that wonderful foundation the first trainer had established. This horse followed my commands perfectly when I asked him to walk, trot, stop and then move out again. When I asked for the canter, it was clear he had no idea what I wanted, but he tried, anyway, trotting ever faster as I urged him to move out. I changed my communication style. Instead of using my voice to ask for this faster gait, I moved my own legs to the cadence of the canter.

Now he was really confused. I could sense what he was thinking. You want me to run? But mostly I run when I’m fleeing something threatening. Are you scary? How could I tell him I didn’t want him to run in fear? I wanted him to run in a new way, slower, more controlled, a dance I might one day join him in. I talked to him softly, moving my feet to show him what I wanted, and when he began to gallop too fast, I said encouragingly, “Good boy! Now just slow it down a bit.”

One day I just thought, It’s time to get on this horse. Moving things along very slowly, I put my foot in the stirrup and stepped up to the saddle, then down again. He was so quiet. In a few days I felt sure enough of him to put my foot in the stirrup and swing all the way up and into the saddle. I asked him with my legs and my voice to move out at a walk. He responded perfectly. And what a perfect moment for me. Never trust, never love again? This horse had been abused, neglected and betrayed, yet he was showing me he was willing to trust again. Who was I to shut out the world? If I could build mutual trust with this horse, building it with a human being might be possible. This horse was showing me the way. I would be open to love again someday and then I would know how. Just take it slow. Build it step by step. Be wary, but be willing.

I thought back to that moment of deep self-love in my dark night of the soul. That love was a bridge to freedom—freedom from anger, sadness, regret, self-recrimination…freedom to be wholly and holy loved. Now riding this U-branded horse, I reached down and stroked his neck. “You are not unwanted and will never again be unwanted. I want you. You are loved.” The horse and I had stepped up to our challenges. I was healing that U brand in my soul. I would not be a slave to betrayal.

My plain brown horse deserved a name that would transform that sad U into something fitting his grandness. Why not Underestimated and Ultimately free? Now I open his pasture gate and call his new name. “Good morning, Freedom!” He calls back with a whinny and trots to my side.

A Nose for Love

Dena Kouremetis

When my husband, George, and I look back, we shake our heads in disbelief. We didn’t find one another on a dating site or throw flirtations to one another across a crowded bar. The brother of my maid of honor, George was a groomsman in my 1982 wedding to someone else.

See, it’s a Greek thing. During the ensuing twenty years, I’d spot George at Greek weddings, festivals, funerals, picnics and dances I would attend with my husband. And each time I’d see him, I would ask his sister about him, taking curious note of the fact that he’d stayed single. My knowledge of George extended to his being a gregarious, good-looking family friend that danced well. After my marriage broke up two decades later, however, I was to discover that George was still there, unattached. And when he found out I was about to become single myself, he wasted no time saying he had no intention of missing his chance to finally get to know me. Well, it’s just about the most flattering thing a middle-aged woman can have happen to her, isn’t it?

So is this what they meant by “happily ever after?” Well, almost.

You see, my new love made it clear early on that he had pet allergies and that, although he liked dogs, he would probably never own one. Pet dander was a new term to me.

“What happens when you’re around a dog?” I asked.

A pained look came over George’s face. “My sinuses get stuffed up and I get headaches. Then I get sinus infections and it’s awful.”

Hmm, really? I’d had small dogs throughout my life. They’d warmed my lap, watched TV with me, melted me with their doleful eyes and filled up spaces in my heart humans simply couldn’t. It was tough to face the idea of never owning one again. “Can’t you get shots?” I asked.

George looked at me as if I had reduced his affliction to inoculating livestock, and it was there the subject ended.

As things got more serious between us, I rationalized the idea of having the freedom to travel and socialize without worrying about a pet. I could accidentally drop food on the floor or leave a door open without having to worry about a little being scurrying to snatch up the morsel or run out of the house. The freedom began to grow on me. A little.

The day finally came when my daughter walked me down the aisle to George and life began anew. At dinner with some friends not long after we moved into our new home, we learned they were getting a Shima puppy flown down from the Northwest—a shih tzu–Maltese crossbreed, a dog that had become popular over the past few years for its personality, its no-shed fur and, of course, its cuteness factor. Rena and her daughters would excitedly show us photos of their mail-order dog. There was jubilation the day Maxie’s doggy crate, containing a floppy-eared, mop-tailed pup, was handed to its new owners at the Sacramento airport. In the end, Maxie would be everything this little family had wanted in a dog and more. He was adorable, easy to train, smart and absolutely charming. Even people who hated most dogs loved this little guy.

Rena could tell I was smitten with her new four-legged charge. I’d make any excuse to “stop by” for a visit and I loved it when she or her girls would knock on our door with Maxie in tow. And even though I’d watch George begin to sniffle afterward, it was apparent that he became putty in Maxie’s paws. Soon a conspiracy began to hatch. Rena began forwarding me by email photos of new Shima puppies she received from the Spokane, Washington, breeder of her own pup.

The short-limbed, big-eyed blobs of fur in the photos were, of course, totally disarming. The pure white ones looked like tiny snowy owls, and the brown ones like diminutive shaggy dogs you could cuddle to death, like the character in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, if you weren’t careful. With each set of photos I forwarded to George, he’d make a remark that I was trying to wear him down. I was. By the time I forwarded the third batch of litter photos to George, it was all over.

“Did you see the black-and-white one?” he calls to me as we occupy our respective home offices in our new house.

“Oh, yeah. He’s my favorite,” I admit.

A few minutes go by. I hear nothing but the click of George’s mouse. Then a feeble voice echoes down the hall to me. “I think we have to go see this little guy.”

If I could do a happy dance atop my Aeron chair without killing myself, I would have risked looking like an idiot.

Before he could change his mind, I was busy emailing the breeder, asking questions about the black-furred, roly-poly handful with the white paws and white belly. She told us about his parents, how he was the first puppy that wanted to be held, how large he might grow (no more than eight to ten pounds) and when he would turn eight weeks old—just old enough for him to leave his mama. The next day, knowing our heightened interest level, the breeder snapped more photos of him and sent them hurling through cyberspace. There was one of him standing on her deck, one with him shakily perched atop a rock and another one that was a close-up of his little black-and-white face. We were head over heels in love with our small furry Internet date.

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