Dog Rescue

I figure I may as well stay on theme here.  All this talk of dogs and pets in general, and what with Labor Day just in the rearview, it’s all reminded me of the time I found this stray and collarless pooch on the side of the highway a year ago, last Labor Day weekend.  A beautiful pup, some sort of shepherd mix, but oh was she a pitiful sight, covered in fleas and ticks, all skin and bones, and when she’d moved or shake, voluminous brown clouds of dirt would explode from her fur, as if you were smacking your grandmother’s rug.  Well, I gave her some water and then, a bit impulsively, loaded her into my car and took her home, where I tried my best to nurse her back to at least a semblance of health.  But, it being a holiday weekend, I had to hold onto her for a couple extra days before I could take her into the vet for a legitimate checkup, for something a little more thorough than the oatmeal baths and the once- and twice- and thrice-overs with the flea comb that I was administering.  And let’s just say that, over that long weekend, I fell in love and decided to keep her. 

When Tuesday arrived, I finally took her in, and the first thing the vet did was scan her.  To our collective surprise, the handheld machine beeped, and the vet said, all excited, well looky there, she’s chipped, how wonderful!  Yes, indeed.  But truth be told, my heart sank.  I’d already researched what type of kibble I’d feed her, had started looking at dog beds, dog toys, various other dog paraphernalia.  Hell, I’d even picked out a name.  Phoebe.  Not sure how I’d landed on that one, but it stuck.  So yeah, I was pretty sad, given that Phoebe being chipped probably meant I wasn’t going to get to keep her, and I couldn’t help but think that any owner who’d allowed her to get into the shape in which I’d found her, accident or not, didn’t deserve to keep her. 

The vet told me to sit tight and went to call the number on file, and, as the minutes passed, as I hoped that the owner was a deadbeat who wouldn’t answer the phone, perhaps didn’t even want Phoebe anymore, a thin thread of guilt began to weave its way into the sadness that I’d already thrown over myself.  Sure, I thought, shouldn’t I be happy that I’d “saved” her, that she’d be going home to her rightful, legal owner, a person, or people—a family, even—who missed her dearly?  That thread, though, was immediately pulled out, yanked away, when the vet came back in and delivered the “good” news that she’d reached the owner.  She asked if she could share my contact info so that we could arrange the necessary logistics.  Sure, I said, trying not to sound too glum.

Long story short, I was immediately turned off by the entire situation.  Turned out, Phoebe’s owner lived in Kentucky, over a hundred miles north from where I’d found her.  My ex-husband got it for my stepdaughter, said the woman on the phone, she lives down there in Tennessee.  Not caring to sort out this halfwit inbred’s family tree (yes, I was already getting judgmental; not the most sound or Jesus-y approach, but I couldn’t help it), I found out that “there” still turned out to be a good thirty or so miles from where I’d found Phoebe, so I’m immediately thinking, how the fuck did I find her so far away from her home?  I must’ve said something along those lines, too, because the woman then explained that her stepdaughter was pregnant, like about-to-pop pregnant, and that she’d asked a friend to watch her house and dog while she and her redneck boyfriend were at the hospital (judgmental again, sorry).  “She must have gotted loose,” the woman said.  Yeah, you gotted that right, ya dumb fuck (sorry). 

But no, sorry not sorry, because my instinct was correct on this one, as the woman then asked if I could drive and deliver Phoebe to her, up in Kentucky, explaining that she would take her down to her stepdaughter once her baby was born and they were all settled in.  Like, what the fuck, no?  Not only had I essentially rescued your dog and nursed her back to health, but the vet visit itself was a couple hundred dollars—not that I’m complaining; was happy to do it!—which reminded me, the vet had asked all the basic background questions, the answers to which I obviously didn’t know at the time but was now more than eager to press upon this woman, which turned out to be a maddening and useless exercise because she basically gave the same answers that I gave the vet—Do you know how old she is? Hmm, no, not really sure—Is she on any heartworm or flea and tick medications?  Don’t think so.  Has she gotten her vaccinations, rabies, distemper, parvo?  Her perv-what?  Maddening, truly maddening.  These hillbilly fuckwads get dogs and then treat them like goldfish from the county fair.  Anyway, I put my foot down—which was easy to do considering Phoebe was in my possession—and told the woman that if she wanted Phoebe, she could drive her dumb ass down to me and get her herself.  And, to her credit, she did, albeit a couple days later and not before trying to see convince me to meet her halfway.

Not wanting this woman anywhere near my house, we arranged to meet at a park down the street.  It was about forty-five minutes past the agreed-upon time when I spotted a dented and mangled green Toyota Corolla slowly cough its way into the parking lot.  The only reason I hadn’t gotten up and left was because she kept sending me misspelled and grammatically incorrect texts that made me think she was close: trafficks bad; wuts the adress again; allmost their, sry; etc. etc.  Anyway, she parked, but then both of the beater’s front doors popped open, and not one but two women languorously climbed out. 

“Hey, Chesney,” the driver said in my direction, so casually it seemed like she was talking to me, like we were at the dinner table and she was asking me to pass the ranch for the fried chicken bucket (her second), and for a moment I wondered how she could’ve gotten my name so wrong, until I realized that Chesney was Phoebe’s real name.  That being the case, you’d think this woman would be a little more excited, no?  And my God was she weathered, like she’d recently been rescued from some mystical desert isle where she’d been forced to survive on a bottomless buffet of popcorn shrimp and sugary frozen cocktails (not too shabby an existence, if you ask me, but this woman looked like the poster-woman for overindulgence…).  The other woman, a fair bit younger than, and nowhere near as stout as, the driver, but no doubt equally as haggard, was wearing flip flops, gym shorts, and an aquamarine tube top a few sizes too small, revealing a pale and saggy stomach, like a semi-inflated plastic grocery bag.  Also, I couldn’t help but notice that she was hunched over and cupping both of her breasts in her hands.  The fuck was going on, I asked myself?  Phoebe, at least, seemed undisturbed, excited even, her tail wagging.

Missing her front two incisors, the driver then stuck a cigarette in the gap as she introduced herself as Beth.  The passenger was her daughter, Ashley.

“Ash,” the daughter said, still cupping her breasts.  “For short.”

Yeah, I got that.  Thanks.

Beth lit the cigarette and said, “Yup, Rachel, Ash’s stepsis, she’s havin’ the baby any second now, so she’s out of it, yeah?”  I grunted and nodded.  I was still holding Phoebe’s leash, and I wondered when either of these two idiots were going to offer to take her from me.  Not that I wanted them to.  I simply wanted to extract myself from their vicinity as soon as possible.  The quicker the exchange, the lesser the heartbreak.  Poor Phoebe, I thought.  But her tail was still wagging, so there was that.

“Yup,” Beth continued, “I says to her the other day, I can tell you about to pop just by lookin’ at ya.  Mother’s instincts, even though she’s my stepdaughter.  But on the FaceTime, she was showin’ me, ha.  You should’ve seen her,” she said, making as if she were hugging a barrel with her arms.  “And the pregnancy doctors are takin’ it careful with her, Rachel, on account of her condition”—I tried to recall any mentioning of a “condition” from our brief telephone conversations and text exchanges, but I didn’t remember anything—“so, like I says, my husband, well, ha ha, my ex-husband, Ash remembers that one,”—this, she said, nodding over her shoulder to her daughter—“yup, a real piece of work he was, but yeah, he’d gotted her this dog for her condition.  A, um, what’d they called ‘em, motional support?  Yeah.  Got it for her as a present.  For her motional support.  Yup,” she said, bending over to pat Phoebe—or Chesney—on the head, “she’ll be happy to get ya back, pup.”

Aside from its baffling incoherence, the whole time my eyes were fixated on the constant up-and-down motions of the glowing ember of her cigarette. 

“C’mon, mom,” Ash whined, “I gotta go pump.”

Beth blew out a stream of smoke as she watched her daughter gingerly climb into the passenger seat.  “Ah, yeah,” she said.  “Ash there shot one out the other week.  Gonna have coupla grandbabies runnin’ ‘round the place, ha.”  She reached for the leash, and, for a split second, I held onto it, like I wasn’t going to give it to her, but I did, and she led Phoebe to the back door.  When she opened it, a couple wads of crumpled fast-food bags spilled out, then an empty 2-liter-bottle of Mountain Dew, which bounced hollowly on the pavement.  As Phoebe jumped in, I told myself that it looked like she’d done it a million times before.  I couldn’t deny that she did look happy—or, at least she didn’t look unhappy. 

Anyway, after she closed the door, Beth started walking towards me again, but she was stopped by her daughter’s shrieking that she really needed to go pump, like, now mom, C’MON!  Beth turned to me and said, well, see ya, before she collapsed herself into the driver seat, the beater groaning on its strained chassis.  Then, without thinking, I waved goodbye to Phoebe, which Beth caught and misinterpreted as being directed toward her, as if I were bidding them all farewell on their way back to Kentucky, and she waved back at me, cigarette still in the gap, the hint of a smile in her mangled gob.  Then, when their car, and Phoebe in it, had fully disappeared from sight, I went and picked up the trash that had fallen out.