Rescued in America

In my daily search for news that will not make me want to slash my wrists, I came across this article in The New York Times about writers and their dogs. The six writers featured included famous names such as Amy Tan and Isabel Allende, but what warmed my heart was that, of the seven dogs they own (Allende has two), four were mutts—a Lab mix, a Poodle mix, a smallish, rough-haired dog of no discernible provenance, and a canine bouillabaisse with Pit Bull, Chihuahua, Husky, and Australian Cattle Dog in his DNA.

This prevalence of mutts over purebreds reflects the dog population in the country as a whole, which is estimated to be 53% mixed breed. I haven’t made a survey of the dogs in the retirement community where I live, but my sense is that it accords with the national statistic. In good weather, the little dog park near my house resounds with the barks of mostly Lab mixes—medium sized, short-haired, affable-tempered dogs who live to chase balls. Each comes with his or her origin story, which their owners love to tell between ball throws.

The fact that mixed-breeds are in the majority means that most dogs (including some purebreds) are adopted from shelters, since few people choose to spend money on a mutt. These dogs have tragic histories, and they come with physical and emotional problems that require endless patience and goodwill on the part of the adopter. (This is in no way to malign people who buy purebreds. Most of the dogs in my life, from setters to shepherds, were purebreds purchased from, as best I could determine, reputable breeders.)

My three attempts at rescues met with various degrees of success. The first was a five-year-old greyhound, fresh from a race track in New Jersey. We named him Trailways. He was tall and slender, and so muscular that petting him felt like caressing a plank of wood. At first I thought he was black, but after much scrubbing he emerged a beautiful brindle.  He couldn’t manage stairs or smooth floors, but he ambled gracefully by my side when I took him for walks. No matter how much I fed him, he was always hungry: in the space of a single day he ate the housekeeper’s lunch, which she had left in a paper bag on the kitchen counter, and a bunch of bananas, skins and all.

All went well until, on the third day, he caught our Siamese cat by the neck and would have killed her if I hadn’t arrived in time to pry her out of his jaws. You couldn’t blame poor Trailways—he’d been trained to chase and catch furry scurrying objects. But the cat would never have survived if we had kept him, so we had to give him back.

My next rescue was Lexi, who looked like a German Shepherd, albeit not one who would win beauty prizes. She was four months old, and her ignorance of the rules of domestic life was matched only by the intensity of her drive—a compulsion to be doing something at all times. Hoping to drain some of that energy I took her to obedience class after obedience class. We got kicked out of agility because she was deemed “unmanageable.” We were disqualified at an obedience competition when, after a perfect performance off-leash, in the middle of the distance recall she did a play bow, leaped out of the ring, and made the rounds of the spectators.

She learned the names of several toys and would retrieve specific ones from the toy box on command. When I brought home another Shepherd puppy, and then the Cavalier, Bisou, she house-trained and ruled them with an iron hand. If she was lying quietly in the middle of the kitchen and I called the other two from another room, they would stand whimpering anxiously rather than risk walking past her. There were no dog scuffles in our house, ever.

And now there is Truffle, the wee Pomeranian, whose sad history (almost eight years in a cage, let out only to mate) I never tire of repeating. Rescued by a heroic local organization, he was sent by the universe to help me overcome my addiction to perfectionism. Whenever I think how much easier it would have been to get a puppy from a responsible breeder, I remember all the people across the land who, with fewer resources and more complicated lives than I, give unwanted dogs a home and a good life. And then I don’t complain so much.