Are you okay?
My mind races. I wonder if she is injured or sick or something.
Yes. But I could use another pair of hands.
Curious. That sounds less like an emergency and more like work is in the offing.
I’m on my way.
? ? ?
I knock on Lynne’s door and hear a flurry of activity and the unmistakable sound of barking. Suddenly things are starting to make sense. The door swings open and there is my elegant friend Lynne, sweating and looking panicked, her hair a rat’s nest, holding a wiggly Dalmatian puppy, who is chewing on Lynne’s ponytail and scrabbling at her arms, already covered in red welts, with his rear paws.
“Hi,” she says. “This is your fault.”
I try to prevent myself from laughing.
“Well, hello there. Who is this?” I say, coming inside to see that her apartment looks like a crime scene. There are feathers everywhere, presumably from a destroyed throw pillow, unmistakable pee stains on the rug, scratches on the hardwood flooring, and what appear to be the remains of at least two different shoes.
“This is Ellison. Who I am about to fucking kill. Can you take him for a minute?” She holds out the beastie to me as I put my purse safely on the counter. I receive the warm weight of puppy, cooing to him softly, and hold him tightly with his back nestled against my front and his legs supported from underneath. I spot a small bully stick on the side table and pick it up, holding it while he chews it, and he calms immediately.
“Hello, Ellison. Are you a terror?”
“He’s a fucking terrorist.” Lynne begins to pick up the detritus from her little Tasmanian devil. “Look at my house! He’s gonna destroy everything!”
“Well, yeah, he’s a puppy. When did you get him?” I say, settling into one of the club chairs in the living room. Ellison readjusts himself on my lap and accidentally nips my hand, and I adjust the bully stick to keep his razor-sharp puppy teeth farther from my tender flesh. He snuggles into the wide expanse of my thighs, using his front paws on my hands to help hold the chew toy.
Lynne collapses on the couch, where I can see that one corner of the arm closest to me has been well chewed. “Over the weekend. I picked him up Friday afternoon. Took yesterday and today off to get him settled. He was so sweet. Calm and quiet, just spent the last four days as a lovely, mellow little guy. Then I went upstairs to the workout room this morning after his walk and came home to this!” She sweeps her hand around the apartment.
“Didn’t you have him crated?” I can see the large black crate in the corner of the room.
“He was sleeping on his little bed when I left. I was only gone forty minutes.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, that’s all it takes.”
“Clearly.”
“How old is he?”
“Twelve weeks. He’s had a month of puppy training at the breeder, so he can handle the leash, and knows ‘sit.’ But I would have thought he would be more housebroken than this.”
Oh, Lord. “Lynne, I know I said you should get a dog, but didn’t I specifically say you should go to the pound and get an older rescue dog?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t go all ‘I told you so’ up in here. I’m aware of what you suggested.”
“So how did you get from older rescue mutt to purebred Dalmatian baby?”
When Lynne blushes, her caramel skin deepens to a lovely mahogany. “Angelique.”
“Angelique Morris?”
“She has Dalmatians. Three of them. I mentioned I was thinking of getting a dog, when I was meeting with her to try and land the business, and she immediately called her breeder and pulled strings.”
I start to laugh.
“It’s not funny! She got all excited that our dogs would be cousins and that would make us like family and I thought if I didn’t go that direction I might not get the account and it all just snowballed!”
“Wow. You are committed to your work, I will give you that. Have you done any research on the breed?” Dalmatians, while lovely dogs in personality, are high energy, not particularly well suited to apartment life, and can be difficult to train.
“I have now. God help me.”
Ellison has fallen asleep on my lap, such a sweet warm weight; you’d never know he was a one-man demolition crew. “I presume there is no going back on this, you can’t return him?”
“Are you crazy? Angelique would think I’m a monster. Plus . . . I sort of like him. When he isn’t munching my Prada and peeing on my silk rug.”
“Good. He’s a sweet boy, and Dalmatians are trainable, you just have to get serious. And you have to crate him when you aren’t here, always.”
“Yeah, that part I learned.”
“Let’s put him in there to nap and I’ll help you clean up.” I stand slowly, and the puppy squirms a bit, but doesn’t really wake up as I put him in his crate and gently lock the door. I grab the throw blanket off the nearest chair and drape it over the crate to provide some darkness and sound buffering, and Lynne and I get to putting her place back to rights. I grab her iPad and put in a Petco order with some essentials for her, and schedule delivery within two hours. I forward her the contact info I have for Bryant, the trainer who helped me with Simca, and my dog-walking service.
By the time we’ve cleaned up the destroyed pillow and shoes, and cleaned the rug as best we can, it feels late enough that we can indulge in a drink and Lynne opens a bottle of wine.
“Cheers. Thanks for the save.”
“Well, it is partially my fault, but I don’t take full blame on this one.”
“Fair enough. I totally get why you thought I should do it. You know, when he was so calm these past days it was amazing to just have this adorable little guy who loved me so much and just wanted to be with me. What the hell happened?”
“When you bring puppies home, it can take a few days before they feel comfortable enough to be themselves. The move from the breeder to your house is emotionally trying and it makes them exhausted and super docile. When they get comfy with you and their surroundings, they just become normal puppies, and everything that goes with that. Simca was an angel for the first three days, just padding around after me and snuggling with me whenever I sat still. And then she became a tiny little maniacal furball full of teeth who peed constantly. My arms looked like hamburger, and my rug wasn’t salvageable. But nothing was more adorable than the sweet parts, the quiet, sleepy parts.”
“That’s how they get you.”
“Indeed.”
“Somewhere right now my ex is really smug.”
“Why is that?”
“He wanted dogs. Dogs and kids. Not, of course, when we met. When we met he was all, I’m too busy, too much of an impact on lifestyle, too hard to travel, too much hassle, yadda yadda yadda . . .”
“Like you.”