We told Anthony and his mother our conditions, and they just stared at us. ‘Oh monsieur, – dame, and you, little boy, you will love this dog so much you’ll never want to get rid of him,’ Anthony said. ‘The one thing I do ask you is that I be able to visit him once in a while. The transition will be hard on him, and I will miss him so.’
Who was this boy who spoke like a French politician? We agreed, of course, to regular visits for as long as he liked, and he handed over the leash to Joe. He turned to kiss the dog, but as far as the dog was concerned, Anthony and his mother were history. Of much more interest was our garden, our apple tree, our dahlias. Anthony began crying his eyes out and he and his mother, who held him around the shoulders, sobbed their way out through the door.
I was exhausted by all the emotion. I looked at Michael, who shrugged. ‘We’ll see,’ was all he said.
The dog bounded over to us and Joe leapt out of the way. Michael scratched the dog’s ears and he lay down, calmed. Joe eased in; I patted him, too. He was awfully cute, and he seemed very sweet, just like Anthony and his mother had said. They had assured us he was house-trained, had no bad habits, didn’t sleep in their beds – one thing I deplore – and that he was very calm. This all sounded good to me.
I went into the house to cook. I was working on recipes and the menu included avocado with pistachio oil and shallots, braised oxtail with cinnamon, baked potatoes with bay leaves and ginger madeleines with allspice ice cream. With all this dog business, I was behind schedule.
Several hours later Anthony returned with a dog dish, some dog toys, and another leash, this one bright red leather. The dog was all over him, and he all over the dog, and they played for a moment. Then the waterworks began again. ‘You can come visit him whenever you want,’ I reassured Anthony, who seemed close to a nervous break-down. ‘I will do that, Madame, merci,’ he sniffed, backing out of the courtyard.
We went about finding a place for the dog to sleep, and a place to set his bowls. We had decided the dog would eat leftovers and dry food, since both Michael and I are morally opposed to feeding dogs food that could logically be given to hungry humans, and most canned dog food fits into that category. So, Michael and Joe went off to buy him some dry food.
We got the dog set up. He was asleep by this time, on the entranceway rug, right in the middle of the traffic pattern. We all stood there and looked at him. He was pretty darn cute.
He needed a name. I wanted to give him a literary French name, like Aristide or Gionot, since he was a French poodle. Michael and Joe settled on calling him LD, for Little Dog. I’d renounced responsibility for the dog – how could I intervene?
Dinner that night was a resounding success – we loved all the recipes – and there were few leftovers, but what remained went into the dog’s dish. He immediately dragged the bones into the middle of the kitchen floor and noisily chewed on them, then left them right there when he wandered off to fall asleep again.
We transferred LD to a clean blanket in the kitchen, and we all turned in. Sometime after we’d all fallen asleep we heard excited barking. It was LD reacting to something outside – a light going off, a car going by, we didn’t know what. Michael quieted him down and we went back to sleep. The next day Joe came down the stairs and wrinkled his nose as he walked into the kitchen. ‘Where’s LD?’ he asked and, simultaneously, ‘What is that smell?’
LD and the smell were in the same spot. He hadn’t left any untoward packages anywhere; he just smelt like a not-very-clean animal. We hadn’t noticed it the night before, most likely in the excitement of having him in our home.
‘When you get home from school we’ll give him a bath,’ Michael said to Joe.
But Michael and I couldn’t make it through the day with this fragrant dog, who smelt as if he’d rolled in something dead. How had we not noticed this the night before? Michael bathed him, rubbed him dry, and put him outside on a long tether. He was fluffy, clean and very cute. We both went back to work.
LD began to bark, at moving objects – people, cars, birds flying by. I went out to tell him to be quiet, in English. He stopped barking, but gave me the most quizzical look. We stared at each other for a full minute before I realized he hadn’t understood the words I’d said. So, I wondered, how does one tell a dog to be quiet in French? ‘Tais-toi’? Impolite. ‘Calme-toi’? Ineffectual. I settled on ‘Shhht!’, the sound most often heard in a French classroom, which can be uttered with a great deal of authority.
By the time I’d climbed the flight of stairs to my office he’d started up again. I brought him inside, and he stopped. I showed him his blankets and he lay down and immediately fell asleep. ‘Whew,’ I thought, but I was wary.
I went back to my office. Pretty soon I heard LD leaping up the stairs. He nosed open my office door, came in, sat down under my desk and rested his head on my foot. ‘Aw,’ I thought, ‘he’s really cute.’
But he still smelt, and he twitched. Then he got up and left. I heard Michael lead him to his blanket, after which I heard no more.
Later on, Michael put LD on a leash to go and pick up Joe from school, and off they went. I looked out of the window after them. There was Michael, tall, well-built, masculine, with this fluff-ball on a leash that walked in an odd, gimpy way down the street. The scene looked good, unlike the hysterically funny scenes of the Frenchmen I see who walk their dogs. There they go, normal, virile-looking men, in handsome business suits or newly pressed jeans, walking mincing little dogs who stop and sniff at every piece of gravel. Whenever I see one I try not to stare, which is hard because they look so ridiculous. I can’t believe they actually go out in public with their dogs. Why don’t they have labradors, or huskies, or something more befitting their sartorial splendour?
When Michael and Joe returned, Joe was holding the leash, petting LD, completely enraptured. ‘This experiment seems to be working,’ I thought.
Several days passed and, aside from LD barking constantly when he was outside, he easily settled into our lives. He was obviously an inside dog, and he seemed used to making himself at home. Anthony and his mother had been right – he didn’t jump on the furniture or make any messes inside. He didn’t eat leftovers or dry dog food, either. ‘He’ll get used to it,’ Michael promised. ‘It’s a matter of time.’
Lulled into a feeling of security, I let him out through the front door one day, sure he’d stay close to the door. How wrong I was. He bolted immediately, so far and fast that I lost him. Oh dear, I thought, that was short and sweet. Within an hour he was back, however, docile as could be. He headed to his blanket and fell asleep. When he woke up, he immediately threw up, a lot, in the middle of the floor. He looked perplexed for a minute, then bounded around, the picture of good health. He hadn’t eaten anything at all since morning, so how, I wondered, was he able to throw up so much?
We developed a routine. LD stayed in the house during the day, more often than not in my office, his head on my foot. I didn’t love the dog, but it was kind of sweet that he’d chosen my foot as his pillow. And he was quiet enough. We learned that he would bolt immediately if he got out the front door, so we tied him to the apple tree with a very long leash a couple of times a day so he could get fresh air. He barked, but we ignored him and hoped the neighbours did, too.
Despite our efforts, he ran away often, always returning an hour or so later. He would circle his bedding, lie down and sleep for a while, then rise and throw up. After the first few times we concluded he had found someone who fed him a lot of meat. ‘This,’ Michael said looking at LD, ‘is a hobo dog.’
Michael put up wire mesh around our fence to keep him in,