life and puppies

I am suffering from post-election withdrawal.  I turn on CNN in the morning and immediately ask myself why I bothered.  What did I think I would find that could cure this ailment?  I was briefly interested in yesterday’s story that they may be closer to finding Natalee Holloway’s killer, but then realized they were just going after the Dutch guy that they’ve already arrested twice before in connection with her disappearance.  Not that closure isn’t needed, but it hardly seemed like a big break when he essentially confessed about a year ago.  And I’m trying to remain interested in Obama’s appointments, but even that has given me little to think about.

So, with that in mind, I think I will write about the story of Grace and how she came into my life.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, as we will celebrate our five-year anniversary together in January.  I’ve been thinking about how much comfort she has given me and how lucky I am to have her.  I’ve also been thinking about how close I was to not having her at all.

The scene: Richmond, 2003.    Well, wait, let’s back up.  As many of you know, I am severely allergic to dogs.  To illustrate this, I will briefly relay the story of when I was in elementary school and my family and I were visiting my aunt Jane’s family in La Crosse.  All I really remember from this weekend was playing super fun badmitton in Jane’s parents’ backyard and being taken to the emergency room because my eyes had swollen shut from being around a dog.  The badmitton was definitely more fun.  So, we did not have a dog for what seemed like an eternity to young Kate.  I would look longingly at my parents’ pictures of the dogs they had before I was born (3), and the pictures of me and Molly, the black standard poodle they kept around for awhile until they finally relinqished her to Jane and Mike when I was a toddler.  I REALLY wanted a dog.  I loved dogs and it seemed so cruel to me to be deprived of one, especially when my parents clearly adored the animals themselves.  So, one night when I was in fifth grade, I had a breakdown.  I couldn’t stop crying.  My parents came into my room, sat on my bed and asked me what was wrong.  “I want a dog!” I blubbered.  “I NEED a dog,” I implored.  My parents looked at each other, at me, and decided we could try to get a standard poodle because (a) they don’t shed and (b) my parents don’t tolerate small dogs.  So, with that, Casey came into our life.  We bought her from a breeder in Oregon, WI and she was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.  She was a puppy and so we had to do all the puppy things: training, training and more training.   Only I think we stopped at the second training because after learning to hold her bladder and sit, there wasn’t much else Casey was good at.  Except being an excellent sleeper.  In the winter mornings, while I was still nestled in bed, relishing the last minutes of sleep before school, my dad would call upstairs to Casey to come down to go outside.  She would pretend she hadn’t heard.  I’ve never really seen that quality in a dog since that time.  Anyway, Casey was a sweet pooch, but in the fall of 2000, she developed awful tumors on her spine that made it so she couldn’t walk straight.  She would fall down the stairs and was generally out of sorts.  Though my parents had divorced by this time, they went together to take Casey to the vet to put her down.  Sweet puppy.

So, with this background in mind, you may now understand how committed I was to having a dog in my life.  At the same time, I did not think college or law school were good times for me to commit to a pup.  When I finished law school, though, one of the first things that crossed my mind was, “Now I can get a dog!” 

June 2002.  Ben and I moved to Corpus for my job and we ended up taking a 6-month lease on an apartment (sight unseen, Corpus unseen for that matter) that didn’t take dogs, was in a complex and had a name: the Breakers.  I had never seen myself living in such a place before (or since), but it was Corpus and that’s how they roll.   Anyway, after 6 months, I thought we would be in better position to find a cute place to live and a cute pup to join us there.  Well, I was wrong.  Despite scouring the town, we couldn’t come close to finding a cute place to live.  Or eat.  Or walk.  Or hang out.  Really, there is just nothing cute about Corpus.  We did, though, find another apartment complex down the street that took dogs.  We put a $100 deposit down on another 6-month lease, but backed out a few weeks later when we realized we didn’t want to move again unless it was moving out of Corpus, which we did the following June.  So, no dog, but no Corpus.  A step in the right direction.

August 2003.  Richmond.  Yay!  Life was good again and Ben and I were about to be married.  Since we were getting married in Madison and honeymooning in Italy, Ben reasonably argued that we should begin the dog search after we were back settled in Virginia in November.  November came and went without a dog.   Richmond seemed to me to be the dog capital of the universe.  They were everywhere!  And the humane society came every Saturday within a few blocks of our apartment with a car-load full of dogs available for adoption.  Ben always found an excuse to say no to these dogs and the dogs I was finding on petfinder weren’t working out, either.  I was committed to trying to find a non-shedding dog, but also a rescue.  Not easy to do (Obamas: take note).  I put in applications to local airedale and standard poodle rescue groups.  I applied for several specific dogs.  I even had some phone interviews.  No takers.  I finally had a lead on a cute wheaten terrier named Hobo, but communication problems led to another family taking Hobo with them.  One day I was visiting Ben at the furniture store at which he worked at the time and we went across the street to where our car was parked.  We got in the car to talk and I had a major breakdown.  “I want a dog!” I blubbered.   “I NEED a dog,” I implored.  “I’m so lonely!”  “You promised!” etc, etc.  So, Ben agreed to be more supportive of the dog effort and said that he was backing it 100%.  Reengerized by this, I went back online to petfinder and found a cute, scruffy, part wheaten available in the area.  I emailed the organization and heard back immediately (rare) that the dog had already been adopted but that they would keep me in mind for similar dogs (I had mentioned my allergy issue).  I didn’t take too much from this, but was happy to have actually made contact with someone in the rescue world.  And then maybe a week or two later, I get an email from the organization (which it is clear by this point is just one woman) asking if I am interested in a dog very similar to the one I asked about, but this one was a girl.  Well!  I said not only was I interested, I preferred a girl and it sounded great!  The next bit is a whirlwind.  The woman calls me and says she is north of Richmond, coming through town any minute on her way to Virginia Beach, and would I like to take the dog for a week and foster her?  Um, yeah!  So, I hastily leave work, run down the street to catch my bus, lose one of my favorite mittens, get a call from my woman on my cell asking for directions, call Ben at work and ask him if someone there can give her directions (still relatively new to town and not familiar with the highways yet), call her back, rush into our apartment, straighten up, call my mom, see van pull onto our street, rush outside, van pulls over, puppies are barking and howling and yipping and crying, woman gets out of van, comes over to me and introduces herself.  Then she opens the back of the van.  There are crates of dogs piled high and deep.  Apparently, this woman gets calls from kill-shelters all over Virginia and just drives around and picks up dogs that are set to be executed.  That day she had gotten a call from a fellow at a shelter north of Richmond saying that he had a super sweet dog there but if no one adopted her by today, she would be put down.  As she’s telling me this, we’re unloading crate upon crate of dog, which is no easy task as dogs are mobile creatures.  We come to a crate with the only dog in the bunch that is not making a noise and she tells me this is my dog.  Well, this was no wheaten terrier.  This dog looked like the weirdest, mangiest dog that I had ever seen.  Possibly a burn victim.  She had black and grey stringy fur and was not at all cuddly.  I was terrified.  But, after all this production, I tried so hard not to let it show.  “Oh, well, hello, isn’t she something?”  We put the other dogs back and took this dog out of her crate.  Unfortunately, she had gone to the bathroom in the crate, which was too small for her, and was now covered in ick.  Without making much noise or much tail wagging, she jumped up on me.  She wanted to look me in the eyes, I thought.  Nice trick.  Soon, Ben came walking down the street on his way home from work.  I brought the dog up to him and I believe he said, “What is that?”  The woman couldn’t have been more delighted, telling us we were made for this dog.  She left, saying she would call back in a week to arrange for the dog to be spayed and to ask us how it was going.  We never saw her again.

We went inside our apartment.  Ben was not happy.  At first he told me I needed to call the woman back immediately and tell her we are not keeping this dog.  I couldn’t do that, I said.  I didn’t want the dog, either, but I was too embarrassed to give her back after ten minutes.  We agreed to keep her for one week and then we would say she wasn’t working out and we would be onto our search for our real dog.  I went to the grocery store to get some dog food and Ben (kindly) gave her a bath.  After her bath, she perked up and ran wild around the house shedding everywhere.  Yes, that’s right, shedding.  Anyway, over the course of the next week, I don’t think she was alone in the house once.  We were both scared of that.  Though she seemed trained, we didn’t really trust her.  We didn’t want her on the bed, for example, because she was scary.  I remember saying, “I can’t have a dog that I’m scared to have on my bed.  What would be the point of that?”  Our schedules worked out so that when Ben was at work, I could be with the dog and vice versa.  The adoption woman called us once to say that the dog’s spaying appointment had been moved, but that was about the last we heard from her.  The exception being some strange email I got from her instructing me to tell the dog that her “auntie” missed her.  After about a week of talking about how we were not going to keep the dog, getting the blessing from our friends and family that it was ok not to keep the dog, we looked at each other and reluctantly said, “We’re keeping her, aren’t we?”  And then we named her Gracie.

Like many Madisonians — though interestingly enough, no one I know — I take the bus to work in the morning and home in the early evening. From time to time, I drive, but most days, I bus. I do this for three main reasons: (1) it’s far cheaper than driving; (2) it’s far less sweaty than biking; and (3) I get to read. It’s where most of my reading gets done. Anyway, usually the bus experience is uneventful. Sometimes it’s annoying — like when the guy called me rude when I told him I was getting off at the same stop as he so he could stop trying to walk over me. Sometimes it’s super cute — like when these six or so kids get on with this guy who clearly runs his own day care and they sing The Wheels on the Bus or when the Preschool of the Arts kids are on and ask each other if they have vaginas. Sometimes it’s scary — like when my bus plowed into an oncoming car the other day, essentially totaling the car. Mostly, though, it’s pretty much a way to get from one place to another and enjoy ten pages or so of whatever book I’m reading. Today was a little different.

This morning, a fellow rider got on at the same stop as I and he had some trouble paying his fare. I thought he was just searching for his bus pass in his wallet, but it turns out he was probably more likely searching for words. I sat down — next to a totally disinterested, denim-clad butt — and watched as the scene played out. The bus driver kept telling the guy — who was probably mid to late 30s, very dark-skinned, and carrying a laptop-like bag and a lunch box-y thing — that the fare was $1.50 and that the bus couldn’t make change. The bus driver was driving the route at this point and even making other stops. The driver told the guy that it was ok this time, he could ride for a dollar, but the next time the fare would be $1.50. The guy clearly didn’t get what he was saying and continued to stand there, look like he needed help and hold on to his second dollar. Finally, the driver told him to sit down and the guy did. He sat down in the closest seat, which happened to be next to a middle aged woman with blonde hair who was traveling with several different sized bags. I thought it looked a little uncomfortable because they both had so much gear between them, but I was wrong. The woman took out her wallet — more of a South American-sewn pouch-type thing sold in the many stores that sell such things on State — and showed him two quarters and explained that this is what he needed. She then proceeded to take his dollar and give him four quarters. She asked him if he spoke English, and he said a little, but his face said he was clearly not comfortable with the language. They immediately began speaking French to one another. Yes, that’s right: French. Now, Madison may be a smallish town, but we do have a pretty major university in our midst, so this is certainly not the first time my humble self has heard a non-English tongue on my bus. In addition to the ubiquitous Spanish, I’ve heard several Asian languages bandied about and others I couldn’t tell you what they were. But this was the first time I have ever heard two strangers meeting on the near west side of Madison on a bus and finding that it would be best if they were to converse in French. I couldn’t hear much because of the noise of the bus, but I could hear that the woman was clearly fluent, she spoke seamlessly. And I could see that the man seemed not at all surprised by this — like, of course Wisconsinites all speak French — and asked her several questions. They made jokes that made their faces light up and when it came time to get off the bus, they got off together to head to the Union to try to get him a bus pass (I provided them with the info that he could probably buy one there — hope I didn’t mislead). While they were getting off, a young woman came up who must have heard some of what was going on and offered to take him to the union. They all three went off together, laughing as they walked down the street.

It was really kinda something.

Facebook is many things. One of them is a really neat vehicle to reconnect with old friends. Friends that you knew were still out there, and suspected were doing really neat things, but with whom you really hadn’t had any contact since you maybe ran into them at Four Star during one of your college years.

One such friend is a gal named Kayt, who was pretty much my best grade school friend. Kayt, like me, had a lawyer for a parent, was an only child, and had to attend what was called after-school day care because our parents worked till the shocking hour of five. When we were in about fourth grade, we really started rebelling against this day care idea and just went home. Often together — probably for two reasons: (1) it was more fun that way; and (2) it was easier to convince our folks that we were safe if we were together. Well, Kayt is now in Japan and has a really neat blog of her own. She’s clearly become a master storyteller and still has the brains and wit that make me remember the way she was back in the day. She was always so much more advanced than I was in the ways of the world (as is clear from some of the stories she tells on her blog). For example, I remember shortly after I had gotten braces (so I was about 11), she and my mom and I were having dinner at the now-defunct Upstairs Downstairs Deli at Hilldale. My mom got into a converation with folks at a neighboring table (I suspect she knew these people as my mom is not really a start-chatting-with-strangers person) about things like, well, my braces. There must have been some discussion — jovial, I’m sure — on how much the damn things cost and what’s a parent to do. Without missing a beat (in my head anyway), Kayt said, “Yeah, and the next thing you know, she’ll be needing dentures.” Laughter all around! What a hit! Except for with me because I had no idea what dentures were. I felt like a total idiot.  That was Kayt: funnier and wittier and brighter than I. She had a self-confidence I admire to this day.

What I also admire is her ability to tell a story.  As is evident here and here and here. And pretty much everywhere else on her blog.