In the winter of 1993, I was attending graduate school in Cheney, Washington, a small college town about 30 miles outside Spokane. Eastern Washington University is a modest urban oasis tucked in among fields of winter wheat, a wild bird refuge, and acres of forest. Many students and faculty make a daily commute from the city, so the local economy sustains only basic services: a bank; a post office; a handful of cheap restaurants; two grocery stores at a respectful distance on opposite ends of the main road.
I lived in the ground-floor apartment of a converted ’50s-era house not far from the campus football stadium. On a modest teaching assistant’s salary, I couldn’t afford a car, and the record cold and snowfall that season had resulted in large utility bills that further strained my finances. My desk was strategically positioned to require the use of only a single electric wall heater, and every night, dressed in sweats, socks, and a stocking cap, I huddled beneath a heap of blankets while a layer of ice slicked the tub in the thinly insulated bathroom. My diet consisted mostly of Top Ramen, which I relished for its cheapness as much as for its comforts of hot broth and carbohydrates.
One day in February, as I was making my usual walk between school and home, I noticed a strange dog—some kind of spaniel—nosing in a snowbank at the community park. There were no other people on the street, and I’d already mentally cataloged known dogs in my neighborhood so as not to be surprised during the occasional run or bicycle ride. An unattended spaniel does not inspire the same terror as a loose Rottweiler or pit bull, however, so I continued on until the dog suddenly looked up, caught sight of me, and came loping across the street in a raggedy blur of black and white.
After a brief adrenaline surge, I realized the dog was not going to attack; in fact, its behavior was more like that of an island castaway greeting a rescuer after months of isolation. It bowed and wriggled, dancing around me as its broad muddy feet scuffed a circle in the snow. Its eyes evoked every canine cliché—mourning, pleading, soulful—and instead of merely whimpering, it hummed like a Theremin. I patted its head tentatively with a gloved hand. The dog had no collar, but it didn’t look overly thin, and its coat, though fringed with beads of dirty ice, didn’t suggest a lifetime in the elements. I decided it must be someone’s pet, either lost or intentionally abandoned.
The sun was setting, and I was reluctant to leave the dog to the descending cold. I decided to take it home and call Animal Control, who could at least provide shelter for the night and check missing animal lists for a reported runaway. The dog required no coaxing to follow, and I kept glancing around as we walked, half expecting a frantic owner to drive up and accuse me of dognapping. There was no such intervention, however, and when we reached my apartment I quickly herded the dog down the driveway and back to my door, hoping the upstairs tenant—the landlord’s daughter—wouldn’t catch sight of my impending violation of the “no pets” policy.
I hadn’t considered how to keep the dog under control while I made my phone call. (This was, of course, still the age of wall-mounted phones.) My initial thought was to bring it inside and somehow confine it to the linoleum entryway by the kitchen, where I could at least mop up the inevitable paw prints. I decided against this idea after the dog came in and promptly added a puddle of urine to the cleanup list. Without a leash or even a length of cord to tether the dog to the outside railing, I thought that food might entice him to stay. Keeping one eye on the parking lot where the dog had wandered to explore the trash area, I checked my cupboards and pulled the only meat-containing item I could find: a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Dumped cold into a plastic bowl, this was not particularly appealing to the dog, but it kept him engaged long enough for me to get Animal Control on its way.
After seeing the dog tucked safely into the caged transport compartment of the truck, I casually asked the Animal Control officer what would happen next. She explained that he’d be held for up to a week to see if an owner came to claim him; after that, he’d be available to adopt for maybe 10 more days; and after that, well…. Her voice trailed off, and she gave a weary shrug, as if too tired to conjure another of the many euphemisms she doubtlessly knew for “executed.”
I felt strangely anxious as I watched the truck drive off. Not an hour before, the dog had been free to chase squirrels and caper in the snow; then I had baited him with kind words and soup before surrendering him to canine prison and a possible death sentence. What if no one was looking for him? What if the shelter was already filled with winsome puppies or more popular breeds that would eclipse his chance of being adopted? What if his last two weeks on earth were spent alone and afraid in a concrete kennel?
Over the next week, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dog. I thought of him as I sweated before my Writing 101 students, wishing my leather jacket and combat boots were sufficient armor against self-mortification. I thought of him as I watched my peers go home to boyfriends or the occasional professor in chic Victorian flats in the city. I thought of him as I plinked talentlessly on my guitar while performing angst-filled meditations on the lyrics of cassette-tape inserts. I was exactly where I’d planned to be in my life; it just wasn’t working out the way I’d envisioned. I was lonely and discouraged and suddenly questioning my future, not to mention tired of being poor and cold.
Maybe the dog was a sign, I slowly realized: maybe we were soulmates, two disaffected creatures destined to find each other in the midst of this bleak northwest winter. I imagined coming home to the boundless joys of dog-love; taking walks together and looking perfectly matched in our black and white palettes; sleeping soundly for the first time in months, secure in the knowledge I had canine protection, or at least a reliable barking alarm system. I barely had enough money to care for myself, and my lease clearly specified no animals allowed, but I was convinced of my new mission: I needed to save that dog.
I called the animal shelter the next morning and found that the dog was still there, unclaimed, and that his adoption eligibility period had now begun. As for the lease issue, I’d decided I’d have to get the dog first and then beg forgiveness later, and I’d already prepared a compelling speech, along with a corresponding monetary incentive, to convince my landlord that this dog would be unfailingly quiet and tidy. My friend Leigh Ann, herself a dog owner, had a truck with a covered bed, and she’d volunteered to provide the necessary transportation as well as a leash and other hand-me-down dog supplies. I came prepared with a packet of jerky treats and a proper adoptive name: Telly, after the model of my black and white guitar.
The animal shelter was in a run-down section at the far east end of town, and though I’d never been there before, it was familiar in its cinder-block austerity and self-consciously clean smell. I tried to focus on the delight of my impending pet parenthood instead of the animal sounds that came from behind the doors that branched off the reception area. When I told the woman behind the counter who I was and what I wanted, I thought she’d praise my good-heartedness and tell me what a fine companion I’d picked out. Instead, she looked concerned and paged one of the technicians, who led me back to the kennels.
I’d expected to see Telly looking expectantly through his gate, or perhaps curled into a ball, tail over nose, until he saw me and jumped to his feet in ecstatic recognition. Instead, I found him in some sort of canine trance, pacing circles and figure eights and moaning like the disconsolate ghost of a dog. He stopped for a moment when he noticed us, and I asked to step inside the cage, which was strewn with feces and bits of kibble from his overturned food bowl. Telly sniffed my boots and edged close to my legs, and I couldn’t tell if he was trembling from excitement or agitation.
“There’s something seriously wrong with that dog,” the technician said. “He hasn’t settled down since he got here, and he keeps making that sound. And the mess? Normal dogs won’t do their business anywhere near where they eat, but he goes everywhere. Everywhere.”
“Maybe he’s just scared,” I offered, glancing around at the surrounding pens, where other dogs were crowding like gossipy neighbors watching a next-door emergency.
The technician gave me a skeptical look. “We think he might be retarded.”
Despite being dressed in puppy-print scrubs, she looked solemn and authoritative, and I suddenly felt foolish: How had I allowed myself to think this could possibly work? I was a poor, apartment-dwelling student with no time, space, or resources for a Lassie-caliber dog, let alone a special-needs one. I wasn’t a flannel-clad St. Francis or a grunge-girl Barbara Woodhouse—I was just a naïve do-gooder bearing Snausages, and I was going to have to admit I’d made a terrible mistake. I latched the gate behind me as Telly resumed his whirling. The woman at the front desk assured me it would be all right, this would be for the best, and I nodded as I set the jerky treats on the counter and walked quickly toward the exit.
Outside, Leigh Ann looked surprised as I emerged with the coiled-up leash. I told her the story, trying to make it sound funny and absurd, but I found myself choking back tears, overwhelmed by a sudden, overwhelming sense of disappointment and shame. Leigh Ann gave me an awkward hug before we climbed back into the truck. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” I repeated those words in my head like a mantra as we drove home, looking silently out the window as the pale winter sun flashed white through the blackness of the trees.
