Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul (19 page)

In the months afterwards, when I crossed the road to check our mailbox, I would sometimes look up the hill and see an animal silhouetted against the sky. A wolflike head, pricked-up ears.
A coyote? A fox?
It seemed too short-legged. It would gaze down the hill at me, as if mulling over what to do. Then it would turn and vanish back up the road. Only later did I realize it was a lonesome corgi, mustering the gumption to make another run for it.

On a morning when red maple leaves lay on the lawn, Joyce glanced up from her desk. Through her office’s sliding glass door, Nosmo grinned at her.

That day marked a change. Afterwards, no matter how his owners tried to confine him, several mornings a week Nosmo played Russian roulette with the road’s rushing chromium bumpers and showed up on our deck. He would stare in the glass door of Joyce’s office, grinning. Let in, he would roll belly up, his stubby legs waving in the air, mighty pleased with himself.

One of us would reach for the telephone. But we always found ourselves speaking to our neighbors’ answering machine. Since they worked, Nosmo was alone all day.

“If we don’t do something, he’s going to keep running down the road and he’ll be killed,” Joyce said.

“What can we do?” I said. “He’s not our dog.”

Whenever Nosmo appeared at our door, we would drive him home. He hopped into the car eagerly, ready for an adventure. But we would only imprison him in his house’s breezeway to wait for his owners to return. He would watch our receding car through the breezeway’s glass door, stricken. He had chosen us. We had turned him away. Looking back as we drove off, Joyce looked as stricken as Nosmo.

One day she made an announcement: “From now on, when Nosmo escapes and comes down, he stays with us until somebody is home at his house.”

So, every few days, Nosmo would show up. We would take him in until evening, when his owners returned. On his initial visits, he had shot us searching looks before venturing into a different room, unsure about the local regulations. Now he had the air of a nabob who had bought the place . . . and paid cash.

One evening Nosmo’s owners called us. They had to go away for two weeks. They asked, “Could you take Nosmo while we are gone?”

A few nights after Nosmo began his visit, I found Joyce looking worriedly at our foster dog as he slept on the rug.

“Do you think Nosmo looks right?” she asked. “He doesn’t chase sticks any more.”

It was true. He no longer raced back clenching a thrown stick in his teeth, eyes flashing, daring anyone to wrestle for his prize. Now when Joyce tossed a stick, he just watched, wistfully. Then he would sit dully.

“We have to take him to the vet,” Joyce announced.

After the examination, the veterinarian told us that Nosmo’s condition was serious. He had a herniated colon. He had already had one operation for this condition. Now he needed another operation, and it was no sure thing. But without surgery, he would slowly die.

When Nosmo’s owners returned, Joyce gave them the news. A few days later, she called them again to hear what they had decided. When she put the telephone down, she looked shaken.

“They’re afraid the operation is useless, and that they may have to have him put to sleep,” she told me.

Joyce slumped at the kitchen table, her chin resting on her hands. Her eyes welled with tears. Without the operation, Nosmo had little hope. And even with the surgery, Nosmo would always need extra attention. Since his family worked all day and he was alone . . .

“What more could you do?” I asked. “You’ve been Nosmo’s guardian angel. Joyce, he’s not our dog,” I said finally.

For a moment Joyce stared out the window at the end-of-summer fields, the grasses already turning gold and tan. And then she recited a line of verse, by Robert Frost. It was one of our favorites: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

After a moment, Joyce added her own line. “He chose us,” she said.

Joyce called Nosmo’s owners with an offer: “Let us do day care—we’ll be his nurses.”

After his successful operation, Nosmo became a dog with two homes. En route to work each morning, one of his owners dropped him off at our house. Every evening, on our way into town, we returned Nosmo to his owners.

Mornings Joyce took Nosmo for a long therapeutic walk. I would watch them from my office window, the concerned-looking woman, the little dog, wandering toward the meadow or into the pine woods across the waterfall.

“It’s beautiful here—I’d forgotten,” Joyce told me one day. “Now that I’m walking Nosmo, I’m appreciating my own backyard.”

Two years passed. And then Nosmo’s owners changed jobs and moved to a city apartment that allowed no dogs. Our day-care dog officially became our dog, full time.

One month after Nosmo became our dog, Joyce was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, acute leukemia, and abruptly went into the hospital. Every day I brought Nosmo to her window, so she could look out and see him grinning up at her. “My therapy dog,” she called him. When she finally came home, weakened but on the mend, Nosmo was there to greet her. He had no tail, but his entire body wagged with joy.

Joyce was hospitalized again, and then a third time. Each time she returned home, Nosmo greeted her by throwing himself on his back, waving his flipperlike legs in the air and grinning. Joyce could feel her spirits rising. She could almost feel her immune system stepping up. “Nosmo,” she would say, “you are helping me to recover.”

As I write, I am looking out my office window. On the back lawn, Joyce is throwing a stick, Nosmo is barking, running, leaping for the stick. He must secretly feed on TNT, he has so much pep. And Joyce is laughing. She, too, radiates life and energy.

I stand at my window, watching Joyce play with the dog, and I think about guardian angels.

I know they exist, for I have seen one with my own eyes. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen two.

Richard Wolkomir

A Real Charmer

Henry was fourteen years old when he received a gift: a four-foot-long boa constrictor. By the time I arrived on the scene, Henry was seventeen years old and George, the boa, was eight feet long. George was thriving, but Henry was declining.

I still smile when I recall the day the three of us met: It was the day I was interviewed by Henry’s parents for a nurse’s position. Henry had muscular dystrophy and was getting weaker, too needful to be cared for by his folks alone. While the parents studied my résumé, I walked into Henry’s room, knelt down and looked this carrot-topped boy in the eye. Taking note of his thin, twisted body strapped in the wheelchair, I said, “Hi, kid. Need some help, do you?”

Intelligence and mischief looked back merrily at me. Henry had concocted a test for me: a kind of baptism by fire. “Yes, I do. How about bringing George over here?”

Unwittingly I replied, “Sure; where is he and what is he?” I looked around the room, expecting to see a cat, a dog, even a stuffed animal. My glance fell on a large, boxlike glass structure across the room.

“George is my boa,” Henry smirked. “Would you get him for me, please?”

A snake! I was an excellent nurse, in high demand. I knew that I could walk out of there anytime before I actually accepted the job. Considering the situation, I looked at Henry.
Boy, this kid is cute,
I thought. I glanced around his room. Piles of automotive magazines, books, notepads and pencils littered the folding table that served as Henry’s desk. Race car posters and photos of football heroes hung on the walls. Here was a real boy, a tiny teenager, shriveled with disease, yet with humor intact and a flair for the bizarre. Always a sucker for a good-looking face and ready for a challenge, I knew I wanted the job.

“So, uh, how do I pick him up?” I asked, looking into the glass-walled cage containing what appeared to be a gigantic, coiled rope big enough to anchor the
Titanic.

Henry chuckled. “Very carefully. Grasp him gently behind his head with one hand and support his body with your other.”

“That’s it? That’s the extent of your instructions?” I asked. I opened the hinged lid and felt the cold reptile with my trembling fingers. The snake moved ever so slightly at the touch.
I can do this,
I thought. I waited a moment for a surge of courage. But it didn’t come. One deep breath, and I took the plunge, grasping the enormous George and lifting him slowly out of his cage. Before I completed the lift, several feet of the beast swiftly wrapped tightly around my arm. “I can do this,” I repeated over and over to myself.

Henry watched silently and intently as I crossed the room, bearing the heavy length of pure muscle.

“What do you want me to do with him?” I asked.

Henry said, “Just put his head and upper body on my lap. George enjoys being petted.”

That was my introduction to George. As the months went by, it was apparent that George was a great—if not the sole—motivator in Henry’s life.

It was difficult for Henry when we took a rare excursion in public to eat at McDonald’s or visit the bookstore. People stared rudely as Henry laboriously ate his meal or tried to flip through the books with three fingers, the only appendages still responsive to his commands.

But each week, we went to the pet store to buy food for George. After Henry was meticulously bathed, groomed and coiffed, I’d carefully place him in his wheelchair and push him out to my car. Next, after much maneuvering, I’d tenderly strap and pillow him into the passenger seat, fold up his chair and fit it into the trunk. This all took about two hours; two grueling hours for me, two painful hours for Henry as we both struggled not to hurt his delicate body—an impossible task. What a testament to Henry’s devotion to his gigantic pet.

One time George turned up missing. Henry’s uncle had visited over the weekend and left the top of George’s cage open. His parents and I looked everywhere in the elegant yet spartan home, streamlined for easy mobility for Henry’s wheelchair.
There is nowhere for
George to hide,
we thought. But we couldn’t locate the snake anywhere.

A month went by. Henry was surprisingly calm, convinced that George would reappear in due time. I felt bad for Henry, but I couldn’t honestly say I missed George in the least.

I arrived early one morning and went in to awaken Henry. There was George, stretched almost full-length beside Henry as they both slept. I was shocked by my own reaction, but I found the sight one of the most charming I have ever seen. George had finally won me over!

Over the following months, Henry continued to deteriorate, his body coiling tighter, his breathing becoming more labored. Yet he maintained the use of those three fingers, doing his school work and spending hours stroking George. Three frail fingers determinedly kept the loving connection of boy and boa—even to the last day.

On that final day, Henry wrote me a note. I found an envelope with my name on it on his desk. I was touched, as I had grown to care deeply for the valiant boy. He started the note by thanking me for helping him so much with George and, acknowledging my reluctant fondness for the snake, said he knew he could count on me to care for George now that he was gone. I panicked for a moment until I noticed his P.S. Under a smiley face, Henry wrote that I didn’t really have to worry—the U.P.S. man had agreed to take George.

Oh, Henry
, I thought,
you’re still teasing me.
But I did make a point of stroking George fondly one last time before I left.

Lynne Layton Zielinski

Socks

When I was about six or seven, I had a little mutt puppy named Socks. Socks and I were inseparable buddies for the half year he was with me. He slept at the foot of my bed. The last thing I felt at night and the first thing I felt again in the morning was his warm, wiggly form. I loved him with a love that has dimmed little as the years have passed.

One day, Socks turned up missing. A neighborhood rumor circulated about someone seen coaxing him into a car, but nothing could ever be proved.

Socks stayed missing, and I cried myself to sleep for many nights. If you’ve never lost a dog, then you don’t know the feeling, but believe me, it only slightly diminishes with time. My parents tried everything to get me to brighten up, with no apparent luck. Maturity and years healed the wound so that it was no longer visible, but it remained inside me.

One day, many years later, my feelings resurfaced. My family and I were visiting my parents at their wooded acreage in northern Michigan when our tagalong family mongrel, Buckshot, turned up missing.

Old Buck was a pretty good hound. He resembled a big, lovable bear cub more than he did a proper dog, and this day he decided to see what was on the other side of the mountain.

His disappearance hit my seven-year-old son, Chris, especially hard, since Chris figured that Buck was his personal property. The other kids were fond of the dog too, but not like Chris.

Chris was the archetypal freckle-faced little guy with missing teeth and chubby cheeks. He had the knack of looking sad and pitiful even when he was happy. When he was broken-hearted, the angels held their breath.

Chris worried that his pal was gone forever, and looking at my son, I could feel the years peel away. I saw myself and Socks all over again. The old pain came back.