DogTown (22 page)

After his sleepover, Sherry said, “I felt much more comfortable with the idea that he could have an amazing future with the right people, in the right home, and that his anxiety would subside.”

Still, when she returned Knightly to his quarters at Old Friends later that day, he quickly reverted to his old behavior, anxiously pacing and whining and chattering. “I don’t think that we spent enough time together for him to understand that I was coming to get him again and spend more time with him,” Sherry said.

Over the following weeks and months, Knightly went to several different people’s home for sleepovers as part of a program developed by Sherry years earlier. The purpose was to get the dogs out of their runs at Dogtown, out of their comfort zones, to see how they would behave in a normal home setting full of bizarre and alien phenomena like TVs, dishwashers, beds—and sometimes other animals. The “report cards” filled out after Knightly’s sleepovers painted an endearingly mixed picture of him: “So, so sweet,” “quiet, a little whiny and clingy, seemed sad, would not relax if I was doing things, he would be standing right next to me,” “confused and anxious, will be a great pet with time, patience & training,” “wanted to be next to me wherever I was, including snuggling all night long (and even standing next to me as I dried my hair!).” One simply said, “I love him!”

Many of these people mentioned one of Knightly’s most touching, and perhaps anxious, bedroom habits—he loved to burrow down under the covers, so that his head was buried all the way down at the foot of the bed.

During his overnight stays with Sherry Woodard, Knightly reveled in her company and a comfortable spot on the couch.

“I think Knightly’s messages are pretty clear,” Sherry said. “He truly does tell people that he knows what he wants in life. He wants a home, he wants comfortable furniture, he wants people to be near, but overall, I don’t think he’s needy in an unhealthy way. He seems like he might be a healthy guy, underneath an anxious exterior.”

Even so, despite all the sleepovers and kind intentions, Sherry could see that Knightly was not making the sort of progress she felt he could. The “healthy guy” she was convinced lay inside him was still imprisoned by his own bewilderment, grief, and anxiety. And his surroundings at Old Friends didn’t seem to be helping him move forward with his life.

THE SEARCH FOR HOME

Finally, Sherry decided to see if it would be possible to temporarily foster Knightly in her own home, as he seemed the most comfortable in domestic surroundings. Knightly’s task is as difficult for a dog as it is for a human: Distinguished, elderly, and accustomed to a life of privilege, he would need to give up the past and adapt to a whole new living situation that was more crowded than the one he left behind. At Sherry’s house he’d have to share his castle with a gang of other animals who might not consider him top dog, as he’d been in his original home.

But before Sherry attempted to bring him home, she needed to know how the old dog would respond to her menagerie of housemates, and vice versa. If Knightly could not find his place in their world, trying to foster him would be unpleasant—perhaps extremely unpleasant—for everybody.

One day Sherry and Elissa Jones, who also works at Best Friends, took four of Sherry’s five dogs out to a small, grassy park on the property called Angels Landing. (Sherry had one more dog, a mixed-breed named Trainwreck who stayed at home.) There they would introduce them to Knightly one by one on neutral ground. These introductions would determine if fostering was even a possibility for Knightly; if Sherry’s dogs and he did not get along, then he would stay at Old Friends.

Sherry and Elissa carefully orchestrated Knightly’s meet-and-greet with each dog. They tried to keep each of the dogs’ leashes loose, so they were not adding any discomfort to a potentially tense situation. Sherry had the skills to encourage appropriate greetings between the dogs, even though “lots of dogs lack social skills, and in an uncomfortable situation like this, they may not give appropriate greetings, and then they get stressed and anxious and may start fighting.”

Taken together, Sherry’s four dogs were a motley crew of rescues. Norton, a long-haired black-and-brindle mutt, was found when he was just a newborn pup, living in a Dumpster on the Navajo reservation; Sherry began bottle-feeding him before his eyes were even open. (Her intention was to foster him, but sometimes “the heart has its reasons the mind knows not of,” as Pascal said, and Sherry wound up keeping him. He’s now 12 years old.) Chica was a little black dog, mostly Chihuahua, with a graying muzzle, who was rescued from an extremely grim hoarding situation in California. Miles was a fierce little fur ball whose mother, Jenny, was a purebred Chihuahua. Last of all was Shade, a gray, maybe-border-collie-mix with cold golden eyes, who was a former stray found beside the highway.

All of these animals, whom Sherry tended to refer to as “my guys” or “my family,” had their odd behavioral issues. But together they were a unit, and if Knightly could not find a way to be accepted into it, the whole idea of fostering him at Sherry’s house was a no-go.

First up on the dating game was Miles, whose ferocity was out of all proportion to his size. Sherry called him “my little furry ’gator.” Sherry and Elissa gently moved the two dogs together, on leashes, but when they got close enough to make contact, Miles exploded into a fury, or as Sherry described it afterward, “he went into a Jackie Chan doing martial arts all over Knightly’s face, with no contact but a lot of noise and a big display.” Still, a few minutes later, a second meeting went better. This time Knightly sniffed Miles, tail wagging, which Miles tolerated. Then Knightly walked off imperiously and Miles followed, meekly. “You’re doing well, big dog!” Sherry encouraged.

The next dog, Chica, was fearful and tended to snap when frightened, though normally her dog-to-dog interaction was fairly calm. And that’s what happened on this day: The little black dog and the big gray dog sniffed each other’s noses and backsides and seemed content to let one another live.

Next came Norton, who worried Sherry because he had been aggressive toward people and other dogs since he was a puppy. She actually took him in because she was afraid to put him out in public. But he was getting older and had mellowed in his senior years. Knightly came up and sniffed Norton, tail wagging, but Norton appeared to ignore him, walking off stiffly. He looked uncomfortable, perhaps feeling threatened. Still, no fireworks. The introduction went well.

Sherry’s most devious and unpredictable dog was the gray border collie, Shade. Shade’s MO, Sherry explained, was to demonstrate hardly any behavior at all when he was introduced to another dog, “but then I’ll turn my back and hear somebody scream, and that’s when he’s jumped somebody.”

Because Knightly grew happier on sleepovers, Dogtown staff concluded that a home environment would be best for him.

When Knightly approached, Shade went silent. He seemed to be trying to ignore Knightly, refusing to make eye contact. Sherry said this was a bad sign. He lifted his lip just a little, though Sherry didn’t think Knightly even noticed.

“He’s going to completely ignore him right now, but that doesn’t mean he won’t offer up something unpleasant when I’m not looking,” Sherry said.

“Will you try to be good?” she said to Shade. “Huh? Try to be a good boy?”

But Shade’s sneaky golden eyes gave no real clue about what he might be plotting next.

Knightly’s reaction to all these introductions was a little difficult to read. He did not seem overtly anxious when he met each animal. But he was not terribly friendly or outgoing, either. He acted mildly curious but reserved.

Ultimately, Sherry decided to take Knightly home to see if fostering him would work. She felt that might be the best way to get him accustomed to living with other animals, and to help overcome his anxiety. She was still uneasy about it, though.

“At the end of all our introductions, I still have concerns,” she said. “The other dogs are going to need to be supervised. But that won’t be a barrier in being able to offer Knightly a place to call home for now, until we find him the ultimate home.”

But that place to call home did not turn out to be Sherry’s house. Knightly’s presence in the house made the other dogs seem stiff, uncomfortable, on edge. Although there was no overt fighting—at least, none that Sherry saw—none of the dogs, including Knightly, seemed able to relax around each other. Oddly enough, Knightly seemed to get along with the five cats just fine; it was the household’s canine component that gave him trouble.

The only time Sherry saw Knightly completely unwind was when she closed off the rest of the house, including the other dogs, and allowed the old Weimaraner to lay claim to the entire main part of the house. Suddenly Knightly could exhale completely. Suddenly he felt at home. It was as if he had reclaimed his rightful place as monarch of the realm, and he’d sprawl luxuriously on the sofa, awaiting his next repast.

The other dogs hated this, of course. And Sherry did not feel it was fair to them—after all, they were there first. Unable to find a way to keep everybody happy, after a month or two of trying, Sherry walked Knightly back to his enclosure at Old Friends, just across the street from her house.

She did maintain strong hopes for Knightly’s eventual adoption. When she imagined his future, ideal adoptive home, Sherry felt it “would be with someone who has a lot of time to offer him. He would love to be with someone who either didn’t work, or worked from home, and was there most of the time. He could be a retired dog with a retired family, and that would be wonderful for him.”

KNIGHTLY’S NEW HOME

Knightly had a few false starts in his quest for a forever home. A man in Oregon adopted him first, but a change in his personal situation meant he had to return Knightly to Dogtown. Then a woman approached Best Friends about Knightly, but in the end she was unable to adopt him. It was frustrating because everyone knew that Knightly would thrive in a home environment if just given the chance.

But then something wonderful happened. One of the second woman’s dog-loving friends, whose name was Crystal, had seen the old boy’s picture and was interested in adopting him. That’s when Knightly finally got what he had been wishing for so dearly.

Today, Knightly has found his home in Windsor, California, in the idyllic Sonoma wine country. He lives there with Crystal, her husband, a winemaker, and two dogs—a Jack Russell–Chihuahua mix named Minnie and a year-old Labrador retriever named Jack. Knightly’s house has a big backyard and a neighborhood dog park. He adjusted quickly to these grand new digs, as if he’d finally found his way back to the sort of circumstances he was looking for. Although Knightly didn’t spend much time playing with the other dogs—Crystal reported that he was definitely a “people dog,” preferring the company of her and her husband—every night Knightly curled up and slept with Jack.

“Knightly is doing very well!” Crystal reported in a message to Best Friends. “I receive lots of compliments on him, he is a very handsome and well-mannered boy. He looks very happy, his eyes are bright and his coat is healthy…I am so happy to be able to give him a home, he brings much joy!” Knightly had settled in and finally had seemed to relax. It was just as Sherry had predicted: Once Knightly found a home, he would be confident enough to let his true princely self emerge.