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“That is not a dog. Mr. Buggles is a dog. That is a beast! How could you bring that thing here?”

“Gail, he’s nice. I don’t think he’d hurt anyone.”

“You don’t think? You don’t think? You bring a lethal weapon- ”

“He’s a dog!”

“Mr. Buggles is a dog! That is a-”

“Mr. Buggles is a leash-trained rat!”

“Ah!” Gail clapped her hand to her cheek like I’d just slapped her. “You take that back, Savannah! You take that back!”

“Take it back? Are you twelve?” Joe was still lying at my feet. “Come on, Joe. Let’s go.” I walked back into the house, with Joe following me. I slammed the door loudly behind us.

Gail spent the rest of the afternoon crying in her kitchen, and I was pretty sure it was for my benefit. After I finished scrubbing the carpet in the upstairs hallway, opened every window in the condo even though it was freezing out, and lit every candle I owned to try to kill the smell, I dragged my comforter downstairs and spent the afternoon bundled up on the couch with Joe, watching TV with the volume up high enough to drown out Gail. My upper thigh was sporting the beginnings of a brutal bruise, so I sat on an ice pack.

Joe barked anytime there was a dog, doorbell, or car horn on the TV screen, but the rest of the time, he lay there with his front paws on my lap, nudging my hand whenever I stopped scratching behind his ears. And if I talked to him, he did a great job of pretending he was interested, tipping his head from one side to the other, or making his ears stand up at full attention.

We got up every hour on the hour to go outside, just in case. I wasn’t taking any more chances.

T
he next day, Joe must have been good and rested, because after breakfast he ran around the condo at warp speed. He ran up the stairs, into the bedroom, jumped on the bed, jumped off the bed, sped down the stairs and into the kitchen, then turned on a dime and raced into the living room to jump on the couch. Then he pushed some of the cushions off the couch with his nose like he was throwing a temper tantrum, before tearing back up the stairs again to start the cycle all over again.

I didn’t know what to do. I sat at the kitchen table, holding my mug of coffee protectively and watching in awe. When he raced by, he was a blur of black fur. He went through the entire cycle six or seven times before stopping in the kitchen. He was panting so hard I thought his heart might explode. He gave his empty water dish a good smack, and looked at me while it wobbled around on the floor, as if to say, “I demand water, damnit!”

“What, do you think you have a maid or something?” I asked, but I filled his water bowl anyway.

He spent the next few hours passed out in my office while I pulled my hair out over an arts-funding grant I was working on. I had only half the information the client promised and the deadline was fast approaching. I had this sneaking suspicion that if the grant didn’t get turned in, my client wasn’t going to pay for the work I’d done, even if it was their fault. With six thousand dollars’ worth of dog sprawled out on his side on the floor, snoring, I really couldn’t afford to work for free. After two hours of doing the best I could with the information I had to work with, I’d had enough and went online to translate the yellow paper of commands. Apparently, the command for
no
was
fuj
, which was pronounced “phooey.” Great, I thought, as if it’s not weird enough to walk around talking to your dog in a language you don’t even speak, now I could sound like I was ninety years old. I might as well start saying things like “drat,” “gosh darn it,” and “golly gee willikers” too.

There were twenty-seven commands. The obvious useful commands came first: sit, stay, heel, bring, drop it, lie down. But then there were weird commands, things like “find narcotics” and “search the building.” It was hard to think of Joe as the kind of dog who could sweep a building and bring down drug dealers, when he was busy drooling all over the carpet.

The writing on the back of the command sheet turned out to be a recipe for dog food made from boiled chicken, rice, celery, carrots, and olive oil. One of the dog books I’d seen at the library had a whole chapter about home-cooked dog food, and was adamant that feeding dogs people food was the best way to keep your dog healthy. I hadn’t paid much attention to the book at the time, and I’d been feeding Joe fancy kibble that claimed to have “the perfect mix of proteins and antioxidants.” But the recipe seemed simple enough. If that was what he was used to eating, it didn’t seem fair to make him eat kibble. And I didn’t have much food for me in the house either. Chicken, rice, and some veggies would be a major improvement on my steady diet of microwave meals and cereal.

I had to put Joe in his crate so I could go to Wegmans to get supplies. “Poy-ed Sem,” I told him, using the command for “Go inside,” as I held open the door to the crate.

He stretched his neck and barked, his nose pointed at me, and his lips were tight around his mouth. It was a grumbling bark, like a complaint.

“Go,” I said, pointing to the crate. “Poy-ed Sem.” I felt like I was telling a teenager to go to his room.

He gave me a mournful look, then walked slowly into the crate like he was hoping I’d change my mind. I didn’t, and he collapsed with a thud inside the crate.

“Good boy,” I said, as I closed the door to the crate. He sighed heavily. I’d never realized how expressive dogs could be.

Wegmans wasn’t crowded. I’d timed my trip perfectly: after the lunch rush and before the crush of people picking up dinner after work. It didn’t take me long to round up all the ingredients and get through the checkout line. I couldn’t have been gone for much more than half an hour.

When I got home, Joe met me at the door to the garage, wagging his tail and giving me a loud “hello” bark. At first I thought it was nice that he was greeting me at the door. It had been a long time since I’d had anyone to come home to. Then I remembered that I’d crated him.

“Oh no oh no oh no! What did you do?” I yelled, running upstairs to see how he’d gotten out of his crate. Joe followed as I walked down the hall and into the bedroom.

There was a huge hole in the corner of the crate at the air vents. Chewed bits of plastic were strewn around the room. Joe jumped around, picking up a big piece of plastic. He flung it across the room and then pounced on it. Then he brought it over to me, wagging his tail like it was a fun new game he’d just invented.

“You suck,” I told him, bending down to pick up the pieces. The rough edges stuck in the carpet. I couldn’t just sweep them into a pile with my hands, and my crappy old vacuum didn’t get them all either, so I had to get down on my hands and knees to pick the little shards of plastic out of the carpet one by one. I tried to rationalize Joe’s actions to get myself to calm down. I guess if I’d been shipped like cargo in an airplane, I wouldn’t want to get back in my crate again either. But, as I was picking the plastic pieces out of the carpet, I noticed there were splintered pieces of wood in the carpet too. The dresser was fine, so was the TV stand. Then I saw it. Joe had chewed one of the legs of my bed like it was a big fat stick. There were big ugly teeth marks in the dark wood.

“Phooey,” I yelled, even though I knew from my reading that it was after the fact and it wouldn’t mean anything to him. I was frustrated that I didn’t have a way to make him understand. Tears welled up in my eyes.

That bed was the only piece of honest-to-goodness, non-hand- me-down, non-secondhand, bought-from-a-furniture-store piece of furniture I owned. It was one of the few things I really took care of. I bought a special beeswax polish. I filled the little nicks and scratches. I did everything I could to keep it looking brand- new.

“Phooey!” I yelled. “Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!”

Joe dropped to his belly and pressed his chin to the floor. His ears went back against his head, and he whined.

I lay down on my back on the floor and touched the teeth marks in the bed. They were deep. Not so bad that the bed would collapse, but bad enough that no amount of polishing or wood filler would repair it. I could feel tears streaming down the sides of my face.

My mom ordered the bed for me when I moved into an off-campus apartment senior year of college. It was a total surprise. “Sorry I couldn’t be there to help you move in,” she said, when I called after the deliverymen left, “but I thought you needed something to mark your independence- your first apartment-a grown-up bed.”

“It’s not just my apartment.” I’d moved in with two other girls from my department. It was a crappy apartment with stairs that creaked, and a perpetual keg party in the unit next door. “It’s not that much independence,” I’d said, worrying about what it cost. My mom’s car was on its last legs, and I knew she should be saving for a new one.

“You can’t sleep on a futon forever,” she said.

It turned out to be the beginning of my independence. When I moved out of that apartment, I had to hire movers. Unlike all the other kids who discarded what didn’t fit in the back of Mom and Dad’s SUV, I had a big, heavy wood- framed bed and no one to help me move it. When I moved out of that apartment, I didn’t have a mom anymore.

Practicality was never my mother’s strong suit, but I think, maybe, she’d been trying to do what she could to get me settled in life. To make sure I was okay. To mark the milestones she could, because she wasn’t going to be there for all the rest. I liked to think the bed was a “just because” kind of present, but I think it was much heavier than that. She probably already knew about the cancer when she bought it.

I could have asked Diane exactly when my mother found out she was dying. But maybe that was part of why I’d pushed Diane away. Sometimes, it’s easier not to have the answers. Knowing wouldn’t change anything. Either way, my mom had been trying to do something nice for me. Either way, Joe had just ruined my mother’s gift. My mother was still dead, Peter was still married to Janie, and Diane was still done with me.

I lay there and watched my stomach shake, choking back sobs. And when I couldn’t hold them back, it turned into that awful wailing, primal kind of cry that has a life of its own. I’d been doing everything I could to keep from getting that deep. I worked too much. I drank too much. I could let myself fall apart sometimes when I was good and numb, but it was scary, lying there, crying with every single part of my being.

Joe got up and plopped down again next to me. He let out a big sigh. I could feel his sides press into mine with every breath he took. He lifted his head and rested it on my chest. I wrapped my arms around his neck and cried that horrible cry, and it was much less scary because I wasn’t alone.

T
he next morning, Joe started up with the crazy running around again. His eyes looked wild as he ran past me, knocking a stack of junk mail off the coffee table as he went. I had no idea what was wrong with Joe, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I went up to my office, turned on my computer, and did a search to see if there was anything I could do to stop Joe from going crazy all the time, but every site I read said to consult a vet before trying to treat any major behavioral problem, to rule out medical causes.

I grabbed the phone book and flipped through two pages of vet listings until I saw an ad for a Dr. Alexander Brandt. The ad had a sketch of a German Shepherd and said “Specializing in Large Dogs.”

I dialed the number. Since it was Saturday, I wasn’t actually expecting them to be open, but I figured I’d leave a message and get the ball rolling.

“Dr. Brandt’s office, Mindy speaking.” Her voice sounded like rainbows.

I told her I needed to make an appointment for my dog.

“Is he a patient here?” she asked.

“I just got him on Thursday,” I said, warily. I really didn’t want to tell her anything about how I got Joe. Luckily, she didn’t ask.

“I have a cancellation this morning at eleven,” she said. She was chewing gum. “Otherwise, looks like we can’t get you in until December. Is the twelfth okay?”

“I can come in today,” I said, despite the fact it was already ten thirty, and I was still in my pajamas.

“Okeydokey,” she chirped. “See you soon!”

I hung up the phone and ran upstairs. By the time I showered and put on some mascara, I was already running late. I didn’t even have time to brush my teeth. I threw on some jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, and grabbed a pack of Doublemint gum off my desk. My hair made the back of my shirt damp.

When Joe got wind of the fact that we were going for a ride in the car, he acted like a kid at the gates of Disney World, jumping up and down, whining like crazy. I wished I could get that excited about riding in the car. Hell, I wished I could get that excited about anything.

Joe jumped in the car the second I opened the door. Then he sat in the driver’s seat and licked the steering wheel. “Backseat,” I told him. He jumped to the backseat immediately. There were some things he just seemed to understand naturally, like when he followed me into the bathroom and I didn’t want company, I said, “Can I have a moment?” and he backed his way out so I could shut the door. There was no way he could have been trained to do that. I couldn’t understand why sometimes he instinctively knew how to behave, but then he didn’t know not to chew on my bed or eat his way out of his crate.

Joe bounced around on the backseat, checking out the view from every window. He barked at people waiting at the bus stop or crossing the street at stoplights.

When we got to the vet, I put Joe’s puppy collar-leash combo on him. It looked like I didn’t know what was supposed to go where. I wish I’d thought to buy him a real collar.

Dr. Brandt’s waiting room was bright and smelled like pee. There was a huge fish tank in the middle of the floor and a lizard tank built into the reception desk. I watched the lizard eat lettuce while I waited for the woman sitting behind the counter to hang up the phone.