Menagerie: Just between us species.
On a hot summer evening that smells of hay and feels like Vaseline, three middle-aged women from a small Ohio humane society are waiting in a van parked off a highway, near an apartment complex. It’s an ambush. Helen and I ride in front while Sue, a retired humane agent, sits in back, a spry guru helping on this tough case. Sue is the kind of person who stands in the road directing traffic away from injured animals, is opposed to flypaper — cruel to flies! — and treasures a thank-you card from PETA’s national office. Helen is a plump ash-blonde often flushed with feelings. A thumbed copy of the state anti-cruelty code circulates among us, as we strategize how to rescue Sammy, a three-month-old boxer puppy, from his owner, Bruce.
The dog rushed us, slamming into our bodies over and over. He wasn’t attacking. Crazed for motion and contact, he flew at us as if trying to pound our warmth into his bones.
It’s our second visit to Bruce. On our first visit, a week ago, he told us that a child care worker was taking care of his dog during the day, until his wife returned from overseas. But Bruce’s family caseworker — who reported him — says that his wife isn’t coming back. And Beth, his child care worker, wants us to rescue Sammy, who is going insane.
Bruce was supposed to contact the humane society for follow-up. He never called, so we’re here to confiscate his dog. Our legal case is shaky. We really need Bruce to surrender Sammy willingly, because the code will make prosecution hard. Our case rests on the facts that Beth shared with us, but Beth refuses to testify. So we’ll try, on this visit, somehow to get her info into our agent’s report, the only tool we have. Helen wrinkles her nose.
“People want you to, like, do something, but they never want …”
“Yes,” says Sue. “Bring your phone. If he says again that it’s his wife’s dog, call the wife. Start taking pictures, he’ll demand to know what right you have but you go ahead and take those pictures. You’re the Humane Society gathering evidence.”
On our first visit, Helen and I met Bruce at 8 p.m., when he returned from work. A big, buzz-cut young blond with silver earrings, he opened the door snarling at the child behind him: “G’wan! Go in the bedroom and watch TV!” We entered a room chiefly furnished with a black vinyl sofa, and Sammy, crouched in a cage without space for him to stand. Let loose, Sammy rushed us, slamming into our bodies over and over. He wasn’t attacking. Crazed for motion and contact, he flew at us as if trying to pound our warmth into his bones. His paws punched my gut. Wham! My jaw. Wham! Left ovary. Helen and I began raising our bent legs to block him, performing a sort of folk dance in front of Bruce, who told us it was his wife’s dog, a guard dog.
“As you can see,” he smiled. Barking ecstatically, Sammy rammed my leg, clawed a kneecap, and rediscovered Helen in one sprawling leap. So many friends, so little time. Then he crawled, rubbed, and danced all over Bruce, pushing him down into the squashy sofa. Helen began talking seriously, while I got distracted by a yellow blanket creeping across the carpet at my feet.
“Ooh!” I gasped. “Is that a snake?” A little hand patted my sneaker, and a pale, dark-eyed kid revealed himself. Did I want to see him do karate? His name was Joey. Did I want to touch his bubble gum toy? Joey’s mother had left months ago, and he had an inexhaustible repertoire. Did I want his doughnut? Helen clipped a leash onto Sammy’s collar and wrangled the dog, acrobatics and all, into the kitchen. She stood on his leash, giving him two feet of slack. Finally he stood still: a gorgeous, gorgeous puppy, bronze velveteen, black eyes alive with questions, charmingly white-tipped paws. An undershot jaw lent a goofy touch to his expression as he moseyed around Helen’s ankles, at a loss for what to do with himself. Helen checked his education:
“Sammy! Sit.” Sammy licked the linoleum. And Helen, on whom my sideshow with Joey had not been lost, pulled in her chin. “Sammy has got to be trained. Because he’s going to hurt someone, and that will be trouble for you, or he’ll hurt your little boy and then they’ll put him down. And that’s so unfair. Training – look, you work long hours? You don’t have the time. Nobody’s blaming you. Nobody could do this. If you came to the shelter looking for a dog, I tell you frankly, I would not recommend this dog for you. You’re overwhelmed here. Why don’t you let us take him off your hands?”
“We have hot dogs!” screamed Joey, swooping to the toaster oven and waving his arms. “Look! They’re here! They burned!”
“They could be dog treats,” Helen suggested.
“‘Dog treats,’” Bruce snorted. He scrounged in a kitchen cupboard, and showed us a bottle.
“I got all the dog stuff, I got this shampoo. See, expensive stuff — but he sheds, man, he sheds. Is this the right shampoo?”
“Dogs shed,” replied Helen, out of patience. Crossing his arms, Bruce announced that he was not going to part with the dog. It was his wife’s; she’d be devastated. Joey was hugging my waist. Wistfully, he kept up his siege.
“Why won’t you look at me? Why won’t you just look?” I looked at Joey, and my endocrine system yearned to feed him vegetables. Neglect, the most common form of animal cruelty, is always cross-species; that’s why most humane agents are mandated to check for child abuse. Meanwhile, since Bruce planned to keep Sammy, Helen gave him a week to enroll the dog in obedience classes, and call the human society with the name of the trainer.
“I can fly!” Joey zoomed past and leapt facedown into the sofa.
“Don’t,” said his father.
A week later, here we are again at 8. A pickup pulls into the lot, with two Kawasaki bikes in back, and Bruce gets out.
“Nice bikes,” Sue remarks, hinting at how much dog-training money and time is in those bikes. “Don’t forget the poop sample, it says everything.”
State law does not protect animals’ mental health. Access to water, however, is prosecutable. It’s all we have, but a good lawyer could make it vanish like morning dew.
Helen and I jump from the van and as we approach, Helen calls, “Nice bikes!” Bruce, annoyed to see us, waxes indignant, but Helen rolls both eyes and one hip, and orders him to bring his dog outside. Not looking at us, Bruce fetches Sammy; he clips his leash to a stake in the backyard grass, and, as the puppy goes ballistic, Helen tells me (lucky me!) to hold him, so she can check for pressure sores. I kneel among the mosquitoes and hug what feels like boxing gloves in my face, like flying nails. Sammy is the equal and opposite reaction to the force of neglect. Helen cries,
“What’s this?” We flip Sammy on his back, and see beneath his collar a small box on a black band. “A shock collar?” Helen’s voice skips an octave and she stares up at Bruce. “Why does he have a shock collar on?”
“It’s a bark collar. The neighbors complain he barks, right? I’m training him. I got a training video.” Helen gives me a look of perfect wrath. I don’t think she sees me at all. She sees a point in space where she can beam her understanding of cheap videos that go with shock collars on puppies abominably confined.
“That’s not ‘training,’ you’re just giving him electric shocks. You don’t have the time. Give him to us and we’ll find him a home.”
“I can’t — he’s my wife’s,” Bruce smirks.
“You said you’d talk to her about it.”
“She wasn’t home.” He shrugs, and Helen shrugs.
“O.K.,” she says, “Fine. Let’s call her again.” As Sue predicted, Bruce is thrown but sulkily provides the number. We smell victory. In the dusty twilight, red and white lights swooshing by on the highway, Helen, crisply and sweetly, explains to some Dubliner awakened at 2:30 a.m. that she is from a no-kill shelter, highly reputable, check us out on the web … But Bruce’s wife isn’t home. It’s only her boyfriend. Our gambit’s failed.
By now, Beth, the child care worker, has arrived, opening the glass backdoor and turning on the yellow light over the patio steps, where Bruce sits and argues. Helen is silhouetted against the mustard steps.
“You cannot use anything, anything, that my caseworker says about me. That’s conflict of interest!”
“She’s a citizen,” Helen retorts. “Any citizen can report abuse. And a family caseworker is bound, by policy, to report any suspicion of animal abuse! I am,” she says, drawing herself up, “a sworn Humane Society agent, and I’m bound to report any suspicion I have of child abuse!” Now his head hangs. That’s got him: the agencies working together, the pincer movement. If only he doesn’t realize we’re bluffing. Legally, there is nothing against isolating Sammy in a hot cage, without standing room, for 10 hours a day, with electric shocks every time he utters a sound. State law does not protect animals’ mental health. Access to water, however, is prosecutable. It’s all we have, but a good lawyer could make it vanish like morning dew.
Helen presses her advantage.
“And we have reason to believe that this dog isn’t getting water. That’s illegal!”
“What do you mean no water! She gives him water!” Bruce stamps inside, leaving Beth, a thin teenager biting her lips.
“How many times a day do you give him water?” Helen asks. Beth murmurs a single word, the precious nugget of evidence for us to enter in our agent’s report.
“Occasionally …”
“I’ll need your phone number. We may need to subpoena you.” This is aimed at Bruce, listening through the open door; he emerges and puts a full water bowl on the grass. The air fills with splashy gulping. In seconds, it’s an empty bowl. Helen and I are transfixed.
“Why is he drinking like that?” Helen demands. Bruce slaps down another bowl. Helen crouches and photographs Sammy. No longer explosive, he now looks small and too ribby, replacing, with puppy gusto, his depleted body fluids.
“What’s the next step?” Beth asks, right on cue, as she sits beside Bruce, copying his pose with devious loyalty, bare arms draped over knees.
“The next step is we get a prosecutor and a search warrant, and we file criminal charges. Look,” Helen adds, acid and lucid, “You’re not able to train this dog.”
“I said, I’m training him.”
“When?” She’s splendid, fists crammed into her hips, her body behind each word. “In what 20 minutes? In the morning? I know how kids are at breakfast! At night? I don’t think so! The thing that’s worst is — the place where you’re lying to me is — I know there are times when you wish you didn’t have this dog! Wouldn’t you enjoy coming home and instead of telling Joey, ‘Go watch TV,’ you could spend some time with him?”
There’s a pause, during which Bruce’s face alters, as he sees how the neglect of his dog is tied to the neglect of his son. I feel this shift like the night breeze under my sweaty hair.
“Let’s say I agree. O.K.? Let’s say I agree. It’s got to be my decision. I mean, you come in here and take my dog? He’s part of my life, I mean — why don’t I just give you the keys to my truck?” He smiles now, to appease.
“Your dog is not the same sort of an object as your truck. Your dog is a living being. He has — ” Helen jabs — “needs.” She lets this sink in. “The only reason you wouldn’t do this is, your stubborn pride.”
“Hey,” says Bruce, half-laughing, “now, this isn’t a male-female thing!”
“Did I say anything about that?” Helen says. She looks at me and I look at her. There is a zinged air of discharged tension to everyone in the scene, and it’s almost companionable, because we’re all exhausted. It takes such passionate, annoying people to make changes on board, to command our attention for fellow beings’ needs, during our life’s brief voyage. Neglect is cross-species because time is.
So with sympathy (before taking the poop sample) I tell Bruce that I understand how giving up your dog is hard, but look at it another way, like, you’re a citizen, and we’re the county society …
“We’re a service!” Helen chimes in.
Bruce responds to the idea that he’s being served.
As Helen fills out papers, I imagine both the puppy and the little boy, each begging in his way, “Won’t you look at me?”
Sharona Muir is the author of four books, including, most recently, “Invisible Beasts,” a novel. Her stories have appeared in Granta, Orion and elsewhere. She is a professor of creative writing at Bowling Green State University.