White Trash at Flat Rock

While I plan on posting further installments of White Trash at Flat Rock,  please enjoy this video of Dolly and Bubba turning a $60 road bike tire into trash. Yes, I know the audio needs work, but what can you expect from a cheap camera?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxxNuuFAdMw

Even before I left the shelter I knew it was a done deal. “Anne and a pit bull bitch would make a wonderful match,” my friend Paul happily informed the dog officer. I always used Paul for a reference. You can depend on him to say just the right thing. I called Laurie at the shelter. “Okay, she’s coming with me. Can you call her Dolly until she gets home?” It turns out Dorothy was really too long of a name to call a dog, but Dottie was out of the question. My cousin’s wife was named Dottie. So Dolly the Dog she became and a good thing too, because people could sing “Hello Dolly” to her if they ran out of things to say.

As it turns out the list of rules for a newly adopted pit bull is endless.

1. No heavy duty playing for a few days. She just had her operation.
2. The dog enters the house behind the person.
3. The dog cannot go on the furniture until she earns the privilege.
4. The dog walks beside or behind the person, not in front.
5. Never leave the dog loose in the house.
6. No tug of war.

I did my best. Dolly came home, followed me inside and checked the joint out. Dolly went on walks around the neighborhood. Dolly chewed through three leashes, five dog toys and one chair arm the first week. Dolly chewed through the wiring for the tow hitch in the back of the Jeep the next. At some point she gnawed a bit of molding into oblivion.

Then she learned to sit and to come. She learned to walk on a loose leash on the sidewalks and snowy paths. In just a short time she learned to walk without the leash on the trails. She lost two pounds of pound excess during her first few months home. She met her grandparents and tried to chase their cat. She charmed Cathy and John downstairs into waiting for her to come home so they could give her a cookie. Their cat chased her.

I kept a close eye on things. Dolly never was allowed to play with more than one dog at a time at the shelter and never with another pittie. She became nervous if people loomed up at her out of the dark. That quirk was okay with me. Iignored the fact if I didn’t have to walk the dog each night I wouldn’t be out in the dark in the first place.

One fateful day we went to a different entrance to walk the trails. Several cars were parked at the end of the road near Flat Rock Reservoir but I decided to walk there anyway. There really wasn’t enough time to drive somewhere else that morning. A bit leery, we leashed up and headed out. Immediately we met up with a group of three large dogs and their person. Off leash. Uh-oh.

“It’s okay, let her go,” the woman urged. “Was this a ‘try it, you’ll like it’ tactic, would these big dogs maul my now-slimmed down pittie?” I wondered. If one of those mammoth dogs was injured would there be another “pit bull attacks innocents” story in the local rag? Needless to say I was cautious but didn’t want to cheat Dolly out of any play time.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s lots of us up here. We meet at 10.”

“But I’ve never had her loose with other dogs,” Lucy countered.

A pitiful whine came from down below. The leash was stretched taut and the dog was quivering.

“Alright, if you’re sure.”

Life was never the same.

With this work, it seems I start with something that really happened, I wanted to happen, or I feared would happen. Then I call upon my childhood training as a prank phone call maker and get down and devious.

By staying with a simple chronological narrative and a limited number of characters and settings, hopefully things will remain clear as the work progresses. I’ve had a lot of experience in imagining the worst. If you go far enough with that process the silliness becomes obvious.

A popular excercise for performing musicians racked with nerves at a performance is to imagine everyone in the audience is naked. Think about it. You’d see things you never dreamed of; a formerly well-dressed gentleman sitting there with a big black patch of sharpie marker where the hole in his silk dress sock was, perhaps a lovely woman with wig-head – just on the side where the fake pony tail attaches.

Anyway, imagining can be fun and quite useful.

Kay Dacus has some interesting takes on creativity on her site at http://kayedacus.com/2009/01/27/becoming-a-writer-creativity-inspiration/

So, what’s a white middle-aged woman doing with a pit bull anyway? The arrival of the dog was a long time coming. I had been dogless for years and was finally had come to a place in life where I could once take on the duties and responsibilities of dog-ownership. Once again, I was working for myself and had the flexibility to schedule for the time demands a well-behaved dog must have.

 Petfinder.com and the local shelters were bookmarked in my browser. I spent hours pouring over the photos and stories of all the little unwanted dogs. My requirements were many and I was determined not to loose my heart to a dog I shouldn’t have. Most importantly, the dog should be a female. Girl dogs rule. Next, the dog could not be anything like my last dog, a gentle retriever mutt. Then, there were all the other things. No dogs from far away locations, she had to be young, big enough to run outside but small enough to pick up in an emergency. Fortunately I lift weights, so anything smaller than a Newfie was in the running.

For months I wandered around in the homeless dog sites. I browsed a lovely little beagle mix in nearby Orange. Nope, too likely to run away. I lurked in the boxer rescue site. They had a 12 page application and wanted to do two home visits. Maybe they wanted my blood type also and planned to do a CORI check. I searched and searched. Too many puppies, too many males, too many older dogs. There was hope, after all look at all the dogs with people and people with dogs out there. They all got together somehow.

 I even had the name picked out. Dorothy. After all, Dorothy was one of my first female heroes, right up there with Nancy Drew. Dorothy organized the others and got the Wizard of Oz to try and fax her home. And while Dorothy had to wear ruby slippers to get home to Kansas, you couldn’t really picture her in heels. Nancy tended to be a little more concerned with appearances, but she did have that hot convertible. I already had a sports car of my very own. 

Then one day I made the trip to a shelter in Gardner to meet J***. (see footnote) The shelter women had told me wonderful things about this dog. She was just the right age, a little past a year old. She was good with cats and children and very affectionate. One lady wanted to keep her but couldn’t have dogs where she lived. The animal had been in the cage nearly six months.

Six months!! What’s wrong with that statement? Well, J*** was a pit bull. We all know they have a bad rap. They don’t shed much though. This dog was the perfect size too, just under 60 pounds. She needed a little slimming down, but then I usually do also.

I sat on an overturned food bucket while Laurie the dog officer went to get J*** from the cage out back. J*** bounced into the room and careened from one person to another, jumping up for licks and treats. She ran up to a woman holding a cat and scuttled away when the cat hissed. Laurie gave her a can of soft food – oh, boy, oh, boy – and then took it away a few times while J*** was busy gobbling it down. No problemo.

 Meantime, Laurie and her volunteers were elbowing each other. “Looks like we have a live one,” the receptionist murmured behind her hand.  They were all smiles as they gave me a form to fill out. Paperwork completed, I said I’d call in a few a days with my decision. 

 (Footnote- In an effort to help the dog adjust to her new name and her new way of life, I forbid the use of her birth-name.)

Almost daily, I meet up with a group of people to walk our dogs at a lovely reservoir called Flat Rock. The dogs and people are quite a cast of characters. “Someone just has to write about this,” one of the walkers keeps saying.

So, here we are. The people, dogs and some events are based on real life. The story morphs into fiction along the way. I have an artist on board who plans to do illustrations. Chapters are short and sweet, since we are so used to reading bits and pieces of things through all this new media.

I’ll post a chapter here and there. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Anne