Dog of the Month

By Susan Kimmel Wright

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
~William Shakespeare

Frantic barking mingled with the thud-and-jangle of bodies hitting kennel doors, as we walked the aisles of our third animal shelter of the day. My husband Dave studied each dog, taking his time. I withdrew inside myself, sobs just a breath away.

Normally, these eager faces would've moved me, but my heart had turned to stone. Today, I could only think... Brandy is dead. All these dogs, and her sweet face nowhere among them.

Brandy had entered our lives at nine months, and we were her third owners. A small Collie mix with infinite good-natured energy, she'd just been much too much of an exuberant dog for their smaller homes, but we'd loved her on sight.

Just the night before this, as I'd baked Christmas cookies for a Children's Hospital bake sale, Brandy had asked to be let out. It was twenty below zero, and I'd hurried back inside to check my cookies. When she didn't bark right away to come back in, as cold as it was, I went out anyway. I called and called, but saw no sign of her -- until we found her lying in the road. She'd jumped the fence and been killed, probably by the snow plow, one of the few vehicles that had passed on our quiet back road.

Grieving, I didn't want another dog, but after a horrible night, Dave knew he needed one. He could hardly wait for the next morning so we could make the rounds of the shelters. I trailed after him, numbed by all the barking, looking for Brandy, and hating every moment.

Finally, Dave stopped. "How about this one?"

I stared at the shaggy, medium-sized brown dog. He kept flinging himself at the mesh and yelping, but I couldn't even hear him over all the others. "This one?" My heart sank. I'd never before seen a dog who actually seemed to be scowling. My Brandy had had such an open, happy grin.

They said they'd just found him tied to the front door one morning, and he'd been there for nine long months. In fact, he'd had the distinction of being "Dog of the Month" and his photo had run in the Pittsburgh Press. It was an honor hardly in the same category as Prom Queen, but rather bestowed on the longest, hardest-to-place residents of this no-kill shelter.

"This one," Dave repeated, and minutes later, we left the shelter with Newton. He dropped the tailgate of our station wagon, but unlike Brandy, who normally jumped right in, Newton just stood there, no matter how much Dave coaxed. Finally, he just picked up our new dog and put him in.

I'd expected Newton to be excited to finally get out of the shelter, but he rode along almost dejectedly, head drooping. Much older than Brandy -- probably between six and eight, our vet later told us -- his eyes already showed some clouding and his muzzle had some white on it. What on earth had we done?

Newton's face wore a perpetual frown -- as if he was either irritated or worried all the time. Actually, he was just plain weird looking -- something like a little Collie mix, but with the face of an Afghan Hound in a bad mood.

When we got him home, we had to lift him down again. "I'll take him for a walk," I said. After all that time in a city kennel, surely, that would wake him up. All the woods and fields and little critters should smell like heaven to him.

But we didn't get very far. Newton plodded one step at a time, head down, running his nose endlessly over each dry leaf and twig.

In fact, his nose itself was running endlessly. Not only had we brought home a strange-looking, listless old dog, but one with a disgusting nasal drip.

Newton showed no more interest in the inside of the house than he had the outside. He just flopped down with his drippy snout on his paws and sighed. We had a dog again, and Dave was happy, but I wondered if the dog would ever be really ours.

Actually, it took close to a year. Our plodding walks became a daily routine, and when I took him to the barn, he hardly even glanced at the horses. The rest of the time, Newton just lay and stared ahead, wearing the same worried expression he'd had the first day we met him. His nose kept running, too -- the vet said it was a kennel infection. He sure wasn't Brandy, but I felt so sorry for him. Often, I just lay next to him and petted him, and told him he was home now.

One day, things changed. Dave was listening to a radio program about a scientist who studied babies' communications. The researcher would play a snippet of a baby's crying and then interpret it: hunger, colic, serious illness. What was most dramatic, though, was Newton's reaction. At the first recorded baby cry, our depressed old dog sat up with a jolt, growled and barked. Suddenly animated, he avidly scoured the house as if looking for the baby. But as soon as the cry stopped, so did Newton, looking confused.

Once, Dave and I got into an argument, and our raised voices had the same electrifying effect. Newton growled and scooted for cover. "It's almost like he's been somewhere there was child abuse," Dave said. "Maybe dog abuse, too. If only he could talk...."

In time, the runny nose stopped running. Newton started lighting up when he saw us and walking with a spring in his step. In fact, he and I got in the habit of long, rambling walks -- three, four, even six miles. I'd loved Brandy so much -- for her goofy exuberance and sloppy affection -- but Newton and I actually spent much more quiet time together, and it bonded us forever.

We'd thought we were bringing home a dog on his last legs, but we had him for fourteen years. If the vets were right about his age when we got him, Newton lived to be somewhere between twenty and twenty-two years old, and when we adopted three children, he became a big brother. In my favorite picture, he is sitting, looking alert, head up and grinning, his eyes focused on my face as his picture was being snapped. When I see it, I realize the infinite potential for love and companionship -- and a long, happy life -- that there is in even the unlikeliest, unwanted shelter mutt.

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