‘You can write a really happy ending to this.’ : The Last Dog Saga I’ll Ever Write

It was never my intention when I entered this business to spend my career writing about dogs and old ladies.

The closest I came to an excess of the former was a long time ago when I was forced to take a turn at a talking dog column for the Oakland Tribune.

It was called “I Want a Home,” and each week featured a different stray dog. The animal was given a byline and the column was first-person, so it might be signed “By Li’l Precious” or some other equally stupid name designed to hook an owner with a low IQ.

The prose would go something like this: “Hi! I’m a dewormed young female mixed breed with cute brown eyes and I’d love to lick your chin!”

It was said, though never confirmed, that someone on the copy desk was attempting to string the columns together into a book of animal porn but could never get past the idea of a sex queen who had been dewormed.

Remembering the Trib gang, however, I’m sure the man gave it a good try.

As for old ladies, I usually only write about cheeky ex-hookers with a drinking problem who fight off purse snatchers with empty whiskey bottles, and there aren’t a hell of a lot of those around anymore.

Only occasionally have I churned out teary words about spunky octogenarians who have, for a variety of reasons, been deprived of (1) their pets, (2) their pensions or (3) their homes, feeling strongly that those stories were best left to general assignment reporters who aspired to sainthood.

But then I met the Queen.

The Queen, to refresh your memory, is Princess Red Fawn, who is also known as Queen of the Streets and who lives in an old car parked at a curb in Canoga Park.

She is 83 and independent as hell. At the time I ran across her, a mutt named Tweetie lived in the car with her.

I found the situation unique if not inspiring and, momentarily setting aside my vow never to write about dogs and old ladies again, I turned out a column on Tweetie and the Queen.

Three things happened. The old lady got her car smashed up, the dog disappeared and the Queen was nowhere to be found.

By then I was committed to discovering what the hell was going on and was told that someone, out of hate or hostility, had deliberately smashed up her car and had taken her dog in order to submit the creature to unbearable pain and indecencies.

No one seemed to have any idea what happened to the Queen. Perhaps she was kidnaped by Gypsies and forced to perform stand-up comedy in a Burbank night club.

So I reluctantly wrote a second dog-and-old-lady column and suddenly found myself involved in the thing up to my, er, behind.

Well, the information in the column was only partly true. Ignoring the observation of an old rewrite man who used to say that partial truth is better than no truth at all, I went looking for the Whole Story.

Sparing you details of the search, I discovered that the Queen’s car was plowed into by a hit-run driver, bouncing it into a tree, that the Queen had not been kidnaped by Gypsies but was just out looking for her dog and that Tweetie had been taken by a woman concerned with the animal’s well-being.

Good enough. I was perfectly willing to let it go at that and allow the participants to work things out, but it was too late to pack my prose and sneak off into the night.

I was committed by my own bad judgment into seeing the thing through, though I am not crazy about dogs and am only moderately concerned with old ladies.

Be that as it may, I suddenly found myself trying to arrange for the Queen to occupy a low-rent unit in Canoga Park with a yard that would allow Tweetie fresh air and sunshine.

At the same time, I was talking to the lady who had arranged to have the dog taken from the car and who had spent $800 of her own money to nurse it back into good physical and mental condition.

There are probably better ways she could have spent the 800 bucks, but compassion, like love, is probably blind, and I’m not going to get into all that.

In short, if the Queen gets the apartment with the yard, the dog lady will give Tweetie back to her. The woman acknowledges she probably shouldn’t have taken the dog in the first place, but she loves animals and felt that Tweetie was suffering.

“You can write a really happy ending to this,” she said.

While I am reluctant to admit that any kind of ending would probably satisfy me, I am, I suppose, pleased that the story seems to be coming to a beneficial conclusion for both Tweetie and the Queen.

I am not jumping up and down with happiness only because my doctor has advised me not to jump up and down, though he needn’t have worried because I am rarely happy and I never jump.

Whatever happens, however, that’s the end of it for me, so goodby, Queen, goodby, Tweetie, and goodby to the folks everywhere who love dogs and old ladies.

I need a drink.