It’s a Dog’s Day When the Master’s Away

When my wife and I first started traveling, we still had offspring at home who took care of our pets. So, at first, our problem had an easy solution.

That didn’t last. It wasn’t long before our children were out on their own and we had to find another answer.

“It can’t be that hard,” Joyce said. “What do other people do when they go away for a few days?”

I checked with a friend who travels a lot.

“It’s no big deal,” said Burt, stroking the big gray cat nestled in his lap. “I just run old Tom over to this hotel for cats. He loves it. Don’t you, big fella?”

But when Burt brought out his “kitty carrier” to show me how he transports the big fella to the “hotel,” Old Tom, who had been relaxed and purring, suddenly went as rigid as if somebody had stuck his tail in a wall socket. The big gray went straight up in the air and then almost instantly disappeared under the sofa.

“Loves it, huh?” I asked.

“Wonder what spooked him,” Burt said. “Would you hand me that broom out of the closet? Here, kitty, kitty.”

Three-Legged Dog

When I left, Burt was still trying to fish the big fella out of the couch springs.

Joyce was disturbed by my report.

“Maybe it’s different for dogs,” I said. Since I’m allergic to cats, we didn’t have any, but we were sure long on dogs. We had three.

Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration. We really had 2 3/4, one of our daughters having brought home Kubro, a mixed shepherd who had only one hind leg. It was this particular animal that posed our major problem.

As the lowest common denominator in our herd, or pack, we figured that if we found a kennel that could cope with Kubro, our other two dogs--Snickers and Josie--wouldn’t present any problems.

Kubro had lost one back leg and had a few stabilizing steel pins inserted in the other as the result of a driveway accident he suffered as a puppy.

Catherine, one of our daughters, said he followed her home. When nobody seemed to be buying that, she admitted that she got him from a musician friend who was just no longer able to cope.

She also announced, chin quivering, that “we just have to take him because he hasn’t got anywhere else to go and somebody’s just got to turn this dog’s luck around.”

Bark Worse Than Bite

“Well,” Joyce said, “is what we see all that’s wrong with him?”

Catherine looked up at the ceiling. “There is just the slightest touch of arthritis when his bullets bother him?”

“His bullets?” I asked.

“Yes,” she explained. She scratched the dog behind the ears. “And he has an unusual bark, but he’s sweet. Aren’t you?”

As if in answer, Kubro barked. It was so loud and sharp, the dog himself shook his head as if trying to clear the ringing. Then, to prove it was no accident, he did it again and pawed his ears. I also pawed mine; it didn’t help.

“I think his mouth is too close to his ears or something,” Catherine said.

Joyce is a “mark,” a sucker for anything small and furry. And a double mark for anything small, furry and hurt, but she put on a show of firmness. “You’ll take care of him? Feed him, bathe him and take total control?”

“Of course,” Catherine said. “Naturally. I promise.”

Amorous Nature

Two years later, she got an apartment closer to her work . . . and Joyce and I got Kubro.

Besides having a short count in the leg department, Kubro also had one lop-ear, indeterminate coloration and a shaggy coat that came out in clumps in the presence of dark clothing or carpeting. If you combed that dog once a week, you’d get enough fur to make another dog.

Kubro acquired his bullets when he was shot by someone for raiding garbage cans in the alley in the middle of the night, also in his puppyhood.

There were, however, two other problems. First, he was possessed of an amorous nature.

But we figured that a dog with only one back leg would be playing the game of romance with enough of a handicap, so we kept putting off having him fixed.

Then there was the lightning.

But I didn’t even consider telling anyone about Kubro’s problems with lightning when I started checking around for a kennel.

Seller’s Market

In the Yellow Pages there were listings such as The Pet Hotel, Waggin Tails Pet Resort (I figured that had to have a dude-ranch motif) and The Barking Lot.

The kennel search was surprising. First, I found that most of the operators considered it a seller’s market. They had lists of requirements regarding would-be clients.

Potential “guests” had to have shot records indicating they’d been inoculated against rabies, distemper, parvo (which I had always thought had something to do with kosher foods), kennel cough and another affliction that sounded like the name of a Mafia family.

Most of the kennel operators cared not a fig if Fido was a barkaholic or stone crazy, as long as he was in perfect health and could come up with $10 a night (which would be 70 in doggie dollars).

I only visited the places that advertised having “dog runs,” not just cages. Though I imagined a dog run would be a place where the dog could run, in most instances it amounted to a few extra square feet of space in addition to a protected sleeping area.

I was a little disappointed until the last place.

A Good Omen

The office was closed because it was a Sunday, but since it advertised “outside runs,” I climbed up on a ledge and looked over the fence. There were dozens of small 5-by-10 chain-link fence enclosures with dog houses at the end of each and a tent over the whole compound.

A caretaker was talking to the dogs as he cleaned up, and they were listening. That seemed like a pretty good omen, so the following day I visited the place.

A pair of Chihuahuas in the same run were barking at nothing, while a couple of Dobermans, also together, were pacing. So what else is new?

The proprietor introduced the Chihuahuas as Cheech and Chong, and the Dobermans as Hannibal and Hamilcar. Since the historical Hamilcar’s family name was Barca and Hannibal was his son, they sounded like pretty good names for dogs.

Comforts of Home

“Yeah,” said the proprietor, “makes you wonder, though, what the dogs call themselves.” A cocker spaniel was sitting in the next cage, staring through the fence, looking worried.

“That’s Florence. She’s not really upset, she’s just a cocker. They’re only happy when they worry.” We moved on past the runs.

“The trouble with most people,” the proprietor went on, “is that they look at kennels from the human standpoint. Your average dog owner wants the place to have all the comforts of home. Like there should be a sofa in each run and someone to come along and yell at each dog to get the hell off the sofa a dozen times a day. Don’t laugh, it’s almost come to that.

“You’ve got to look at a kennel through your dog’s eyes. Dogs run in packs. They like to be around other dogs. It’s their nature. I think a lot of these dogs are happier here than they are at home.

“Dogs love to smell things. Can you imagine the smells these animals are enjoying now? Most of them don’t know they’re in a kennel. They think they’re in Disneyland or they’ve been sent to camp for the summer.”

‘Members of the Family’

A little exaggeration maybe, but three months later when a trip came up, Joyce and I booked space for our dogs at the kennel.

When Catherine heard about it, she had an attack of conscience and took Kubro to live with her while we were away.

Two weeks later we picked up Snickers and Josie. Both were healthy, happy and freshly bathed “to remove that kennel odor.” Sure enough, the kennel odor was gone, replaced by a fragrance a neighbor said made both dogs smell like they’d spent the two weeks in a Bessarabian brothel.

Later in the day, Catherine brought Kubro home to us. Being confined to her apartment while she was at work had not suited him too well.

Once, when he had “fallen in love,” he had eaten a part of her front door to get out. She assumed he had gotten lucky because when she bailed him out of jail (or the pound) three days later, he was filthy, relaxed and wagging his tail a lot.

Another time, while reacting to a minor electrical storm, he had gone through the window. Unfortunately, the window was closed at the time.

“He cost me a fortune,” she said. “You know, keeping animals can be expensive?”

“Zat so?” I said.

Joyce’s response was better. “When you take them in, you’re making them members of the family. You don’t think of them as an expense. Think of them as an investment.”