March 19, 2009

In which it is demonstrated that there is more than one kind of hellhound

 

Another beautiful day, another day in which I feel like rotting vegetable matter, sigh.  I did get out into the garden again to enjoy the sunshine and commune with the other vegetable matter, both the rotting and the sprouting–I love this time of year here in the garden, when everything starts growing like mad, and you haven’t made any mistakes yet:  of course you’ve lost stuff to the winter, but that just gives you delicious gaps in which to put new stuff–but write a blog entry?  Unnngh.  However, I am still reading proofs and thus I have the perfect excuse to give you. . . .

 

It took her almost a week after graduation to make time to go to the dog pound.  The primary school got out a week before the high school did, and the barn was immediately deluged with little kids wanting extra lessons.  Miri was good with kids, especially the ones torn between adoring horses and being scared to death of them.   Some of these then transferred their adoration to Miri, and would only take lessons from her.  Every time she looked at her schedule for a space to shoehorn another of these in, she thought of the indoor arena, and found one.

            She knew her mother was hoping she’d forgotten about the dog . . . but that Jane also knew her well enough to know that she would not forget. 

            So one day–finally–at lunch she said, “Carol’s mom cancelled, poor Carol’s sick, and I moved Harriet to last thing.  If you can spare me, I’m going to the pound this afternoon.”

            Jane gallantly refrained from sighing, and said immediately:  “Of course we can spare you.  Remember to buy dog food on the way home.”

            Miri suppressed a grin.  Her mother also knew her well enough to know that if there was no farm dog by dinnertime, it could only be that a roc had stooped from nowhere, picked up the car with Miri in it, and was bearing them away to an unknown island in the Pacific.

            She drove very carefully on the way to the pound.  She had had her license from the moment she was old enough to be legal, and had been efficiently backing horse trailers around corners at the farm some time before that;  it wasn’t the driving.  It was that today was a special day.  Today she’d have–she’d finally have–a dog.  It wasn’t even only the dog:  this would be the first time she’d done something clearly, absolutely, definitively hers.  She loved the farm and the riding stable, and had every intention of staying there for the rest of her life (she even had the site picked out to build her own house on, if she managed to acquire a husband who had a job that earned genuine money so they could afford to.  But the site was only on the other side of the driveway plus a few trees from the old farmhouse.  There was 6 am breakfast for horses to think about, and you wanted to be within earshot for sounds of trouble).   And budgeting for the indoor arena was her idea (maybe she had one or two of her father’s genes after all), but it was still something she was doing with her mother.  A dog would in a way be the first step toward making the riding stable genuinely individually hers too.

            Ronnie was behind the counter at reception.  “So, how does it feel to be a grown up and have to start paying your own bills?” he said jovially.  Ronnie coached the local Little League team Mal had been on, and had six dogs of his own, all from the pound.  He tended to specialise in the hard-to-place ones, so he had three-legged dogs, blind dogs, old dogs, and hyperactive incontinent dogs.  He also had a very patient wife. 

            “It feels okay.  I’m only working forty-two hours a day for seventy-five cents an hour, that’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

            Ronnie whistled.  “Your mother’s getting soft.”

            “Yes, that’s what I thought.  So I decided I’d better get a dog fast before she tightens up.”

            “Good plan.”  He lifted the end of the counter and came out.  “I’ll take you round.  Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?”

            “Not really.  Something that can put up with a lot of cats and people and won’t chase horses.”

            The pound was nearly full, so there were a lot of dogs to look at.  And most of them were barking.  Miri began to think there were more advantages to cats than she’d realised.  Her head started to hurt, and it was hard to look at each dog, especially the barking ones.  But shouldn’t she want a dog that barked?  In case it happened to be on the right side of the house the next time someone tried to break into the tack room.

            They turned down a row of large runs.  “I also don’t want anything that it takes two days’ salary to feed for one day,” said Miri, as something that looked like a cross between a St Bernard and a Shire horse shambled up to the front of its run to look them over.

            “They’re not all like Marigold,” said Ronnie.  “Some of ‘em are just tall.”

            Miri stopped at a run a little over halfway down the row.  This dog was not only not barking, which was unusual enough, but it was curled up in a far corner with its back to them.

            “This one’s a funny one,” Ronnie said.  “You won’t want him, though.  Nobody does.  I’d've taken him home by now, but my wife says six is enough.  He’s a complete gentleman;  he wouldn’t chase your cats or your horses.  But you won’t want him.  He’d scare your little kids.”

            Miri’s curiosity was now fully aroused.  All she could see was a long reddish-chestnut back:  part setter, maybe, she thought.

            “I’m going to take him home soon anyway, though,” said Ronnie.  “I hate seeing him like this.  Some dogs almost don’t mind being pound dogs, but he’s a sensitive soul, and he’s been here too long.  He’s pining, poor thing.  No one even stops to talk to him, let alone take him home.”  He unlocked the wire-mesh door and went in;  Miri followed.  “Hey there, my friend.  You’ve got a visitor.  Come say hello.”

            The dog raised his head and looked back over his shoulder at them.   He had a long narrow head with lopped-over ears, and a slightly bristly red coat–although more streaky merle than setter.  He also had enormous, slanted, almond shaped eyes, with slightly drooping lower lids.  But the interior of those lids was a brilliant scarlet red, and the rim all round was red;  and the eyes themselves were a curious reddish brown, almost the colour of his coat.  The whites of his eyes, visible at the angle he was looking at them from, were also scarlet red.

            “Oh,” said Miri.

            “The vet can’t find anything wrong with him.  He seems to see perfectly well, the eyes don’t seem to be sore or tender and there’s no swelling, no wounds, the lab reports all come back negative.  He just looks . . . odd.  Somebody saw him by the road and called him in;  but when Diane went out with the van she almost didn’t bring him back, because of the way he looks.” 

            The dog was looking at them sadly.  Miri wasn’t sure how she knew this;   it was hard to read an ordinary dog expression in those eyes.  But she was sure she knew what she was seeing.  It wasn’t just what Ronnie had said about him. 

            “So, dog, how’s it going?” she said, and held out her hand tentatively.

            The dog looked at her for a moment longer and then slowly uncoiled and stood up.   Oops, thought Miri, well, he’s certainly one of the tall ones.  He waited, watching them, before he turned around so he was facing them, and paused again, still looking at them.  The way he moved reminded her of the way you move around a nervous horse:  slowly, gently, with lots of pauses, and watching carefully both for any reaction and any opportunity to try to make friends.  This was suddenly so clear to her that she grinned, and held her hand out more positively.  The dog cautiously walked the length of the run to them, stared into her face a moment longer, and then dropped his vivid eyes and lowered his head to put his nose in her hand.

            “It’s only that he’s a hellhound,” Miri said.  “That’s why he has those eyes.  I’ll take him.”

March 19, 2009 | Filed Under my books 

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