I can remember a time long ago, when I wanted a lot of dogs. One wasn’t enough for a kid like me. I was a hoarder back then. Comic books were my thing and I had boxes of them, neatly organized and stored away under my bed. But I didn’t stop at comics. Rocks, bottle caps, trading cards, you name it I collected it.
So it was only natural that when I said I wanted a dog, one wasn’t going to be enough. I wanted to be surrounded by dogs. It may have all been simply escapism, a way of getting my mind away from the grimy Brooklyn neighborhood I lived in.
A minimum of three dogs would have been good with me, and although I could barely care for myself, I tried to convince my parents that I could look after them in such a way that they would never know there were three dogs around.
That didn’t fly with my parents, so years later I attempted to talk my girlfriend into the same deal.
The conversation was simple enough. One dog wasn’t enough for us; we had a lot of love to spread around. Besides, caring for two should be the same as one anyway. I lied. I knew what lay in store for us but I was going to fulfill my dog fantasy and this was as good a time as any.
Michelle bought into the idea immediately since she had also been harboring a desire for another dog. That’s when we got Macho. Shortly after getting him, Lulu entered the picture. She was our other pit mix. She had originally come into our lives as a foster. We were to care for her until that time when she found a permanent home. We failed miserably. We fell for her hard and didn’t want to give her back.
Only three months old and with a bad case of Mange, Lulu had been rescued by a local organization from a kill shelter in the south and made her way into our home.
This little girl’s eyes were beautiful and soulful. She gazed at us in a way that made us want to care for her and had us wondering about the kind of world we live in where such innocents are carelessly put to death.
You know you’re becoming overly attached to the dog you’re fostering when the rescue group contacts you because it’s time to introduce her to potential families and your mind searches for ways to sabotage the agreement.
I considered telling one family that she was prone to fits of aggression. This was a hard sell. At the time she weighed in at little more than 10 pounds and jumped for joy, tail wagging dangerously fast, at the sight of a new person. How would I convince anyone this little dog was a potential Cujo? Besides, I am a trainer and it would have been unethical. I’m not into collecting bad karma, so I scrapped the idea.
Our biggest fear was that some family was going to meet her, instantly fall in love, and run off to fill out the adoption papers. We couldn’t let that happen. I say “we” because by this time Michelle was on board with my plan to evade and bamboozle. So my next scheme was to stop showing her to potential families.
There was no shortage of excuses when the rescue group called. We were busy, sick, the car was in the shop, we had pink eye. I thought up any reason I could. It was pathetic, but we had a higher purpose. No one was going to take this little girl from us.
This strategy wasn’t getting us anywhere either. We decided on the only course of action that would get us the results we wanted and away from this mess we created. We kept her and made her a permanent part of our family.
Michelle and I promised each other that there could be no other foster dogs in our future. Clearly, we weren’t cut out for this kind of work. Although, every once in awhile we toy with the idea of breaking that promise.