I
had more boy names than girl names picked out when I headed to the Sterling
Animal Shelter in search of a puppy. Almost all of the names came from books,
which isn’t much of a surprise for a writer, and they tended not to be the kind
seen often in veterinary offices. No Rex, Fido, or Daisy for me. Instead, I had
Mycroft (boy), Atticus (boy), Talbot (boy), and Sookie (girl).
So
it figures that I’d end up with a girl dog that didn’t have the personality to
justify the name Sookie.
The
Sterling Animal Shelter is located on a back road in Sterling, Massachusetts,
at the very end of a driveway with trees on either side. Thick green leaves prevent
passing motorists from seeing the buildings from the street. Barking from the
dogs in the outdoor pens at the kennel can’t be heard beyond the end of the
driveway.
To
the right of the parking area sits the administrative building which houses the
cats and is where volunteers process adoptions and sell pet necessities. Left
of the parking and across from the administrative building is the veterinary
office where the onsite medical procedures are done such as wellness exams and
spaying and neutering. The final building at the shelter, at the very end of
the driveway, is the dog kennel.
The
dog kennel consists of a long, white building with chainlink fence forming pens
on the front and back of the building. An overhang covers all of the pens so the
dogs can be outside for exercise and fresh air no matter the weather. The
building itself isn’t very deep, the pens the widest part of the structure.
I
had two puppies in mind before I even stepped out of the car and onto the
driveway in front of the dog kennel. I saw them on the shelter website the week
before, and I scanned the pens for their faces. They weren’t in the first pen,
but the three dogs in there did catch my eye. Specifically, I noticed the black
dog in the group. She had brown markings on her cheeks and charged the fence to
be the first to receive attention. The puppy climbed over one of her lighter
colored pen-mates before having the other climb on top of her.
I want to check that one out, too, I thought
briefly as I walked along the fence.
I
focused in on a blonde puppy, and my heart skipped when I recognized her from
the website. She stood far back in her pen, on the concrete pad next to the
kennel building and away from potential adopters. Her ears laid flat against
her head. She avoided looking at anyone and refused to come near the fence. I
got a chance to meet her inside her indoor kennel, and she ignored me, staring
through the chainlink door instead.
Well,
that was one puppy crossed off the list. And I had already convinced myself she
would make an excellent Sookie.
The
second puppy I originally had in mind was housed with what I took to be a
littermate, a black, white, and brown male. The male struck me more than the
black female. His coloring reminded me of my first dog, Max, and I asked the
shelter volunteers to see him outside in one of the outdoor pens. The volunteer
who brought him out handed me some treats, and those ended up being the only
way I could get the dog to come near me. Even then he took the treat only to
walk away and eat it.
By
the time I decided he wasn’t for me, another couple had adopted the black
female I originally came to see. That crossed the second puppy off my list.
The
kennel at the shelter still housed a number of dogs, even though that number
decreased by the minute. A handful of puppies were adopted while I surveyed the
dogs, and I began to feel a small fog of disappointment form in my stomach. The
whole hour and a half trip up to Sterling would have been in vain if I didn’t
come home with a puppy, and I won’t end up getting a puppy for another month
because of all the things that’ll be going on in the house in the coming weeks.
I
took another walk through the kennel to check out the puppies one more time.
The black and brindle I noticed when I arrived again caught my eye. She’d been
with a lighter colored puppy in the indoor kennel earlier, but now she lay all
alone on the raised bed. She didn’t seem to mind, though, as she chomped on a
squeaky toy shaped like a mallard duck.
I
let myself into her kennel, and the puppy turned her attention to me. She
jumped on me, her tail wagging.
“Off,”
I said as I pushed her off.
She
jumped again, and I pushed her off again. We repeated this little dance of ours
several more times until she decided to keep all four of her paws on the
concrete. When I crouched down to pet her, she licked my hand and wagged her
tail. Her eyes made me ask the volunteer if I could see her outside. She looked
at me with more love than I thought possible at a first meeting.
“Sure
you can take her out,” the shelter volunteer said as she picked out a leash and
choke chain collar. “But I’m not sure how good she is on the leash.”
In
fact she wasn’t good on the leash at all, and I discovered that as soon as I
took her out of the kennel building. She leaned against the choke chain,
coughing and wheezing as she tried to get at the dogs still in the outdoor
pens.
We
rounded the corner of the building to the short side where the other dogs were
out of sight. I knelt down and touched the puppy’s chest, effectively getting
her to stop choking herself.
“Take
a chill pill,” I told her. “Relax.”
Her
tail never stopped wagging as she leaned her chest against my knee and looked
up at me.
I
felt excitement at the prospect of training this puppy. Obviously she needed to
learn how to walk on a leash, and she probably didn’t have any obedience
training. That meant I would get to train her and mold her into exactly the dog
I wanted.
The
final test for this puppy, a test both of the other dogs had failed, was in the
outdoor pen. I led her into it, closed the door, and let her off leash. She
wandered away for a moment to sniff the gravel and the toy and for a potty
break. But then I called her to me, and she came. She followed me around the
pen, a few feet behind my heels.
I
felt unsure about her. She passed all my little tests of temperament and
training, but she wasn’t the puppy I imagined bringing home. I had my mind so
fixed on the blonde female puppy that I couldn’t see a black and brindle puppy
as my own. I also couldn’t see having a dog as reality. I’d only had one dog in
my life, and I didn’t think I could love another dog as much as I’d loved him.
Then
the adoption process happened. I signed all the forms, listened to the
instructions of the shelter volunteer, and loaded up our new puppy supplies
into the car. I settled into the back seat of the car and looked into the rear
at my new puppy, cowered against the back of my seat.
“I
don’t like Sookie,” Mom said from the driver’s seat. “What are some other
names?”
I
kind of agreed with her about the name. Sookie just didn’t seem to stick with
the puppy. So I scrolled through a number of dog-naming websites on my smart
phone, listing off names like Roxie, Duchess, and then Grace. I rolled the name
around on my tongue, glancing over the seat at the puppy curled up against the
seat.
Grace.
That
sounded like a good name for this six month old Labrador/Terrier mix
transported up north from a Tennessee rescue organization. That sounded like a
good name for my new puppy.
“I
like Grace,” I said.
