Woman's Best Friend Women Writers on the Dogs in Their

Lives

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For my parents, who encouraged every beginning, and for P, who made
“The End” possible
 Contents

Chapter One: Will Work for Pets

Chapter Two: Wild Birds of the East Bay
Chapter Three: Nanny Cam
Chapter Four: Wolf Pack
Chapter Five: The Farting Greyhound
Chapter Six: Alpha Females
Chapter Seven: Desperate Measures
Chapter Eight: Rain or Shine
Chapter Nine: No Heroics
Chapter Ten: Bachelors
Chapter Eleven: Forty Days
Chapter Twelve: Lost and Found

Acknowledgements
About the Author
Dear Neighbor,

I am pleased to introduce myself as a new name in local animal care. While I am only recently a
resident of California, I’m an old hand when it comes to working with (and doting upon) animals.

It’s my pleasure to offer my services to you and your pet—canine, feline, reptilian, avian, or
otherwise—with the guarantee that, while I am with your companion, my top priorities are
always safety, consistent quality of care, and lots and lots of affection!

I look forward to meeting you and your (furry, scaly, or feathered) friend!

Lindsey Grant
 CHAPTER ONE

Will Work for Pets

I was the go-to kid on the block to call when the neighbors were going out
of town and needed their newspapers brought up, their mail retrieved,
the plants watered, and their dogs walked or their cats fed while they were
away. Before I was old enough to babysit, and even after, I regularly
watched after the pets living in my family’s intown Atlanta neighborhood.
For years, I pet-sat for a Lab and an aging cocker spaniel down the
street, never quite getting used to the idea that I’d earned the crisp $50 bill
the neighbors always paid me with when they returned. I’d have played
with those dogs, pet them, fed them, and refreshed their water bowls, for
free.
As the spaniel got older and older, she got more and more ornery, once
biting me on the face when I leaned in too close to greet her. I was
devastated, certain that I’d done something really wrong to prompt her to
bite me like that. In my third-grade class, we’d had a hamster that bit me,
and I never forgot the teacher’s explanation that animals bite because they
are afraid and are trying to protect themselves. I’d cried about that hamster
bite, not because it hurt, but because I felt so bad for scaring the hamster.
After the spaniel attack, I left a note for her owners explaining what
happened and suggesting that they shouldn’t pay me because I had scared
her and I was sorry. They of course paid me anyway; I heard them at the
door talking to my parents and apologizing profusely for what had
happened. The dog was getting old and senile, they’d said, and they’d been
worried for a while about their own young kids playing with her for this
reason.
I also took care of two big beautiful golden retrievers who, unlike our
dog, Biscuit, lived inside the house and ate wet Alpo, which smelled much
worse than Biscuit’s dry pellets. And once, I took care of our family friends’
budgies when they went on vacation. I couldn’t understand the appeal of
those loud, demanding birds—also biters—but I was happy to be asked.
Even when I started taking on babysitting gigs, I so much preferred the
demands of the dogs and birds over the kids I cared for. Animals didn’t
complain about the way you prepared their SpaghettiOs, balk about bed or
bath times, or question the necessity of tooth brushing. They didn’t
challenge your authority by throwing things at your head or tell you they
hated you and wanted their mommy. Increasingly, I declined requests to
babysit or nanny and just stuck with the animals.
While I grew up with traditional pets—seven or so hamsters, our
beloved Biscuit, and Seal the cat—I had a snake in college. Monty was a
ball python, about two feet long, and a wonderful companion. As pets go,
snakes aren’t the most expressive or the cuddliest. But to me, he was both.
He never bit me and was content to hang out on the couch, wrapped around
my arm or coiled under a throw pillow, while I studied or watched TV. He
was exceedingly polite to guests and even acted like a gentleman in the
company of the live rats I fed him. If he was hungry, he dispatched them
quickly and cleanly. A hero’s death. If not, he endured the rat’s fearful bites
nobly, never retaliating when his rat snack sunk its teeth into his perfect
scaly length.
Perversely, I grew attached to the rats, too—the uneaten ones. When
Monty declined his dinner, I’d keep the rat in a shoe box with a cardboard
tube and an ear of corn or some cereal until my next shift at the strip mall
pet store, where I’d worked since sophomore year. There, the rejected rat,
spared its inevitable fate for one day more, would go back in the tank with
his rodent brethren.
After college, my move from Georgia to California necessitated that I
find Monty a new home. Taking him with me on the cross-country journey
hadn’t even occurred to me. This was 2004, and Snakes on a Plane hadn’t
yet been released. I didn’t investigate at the time, certain that there weren’t
allowances for reptilian carry-ons. Nevertheless, as soon as I relinquished
Monty to my manager at the pet store, along with his hand-painted cage of
wood and chicken wire, heat lamp, water bowl, and bark arch for hiding
beneath, I sorely wished I’d reconsidered.
Snakes don’t exactly give you that heart-squeezing look that you might
get from a beloved dog, or cat, or rabbit. He flicked his tongue, testing the
stale air in the back of the store, no doubt sensing the proximity of many
other snakes and dozens of tasty rodent treats. Surely, his tiny snake heart
was not hurting like mine did during this final farewell. My former boss
was more than happy to take my handsome two-foot-long friend off my
hands, certain that she could sell him for a nice sum.
Once I’d surrendered my snake, I packed up the rest of my belongings
for shipping West. Beyond the bedding and clothes, my boxes were filled
with largely impractical and sentimental creature comforts—books, my
parents’ decades-old vinyl collection and turntable, framed photos. I was
proud that I’d condensed twenty years of living in the Atlanta area into
roughly six boxes of varying sizes, until I saw the amount I owed for
shipping. Perhaps I could have reconsidered some of the books and all of
the records.
My plan was to establish California residency in order to attend grad
school. Creative writing seemed a likely fit for my interests and skills; far
better than a master’s in linguistics or a PhD in literature. I’d studied
literature and film at the University of Georgia, a state school liberally
attended by people I’d grown up with. Four years of college parties and
rooming with kids I’d known since elementary school, in a town where
alcohol poisoning was de rigueur and every place seemed overrun with
pledges and their Greek sisters and brothers, was enough to instill in me a
potent fear of stagnation and mediocrity, and the desire for a significant
change. Moving to California instead of returning to Atlanta post-
graduation seemed like a pretty good, if dramatic, way to avoid the former
and achieve the latter.
Plans rarely pan out; I knew this. But that was mine, and I was sticking
to it. My mom’s best friend from childhood lived southeast of Berkeley
with her husband and two young boys, and she had offered to help me get
on my feet. She was an English professor and had been providing me with
ample information about the excellent writing programs in the area. It was
to her address that I sent my belongings, with her that I shared my flight
info. I had never before purchased a one-way ticket. I was leaving my
Atlanta home to go West, to write.
Annie had set up a pet-sitting gig for me with her neighbors down the
street. They were off to visit family for two weeks and needed a house sitter
to take care of their dogs. Two weeks sounded like the perfect amount of
time to get my bearings, apply for work, and figure out the year that
yawned before me.
The neighbors offered me $30 a day; more money than I could wrap my
brain around for hanging out with two dogs, feeding and petting and
walking them, and sleeping over at their gorgeous Craftsman home.
At the pet store, I’d been paid minimum wage to show up at six o’clock
in the morning and clean each puppy cubby, flushing pounds and pounds of
dog shit down an industrial disposal. Once all of the cages had been
sanitized, first with bleach and then with a highly concentrated pink
solution to protect against parvo, the dogs could be restored to their now-
habitable display cases, and we could open the store to the clamoring
hordes. During the day, it was my job to keep the trays clean of any
leavings and leap into action if any of the dogs started rolling in—or worse,
eating—their turds. My colleagues working the floor—“Pet Counselors,”
their nametags declared—would rap on the kennel door and call “retriever”
or “Dalmatian,” and I’d scurry down the line to deal with it. Beyond that, I
fed, medicated, groomed, laundered, and generally kept things clean and
running smoothly behind the scenes.
Disgusting a job as it could prove at times, I loved those animals. The
grand equalizer was the time I spent walking or brushing or snuggling them.
I worried when one of my favorites was quarantined with a cold, and I
missed each and every dog or cat that went home with a customer. For those
few years, I was the den mother and they were my cubs.

Getting paid (and so well, by my Georgia minimum-wage standards) to

simply love and look after the neighbors’ dogs, all while being housed for
two weeks, felt like the best kind of good luck. I took it as an omen that this
move would work out just fine.
My charges were Blondie, an energetic blond terrier mix, and Buster, an
ancient black Lab mix. Their owners were both successful interior designers
and the kind of people made infinitely more attractive by their abundant
warmth and welcoming nature. I liked them immediately and pledged to
take better care of their dogs than anyone ever had.
For someone feeling displaced and homesick, as I was, the enthusiastic
and unconditional adoration of these two dogs was a balm for my aching
heart. I couldn’t remember ever meeting two such faithful and affectionate
animals, other than—of course—Biscuit, who was officially The Best Dog
in the World.
Biscuit was a big fluffy white mutt, descended from a neighborhood
retriever and her erstwhile poodle mate and brought into our family when I
was still a toddler. We grew up together, Biscuit and I. She was my number
one sidekick when it came to playing make-believe, dress-up, tag, and let’s-
sleep-in-the-yard-on-a-big-blanket. My older sister and I were raised
Quaker, and part of that upbringing was an hour of quiet time a day, in
which we had to play separately and quietly in our respective bedrooms or
outside. She would host a tea party for her stuffed animals, or play
schoolteacher to her doll students in her bedroom. Outside, I would put
headbands and scarves on the ever-tolerant dog and dance about her,
singing her special song that I’d composed: “Queen Biscuit, Queen Biscuit.
Queeeeeeen of the Wooooorrrrrlllld!” When I played my Madonna cassette
tapes, I’d lift her paws onto my shoulders in an approximation of dancing.
Often, she just sat quietly by my side while I worked on the stories and
poems I loved to write in any one of my many collected journals and
notebooks. She was undoubtedly my best friend right up until her sudden
death when she was ten and I was twelve.
Sweet and affectionate as they were, these dogs also had an
impressively detailed health history, Buster in particular, and I had plenty of
instructions to follow for their daily care. Buster was going blind from
cataracts, had to take antidepressants for separation anxiety, and was on a
strict regimen of Glucosamine and Chondroitin for his advanced arthritis.
He was also completely deaf. He and Blondie were both on a diet of boiled
chicken and rice; Blondie because she had a tender stomach, and Buster
because he deserved the good stuff in his twilight years. Their water came
from the Brita pitcher on the counter.
Biscuit had shared her Alpo with the rats that ventured out of our
heavily wooded backyard, and her water came from the garden hose. The
only medication she took staved off heartworms, which was standard for
outdoor dogs. We hid the foul-smelling pill in cheddar cheese, which she
gobbled with enthusiasm. Beyond her daily dog bone, she didn’t enjoy
many luxuries. She’d always seemed perfectly content with her lot in life as
an exclusively outdoor dog. In fact, she wouldn’t come inside the house
even when invited. I can’t account for why she was so averse to being
indoors—she’d been that way for as long as I could remember. According
to my mom, she’d come home to an unlocked front door soon after we got
the dog. She bodily dragged a reluctant Biscuit over the threshold, saying,
“Come on, Butch, go get ’em,” in an effort to scare any home intruders that
might be lurking within. The minute she released her grip on Biscuit’s
collar, the dog dashed for the door, eager to get out of the house and back to
the yard, where she was happiest. Nothing about Biscuit suggested that
she’d ever be a guard dog, an indoor dog, or butch in any way at all.
Though I’d long been passionate about animals and preferred their
company to that of my own kind, I hadn’t pursued an education that would
lead to a career in animal care. I’d attended one of the top veterinary
universities in the country, but I wasn’t at all scientifically or
mathematically minded, and I didn’t have the stomach for the grislier side
of veterinary sciences, zoology, or other related vocations. So I went with a
clean and completely cerebral literature major, relegating my interest in
animals to the extracurricular.
Now that I’d matriculated and was seeking employment in the real
world, so far beyond the borders of my college town, I felt sure that my
enthusiasm for animals coupled with my three years at the pet store more
than qualified me to be the lady in scrubs who ferried animals from waiting
room to private exam room, to weigh the pets and take their temperatures.
Without overthinking my resolution too much, I applied for vet tech
positions at twenty-five or so local animal hospitals.
I got one interview.
It was far away, at least by my intown Atlanta standards where
everything—everything—is only a five-minute drive, except the airport,
which takes fifteen. The thirty-minute drive to Hayward brought me to an
unremarkable cement building along a suburban thoroughfare, where I met
with an endearingly overweight guy named Andy. He left me in a sterile
white seating area to fill out some paperwork, and, within a few minutes, it
was abundantly clear that I was nowhere near qualified for the job.
 Had I administered subcutaneous medications? Declawed cats?
Neutered animals? Performed any anesthetizations? Diagnosed any
illnesses?
I tried to glamorize my skill set—which was woefully limited to
deworming (dumping the writhing masses into the disposal), administering
medication (shoving pills down slimy, gagging dog and cat gullets), light
medical attentions (applying shiny blue or pink plastic cat-claw tips;
holding down a rabbit while my boss drained an abscess), experience with
exotic animals (watching in horror as a monitor lizard took a rat by the
testicles and slammed him to death against the cage wall)—carefully
sidestepping the fact that I’d been less of a technician and more of a lackey.
Andy let me down easy, saying he’d be in touch. I knew better than to
expect a call back. Three years’ experience as a pet store cave troll does not
a résumé make, and I had enough sense to spot the rejection between the
lines.

While I was away from the dogs during the day, I was supposed to leave the
jazz station playing on the stereo. This allegedly calmed Buster’s separation
anxiety, though I couldn’t understand how that reconciled with his deafness.
If he couldn’t hear the music, was it the vibration of the jazz that he
benefited from?
Buster’s combination of ailments made him clingy in a very dear way.
He kept me in sight at all times, even shuffling after me when I went into
the bathroom. It felt good to be minded, to be needed. When I left the
house, I took very seriously the owners’ routine for reassuring him that I’d
return. At the front door, I’d get down on face level with him and—because
he couldn’t hear me—I smiled and nodded exaggeratedly, petting him and
kissing him, and then repeating the smile, nod, pet.
The smooth jazz was quietly thrumming when I returned from my failed
interview, and I gratefully submitted myself to a session of pet therapy on
the floor of the living room. Their slobbery approval was the perfect
antidote to my slightly stung pride and growing anxiety over my lack of a
professional Plan B. Somehow, Buster’s gift of his stuffed squirrel
deposited in my lap, followed by a sincere and thorough licking of my
hands and arms, made it all feel less scary and uncertain.
 That night and every night, I strapped Buster into a hunter green fleece-
lined harness and hauled him up the stairs to the master bedroom, his limbs
flailing and his toenails scrabbling helplessly for purchase. The idea was
that I’d hoist him vertically, taking enough weight off his aged joints that he
could go through the motions of mounting the steps. Only after we’d made
it to the second floor, both panting—and, I imagined, equally relieved that
the ordeal was over—would Blondie bound up the stairs to join us.
In the kennel, I frequently had to retrieve or deposit large dogs—some
in excess of fifty pounds—to and from their fluorescently lit cubbies for
walks or playtime with an interested customer. We ran an adoption program
for local shelter dogs, and many of these were full-grown and slightly
overweight, like Chester the resident Shar-Pei. He was adorable, but
hoisting him or any of the other bigger dogs from the cage, and always
holding tight to keep them from bolting for the exits until I could get them
leashed, was a struggle. The squirmy dogs, so excited to be released from
their claustrophobic enclosures, left me with back twinges that lasted for
days.
But that was nothing compared to heaving the dead weight of an
overweight arthritic Lab up a flight of stairs. Waiting for me in the
bedroom, though, was a Sleep Number bed: the perfect place to collapse
after my exertions. One side was extra firm, the other moderately so. I had
written down the respective numbers on a bit of paper to be sure I could
restore the mattress to its original settings at the end of my stay. Until then,
I was bound and determined to find my personal number. I had been
working my way through the thirties and was feeling almost close to perfect
at thirty-nine.
Buster slept between the dressers, his toenails scratching erratically
against the hardwood floor as he dreamed. Blondie’s spot was right next to
the bed, her satisfied-sounding exhalations the last thing I heard as I drifted
to sleep.
After following up on all of my applications and accepting that the vet
tech path was not to be, I started looking for openings at local pet supply
stores. If I couldn’t be the vet tech waiting room lady, I certainly had the
chops to wash dogs and offer their owners advice on accessories.
True, working the sales floor at the pet store peddling merchandise—
and pets, of course—had never been my strong suit. The pet counselors
worked on commission, and they were ruthless, using every trick in the
book to make a sale. This meant pitching all manner of questionably useful
accessories (The pooper-scooper with ergonomically angled claw! Frilly
underwear and pads for when your bitch is in estrus!) and upselling
customers on industrial-sized bags of dog food, cat litter, aquarium pebbles,
and so on. It also meant that many an $800 dog went home with the wrong
family. And many of those dogs got returned within a week or a month
when the first-time owner realized what they’d gotten themselves into.
We had one customer who kept his Siberian husky in the cab of his big
rig while he drove around the country. I have never seen a more neurotic
animal, or one more badly in need of exercise. The overwrought dog
couldn’t come into the store, which he and his owner visited anytime they
were in the area, without chaos erupting. Within moments of the dog
rearing his way through the cheerfully jangling door, displays were
upended, toys and treats scattered across the industrial carpet, ferrets
terrorized, the top layer of pig ears in the bin test-licked, and all other
customers with or without their pets in tow hastened to the exit.
I didn’t have the ambition to wheel and deal like the others, convincing
new or expecting parents that a Lab puppy was a good choice, or that the
twice-as-expensive memory foam dog bed was that much better than the
regular and reasonably priced one. I was far more comfortable trimming
toenails and chatting with customers about the consistency of their dog’s
barf than trying to convince them they needed a $150 tartan cushion to go
with those nail clippers. Hence my permanent position back in the kennel
with the animals.
Though working at PetSmart, Petco, Pet Food Express, or any other
area chain felt like a big step down from being a vet tech, in both pay and
prestige, I still preferred the access to the cute and furry that the job would
provide over being, say, a barista or finding a desk job. I’d so much rather
spend my days interacting with animals and their accessories than serving
coffee to undercaffeinated customers or staring at a computer screen.

On my last day with Blondie and Buster, I was still without a job, or even a
likely prospect. I was grateful that I at least had a place to stay, as Annie
had invited me to use their spare attic bedroom indefinitely. We had worked
out an agreement in which I would help ferry her boys to and from school,
kung fu, tutoring, and so on, as well as do some light shopping and cooking
in exchange for room and board. They rarely used their old Volvo, a car
they’d been meaning to trade in for months, and essentially handed over the
keys. Even with the question of employment still looming, at least I could
check “roof over my head,” and, for the time being at least, “set of wheels,”
off the list of required components for my West-Coast attempt at adulthood.
I compiled photos I’d taken of Blondie and Buster into a collage with
dialogue bubbles declaring how much they’d missed their owners, and how
much fun they’d had with me in the meantime. I left it propped on the
kitchen island against Buster’s economy-sized pill bottles.
It was only after the neighbors returned that I learned Blondie and
Buster had regular dog walkers, a husband and wife team who lived a few
streets over. They didn’t offer overnight pet care, and they were looking to
contract with someone who could provide this service for their clients, just
as I’d been doing for the past couple of weeks.
I can see, in retrospect, why I was such an appealing solution to their
problem. I showed up for my interview at Tom and Patty’s house, a classic
northern California bungalow with an adobe-shingled roof and fruit trees
dominating the postage stamp of a front lawn, wearing Crocs and my
favorite Big Smith overalls. When they opened the door, I greeted their two
massive German shepherds first, kneeling before them to receive their
exploratory sniffs and licks.
Tom and Patty later confided that this instinct on my part, greeting the
dogs first, was more important to them than anything else I did or said in
the hour-long interview that followed. In that meeting, conducted on their
Southwestern-patterned couches in the dimly lit living room, I learned
about their decade-old business, founded after they quit the rat race of
corporate America to pursue their passion for animals. They shared with me
the basic requirements of setting up shop as a professional pet-care
provider, which, as small business ownership goes, had fairly low overhead.
They primed me on which services were in high demand and the going rates
for each, and where I might fit into this rapidly growing industry.
Apparently, while plenty of pet-care providers would do end-of-the-day
visits to tuck their clients’ dogs and cats in, next to no one stayed the night.
It was this highly sought service that would be my niche: the sleepover.
 Of course, I would supplement these overnight stays with daily walks,
helping lighten the load of Tom and Patty’s packed client roster by picking
up those neighborhood walks and drop-in pet-sitting visits they couldn’t get
to. Tom specialized in the group off-leash walks, so it was primarily Patty’s
portion of the daily walks I’d help with. I was not interested in—or rather, I
was completely daunted by—the prospect of managing five or so off-leash
dogs at once. They agreed that, as a beginner, I was better suited for the
leashed walks with one or two dogs at a time. They’d have primary contact
with their clients and would manage the billing; I’d do the work, taking
home a contractor’s percentage of what the client paid.
Beyond the business license, liability insurance, and a small inventory
of basic supplies, I would need a few clients of my own. For tax reasons—
to distinguish my role from that of an employee—my individually
established business needed to have an altogether independent client list.
This took a touch of extra explaining, as I was a comparative literature
major to their combined double MBAs. The immediate takeaway, though,
was that subcontracting meant that I could jump right in to working with
them while figuring out my own marketing strategy and ramping up my
business in parallel.
I had my marching orders, and an all-new plan.
Beyond my sheer delight at the prospect of spending my days, and
many nights as well, in the company of so many different, affection-seeking
animals, I was also enthusiastic about the business side of things. I’d always
loved playing secretary, hoarding various types of ledgers and notepads. I
got an adding machine for my eighth birthday and loved nothing more than
accompanying my mom to Office Depot. Where most kids threw fits over
candy or Barbie dolls, I’d beg for inane office supplies like carbon copies or
the pink “While you were out” pads. For the life of me, I couldn’t
understand why my mom wouldn’t let me play with her checkbook.
That I’d need to make business cards, track my mileage and gas
expenses, file all work-related receipts for tax purposes, and submit
invoices at month’s end all sounded like too much fun.
In the very beginning, I only had one client I could call my own. He was
Chase, a four-month-old cockapoo, which is a terrible name for a cocker
spaniel/poodle mix. Chase’s family lived in the neighborhood and knew
Annie’s boys through school. While Chase was undeniably adorable, with