Dog Days

Like a lot of you, my husband Chris and I recently decided now would be a great time to foster a dog. We’re trapped at home, our muscles are atrophying and our community is in peril. We wanted to help. Each day is the same struggle against boredom and helplessness, and taking in a very good boy seemed like a self-care silver bullet. “I need a baby, H.I., they got more than they can handle!” I shouted at Chris all day, channeling my inner Raising Arizona. It worked out; my need for a foster dog and my city's need for me fed into each other, an ouroboros of problem and solution. And so one week ago and after the LA Animal Services approved our application, we drove to the shelter to pick up the answer to all life’s problems.

Missy was a fifty-three pound, four-year-old pitt with brown and white spots, who we were assured was a total couch potato. She was currently held at a city shelter in Chatsworth, a town best known as home to Spahn Ranch, which should have been our first warning. We had spent that morning filling a shopping cart at PetCo while wearing nitrate-coated gloves and face masks made out of pillowcases. We bought chew toys, biscuits, the least-tacky dog bed available, a leash printed with California oranges. We assembled a crate in our apartment so Missy could have a room of her own, excitedly told our friends where we were headed and let them tell us what great people we were.

I wish I realized then that I was trapped in an Amy Hempel story. After a forty minute drive we arrived at the shelter, a flat, teal building a few blocks off the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Due to social distancing we were not allowed to enter the building or even meet with Missy before taking her home. Instead, we signaled to the receptionist and waited outside for half an hour, until at last we saw the foster coordinator and an energetic spotted dog heading our way through the bolted glass doors. “She has an eye infection,” was the first thing the coordinator said us, one foot inside, the other on the sidewalk as she struggled to hold onto the straining leash. “Come back in a week, if you still want her.” On the other end of the leash Missy was enjoying the fresh air and new smells, and it was obvious that her eyes were medicated and bloodshot. “Can we pet her?” I asked, my heart overflowing. The coordinator said of course, but when Chris and I bent down, Missy snarled and lunged, her jaws snapping at Chris’ fingertips and pushing him backwards onto the cement. “She didn’t get you, did she?” asked the coordinator. Chris inspected his hands but when we turned back to talk to the woman she was already inside, leaving us in the parking lot, clutching our new leash.

I realize now it was a fantasy, that what I needed and wanted more than anything—a city-provided therapy dog to make me feel better—would perfectly align with what the strained municipal services could use — foster parents with an apartment filled with hundreds of dollars of dog accessories. In the Chatsworth parking lot I wept into Chris' shoulder. I felt like Catherine Keener in the film Please Give -- a white lady so desperate to help that she's no help at all. While volunteering at a basketball game for kids with Down syndrome Keener's character can't keep herself from crying. "I'm so sorry, it's just so sad," she whimpers as she's asked to leave.

So that was a bad day. Chris and I returned home to find that our cat had torn through the new bag of dog food, and I continued to cry while I disassembled the dog crate, cracked open a beer, watched Fury Road. “Well, you keep moving,” says Max Rockatasnky at what looks like the end of the world but isn't, not yet. The apocalypse is no time to wallow. And while being sad isn't an excuse to let your own needs eclipse those you’re trying to help, it's also true that just because helping makes you feel good doesn’t mean it doesn't count. So. The next day I signed up my neighbors for a mutual aid network, accidentally dropped an onion on my head and cried some more. Maybe I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maybe we all are. Still though, today was another new day and Chris and I delivered shampoo and tuna to Angelenos who reached out through the organizing group Ground Game LA, a good reminder that just down the street there are people doing the real, constant work. Well, you keep moving. Tomorrow we’re driving to a shelter North of Santa Barbara to meet Koba, a seven-year-old Catahoula Leopard Hound who was recently surrendered by her owners. Maybe this time around it will all match up, what we need and what we can give. Before then, I'll watch my cat luxuriate in all the new dog toys he thought we bought for him, and before bed I’ll re-read the George Saunders’ novella “Bounty,” a dystopian odyssey which ends:

The night’s cold. I see a bushel of snowfrosted apples and two black horses snorting at a frozen shirt on a fence-post and I’m lonely already.

There’s a half-moon above the rebel barn. I give it a little knock.

“I’m here to help,” I whisper, and the door swings open.