LITMIR.BIZ

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we’d claimed an open gate was dangerous for our son, but something they seemed very willing to do for a dog. Secure in the knowledge that he was fenced in, we let LD out. He bounded around the garden, tried to wiggle through the iron grating and found it closed. Then he just stood there, head cocked, as though he was thinking. I went back to work, and LD disappeared. Michael found that he’d pushed up the heavy wire mesh and crawled under it. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he’d first seemed.

      One night Joe begged for LD to sleep in his room, and we didn’t object. We moved his bedding up there and he settled in, the ‘little match’ dog. Sometime later, Joe called out my name. When I went into his room, he said, ‘Mama, LD stinks. Can you take him out of here?’

      I almost choked with laughter, yet it was sad, too. Joe’s dreams about having a dog to keep him company hadn’t included a smelly animal that ran away all the time, came home and threw up, barked too much. LD was beginning to be a disappointment.

      The next day LD got out of the house, ran away, and didn’t return. I answered a knock on the door and it was a young woman who worked at one of the shops in the neighbourhood. ‘I saw the police pick up your dog,’ she said in a sly sort of way. ‘When, where?’ I asked.

      ‘Oh, it was a while ago. He was really annoying everyone with his barking,’ she said.

      ‘I’m sorry, you should have signalled me somehow, I would have gone to get him,’ I said.

      ‘Well, you know it is illegal for a dog to be wandering around without a leash,’ she said, righteously. I realized that she had called the police about LD.

      I went to the police station and described LD. Sure enough, they had just transported him to the animal shelter in Rouen. Michael, horrified, jumped in the car and went to retrieve him. Fifty dollars and two hours later, he was back with a lively, unapologetic LD.

      ‘This dog is really dumb,’ Michael said, locking him into the house. ‘We cannot ever let him out without a leash. If he runs away again like that, I’m not going after him.’

      By then, LD had been with us about a month. I kept trying to convince myself to like him. He seemed to love us, wiggling all over when he saw us, snuggling up if one of us sat down. He wanted to be near us all the time, but he didn’t really want to play. I don’t think he understood the concept of play. Life to him was running free, sleeping, eating, being walked on a leash that he could pull against. And he had so many bad habits: incessant barking when he was outside, or when he heard a noise inside; his running away; his aroma. His eating habits hadn’t adapted to our rules, either. He didn’t like vegetables or dry dog food. Michael caved in and got him some canned food, which he inhaled. Michael bathed LD practically every day, but it didn’t help much: he was just a smelly dog. Joe liked him, but they weren’t bonding. In fact, none of us were bonding with LD. Poor thing – he was a travelling dog with bonding issues, not a family dog.

      Two months had gone by, and we were sure the statute of limitations on dog borrowing dictated that we had owned him too long to return him to the emotionally distraught Anthony. In fact, we now wondered if Anthony and his mother hadn’t been rehearsing for a drama project with their Oscar-winning sobfest, as neither of them ever came to visit the dog.

      Now and then, I would take LD on a walk in town, thinking perhaps he and I would bond. Besides, I figured that I would look really French if I had a caniche on a leash. I’m taller than most French woman, have reddish hair, freckles, blue eyes and blonde eyebrows, which means I don’t look French in the least, so maybe LD would be my ticket to Frenchness. But it didn’t work. Friends and acquaintances stooped to give him a pat but mentioned nothing different about me. Their only reaction was a certain sympathy when I explained why I was walking LD down the pavement. I guess I didn’t look any more French than usual as I struggled to keep him from running into every shop we passed, and from stopping to sniff every tiny little thing.

      Then there were those terribly embarrassing moments when LD had to ‘fait ses besoins’. I gently tugged him to the gutter, but he resisted, so I had to pick him up and deposit him there, then stand on the other end of the leash, waiting. It was excruciating. Where was I supposed to look? How was I supposed to act if someone I knew came up to greet me?

      I love to bicycle, and I go for a ride through the fields several times a week. Invariably, LD would wind up flapping along behind me and I would stop, grab him, go home and lock him up, then start again. This happened so many times it became part of my bicycle ride. I would have loved his company on my rides, but he was too undisciplined: at the first opportunity he’d run into someone’s house, or jump over a fence into a yard full of chickens, or make a mess on someone’s front path, or knock over an elderly lady; it was impossible to let him run free.

      The more we had LD, the less we all liked him, but no one wanted to admit it. It was nearing summer and the French government had launched its yearly pre-holiday campaign to discourage the French from abandoning their dogs, which they do in huge numbers each year. Plaintive doggies looked out from posters everywhere, while the words, ‘You wouldn’t be able to abandon him?’ stretched like a reproach above his head. It was as if they were reading our minds, though we certainly weren’t the kind of people to abandon a dog, even a tramp dog, rubbish-eating, meat mercenary like LD.

      Michael, the lover of all animals, agreed that he was a sorry excuse for a pet. ‘This dog is an apartment dog,’ he said, the worst judgement he could lay on an animal. ‘He should sit on a chair all day and be fed with a silver spoon.’ Joe liked him but didn’t really want to be around him much, either, but we were stuck with him and we were attached, sort of. So we settled into accepting him, the way one does dopey neighbours or quirky plumbing. He didn’t chew up things, he wasn’t mean, he didn’t wet in the house, he wasn’t ruining anything but the peace and quiet of the neighbourhood. But he certainly wasn’t the playmate Joe had envisioned.

      We’d had LD for about two months when I discovered I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it, and Michael’s disbelief surpassed mine. I looked at LD, long and hard, perplexed. I try for three years to get pregnant, then decide it’s impossible. We decide to get a dog, get one within moments of our decision, and within two months of its acquisition I’m pregnant? What did it all mean? If we’d known pregnancy was imminent, we wouldn’t have had to go through this dog thing. On the other hand … I couldn’t entertain that thought: the same one which holds that couples who want to get pregnant and can’t suddenly manage to do so the minute they decided to adopt a child.

      I was determined to stay fit and healthy during this pregnancy, and stepped up my regular bike rides. One day I set off to ride to the supermarket. For once, LD was nowhere to be seen, until I began to go around the roundabout several blocks from the house. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spied him behind me. I felt as if I could just let him keep running behind me until he lost me and was too far away from home to find his way back. This seemed a rather heartless way to end our relationship, but it showed me that LD needed a new home.

      Michael, Joe and I later had a family discussion about LD as the dog snuggled under our feet until its head was resting in its accustomed place. We all agreed that we really liked him, but that he wasn’t the right dog for us. We all knew that lots of people would love him, but that being part of our family must have been like reform school for him: he had rules to follow, regular baths, no fresh meat and was prevented from rampaging around the neighbourhood. ‘What kind of a life is this?’ he must have asked himself. The animal shelter seemed like the best solution, so we took him there

      One day, not two weeks later, I was walking to pick up Joe from school when I saw a caniche not far ahead, running in a funny, familiar, gimpy way. I gained on him and looked him in the face. It was LD, sticking close to the walls, stopping every five seconds to sniff, fat and happy. He’d been adopted by a new owner who was walking some way in front of him: a middle-aged, nicely dressed woman. They looked good together.

      Since then we’ve seen him often. He’s a lot fatter than he was with us, and he’s clipped now, an uptown dog. But it is obvious that his heart and soul are still free and on the run. Old LD is having the best of it all!

      

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