I tempted fate when I wrote last week about Buddy’s abilities as an escape artist. I should not have voiced that notion, for fate came knocking this morning at 6:45 in the form of a neighbor, banging on the door and yelling that Buddy was stuck in someone’s backyard koi pond a block away.
I can explain.
Old age has not been kind to Buddy, and at times I hear in the wee hours of the morning a single plaintive bark. It is a distinctive yelp and easy to miss, but this morning at 4:28, I did not miss it. Buddy needed something, or more to the point, someone. So I rolled out of bed and staggered downstairs and found Buddy waiting expectantly at the back door. I let him out, and since a door is something that a dog wants to be on the other side of, I let him back in. He wanted food and water, and then he wanted back out. I put his red leather collar on, the one with a big red heart with his name and my phone number and with a blue bone that says BITCHES LOVE ME. And I opened the door and let him back into the night.
My duties to my master discharged, I returned to my bed. For I am very well-trained indeed.
We all have our peccadilloes when we sleep. Mine is a (dual control) electric blanket turned to high, so that I spend most of the night sleeping like a baked potato in a cozy foil jacket. When Chris is gone, I call it Sleeping in Scandinavia, for I get too warm on my side of the bed and then roll onto his very cold side of the bed, a veritable south Georgia salute to alternating saunas and ice baths.
My preference has nothing to do with this story, but Chris’ does: He cannot sleep without white noise cranked all the way to 11. So when I crawled back into bed at 4:42, it was to a warm blanket and the loud, steady whoosh of a HEPA filter working overtime. I fell asleep to the comforting thought of Buddy sleeping happily in his favorite patch of dirt in the fenced backyard, nestled in the 90 degree angle formed by two brick walls and dreaming of a topless jar of Jif.
I heard nothing until 6:50, for that is when I walked out of the bathroom, dressed to exercise, and found our daughter talking to Chris. “There is,” she said, “a neighbor pounding on our door and shouting that we need to come quickly, since Buddy is stuck in a pond.”
I threw on a fleece jacket, held my running shoes in one hand, and flew out the door. Walking off briskly, my neighbor explained that Buddy indeed was partially submerged in a koi pond a block away; he had been crying continually for the better part of two hours. I caught up with her, and she took one look at me and asked, “Don’t you want to put on some pants?”
I can explain.
I work out at home every morning, and my exercise clothes are the scourge of my daughter’s existence, for I typically wear booty shorts — and leg warmers if it is cold. If she is to be believed, there are years of therapy in her future, since there are some things you just can’t unsee. Your middle-aged mother in booty shorts is apparently one of those things.
When asked, “Don’t you want to put on some pants?,” there is a single correct, socially acceptable answer: “Yes, please. Putting on pants will take just a moment.”
That is why I responded, “Nope.”
So holding running shoes, in indecent shorts and a fleece jacket, walking fast next to a neighbor holding a wet leash, she told me that she had tried to bail Buddy out without success, and she suggested that I wake up Chris. I ran back into the house and yelled up the stairs, and then I continued on my quest to rescue Buddy. When we were almost to the rescue site, I looked back to see Chris dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, a pullover sweater, penny loafers, and a baseball cap. This is par for the course for Chris, to turn out fully dressed in 30 seconds or less regardless of the crisis at hand. Although I do not want to test this theory, I suspect that if the house caught on fire, I would race to the lawn in my leopard print robe and terrible slippers — possibly wearing glasses, possibly having grabbed my Fitbit — only to find Chris waiting for me in a starched shirt and tuxedo, cummberbund on and bow tie hand-tied, polished shoes cladding his stockinged feet.
The neighbor and I arrived at the other neighbor’s house just as he was shutting his own gate, oblivious to a 92 pound crying dog marooned in his koi pond. “Stop!,” she yelled, startling the man and pulling me past him. “Didn’t you hear the dog?” He did not, and as his two young sons and fully dressed wife rolled out of the house, I saw Buddy.
The neighbor’s koi pond was large, about eight feet in diameter, with a school of sizeable koi huddling in confusion opposite the large, wet haunches of a distressed dog. “He wouldn’t let me get him out,” the neighbor reiterated, and as I assessed the situation, I realized that I had worn booty shorts for a reason.
My shoes had come on at some point in the ordeal, and my shoes quickly came off. I put my right leg into the pond, the very cold water up to my hemline, and in a display of strength befitting a much younger woman headed to a caber tossing competition, I effortlessly flipped Buddy like a light projectile onto the neighbor’s yard. The whole rescue — from the initial trespass to the flip to the ensuing profuse apologies — lasted under a minute, and as Chris was walking into the yard, Buddy, the alerting neighbor, and I were walking out. Buddy was tethered to the wet leash my neighbor had provided, but he really didn’t need any restraint.
Buddy — cold, wet, undoubtedly hungry Buddy — was smiling, with Chris to his left and me to his right on the slow trot home.
As we sauntered along, the overpowering smell of wet dog wafting up, all I could think of was this: Who will love me when I get old? Who will be there for me? Buddy was not mine in his needy years as a puppy, and he is making up for it in the twilight of his life. It causes, shall we say, a number of inconveniences and annoyances that make it easy to forget how hard these days can be for him. I try to respond with kindness, even at 4:28 in the morning, even when my right leg is freezing cold in a stranger’s koi pond. I try to keep with me the memory of a recent walk in the park across the street, when I was six feet away but a bewildered and almost panicked Buddy had no idea where I was. I just try, with varying degrees of success, but at least I try.
Given that I cause my own fair share of inconveniences and annoyances, I am grateful that I am on the trying end of others, too.
The mystery of Buddy’s disappearance was solved when we got home: in this weekend’s flurry of home improvement, a latch on the picket fence had not been closed. Buddy had wedged himself improbably through a side gate, into a courtyard, and out into freedom. He launched himself into the night, chasing a memory of his youth, feeling the years melt away. He wandered on a lark. He got thirsty. He found a pond — an unknowing luxury provided by strangers — and when he leaned over for a drink, he tipped in. He called for help, and even though it took a while, the people he loves came running. He made it home to his own patch of sunlight, to the spot he loves, and he slept the sleep of the dead.
I thought again, Who will love me when I get old? And in answer to my silent question, Chris asked if he could make my breakfast. He started clanging pots and pulling out bacon and eggs, and I had my answer. But to my surprise, I found myself declining his offer. Get some sleep, I said. The bed is still warm. The room is wonderfully noisy. And sure enough, I found him there later, not a care in the world.
ALC
