A lot of my writer friends have or have had dogs and have insisted to me for a while that it would be a good idea to get one. Dogs keep you company during those lonely stretches at home, but they also force you to get out in the world. Plus dogs just love you unconditionally. I had a cat for a number of years but he always seemed to get on my nerves more than soothe me. I grew up with dogs. I am a dog person. Analyze at will.

I began to get a little more serious about it after I read Julie Klam’s charming memoir, You Had Me at Woof, which I fully recommend to pretty much anyone who has or has had dogs, or even just those people who like to stand outside of dog parks or in pet stores for slightly longer than a casual amount of time. Even though Julie and I are very different people, our reasons for initially considering dog ownership converge on this sentence from the book: “I was convinced that doing anything to shake up my world would help with the at-sea feeling permeating every aspect of my life.” I am not as at sea as Julie was at that moment in the book, but emotionally I could use something to hold onto. Which is to say: I need to learn how to love something other than one of my books.

So I began making the usual rounds. I will never do online dating but I will spend hours on Petfinder guilt-free. After a while, though, the dogs started to look the same to me, and they were abstract anyway. There were Facebook groups to join too. You could look at the faces of all the dogs who were about to be killed if you didn’t rush in to save them, but none of them seemed like they were supposed to be my dog. It all began to depress me. I needed real life interaction.

I fostered a pit puppy for a weekend this winter and he was very sweet but he was too much for me to handle. I could barely manage him on the leash, plus he chewed everything in sight. I also recently came close to taking in a pug but his health problems were immense, and I worried I would inherit not just a sick dog, but a dog who might die within weeks. It did not feel right to me.

Meanwhile I found it increasinly hard to pass by a dog on the street without saying hello to him. Dogs were more interesting than humans, it was clear. I dogsat Kate’s dog for a week in May, and it went so well one night I said to him, “I’m your new mommy now,” and it was a joke BUT WAS IT? I knew I needed my own dog before I stole one of my friend’s pups.

A couple of weeks ago Jenn told me that Unleash, the completely excellent animal boarding facility in Greenpoint, was having an adoption day through their Dog Habitat Rescue. Vannesa and I took a stroll over there. It was hot, and she was wearing a big hat, and I had just come from yoga and was a mess. We talked to one of the owners, Jay, about what I was looking for. There are so many pits in the system. I wish I wasn’t such a wimp, because I know they are such great dogs. He showed me some pit puppies and they were sweet, but not for me. I’ve had a few people tell me that when you meet your dog you’ll know. Often they will pick you. There was no connection there.

An hour later Jay called me and told me he might have another dog for me. I met him in front of his house and sat on his front stoop and met three dogs, one of whom promptly sat on my feet, claiming me as his own. His hair was overgrown and matted and I couldn’t even see his eyes and I thought he was adorable. So that was pretty much it. I waited 24 hours to see if I was allergic, and then I picked him up and brought him home. I was supposed to foster him, and thought of him as the foster dog for a few days, but then suddenly I realized he was actually Foster the Dog, and now that’s his name: Foster.

I ain’t gonna lie: Foster’s got some behavioral problems. His last owners left him behind in an apartment, just picked up and moved out without even thinking twice about this living, breathing being. (How could someone do that? I know.) And who knows how they treated him before then? He’s sweet as pie to me, exceptionally loving and fun and cute and great, but he has more abandonment issues than Jennifer Aniston in 2005. He follows me around the house and has to know where I am at every moment. He absolutely has to be crated if left alone, or he will pee everywhere, and I’m talking about even five minutes alone. He is also aggressive toward people and other dogs. Ornery, said someone the other day at the dog run. That sounds about right to me.

Don’t worry, because I am determined to fix this. I’m going to meet with a trainer this week, and I will do whatever they tell me and more. (Please resist the temptation to give me advice. I have so much advice right now. Trust.) Also he still has his precious little cojones, and those will be history as of Friday. Snip-snip, and then bye-bye testosterone. I am totally in this to help this dog be his best. I know he is a good dog who has just been through the ringer and is scared.

I also know part of it is his breed. This morning I took him for a walk and we ran into a dog who looked just like him, but was slightly smaller, and damn if he didn’t get in Foster’s face. Foster just took it: he always leaves the smaller dogs alone. The woman and I talked for a moment. “I’d pet your dog but he doesn’t like it when I touch any other dogs,” she said. “Does he follow you everywhere too?” I said. “Everywhere,” she said. We smiled at our ornery, possessive, lovable little monsters.

(07/18/11) | 5 Comments »