Category: Daisy and Walter

Posted on

Walter at the Pound

He sat and he waited. He sensed that there was something special about the day, although there seemed to be something special about every day.

He heard the sound of something pull into the parking lot out front of the building. He listened carefully. It was a pickup truck; he could tell by the sound of the tires on the broken pavement and the faint sound of loose things in the almost empty truck bed. Yes, definitely a pickup truck, a small one.

The engine stopped. That was followed by a door of the truck opening and closing. Just one door, not both, followed by the sound of footsteps crunching in the gravel of the crumbling lot.

The front door of the shelter squeaked open and squeaked closed.

He heard voices speaking. He could hear the person who walked him and fed him and took care of him and who left at night. He could also hear someone else, another woman. The woman who took care of him did most of the talking. He noticed that some people talked more than other people. Some people talked on and on and on to him and he could not understand a word they said. The woman who took care of him said things he understood. He liked her.

The whole time that the woman who took care of him and the other woman talked on the other side of the door, most of the other dogs barked in their cages. “Station” was a word the woman who took care of him used but he heard a lot of people use the word “cage” instead. Some of the barks were scared barks and some were calls for attention. All of the barks were loud so they would be heard by the women in the front room. He didn’t mind. His station was next to the door and so he could still hear the two women talking. He did not know what they said, but he could hear them talk nonetheless.

So he just sat and he waited.

Part of reason the barking was so loud was that all the stations were occupied. Some of the cages even had more than one dog in them. Ned knew that the dogs who did not get along so well with other dogs were in cages by themselves. The dogs who had proven that they got along with other dogs and had been there a while were doubled up in cages together. Ned sometimes wished that he had someone else with him in his station. But he had a bone to chew on and he had the other dogs to listen to and so he learned to make do with that.

A lot of times when the door squeaked open and squeaked closed and then people talked, the woman he liked and who took care of him and fed him would come through the door to the cages with someone he did not know. Sometimes she would bring more than one person. Sometimes two big people or a big person and a small person. One time she came through the door with two big people and more small people than he had paws.

Finally, the woman who took care of him and the other woman came through the door. The woman who took care of him smiled. The other woman did not. She frowned. He could tell the difference between a smile and a frown.

Ned noticed that the other woman did not say much but she did wrinkle her nose the way that Ned did when he smelled something he did not like and the way that a lot of people did when they walked by the stations after they came through the door. Ned also noticed that the other woman smelled nice, like she came from a farm.

The woman who took care of him talked. As she talked, she waved her hand down towards him and then towards the other dogs. The other woman did not say anything. She glanced down briefly at him and then at the other dogs.

Then the woman who took care of him turned to face him and so did the other woman. He stood and his tail kept wagging. The woman who took care of him and fed him said a lot of words. In the middle of the words was “Ned” and his tail wagged faster at the sound of his name. As soon as she heard his name, though, the other woman started to shake her head and she moved on to the next station without waiting for the woman who took care of him.

So, as the two women moved on to the floppy-eared hound in next station, Ned’s tail stopped wagging and he sat back down.

And watched and waited.

The hound in the next station was backed into a corner of her cage, trying her hardest to make more noise than all the other dogs.

The two women quickly passed on to the next cage.

They went on that way down the row of cages, stopping only briefly at each one. The woman who took care of Ned said a few words at each station. The other woman simply frowned.

They completely skipped the American Pit Bull Terrier’s station at the end of the row. Winnie barked loudly, almost as loudly as the hound next to Ned. She was usually passed over by visitors and ignored in general, but Ned would occasionally answer her calls for attention with gentle, encouraging barks of his own. That seemed to help her and they had a good relationship, even though their cages were at opposite ends of the row and they almost never saw each other.

As the women passed Winnie and turned to view the stations on the opposite side of the walkway, Ned cocked his head to the side. He thought he caught the other woman glance at him and his tail started to wag gently. That seemed to bring the slightest bit of a smile to the woman’s face.

So he sat and waited.

The women stopped briefly at each station and the woman who fed him said a few words at each and the other woman said nothing at each, her arms folded the entire time.

Finally, they reached the last station, the one directly opposite Ned’s. After the woman who took care of him said a few words and the other woman said nothing, the woman who took care of him took a deep breath and asked “Well?”

The other woman turned towards Ned, unfolded her arms, and stuck her hands in her back pockets. She asked his caretaker a question that made the caretaker laugh and smile and nod her head and say “Yes.”

The woman looked down at him and very deliberately said “Walter.”

She repeated it.

Then she opened his cage and he stepped out. He sat in front of her and she said it again.

“Walter.”

He knew that from now on, when she said “Walter” she was talking to him.

Posted on

Walter Gnaws a Bone

Walter gnawed on his favorite bone, the long one that he had chipped off considerably at both ends. The sound of his back teeth scraping along the length of the bone was soothing to him, more soothing than pretty much any other sound. Daisy liked the sound of falling rain. Sometimes Daisy would take a cup of coffee and a kitchen chair out to the tiny back stoop, which was covered with a small awning, and sit with Walter lying next to her and she would occasionally reach down and scratch him behind the ears and ask him, didn’t he just love the sound of falling rain. The answer, actually, was no, he didn’t love it, he found it bothersome, but he did love lying next to Daisy and her scratching him behind the ears. No, not rain. Rather, for him, there was nothing quite so soothing as that permeating sound of his teeth gnawing away at a bone, the sound seeping from his teeth straight to his soul.

So now as he sprawled on the kitchen floor, a late autumn breeze came through the screen door. The days had turned chilly, but as Daisy prepared her dinner, she was warmed just enough by the stove and kept the inside door open. The breeze and the rustling sound of leaves it brought in with it were a nice background accompaniment to his chewing. For Walter, gnawing on a bone was a full-fledged project. He stopped to look up at Daisy as she cooked her dinner. It smelled good, whatever it was.

Walter turned from Daisy back to his work so that she would not know he was watching her. Pausing to assess his progress, or “Pawsing” as Daisy liked to call it, he carefully looked the bone over, licking a couple of spots as if to test it. He had reached a point in the project that took a great deal of consideration. During this break, he considered a small spot of mud on his forepaw. The smell of the mud mixed with the smell of the critter that had been in it before Walter. He returned to his work, licking the bone again, trying to decide on the best way to resume. He turned the bone over between his paws, finally choosing which end to chew, Daisy referred to this whole deliberation as “Chewsing.” On one end there was a small tab of bone ready to be removed. He decided to start there. The fragment broke off with a snap that caught Daisy’s attention. Then Walter let the bone drop over his paw and onto the wood floor. For now, his project was finished.

Posted on

At the Pound

She pulled into the parking lot of the animal shelter. The lot was really just a crumbly mess of decayed asphalt, ringed by a dense band of weeds. The asphalt itself was punctuated with only slightly less weeds than what surrounded it.

The shelter was a squat cinder block building on the outskirts of a small town, just off the state highway.

She walked into the building, a skeptical frown on her face. Why didn’t they just call it what it was. It as a dog pound, not an animal shelter. The only animals there were dogs. Dogs that nobody wanted.

Probably with good reason.

And it wasn’t a shelter. Dogs didn’t go there to get out of the rain or whatever for a bit before moving on along their way. They were brought there and locked up there.

Probably with good reason.

Still, she promised her mom that she would look into it, adopting a dog, a companion. This “animal shelter” was at least on her way home, so she could stop in and say she did it and be done with it.

At the front desk, or the lobby, or whatever you want to call it, she could hear the barking and the yipping and the baying of all the dogs in the back. Opening the front door to the shelter must have alerted them. This was the result. A bunch of senseless barking. High pitched barks that were more like squeaks than barks, drawn-out baying of bigger dogs, bossy bellowing of still larger ones.

She was greeted by an administrative sort of woman with a short hello and a half page of paperwork to complete. These rural dog pounds were eager to get rid of the dogs and did not want a lot of forms and signatures and the like to get in the way of that. Without much delay, she was taken to the “kennel room” in the back.

It slapped her square in the middle of her face. The smell.

The shelter administrator, a portly, affable woman of indeterminate age, apologized for the smell, saying they were having trouble keeping up with the recent influx of dogs.

Sure enough, all the cages, or “stations” as the administrator called them, were occupied. Some even had more than one dog in them in what seemed like random pairings. She surmised that the only requirement placed on a dog for sharing a “station” was that the dog and the cage-mate would refrain from attacking each other.

Without any prompting, the administrator started an introduction, of sorts, beginning with the first cage on their left as they entered the walkway between the two long row of cells.

The first dog on the left was a pathetic mongrel that did not even bother to bark. All it did was wag its tail. It did not do anything else, really. It just sat and stared at her as the administrator told her his name was “Ned” and blah, blah, blah.

The name “Ned” was enough. She was definitely not going to take home a dog with the same name as him. Ned was, after all, why she was there in the first place, looking for a companion. Or, rather, why her mom made her promise to take a look.

Definitely not Ned.

The administrator paused for a few seconds to see if the woman showed any interest in Ned. The woman, however, was already looking at the next station.

That station was occupied by a loud hound of some sort, backed into a corner of the cage, trying her hardest to make more noise than all the other dogs.

After that, a mismatched pair of scruffy-looking, squeaky, pint-sized nuisances that appeared to be trying to squeeze their snouts through the bars to bite her ankles. Didn’t really matter what their names were, neither were going home with her.

The administrator quickly sensed the futility of trying to place one of the dogs with the woman. The bio on each successive dog became shorter and shorter as they made their way up the one side of the walkway and back down the other.

They stopped at the door back out to the lobby. The administrator asked the woman what she was looking for in a dog.

“Nothing, really,” the woman replied curtly.

Then, embarrassed at her own impoliteness, she added that she was not really sure. Companionship, perhaps. Maybe something else.

The administrator took it in, patiently, then continued.

As the two talked, the woman noticed that Ned, or “that little nugget” as the administrator had called him at one point, had stood up and was peering through the bars and around the administrator’s legs to see the woman. He just stood and looked at her, as if waiting patiently for something.

The administrator told her that it was just as well that she did not have any preconceived notions of what she wanted in a dog, since it was the dog that did the choosing, anyway.

The woman had heard that corny bit of wisdom altogether too often from some of her dog-loving friends. She found that droll bit of dog wisdom amusing, at best. She wondered why people put so much effort into explaining their dogs. Dogs were, after all, only animals and did not need any explanation of why they were the way they were. They just were.

The woman leaned slightly to her left to return Ned’s gaze. As she did so, he stepped toward the latch which held the door to the cage shut and pointed his nose at the latch, as if to show the woman where it was.

The administrator asked the woman if she had any questions.

“Just one,” the woman answered, returning her attention back from the little nugget to the administrator.

“What’s that?”

“Can I give him a new name?”