Category Archives: Fang & Claw

Open Letter to a Puppy, Chapter VII: Love Rescue 911

My dear Charlie,


I’ve had rescues before.

There was Sal, a Shepherd mix that looked so much like a fox I’m pretty sure one got into more than the henhouse.

There was Esme, the Original OG, a Pitbull mix as gentle as she was fearsome-looking. I’m pretty sure she spared me a mugging once.

But you feel different, just as your sister felt different from the bred pups I’ve known over a half-century. In less than a month, you have dashed off a half-dozen reasons and reminders why rescues rock:

  • Rescues are easier to teach.

When you’re raising a puppy, you’re not only introducing it to YOUR world; you’re introducing it to THE world. Rescues are well aware of the real world, perhaps more so than us.

  • Rescues relive the puppy experience.

In navigating that new world, a rescue will make the same mistakes as a puppy. But so, too, will they achieve the same triumphs of learning your home, your path. The parental pride is easily as fierce, I find.

  • Rescues are easier to discipline.

Every once in a while, we must attempt SOME sense of authority with our canine overlords. And when we do, pups make utterly public their disappointment in us, usually in the form of crate whines. Rescued or Raised, they moan just the same.

But with a rescue, you know: That crate, safe within a home that cares, is like offering a drifter a lifetime, complimentary stay at the Hilton. With poop-bagging.

  • Rescues are more grateful.

Your ancestors, Teddy and Esme, left an embarrassment of riches to their heirs. And like all pups, Jadie chewed through and grew bored with her inheritance, seemingly within days.

You still carry half-eaten rawhides and slobber-encrusted toys like Indy at the Shroud of Turin.

  • Rescues have backstories as imaginative as you.

Part of your appeal is the mystery of your muttness. How old are you, really? Where were you born, really? Who are your mom and dad? Where’d you get that limp?

My narrative for you is that you were the runt (sorry, but shorties rule) of a litter born to a Pitbull that had HER way with a Beagle that had HIS way with a more-wiener dog. Born behind a dumpster that would serve as an iron embryo, you survived on the scraps of excess. One day, on a search-and-subsist mission, you were run over, leaving you with a badass right-front limp when you walk slowly, like a Western gunslinger who’s seen his share of shootouts.

Or something completely different.

This is not to rob Peter and pay Paul. Purebreds are purehearts, and there is a visceral joy to witnessing life still in the glow of being new, unbridled and becoming.

I think you recognize that bond with Jadie. When I give her a good ear rub, you will lick her other ear. Love in stereo.

Which brings us to the core truth about you — and all refugees on the fang and claw:

  • Rescues know.

They know they are rescues. They know of discarded love and recovered love. They know the utter value of a bed, of a roof, of an embrace. They know the unfairness of life doesn’t hold a candle to the beauty of it.

Rescues know.

And aren’t we all?

Open Letter to a Puppy, Chapter VI: Highway One


My Kodachrome,

I brought you home last night.

You have never been small, but you fit inside the oversized hoodie I wore to pick you up in Oxnard. As a guardian angel drove us home, we sat in the backseat, me whispering to you the whole ride back. I’d read somewhere about the importance of “imprinting” your presence on a new Earthling.

“It’s okay, baby,” I told you during the chilly trip down the 101. I had to keep the windows open and the mask on, but our bodies warmed each other.

“You’re going to a safe place. Good Jadie. Everything is going to be good and happy and warm there. This home is yours. Good Jadie.”

You were a pandemic puppy. The biggest, loudest and most nipple-insistent of a half dozen siblings. You were not thrilled to leave mom and whimpered softly the first leg of the trip.

But around Camarillo, you were chewing my hoodie. And my sandals. And my blanket. And my rose bushes. And my baseboards and my gazebo and mygoddidsomeonedareyoutoeattheworld?

As we neared Malibu Canyon, you were grudgingly accepting the notion of peeing outdoors.

Around Northridge, you had become a regular at the Victory Dog Park, where witnesses (one of them your dad) reported seeing you run with a discarded bucket on your head more than once.

By the time we turned onto Sherman Way, you were the size of a small Shetland pony. A shedding, shameless Shetland pony.

At bedtime, you wanted out of the cat crate I was supposed to leave in a separate room but brought to bed with me anyway. Another soft whimper, and I folded immediately: I opened the door and you tucked back to the belly that harbored you home, from the squall of the day.

I know I could have been a more resolute parent, but what can I say? I’m ten cents into the dime for you girl.

You fell asleep. I did not. But I had the most amazing dream.

I dreamt you told me that the vets are full of shit. That you don’t dig because you are nervous; you dig because I am. That you aren’t colorblind; you just can’t see what-ifs. That the reason you jump as much upward as forward when you run is not because you’re working new legs; it’s to see more of a new world.

And I wake up. And it is your birthday. And you are one. And those silly vets now consider you a dog, though we both know the truth: You will never stop being my puppy.

Whaddya know? I guess you were the one imprinting.

Happy birthday, Jadie. You really shouldn’t have, but thank you for the presence.