Keep on Chuggin’ by Geoff Reed

Ruby, Joe, and Franky

I never had a lap dog and never really wanted one, but two years ago I ended up with a Chug. A Chug is one of those unofficial mixed breeds resulting when a Pug and a Chihuahua mate by chance or by a breeder hoping to make a few bucks. I had always preferred the company of big sporting or working dogs, but maybe approaching the big five-o had me coming around to the idea of getting a small dog. I had always noticed that the older people got, the smaller their dogs seemed to be.

Anyway, my wife Melissa was feeling down one cold Saturday in January and wanted to stop off at Metro Animal Control in Nashville to visit homeless dogs. Unlike me, it makes her happy going into those places to visit the dogs.

I didn’t want to go because I was still moping over the loss of my long time come-along-dog Little Joe, who had died of skin cancer a few months back. Even when he was full grown, he looked and acted like a five–month-old Golden Retriever, with these long, gangly legs and a skinny body. I thought there couldn’t possibly be another dog in that shelter as cool as Joe. So what was the point of looking?

I had once purchased a DNA testing kit for dogs, swabbed Joe’s cheek, and sent it off in the mail. The results said he was mostly a Chow-Chow and Brittany mix, which explained his black and purple tongue and his strong hunting instinct.

“Who in their right mind would breed a dog like that?” Doc Johnson said one time, shaking his head after hearing the results. Doc Johnson was an old school vet, kept hand written files on each dog and always gave each animal a thorough sniff, as part of his examine. He liked to say things like “Somebody didn’t do right by him,” when looking at Joe. Doc Johnson liked his dogs pure bred and professionally trained.

So, there I was, thinking about Joe in the parking lot of Metro Animal Control, “car-sitting,” while my wife went inside to look at the dogs. By the way, I normally do a lot of waiting because I don’t like going inside most places that my wife likes to go in. You know, department stores, clothing stores, mall – you get the gist.

Like me, Joe had done a lot of  “car-sitting.” He had terrible separation anxiety; his worst fear was that I would leave him alone at home. In the beginning, he would yelp and bark if I got more than ten feet away from him, fearing another abandonment. If left alone, he was miserable and so stressed out he tore up whatever he could find. I told him he could ride along if he acted good and waited patiently while I went about my job. Since he behaved well and we lived in Western Washington, where it rarely got really hot or cold, our arrangement worked out well. For ten years, we were pretty much inseparable.

We had found Joe at an animal shelter where my wife worked. She volunteered on her day off and, damn, she loved all those homeless mutts. She would walk a few dogs or take one over to the nursing home –that kind of thing.

When I walked into the shelter, I immediately saw Joe and stopped dead in my tracks. He was the most pathetic-looking guy in the joint. He sat in his pen panting, long, weird-colored tongue hanging out, shaking and shivering.

“Just give me the paperwork,” I said.  His file said he had been a stray, and nobody had claimed him. He was wearing a collar on his neck with the word “SPOILED” on it. No lie.

Six years later, when we first moved to Nashville, Joe’s hair started to fall out. I thought it had something to do with the environmental change, and we took him to a vet near our apartment. The doctor had a diploma from Alabama hanging on his wall. Everyone called him Doctor Danny.

“C’mon son, I got a surgery to do,” he had said in a thick southern drawl as Joe squirmed, trying to hide under a chair. Joe’s condition perplexed Doctor Danny, and he recommended a specialist. “Where you two from?” he inquired.

When I told him we moved here from the Seattle area, he said “C’mon, where you really from?”

I said, “My wife’s from New York, and I’m originally from Wisconsin.”

“I knew it. Y’all are just a couple of Yankees.”

I tried to change the subject. “Those are some tattoos you got,” I said to the rough-looking vet tech whose arms were sleeved with them.

“Thirty years ago if I saw a guy like that I wouldn’t know whether to run or shoot ‘em,” Doctor Danny said and guffawed. “Now I hire ‘em!”

Welcome to the South Li’l Joe.

The specialist Doctor Danny recommended had looked really worried, so I kind of knew the news would be bad when she called with the results.

“He’s got three to five months,” she said.

I was in Kroger so I grabbed a steak and drove home in a daze to break the news. Little Joe took it well, happily chomping on his piece of meat.

For the next two months, I watched the cancer spread. It was playing out just like the specialist had told me it would –only faster. The steroids made him crazy, and his personality changed. He acted aggressive and ravenous, eating wood chips from the flowerbeds. Open sores started to bleed.

Joe’s physical condition got so bad that people looked away or turned around when they saw him walking with Melissa. One day, he wagged his tail, and blood splattered on the wall. I couldn’t take it anymore, picked up the phone, and called the mobile vet. “He’s ready to go,” I said.

The vet couldn’t conceal her shock when she walked through the door with her euthanasia equipment and saw Joe. I guess I was used to looking at him by then.

“What do you think?” I asked, wanting reassurance that I was making the right decision.

“It’s probably the worst I’ve seen,” she said. “Tell me when you are ready.”

We were holding Joe when he stopped breathing.

The vet listened for a heartbeat, checked the eye nerves. “He’s gone. If only we could all be as lucky to go out this way,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Melissa asked, looking at his opened eyelids.

“The eyelids only close in the movies,” the vet said.

Three months later, back at the parking lot of Metro Animal Control, I waited on Melissa, and daydreamed about Little Joe. The phone buzzed, disrupting my thoughts.

“I think I found one,” my wife said. Oh man, here we go again, more money, more hassle, and the eventual, inevitable heartache. “Come on in and take a look – you’ll love him.”

His name was O.T. He had been at the shelter for a few weeks and was getting real close to landing on the euthanasia list. But O.T. didn’t know about his potential doom. Instead, he acted like the happiest little thing, jumping all over, excited about all the attention. Full grown, he weighed fifteen pounds and wore a turned-up nose, tan short hair and big brown eyes. His front leg had been broken and never healed right, and his once broken tail bent in an almost ninety-degree angle, like it had been slammed in a car door. He was emaciated with protruding ribs and hips, an under-bite with crooked teeth and bad breath.

I don’t know if it was his impending death sentence or his only-a-mother-could love appearance, but he appealed to me. I felt my resolve slipping away. Perfect, I thought – except for one thing. What would Ruby think of him? Ruby is an elderly Australian- German shepherd mix, who came from the same rescue facility as Joe and spent most of her time surveying the world from our couch. Ruby loves everyone, but hates every other dog she ever met, except for Little Joe. As much as he liked to ride along, she liked to stay home and keep an eye on things. She wore three pieces of bling on her collar – a BFF tag, a GLAM charm and a small locket with Joe’s picture.

In order for his adoption to be successful, this happy-little Chug would have to leave Ruby alone. To test him, the nice man at the shelter brought a female dog into the room. O.T. ignored her and jumped on us, licking our faces.

“I think this might just work out,” I said.

Right before O.T. happily jumped in the backseat of our car, he took a big dump in the grass. We were off to a good start.

We re-named him Franky, and he quickly made himself comfortable in his new Snoozie bed, while we all went about settling into a routine. At first, Franky followed Melissa everywhere, but whenever I got near him, he cowered and waited for a blow. Somebody REALLY didn’t do right by him.

One day, his fear of me almost turned into a nightmare. I took him to the vet for shots and the free check-up that came with the adoption fee. All went well until we were leaving and his collar slipped over his little head. As we walked out the door, he realized he was free and took off. Next thing I knew he sprinted down an alley and disappeared. Because of his fear of me, he wouldn’t come when I called. I spotted him running across a parking lot, acting like his newfound freedom was all a game. We made a few laps around a field, but he was fast and shifty. I once briefly gripped him when he stopped to lift his leg, but he wiggled free and bolted for the highway. I waited to hear the sound of screeching brakes and prepared myself for the sight of my new dog dead in the road. How would I explain this to Melissa? “What a fuck-up,” I said out loud. As I walked to my car, still parked at the vet’s office, thinking how awful this excursion had gone, the receptionist came out of the office door, holding Franky, peering around with a “WTF?” expression.

“Missing something?” she asked.

I was beyond relieved, thanked her profusely, and enfolded her with a big hug. I gripped Franky to my chest and walked to the car.  When I slammed the door, I slumped in my seat, sitting for twenty minutes, nerves shot, lungs burning. Great, my dog would rather be at the vet, than with me. I drove to the pet store, bought him a harness and went home. Even though it was only 11:00 AM, I poured three fingers of bourbon over ice and slowly sipped it.

For the first two weeks Franky didn’t bark, but once he uttered his first peep he became a little watchdog, barking and growling at every passerby. I think he realized that he had it pretty good at our house and nobody was going to screw that up.

In the two years since we adopted Franky, he’s acquired a few nicknames, including Mr. Chug, Peanut Head, Franks-‘n’-Beans or Pee-wee. I even think that Ruby a.k.a. “The Roo” likes him. In the end, he befriended me out of necessity. Being a lap dog, he needed a suitable lap, which turned out to be mine.

Of course, he can never replace Joe. And it isn’t fair asking him to. He did, however, fill the hole Joe’s death left in my soul. How Franky made it from homelessness to snoozing on my lap in our La-Z-Boy is now very clear to me. He keeps on chuggin’.