Sweet Sara Puff: My First Rescue

Winter, 2001, Davidson County, Tennessee:

My buddy Butch lived with a professional racecar driver that I’ll call Bobby Dickhead for the purpose of this story. Butch phoned me one afternoon.

“Bobby’s dog looks like shit,” Butch said. “I think there’s something wrong with her.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“The key is under the gnome on the front porch,” he said. “She’s in the backyard.”

They lived in Smyrna, only twenty minutes southwest of our apartment off West End Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee, but I had never been to Bobby’s pad before. Butch always visited us. The temperature teetered at freezing, rain turning to sleet then back to rain. A slate gray sky hovered overhead, the roads slick, headlights glinting off the wet surface. It seemed evening at high noon. I tried to conjure a picture of a sick dog, the kind that forced Butch to call, to sound so serious, but, looking back, I realize that no imagery could have prepared me for my first encounter with an abused animal.

Mace and I parked in front of Bobby Dickhead’s gargantuan house, a mansion really, sitting in a row of identical-looking mansions, all of them hidden from the road by a line of Alabama pine trees and a sign that read something like Evergreen Estates or Lilac Lane. The only way we knew for sure that Bobby lived here was because of the tour bus sitting in the driveway, a coach just like a rock star would own. The inside of his bus was probably bigger than our apartment.

I tipped the generic plaster gnome – red hat, blue vest – found the key, unlocked the door. An undisturbed silence confirmed that nobody was home, but Mason and I didn’t investigate. We were worried about the dog. Butch had never asked us for a favor before.

My first face-to-face interaction with an abused and emaciated dog paralyzed me. A purebred Doberman pincher – not yet a year, coat as gray as the rain falling around her – shivered like a wild animal in the fenced backyard. I couldn’t comprehend her condition all at once. For some inexplicable reason my mind unearthed the lyrics of a Peter, Paul, and Mary song from some long dormant recess.

Puff the Magic Dragon lived by the sea

And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee

Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff

I would call her Puff.

“Holy fuck,” Mason said.

As I absorbed the full extent of her injuries, I realized she reminded me of a dragon because her ribs jutted through her metallic flank like scales. One of her ears hung limp, while the other stood erect. Her hipbones protruded like her ribs, knob-like tail glued to her behind. Something thicker than urine dripped from her vagina.

That’s when I saw the plump pit, chained to a doghouse, food and water bowl empty, but close enough to his den that no one else could touch them, definitely not that broken Dobie. The pit bared his teeth, growled. I didn’t need another warning.

I scooped Puff up, and we split.

We stopped at the Murphy Road Animal Hospital first. Dr. Lewis cried while she pumped Puff full of antibiotics, wrapped a diaper around her bottom, and fed her a small cup of food. She said to continue feeding her small amounts every couple of hours. A week of antibiotics should cure her urinary tract infection. The ear was permanently damaged.

Our next stop was at the Davidson County Animal Control office. Mason unwrapped Puff from a blanket we had found in the trunk, set her on the tile. She slowly slid to the floor.

“He’s rich. And he did this.” My voice shook.

The officer leaned forward in her chair, touched Puff’s broken ear, sighed. She grabbed a notepad and pencil, jotting notes as she asked me to explain the story from the second Butch called until we ended up in her cubicle twice. Then she chewed on her eraser for what seemed like a long time.

“How did you get into his house again?” she asked.

“His roommate told me the key was under the gnome,” I said.

“Let me get this straight. The owner didn’t give you permission to enter his house?”

Mason dropped his head. He was always quicker than I was to figure out the angle.

“In the state of Tennessee, dogs are considered property. You broke into Bobby Dickhead’s house without his permission and stole his property,” she said.

“There’s nothing we can do to him?” I still couldn’t comprehend what the officer was telling me.

“Look, as far as I’m concerned this dog is dead. It got out of the fence and got hit by a car. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Her wide-eyed stare forced me to look away. A clock signaled the changing hour. Papers shuffled. A draft hit my nape. It all clicked together. I had committed a crime by rescuing Puff, but in 2001 in Davidson County, Tennessee, there was nothing we could do to the man that starved and beat her.

Mason bundled Puff back in the blanket he found in the trunk. He carried her through the swinging door of the animal control office. And she was never seen again. I imagine she hopped on a boat with billowing sails back to Honalee.

A few years later Bobby Dickhead ended up in a Kentucky penitentiary for cocaine possession.