Rosie Trusts Me
Last Thursday, two hours after taking off from Nashville, Southwest flight 296 landed in Philadelphia. It was 10 PM, tar black sky, city lights muted by low-lying clouds.
Mason waited for me in baggage claim. He had flown into Philly the night before, and we would both return home on Monday.
It was the last trip of four back-to-back NHRA drag races, meaning sixteen days of working in different cities, but the end was close. Soon, we would both be home for three weeks.
As the tires jarred against the runway, I turned my phone off airplane mode, and it started vibrating almost immediately, signaling an onslaught of text messages. Nothing good comes from that many messages in two hours.
My eyes snagged the first one from Jeremy, Rosie’s primary caregiver, saying if we couldn’t pick her up before next week – as we had originally planned – then he’d have to leave her at a shelter. His landlord threatened eviction.
Sitting on that jetway, ninety-six hours and nine hundred miles away from home, one of ICHBA’s animals on the verge of getting ditched for the second time in less than a year, oddly enough, I didn’t want to do anything except talk to a dog.
Not only did I want to ask Rosie what went down, but I also wanted to assure her that we wouldn’t let her end up in a shelter or on the street. Most importantly, I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for making such a bad choice.
Five months ago, Jeremy, a freshman at Middle Tennessee State University, and his parents had adopted Rosie, a four-month-old St. Bernard mutt.
Donna, ICHBA’s head honcho, doesn’t normally adopt dogs out to people as young as Jeremy, but she had interviewed him three times, and I had interviewed him once. I had even visited his family’s clean, colorful home and spoke with his parents, who said if Jeremy couldn’t take care of Rosie because of school and work, they would pick up the slack.
They had fooled all of us.
Mason drove to our hotel through a pitch-black Philly night while I delivered the bad news to Donna. All of ICHBA’s foster families were already filled to capacity with homeless dogs, but we hatched an alternative plan: ask Jeremy to keep Rosie overnight, and in the morning, we would find somewhere near Murfreesboro to board her, have the boy drop her off, and Mason would pick her up when we landed four days later. ICHBA would foot the bill.
***
I heard Mason’s tires crunch on the gravel driveway and stepped onto our deck, anxious to see the dog we fostered five months prior. Mace and I had returned to Nashville around 9 am Monday morning, and as planned, Mason left straight from the airport, driving a couple hours south on Interstate 24 to retrieve Rosie.
Mason had called to warn me she was big, but it still took a few moments to recognize the puppy I had known inside the large beast that plodded all clumsy and herky-jerky-like down our stone walk. Even with my pack yapping at the new arrival, Rosie wore a happy expression, tail swooshing back and forth, like maybe she remembered the Farnival.
As the week has progressed, I’ve studied Rosie’s temperament, behavior, and habits, waiting for her to bite a cat, destroy furniture, pee on the floor, anything that would prove she wasn’t lovable, but there’s not a single clue as to why her family didn’t want her anymore; in fact, all I’ve seen is a lovable oaf that wears a perpetual grin and snuggles like a pro.
When I decided to work full-time in animal rescue, I never even considered how much my inability to talk with animals would factor into the process. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not underestimating nonverbal communication. There are times when we, woman and dog, are totally dialed into each other, and understanding dawns with such clarity that I practically hear unspoken mongrel “words.” But then there are the more complex ideas – like wanting them to know I’m sorry for making a bad choice or simply finding out what happened– that I’ll never be able to convey or discover.
The thing that complicates working with homeless animals even more is the fact that I’m making decisions for creatures that I ultimately don’t understand and never will; these uninformed decisions affect a dog’s entire life and, worst case scenario, can cause their death.
I’ve asked Rosie a million times since she returned where I went wrong. What clue did I miss? But she just cocks her big goofy head, pink tongue dangling from the side of her square maw, staring at me with a patent look of unwavering trust.