middle of the kitchen floor and noisily chewed on them, then left them right there when he wandered off to fall asleep again.
We transferred LD to a clean blanket in the kitchen, and we all turned in. Sometime after we’d all fallen asleep we heard excited barking. It was LD reacting to something outside – a light going off, a car going by, we didn’t know what. Michael quieted him down and we went back to sleep. The next day Joe came down the stairs and wrinkled his nose as he walked into the kitchen. ‘Where’s LD?’ he asked and, simultaneously, ‘What is that smell?’
LD and the smell were in the same spot. He hadn’t left any untoward packages anywhere; he just smelt like a not-very-clean animal. We hadn’t noticed it the night before, most likely in the excitement of having him in our home.
‘When you get home from school we’ll give him a bath,’ Michael said to Joe.
But Michael and I couldn’t make it through the day with this fragrant dog, who smelt as if he’d rolled in something dead. How had we not noticed this the night before? Michael bathed him, rubbed him dry, and put him outside on a long tether. He was fluffy, clean and very cute. We both went back to work.
LD began to bark, at moving objects – people, cars, birds flying by. I went out to tell him to be quiet, in English. He stopped barking, but gave me the most quizzical look. We stared at each other for a full minute before I realized he hadn’t understood the words I’d said. So, I wondered, how does one tell a dog to be quiet in French? ‘Tais-toi’? Impolite. ‘Calme-toi’? Ineffectual. I settled on ‘Shhht!’, the sound most often heard in a French classroom, which can be uttered with a great deal of authority.
By the time I’d climbed the flight of stairs to my office he’d started up again. I brought him inside, and he stopped. I showed him his blankets and he lay down and immediately fell asleep. ‘Whew,’ I thought, but I was wary.
I went back to my office. Pretty soon I heard LD leaping up the stairs. He nosed open my office door, came in, sat down under my desk and rested his head on my foot. ‘Aw,’ I thought, ‘he’s really cute.’
But he still smelt, and he twitched. Then he got up and left. I heard Michael lead him to his blanket, after which I heard no more.
Later on, Michael put LD on a leash to go and pick up Joe from school, and off they went. I looked out of the window after them. There was Michael, tall, well-built, masculine, with this fluff-ball on a leash that walked in an odd, gimpy way down the street. The scene looked good, unlike the hysterically funny scenes of the Frenchmen I see who walk their dogs. There they go, normal, virile-looking men, in handsome business suits or newly pressed jeans, walking mincing little dogs who stop and sniff at every piece of gravel. Whenever I see one I try not to stare, which is hard because they look so ridiculous. I can’t believe they actually go out in public with their dogs. Why don’t they have labradors, or huskies, or something more befitting their sartorial splendour?
When Michael and Joe returned, Joe was holding the leash, petting LD, completely enraptured. ‘This experiment seems to be working,’ I thought.
Several days passed and, aside from LD barking constantly when he was outside, he easily settled into our lives. He was obviously an inside dog, and he seemed used to making himself at home. Anthony and his mother had been right – he didn’t jump on the furniture or make any messes inside. He didn’t eat leftovers or dry dog food, either. ‘He’ll get used to it,’ Michael promised. ‘It’s a matter of time.’
Lulled into a feeling of security, I let him out through the front door one day, sure he’d stay close to the door. How wrong I was. He bolted immediately, so far and fast that I lost him. Oh dear, I thought, that was short and sweet. Within an hour he was back, however, docile as could be. He headed to his blanket and fell asleep. When he woke up, he immediately threw up, a lot, in the middle of the floor. He looked perplexed for a minute, then bounded around, the picture of good health. He hadn’t eaten anything at all since morning, so how, I wondered, was he able to throw up so much?
We developed a routine. LD stayed in the house during the day, more often than not in my office, his head on my foot. I didn’t love the dog, but it was kind of sweet that he’d chosen my foot as his pillow. And he was quiet enough. We learned that he would bolt immediately if he got out the front door, so we tied him to the apple tree with a very long leash a couple of times a day so he could get fresh air. He barked, but we ignored him and hoped the neighbours did, too.
Despite our efforts, he ran away often, always returning an hour or so later. He would circle his bedding, lie down and sleep for a while, then rise and throw up. After the first few times we concluded he had found someone who fed him a lot of meat. ‘This,’ Michael said looking at LD, ‘is a hobo dog.’
Michael put up wire mesh around our fence to keep him in, and asked the priest and the office workers at the parish house to be sure and keep the gate closed on their side – something they’d resisted doing when we’d claimed an open gate was dangerous for our son, but something they seemed very willing to do for a dog. Secure in the knowledge that he was fenced in, we let LD out. He bounded around the garden, tried to wiggle through the iron grating and found it closed. Then he just stood there, head cocked, as though he was thinking. I went back to work, and LD disappeared. Michael found that he’d pushed up the heavy wire mesh and crawled under it. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he’d first seemed.
One night Joe begged for LD to sleep in his room, and we didn’t object. We moved his bedding up there and he settled in, the ‘little match’ dog. Sometime later, Joe called out my name. When I went into his room, he said, ‘Mama, LD stinks. Can you take him out of here?’
I almost choked with laughter, yet it was sad, too. Joe’s dreams about having a dog to keep him company hadn’t included a smelly animal that ran away all the time, came home and threw up, barked too much. LD was beginning to be a disappointment.
The next day LD got out of the house, ran away, and didn’t return. I answered a knock on the door and it was a young woman who worked at one of the shops in the neighbourhood. ‘I saw the police pick up your dog,’ she said in a sly sort of way. ‘When, where?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it was a while ago. He was really annoying everyone with his barking,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, you should have signalled me somehow, I would have gone to get him,’ I said.
‘Well, you know it is illegal for a dog to be wandering around without a leash,’ she said, righteously. I realized that she had called the police about LD.
I went to the police station and described LD. Sure enough, they had just transported him to the animal shelter in Rouen. Michael, horrified, jumped in the car and went to retrieve him. Fifty dollars and two hours later, he was back with a lively, unapologetic LD.
‘This dog is really dumb,’ Michael said, locking him into the house. ‘We cannot ever let him out without a leash. If he runs away again like that, I’m not going after him.’
By then, LD had been with us about a month. I kept trying to convince myself to like him. He seemed to love us, wiggling all over when he saw us, snuggling up if one of us sat down. He wanted to be near us all the time, but he didn’t really want to play. I don’t think he understood the concept of play. Life to him was running free, sleeping, eating, being walked on a leash that he could pull against. And he had so many bad habits: incessant barking when he was outside, or when he heard a noise inside; his running away; his aroma. His eating habits hadn’t adapted to our rules, either. He didn’t like vegetables or dry dog food. Michael caved in and got him some canned food, which he inhaled. Michael
