Road Apples by Tim Sanders
June 18, 2012
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Hitchhikers As a general rule, Marilyn and I do not pick up hitchhikers. You never know who might be getting into your car. But then again, as a general rule, we regularly ignore general rules. Besides, these two looked harmless. They were standing along a bleak stretch of Highway 71 in that part of the Ballplay area which has no houses or buildings, and little or no shoulder on the roadside. It was almost dark, and they didn’t just look harmless, they looked bewildered. A little frightened, perhaps. There’s not a lot of traffic on Highway 71, but what there is of it often flies by a warp speed. I wouldn’t want to be hitchhiking there, particularly after dark. Marilyn was driving, and I was sitting in the back seat with our oldest son, Steve. Steve is autistic, and we were taking him back to his group home in Ballplay after a visit with family. So Marilyn pulled over, and the hitchhikers hurried to the van. They were glad to have found a ride. One sat on my lap, and the other sat on the floor between Steve and me. “Aha,” you are probably saying to yourself, “if one of them was sitting on your lap, and the other was sitting on the floor, then you really need more seats in that van!” But these hitchhikers, you see, were not your regular hitchhikers. They were a couple of little dogs that someone had left along the road. The one who wound up on my lap was a miniature black and tan dachshund (pronounced “wiener dog”), and the furball, who was content to sit on the floor, was a shih tzu (pronounced “mop.”) When we arrived at the group home, I remained in the van with the doggies while Marilyn took Steve inside. The little wiener dog whimpered a bit, and then laid her head on my knee, and when I rearranged her hindquarters, her friend the mop licked my hand. On the trip home Marilyn and I came up with various theories about just how long those two little pups had been on the road, and just what kind of a low-life cretin could possibly have abandoned them there. There were no answers, so our conversation turned to what our immediate plans were for these dogs. As it turned out, we had no immediate plans, other than to do something about the fleas which I could see had already hitched a ride on the little black and tan hitchhiker in my lap. I knew this was a good indication that there was an entire congregation of fleas and ticks hiding where I couldn’t see them, so my imagination went to work and made me itch. When we got them home we stretched a little accordion gate across the hallway to keep our dachshund, Maggie, from catching something, or borrowing some passengers from the new arrivals. She was eager to meet them and didn’t appreciate the gate arrangement. We examined them in the kitchen, and both were in need of food, and a bath. The little shih tzu was in pitiful shape. “Feel this,” Marilyn said. I did, and the poor dog’s fur was tightly matted to her back from her shoulders to her hindquarters, hard as a rock. We fed them, and Marilyn took the shih tzu to the bathtub to see if she could make any headway with her petrified fur and skin. Meanwhile I remained in the kitchen with the little black and tan dachshund, which I named Deidre because I couldn’t keep calling her “Hey You,” and because she looked like a Deidre to me. Marilyn thought this was a bad idea, because it meant I was getting attached to the pup, but I assured her I wasn’t. It was only an amenity. Marilyn came out in a while with the shivering shih tzu wrapped in a towel. Marilyn hadn’t been able to penetrate the matted fur, and she said the bath water was full of ticks, fleas, and blood. And the dog was limping. She was in bad shape. I considered taking her outside and putting her to sleep myself, but only for a moment. I knew I couldn’t do it. Both dogs spent the night on our deck, and slept in a little house which used to house our cat, Sylvia. The next morning, Marilyn took the shih tzu to the vet’s. When she returned home, Marilyn seemed unusually happy. She said that one of the girls who worked for Dr. Nichols knew a groomer who took in neglected shih tzus and rehabilitated them. She would take the pup to her. Marilyn said that she started crying when the girl told her that, and added that pretty soon several of the ladies in the waiting room were crying, too. Tears of joy and relief, I suppose. Women do that a lot. For moral support. Men simply walk outside and clear their sinuses. I’m glad I wasn’t with her, because I have a feeling my sinuses would have been acting up. The girl also told Marilyn that she thought one of the other girls who worked there would want Deidre, whom Marilyn had been calling Sophie, Lord knows why. We could bring her in the following day. For the rest of the day a newly bathed Deidre got acquainted with Maggie and our backyard, and we learned she could howl splendidly, like a beagle, with encouragement from some of the other neighborhood dogs. She was very playful and loving, and only slightly possessive and a little jealous of Maggie. But the following morning we steeled our resolve and took Deidre, or Sophie, if you prefer, to the vet’s. Dr. Nichols’ assistant showed us some before and after photos of the little shih tzu, which they’d named Matilda. She said her limp, which had been caused by matted fur, was gone, and the physical transformation was amazing. Dr. Nichols’ assistant also thought Deidre was beautiful, and took her to the back, where her new owner was working. They got along just fine, and thus our hitchhiker saga had a happy ending. Except for my sinus problems, which almost got the best of me that morning. And for the next couple of days, Maggie spent a lot of time whimpering and pacing around the house, sniffing. Sometimes dachshunds have sinus problems, too. |