Archive for October, 2011

The Coming of Faye

This column appeared in the “Winston-Salem Journal” on Aug. 9, 2010:

A new dog has joined our family. Her name is Faye.

A woman with an animal-rescue group in Mocksville found Faye on the side of the road. When we went out to Mocksville to meet Faye, I asked the woman why she had named her that.

“She looked like a Faye,” the woman said.

We thought so, too, and kept the name.

As with every found-on-the-side-of-the-road dog, background is pure speculation. She looks like what you might get if Italian greyhound genes were put in charge of the legs, and overall size and yellow Labrador retriever genes were put in charge of the coloration, the head and the disposition. When Garnet saw the expression on a fawn the other day, she decided that Faye must have some deer genes as well.

As soon as Faye came into the house, she made it clear that she was Garnet’s dog. She awarded equal second-tier status to Sparkle Girl and Doobins. I have the No. 4 position all to myself.

That’s fine with me. Still feeling the loss of His Dogness, I felt a floaty detachment around Faye in those early days. I don’t know whether that played a role or whether she was simply destined to be Garnet’s dog. In any case, I’m happy that Garnet and the kids are happy. And I still get to take a dog for walks without having to fret about somehow being disloyal to Buster’s memory.

Getting a new dog happened sooner than I expected. If it had been up to Sparkle Girl and Doobins, we would have gone out the next day and gotten a new dog. I told them, though, that I needed a little time. They understood that. Every now and then one of them would ask whether I was ready yet. No, I would say.

Then one Saturday afternoon I said I could start looking. Our list of specific requirements was short. Certainly, we wanted a dog that everyone liked. His Dogness had been a tad big for Mr. Doobins, and he wanted a dog more his size. Garnet wanted an affectionate dog. Sparkle Girl was easy. As long as it was a dog she liked, she didn’t care about size, color or breed.

I expected the process to take a while. As it happened, we met Faye the next day. From the beginning, she fit right in. Garnet keeps going around saying, “She’s an angel.” I wouldn’t go that far. She makes funny noises sometimes when she dreams and, for reasons that remain a mystery, she is skittish around a friend who is one of the sweetest people around.

But we were definitely lucky. Not a single “uh-oh” characteristic has presented itself, and Poos the cat is OK with the arrangement. The Official Cat Code of Conduct required Poos to express disgruntlement for a couple of days. But, once he fulfilled those obligations, we came in on the scene of Faye and Poos stretched out with Poos’ tail flicking back and forth across Faye’s face.

I knew that any agreements Sparkle Girl and Doobins made about taking responsibility for feeding and walking Faye wouldn’t necessarily hold up, but I thought it was important to have them on the record. As it turned out, both have been really good about taking care of her.

From time to time, Mr. Doobins feels burdened by his responsibilities. But that can be quite entertaining. Because I am the first person up most days, I usually take Faye out for her morning walk. When I got up one morning, Mr. Doobins was already up. I told him that he was coming with us. Wanting a more leisurely approach to the day, he declined. I told him that I wasn’t offering that option.

Once we were on the sidewalk, I told him that he could be in charge of picking up newspapers and putting them on people’s porches, something that I routinely do. That made him feel even more put upon, and, as he carried the first paper up to the porch, he said, “I’m getting older by the minute.”

A couple of days later, he was up when I got up again. Stunned by his run of ill fortune when I told him that he was coming with us, he said, “I’m only going to walk on one foot.”