Simply Simon

We called him Jack, Jack the party crasher.

As things would turn out, that wasn’t really his name, but it seemed to fit. Jack, sauntering in to a Christmas party in full swing and hopping up on my couch, the good couch at that.

Earlier in the day, as is my habit with entertaining, I was attempting to cram into three hours what most, better organized hostesses would spread out over a couple of days. I was a one-woman wrecking ball: cheesecake, meatballs, spicy candied bacon, cleaning the toilets, thawing out the shrimp, not necessarily in that order. It was a small gathering, only twelve people, and as usual, I was running behind.

I had no time for Jack. So it was with some irritation that I dropped the dishtowel on the counter and went to investigate the particularly piquant barking from the front yard. On any given day, I am certain that many a pedestrian passer-by is tempted to toss a piece of poisoned meat in my front yard to get my dogs to stop barking. With the electrical fence around the property, they have free reign. Given Louie’s chow-mix lineage, he takes his guard dogging very seriously. He runs and barks and stomps and scratches the dirt, like a rooster in a cockfight. Libby, a Great Pyrenees/Lab-something mix, as the elder, alpha, diva-dog sidekick, just throws back her head and barks like a hound. Hence, you’ll often find me racing back and forth to the front door with a cease and desist order and a doggie treat to lure them in. This time though, the barking was more frenzied.

It was a dog. Another dog. A spotted dog, who, despite the fact that he might have been nearing the jaws of death, was remarkably nonplussed. He was trotting around, tail slightly tucked, but not looking completely terrorized.

After I managed to trick my dogs into going inside, I opened the gate and tried to lure him in. No luck. He bolted, running across the busy road in front of my house, which gave me a momentary panic attack. Then he dashed between two houses and disappeared into the well-heeled neighborhood across the road, where I assumed he was would soon be tapping across a ceramic-floored kitchen with fine granite counter tops. He seemed to know where he was going.

Nighttime came. With that my daughter and daughter-in-law, first to arrive at the party, with their baby boy. But they were in fact not the first guests as Suzanne, aforementioned daughter-in-law said, “Jean, did you know there’s a dog in your backyard?”

By the time I went to check, dude was gone again. How he’d managed to get in, then back out of my backyard, which does have a gate, is a mystery to me. His whereabouts, by then, were too. This is unsettling, so someone who loves dogs, to know that a stray pup is wandering around the neighborhood on a frigid night, in close proximity to a main arterial road.

We took food and water out to the carport. I figured at the very least, I could feed him and maybe, just maybe I could catch him. Party guests continued to file in. Drinks are made. Meatballs are consumed. Shrimp are dunked. Then, I peeked out in front to check on Lou, who had barked to be let out, and there he was, cavorting around, not in the least bit menacingly, with the stray dog again. Lou has an an undeserved reputation for being aggressive. Really, it’s his sister Libby who’s the aggressive one, but I figured this was my only chance. “Watch out, here they come!” and in came Lou and the stray. Libby sniffed and snarled, but was soon distracted by an unattended meatball on the coffee table and forgot all about the interloper.

 

He was the hit of the party. After a few obligatory introductions, and everybody keeping a close eye on the canine chemistry, lest a dog fight break out, dude, hopped up on the red sofa in the family room. The red couch is off limits for my own dogs, but this one didn’t seem to shed much and he was, after all, a guest in our home. My friend Lynn said we should call him Jack.

When Jack threw up all over the good couch and the rug under it, she and I missed not a beat with paper towels and damp cloths and brushes. Nobody even yelled at him. He’d had a rough day.

The guests in the living room had missed the floorshow in the den and by the time we got it all mopped up, Jack was on a different couch, the old couch, literally in the lap of luxury, with my dog-devotee friend Gerry, warming themselves by the fireplace. Did this little dog gravitate to my house because he knew there would be some world-class canine lovers in attendance? Was he drawn by the scent of other dogs or the aroma of carmelized bacon? He should have been.

By the end of the party, despite my protestations to the contrary, everybody was saying I had just found my third dog. I wasn’t having it. I haven’t the time, nor the inclination to get another dog, especially one that I’d have to train on the invisible fence. Taking him out on a leash at one o’clock in the morning nipped that romantic notion right in the bud.

He slept overnight in the leather chair and actually, the three dogs were quite peaceable. Early the next morning, me feeling a little crispy around the edges (the party had been a lot of fun) I took him out on the still frosty grass and he peed fast and headed back to the barn.

“Good dog,” I said and got on the phone right away. I called the neighbors who I thought he might belong to.

Nope.

I called the vet to see if anybody might have reported a dog missing.

Nope.

I told the vet I’d bring him in to see if he was chipped. Then I sent a picture of the dog, to my animal enthusiast son Sean, who texted back, “you have to keep him.”


Nope.

 

Then, two minutes later, Sean texted me back: “ I found him!”

Then came a FaceBook post from a doggie daycare center with three little pictures of my little stray. I called the number in the post. No answer. I texted the number with the photo. Almost immediately a reply.

“That’s him!”

The doggie daycare owner called me back to say that the dog’s owner had called her that morning in tears asking for help in spreading the word that Simon was missing. Her next call would be to Simon’s owner telling her the good news that somebody had found her dog.

Within five minutes, Simon’s owner was the phone.

“Hi, Jean?”

“Yes!” I said. “I think I’ve got your dog!”

“Oh my God,” she said. “You have no idea how grateful I am that somebody found him.”

After a short exchange, mostly to give her directions, she said, “I’m a wreck. Give me ten minutes, to brush my teeth and wash my face and I’ll be right over to get him.”

“Don’t rush,” I replied. “I’m cleaning up after a party, so I”m moving kinda slow.”

Less than fifteen minutes later, the woman and her daughter were at my door. In the excitement, I didn’t catch her name, but here was this precious little girl holding a holiday candle, so thrilled to see her dog again. They stepped inside and the woman and I immediately hugged.

“Merry Christmas, right?” she was beaming. By now, Simon is hopping straight up and down, like a kangaroo. My dogs suddenly find this very disturbing and start growling like wolves, so we put Simon on a leash and stepped outside.

“I have been worried sick. I didn’t sleep at all last night,” she said and then added, “THIS, is exactly what community is about!”

“And Facebook! The thing we love to hate, right?” She got it. We both laughed.

“Will you take a selfie with me?”

I was about to say, “nah…” I had no make-up on, I was half hung-over, and truth is, I hadn’t slept that well, worrying about the dog, or a dog fight in the middle of the night. But, I immediately reconsidered and we huddled in real close. I wish we’d thought to fetch the dog back out of the car, but the whole thing happened in like five minutes.

After we snapped the pic, we hugged again, a tight hug. “You seriously made my entire family’s Christmas.” After she backed out and waved goodbye, I could still smell her perfume on my jacket. I was glad the fragrance lingered. It made me feel good. The whole thing made me feel really good.

This is what community is about.

I appreciated the fact that she didn’t offer me a reward. I respect her for that. We live in such transactional times. Life it seems, is but a swipe. I give you this, you give me that. It’s easy to overlook the deeper, more lasting value of human decency. I took the dog in. Wouldn’t you? During the Christmas party, while everyone fawned over the little lost dog, my mind kept going to that unknown household where they were going to bed worried sick about him. Sure, he could have been dumped by somebody, but it was unlikely. He was too tame, too sweet, too accustomed to the couch. Here he was, safe and warm, and I just didn’t know how to tell his people he was okay.

It took less than half an hour from the time my son Sean sent me the Facebook post to them showing up at my front door with a cinnamon-scented holiday candle and a collar and leash. Imagine that!

In these days of seemingly endless threats to the very core of what we all want and need to feel and function as human beings; simple things, a roof over our heads; enough to eat; someone to love and love us back; friends to make us laugh, and sometimes cry, but mostly to remind us that we’re not alone; in these times, we are hungry, so very hungry for opportunities to experience and savor simple acts of human decency.

How we crave the reminders. How we celebrate the exchange of something we understand is real and good. It is the essence of our survival. Decency has never been more exalted and that’s okay by me. I’ll take every chance I can get to exercise it. Such an easy thing to be a decent person. Such a simple thing, to share these kindnesses. It was simply…Simon.