Wild Dog (Part III)

By TAD BARTIMUS

I smelled the yard before I saw it: dead cow parts, fish guts, half a plastic bag of shrimp shells. Also, Dean's new tennis shoe, a bath towel, three shredded plastic flower pots. Daisy sat proudly in the middle of the night's haul.

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow all of this will stop when she goes to the Humane Society. Five months ago I'd warned Dean "once a junk dog, always a junk dog" as he'd rescued the starving puppy from a school dumpster. Attempts at civilizing her had mostly failed. Tired of listening to me nag and Daisy bark, Dean had finally caved in, conceding she could never take the place of our dead Border collie Miss Mollie.

"Bad Dog!" I tied the tennis shoe, shrimp bag and a flower pot to Daisy's collar with stout twine. "Make her wear her rubbish, it'll cure her fast," my friends had said, acting like I was the one who didn't get it.

Ha! These people had normal pets. I'd been tying her "presents" around her neck for months without any letup in the nightly guerrilla raids. True, Daisy always acted embarrassed as she dragged the debris around, but the minute we took it off she pranced away, wagging her tail and looking for more trouble.

Managing to appear simultaneously accusatory and mortified, Daisy refused to budge from where her deeds had caught up with her. I went to work at the computer. Two hours later I realized she wasn't there. Feeling guilty, I went looking for her to remove the garbage necklace.

She wasn't guarding the driveway, napping on the back porch or lying under the big tree. Where was she? Several times a day she'd jump over the back fence. I felt a stab of panic; maybe she'd gotten her neck caught on the junk. What if she'd been hit by a car because she couldn't see it coming? What if a motorist had picked her up as an abused animal?

"Daisy. Daisy. Here Daisy. Come Daisy! DAISY! DAISY? DAISY???"

I was running up and down the road yelling for a dog who, until an hour ago, I couldn't wait to be rid of. I was feeling bereft and scared, wanting nothing so much as to see that loopy grin, dripping tongue and Yoda ears.

I was on the back porch calling for reinforcements when I realized I was hearing a faint tinkling under the house. "Mollie music," we'd called it when we'd heard our beloved collie's tags jingling on her collar. "Daisy music," I thought, and got down on my hands and knees to peer into the crawl space.

There she was, huddled among her clunky appendages, looking forlorn.

"Daisy?"

A thump of the tail.

"Good girl, Daisy, come here, that's right, come on, girl."

Wiggling toward me on her belly, the flower pot colliding with the shrimp shells in a barnyard bouquet, I gathered her up in my arms. "I'm sorry," I said. She licked my face; I tried not to think about where that tongue had been.

So. The unconditional devotion and patience of a wild dog has driven home the lesson that's so hard for humans to remember: we must love them the way the are, not the way we want them to be.

We're taking it one day at a time. I'm trying to get over the notion that clothes should be clean and she's trying to like dog biscuits from the store. We have "the petting hour" when we sit on the back porch and commune; I've discovered that if I rub her belly she won't gum my arm.

Ms. Daisy will never be polite, well-behaved or docile. She will always ride backwards in the car and greet us with a pole vault. She will always bring home unwanted presents, roll in cow manure and herd the cats. It is my fondest hope that she will not electrocute herself chewing on the Christmas lights.

I needed Miss Mollie more than she needed me; with Ms. Daisy, it's the other way around. The saga of the wild dog has taught me it truly is better to give than to receive.

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