Styles in the Driver's Seat

Sometimes a pitbull just needs to take charge. 

Last winter, Styles felt that way when we drove out to Long Island for the day to go to a doctor’s office. I guess he didn’t appreciate my staying in the right lane on the Throgs Neck Bridge and getting passed like we were standing still by commuters rushing to work.

So while I was upstairs at the doc’s, he acted. I came down and saw him in the driver’s seat, paused and then decided it seemed only natural to climb in back. When I did he turned and gave me his look, like, “Where to, Poppi?”

That’s his black watch plaid coat he’s wearing. It’s his favorite; he gets excited when I pull it out, and he sticks his head into the neck opening and waits for me to wrap the Velcro strap around his chest in anticipation of a trip or a walk.

He’s less excited about his ThunderShirt. It’s an open question as to whether it will solve his jitters with thunder, but the last time he seemed antsy, I put it on him and he went right to sleep, thud, on the hardwood floor.

But forget about driving: Styles is at his take-charge best when we go for walks, particularly when we’re at the Milford house in PA. He pins his ears back and puts those muscular pitbull shoulders into it like he’s Buck in The Call of the Wild pulling a sled across the Alaskan tundra.

And in the process he’s a babe magnet. If I were younger (lots younger), I’d be picking up twenty-something girls like magic. They flock to him. “Oh, he’s so handsome, can we pet him?”

Who could say no? Not Sty. He lets them get in a few strokes to his head, then goes for the crotch with his nose, the old doggie greeting. “Oooh,” they say and giggle.

Good boy, I’m thinking. What a guy.

That's what pitbulls do; take charge and get babes.

And Styles isn't your ordinary pitbull. He's quite a character, such that I made him a character in my thriller, Spin Move, and dedicated the book to him.

Waiting for Jesse

Styles, our pitbull, has a high school friend, Jesse, who comes to play ball with him in the afternoons. Manette and I started hiring kids a few years ago from the Babysitters/Dog Walkers listing in a local newspaper. It’s worked out well, and over time we’ve had about a dozen come to the house after school a few days a week. At least that’s how it started.

For those of you who don’t know pitbulls, they’re working dogs who are incredibly energetic and athletic. They need to burn off energy or they come at you with their favorite form of working dog “work,” which in the case of Styles is balls. He’s obsessed with them. Somebody needs to throw them, play tug of war over them or say “What about that one,” and point to another to send him off to pounce on it after dropping the one in his mouth.

Styles quickly became accustomed to having captive playmates and so we needed to organize it on a daily basis. As I said earlier, we’ve had a dozen or so, but Jesse is his champion and he adores her like no other. She doesn’t talk on the phone, watch YouTubes or text with her friends; Styles gets her unqualified attention while she’s here. She strokes his head when she arrives, talks sweetly to him while they play, and blows kisses to him as she leaves.

Now it’s her job exclusively.

That’s Styles in the photo at left, waiting for Jesse at the front door.

I call him Mr. Clairvoyant, because he knows when it’s approaching 3:00 pm and he starts his vigil. Since Jesse recently got her driver’s license, she generally pulls into the driveway, opens the electric gate with the remote we gave her and comes in the back door. When Styles hears the gate opening he starts yelping and crying like he hasn’t seen her in weeks. The yard is fenced in because of the pool, so when Jesse pulls to a stop in the back we let him out to take a victory lap around the yard and greet her as she’s getting out of her car. On days we aren’t home because of appointments, she lets herself in with the key we gave her.

That’s her setup in the other photo at left. She prefers Earl Grey tea with sugar and cream and we usually leave her a cookie for herself and a treat to give Styles.

We know that eventually, like Nikki, Tina, Nico, Megan and the others before her, Jesse will get a job at the mall or go off to college. 

I have no idea what we’ll do when that happens, because Styles will be inconsolable. Maybe, like Manette says, we should just adopt her.

Styles' Petfinder Post

I found Styles, our 2 1/2 year old adopted pitbull's, original Petfinder post yesterday when I was clearing out some old bookmarked links.  He was five months old at the time, living in a rescue shelter.  His picture made me laugh as much as it did when I first saw it; because of that I insisted we meet him even though our original reason for going to the shelter was to see another puppy.

After I rediscovered the link I emailed it to Manette and Zac, who read it on their iPhones while in the car.  They both got choked up.  Here it is:

If you can't read it in the JPEG I inserted, the text is:

"What can we say about Styles??!!!  He is just the life of the party and a little ham. This is a pup that you just have to meet. He is so sweet, playful, eager to please, and so much fun to be around. This little guy is just loving life. He is housebroken, dog friendly (although he needs a dog that can handle rough play). He is 100% social and ready to see the world. He is very eager to please and learn. He attends a weekly obedience class where he is handled by teenagers and has a blast."

I had forgotten what the post said, but whoever wrote it left out the part about bed-hogging, obsession with balls, and having only two speeds--flat out and asleep--but aside from that they had him pegged.

At this point none of us can imagine our lives without him.  Thank God for rescue shelters.

Union Square

They have a farmers’ market in Union Square in New York City.  Manette once told me that famous chefs go there to purchase organic produce for their restaurants.  About a month later she told me the same thing.  The next month, too.  And the next month.  It's become a standing joke between us that any time anyone repeats herself, we tell the story about the famous chefs shopping for organic produce in Union Square.

We both watched an episode of the Dog Whisperer in which Cesar counseled a couple who owned a neurotic German Shepherd.  It seems the reason the Shepherd was frantic was because it was unable to fulfill its purpose in life.  Cesar gave it a backpack to carry around bottles of water--he must've seen the same cartoons I did as a kid where the St. Bernards had casks of brandy around their necks--and the dog was cured.

Styles isn't neurotic.  He knows his purpose.  So do we.  It's balls.

He chases them down and brings them back in the driveway.  Now that the pool is closed, he roams the entire back yard, running across the pool cover if necessary to retrieve them.  He chases them down at Staib Park, where the neighbors have an informal dog park at 5 p.m. every day.  There, Zac can throw the ball a few hundred feet and Styles tears after it to the amazement of everyone.  When he was a puppy he was fast.  Now he's unbelievable.  I can’t remember if Superman had a dog, but if he did, it would be Styles.

Styles in the goal

He’s also a soccer goalie between the kitchen and the dining room.  Any time of day he’ll stand there, in the doorway, his goal, waiting, poised to save a shot kicked at him.  He’ll slam his feet together to stop a rug-burner, or snap a lifted shot out of the air in his mouth.  If he isn’t in position, from any room in the house you say, “Get in the goal,” and he’s there in a flash.  We ask the neighboring kids, Nikki and Tina, to come over a few times a month, usually when we’re out, to play ball with Styles.  He knows that’s the only reason they’re there.  He goes crazy, jumping, then runs to find a ball and heads for the door.

Every other time I come into the house after playing ball with Styles out back I tell Manette that Styles' purpose in life is to chase balls.  Then she tells me about the famous chefs at Union Square.

Napping

Now that I’ve sent my edits back to Richard on Vaccine Nation, I’ve been catching up on my sleep, napping a lot, while I wait for him to send it back.  Yesterday, the day after Cindy’s birthday, I awakened from one and we went to Jack and Cindy’s to deliver her gifts and watch her open them.  It was about an hour before Styles' dinner time so I knew it would be a short visit, and I could get back to napping.   Styles’ dinner time didn’t matter.  I let Styles in their house and before I got one leg inside the door I heard his license and name tag clanging against Pita’s food bowls.  I forgot that Styles’ first objective on entering their house is always to ravage Pita’s food.  I’m sure he can’t understand why cats never finish their meals in one sitting, although he’s thrilled about it.  Both wet and dry bowls were almost gone by the time Manette rushed past me, grabbed him and placed the bowls on the counter. 

After Jack finished throwing treats to Styles—fifteen minutes or so, because Jack likes to make a game out of it and scatters them all over the living room so it takes Styles a while to sniff them all out—Cindy opened her gifts.  “Does it make me look fat?” she asked.  I thought of the Geico commercial in which Abraham Lincoln admits to Mary Todd that her dress does.  Cindy’s coat didn’t.  In my state of near narcolepsy—I was overcome with drowsiness and would have done anything for a snooze—I was tempted to tell her it did, just to see how she’d react.  I looked at Manette and smiled.  She gave me the partial juice for picking it out, but in truth I’d dozed at home while she and Zac had gone to Nordstrom’s. 

After Styles finished foraging the living room for treats, then wandered in and licked the kitchen floor, he settled on the sofa next to Manette, head in her lap.  She stroked his head between comments to Cindy about how to adjust the collar on the coat, then slid herself out from under him to help Cindy tie the belt.  Styles watched, then got comfortable again and dozed.

He doesn’t fidget at their house like he did when a puppy, and he and Pita have even learned to pass like ships on a calm sea.  He waited for Manette to sit back down and reassume her position as headrest.  Sometimes it about breaks Manny’s heart that he’s so loving with her.

The Blue Ball Incident -- Part Two

[Spoiler alert: you might want to read Part One before Part Two.]

Read The Blue Ball Incident -- Part One

The next morning, Saturday, I was up early, and worked on The Gravy Train upstairs in my attic study.  Later, I went downstairs to edit on my notebook computer in the library.  On the way down I checked in on Styles.  Still asleep.  I had decided the night before not to tell Manette and Zac about Styles: they couldn't do anything about it, so why have them worry?

At 9 a.m., like clockwork, Styles came downstairs for his breakfast.  He was drowsy as usual, but did his normal morning routine.  Stretching with his front paws extended, his chin on the ground and his butt in the air.  Standing up again, yawning, wagging the entire back half of his body along with his tail, stretching again, yawning some more.  I let him outside before breakfast.  I felt my heart start to race as I saw him squat.  He pooped.  I checked, but nothing.  I remember thinking at that time that parents of infants are immune to the process of changing their babies' diapers, or having them throw up all over them.  I guessed it was the same with Styles; he was a rescue, but didn't that mean we loved him more?  Why would I give a damn about running my rubber-gloved fingers around in some warm turds for pieces of turquoise rubber when the little guy risked going under the knife?

I gave him another big breakfast with about half again more meat than usual, some broccoli, olive oil, and then afterward, a few pats of butter.  He still hated the tummy drops, but now seemed resigned to them and rolled onto his back when he saw me approaching with the vial. 

About forty-five minutes after his breakfast, Styles stood by the door.  I let him outside and watched from the kitchen window, ready to follow him if he wandered toward the bushes, out of my line of vision.  My heart started pounding as he squatted again—the little man is a champion pooper—and even from that far away could see flecks of turquoise hit the ground.  I went outside.  Two pieces!  Styles must have sensed my elation because he strutted around with that stiff-legged pitbull walk like he was proud of himself.

I decided it was time to focus on figuring out how far along we were in the process.  I taped the two pieces he'd chewed off the ball and not swallowed back to it, then donned my rubber gloves again, pulled my bleach bucket into the basement utility sink and scrubbed the retrieved pieces off with some more bleach and an old brush.  An hour later I taped them to the ball.  I guessed that my original estimate of 40% of the ball consumed was right.  I retrieved about 20% of that, so by my calculations, about 12 more pieces to go.  He's gonna do it.

I came back upstairs and played with him.  He ran around the house again like a madman, and then I gave him a marrow bone in his crate.  I sat down on the library sofa to go back to work.  Styles finished his bone and climbed up next to me.  He put his head in my lap while I worked.  All was right with the world.

About noontime he wanted to go out again, so I walked around the yard with him while he sniffed, stomped in the mud and scratched at some remaining piles of snow.  We were just ready to go back in when he hunched over again and squeezed out two more pieces of the ball.  Now we were really getting someplace.

Before dinner, more tummy oil.  Now when he saw me coming with the vial, he hung his head, looking like he was feeling betrayed.  I felt guilty as I rubbed the oil on him.  About two hours after his dinner, Styles did two more big poops—I was overfeeding him, but still couldn't believe where it was all coming from.  Nothing.  I went to bed anxious, yet more hopeful than the night before.

The next morning, Sunday, Styles still seemed perfectly normal when he awakened.  The usual routine.  Stretch, yawn, butt-wag; same thing all over again.  My hopes fell when he did his business, a big one, with no turquoise joy.  I wondered if he sensed the growing feelings of defeat coming off me in waves as we went back inside.  He was oddly quiet all day, sleeping a lot, and not really engaging when I picked up his ball and tried to play catch inside the house.  I wondered if Dr. Buchoff would consider this lethargy.  Images of walking Styles up the ramp into the vet’s office, only half the lights lit on a Sunday evening, Dr. Buchoff suited for surgery, flooded into my mind.

That evening it was pouring rain.  I felt a creeping dread.  Styles hated the rain, and the only way I could get him to go outside in it was to carry an umbrella with me.  After his dinner, I put him on the leash and walked with him around the lawn, the two of us protected by my biggest golf umbrella.  Sort of protected.  The wind was blowing and we were both getting soaked.  We sloshed around in puddles and mud for at least ten minutes to no avail, but I wasn't giving up.  We kept going.  Finally he stopped and looked up at me with sadness in his eyes.  "Okay, let's go back inside," I said.  We walked around the pool and as we stepped off the bluestone onto the grass, he stopped, sniffed and squatted.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  A festival of turquoise.  I brought Styles inside, donned my gloves.  I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears.  I was too excited to worry about bringing the umbrella.  Four pieces.  Unbelievable.  I dropped them in the bleach bucket and ran back inside with it, down into the basement.  I cleaned them off and taped them onto the ball.  We had to be more than halfway there.

I was buzzing with emotion when I came back upstairs.  I checked the weather report for the next few days.  Clearing Monday, with bright sunshine on Tuesday.  I texted Joyce to reconfirm Styles' play-date in our back yard with Rosie, her rottweiler, for Tuesday.  I threw the ball around with Styles in the basement for about an hour, Styles going at it like I’d shot him up with amphetamines.  I went to bed knowing we were over the hump.

The next morning, Monday, I decided I needed to be more scientific about the ball.  I cut all the tape off it, and lay the pieces out on a piece of wax paper on the kitchen counter.  I got out my Gorilla glue and some pins, started piecing the ball back together, remarkably finding that I could figure out where most of the pieces had come from.  I glued and pinned them.  I watched Styles running around in the yard through the kitchen window while I worked.  The pool cover had about three inches of water in it; the pump had died, but run long enough to get a siphon going down the grade into the woods to drain most of the water.  Styles would rush in and out of the water, pick up a stick, throw it in the air, grab it from the water, then do it over again.  Making his own amusement.  A funny little guy.  Well, not so little; he weighed in at 51 pounds at Dr. Buchoff’s on Friday, which now seemed like an eternity ago.  51 pounds of muscle.  Three days of nervous tension.

It took me half an hour to finish gluing the ball together, some of the pieces swollen and misshapen from soaking in the bleach, but they all fit.  I was stunned.  Only one or two small pieces were missing.  They were either still inside Styles or in the woods.  Either way, crisis averted. I felt the tension flood out of me.

When Manette and Zac got home that evening, Styles greeted them like they’d been away for six weeks, jumping up, wagging his whole backside and licking their faces.  It took Manette an hour to notice the reconstructed blue ball sitting next to the Vitamix on the kitchen counter.  Over tea I told Zac and her the story.  Styles got another full round of strokes, pets and treats after that.  Afterwards, Manette walked over to the ball.  Manette, a mother who had wiped Zac’s butt and had him puke all over her when he was a baby, picked up the ball by her fingertips like it was radioactive, wrinkled her nose and said, "We don't still need this do we?"

I shrugged and shook my head.

"Good.  That's gross," she said as she threw it in the garbage can.  She washed her hands, then pulled the peroxide spray out from underneath the sink and sprayed the counter next to the Vitamix.  All I could do was smile.

That night just before bed I walked into the library to see Manette down on the rug on her hands and knees, fishing around for something.  "What's up?" I said.

"Styles chewed the zipper off the cover to his bed."  She looked up and held a piece of something out to me between her fingers.  "I only found a piece of the zipper pull.  The rest of it's gone."

"That's tiny," I said.  "It'll pass right through him."  After the last three days I felt like I knew what I was talking about.

Manette sat back, crossed her legs Indian-style.  She nodded, seeming satisfied.  She pulled the bed cover toward her, then showed it to me.  "You can see where he pulled the zipper right off the end of the teeth."

I looked at it and tensed.  I bent over and took the bed cover from her, scrutinized it.  I felt myself go cold.

"What's wrong?" Manette said.

"Remember he chewed this once before?  I put a safety pin on the end of it so he couldn't slide the zipper off the teeth again.  Did you find the safety pin?"

"No," she said.  "But wouldn't that pass right through him, too?"

"Look at this," I said, showing her the fabric at the end of the zipper.  "It isn't torn.  That means the only way he could've gotten the safety pin off of there was if he opened it."  I felt a sharp tug of anxiety in my gut.  "That means he must've swallowed an open safety pin."

Manette and I just looked at each other.

 Here we go again, I thought.

Happy Birthday, Styles

Styles's shelter photo

Our pitbull puppy, Styles, turned a year old this week.

We started looking for a puppy after a friend of Zac's, the owner of Cooper--a pitbull/retriever rescue we've come to love--sent us a link for a pit/lab/hound puppy named Ringo.  We'd discussed the possibility of a dog on and off over the prior year.  Ringo gelled that thinking.  Zac never had a dog growing up (Tripod, the three-legged cat; Cowboy, the hermit crab; Slippery Slowpoke, the escargot that lived in the shower; Veyda, the cat that jumped on Zac's back and hung around Manette's neck like a fur collar; and other cats, yes, but no dog) and he always wanted one.  Manette and I had dogs growing up.  It was time; we were getting a dog.

Ringo got adopted.  We checked out Petfinder, looking for Cooperesque rescue candidates.  Zac had a major hand in raising Cooper.  He also was instrumental in raising a former room-mate's, pitbull, Nina, a sweetheart who we all loved.  We thought about the "bully breed" reputation of pitbulls, thought again about Nina, Cooper.  And for Pete's sake, Petey from the Little Rascals was a pit.  "Bull," we decided about the "bully breed" myth.  A dog is what you make it, how you train it, how you treat it in the home you give it.  We decided on pit/lab mixes.  Pit/other mixes.  We met Cinnamon, Buster and Ziggy at a Petco-sponsored adoption day for a local rescue shelter.  Too houndish.  Back to Petfinder, refined to pitbull babies.  Rocky and Missy Blue Eyes in South Orange.  Truffles in Brick.  Miss Eleven at Ramapo-Bergen Animal Rescue Inc (RBARI) in Oakland, NJ, looked like a mini-Cooper.  And they also had this brindle, Styles, that made me laugh.  We liked their writeups, planned to visit.  On a Sunday we went to RBARI.  Miss Eleven was cute and feisty.  Styles was sweet, with a shiny, unusual brindle coat, white chest and white front paws like Two-Socks in Dances With Wolves.  Undecided, we left to have a family meeting.

We talked most about Styles.  The staff at RBARI works hard to match dogs with families.  They thought Miss Eleven might be a better match for us than Styles; as a male pitbull, they saw him as potentially more aggressive with other male dogs.  Zac and I favored Styles, with the only reservation that he played hard and might not socialize well with other dogs.  Zac said he'd teach him and live with it if Styles couldn't learn.  Manette favored Miss Eleven, but Zac and I thought she was aloof, less sweet than Styles.

That Monday night, Zac told me he loved Styles and wanted him.  Tuesday morning Zac had to work so we planned to visit Rocky and Missy Blue Eyes for perspective, then convene again.  We discussed what Zac said about Styles, then called Karyn Montuori, Styles's trainer at RBARI.  She'd fostered Styles for 3 weeks, working with him on socialization with her 3 other dogs, and food-guarding.  "He's the best dog here," she told us all on the Sunday of our first meeting with Styles.  On the Tuesday call, Karyn assured us Styles would be great as a playmate for other dogs, including Cooper, as long as we socialized him early.  We picked up Styles that afternoon.  Zac didn't know until he got home from work.

Styles is a true rescue.  He was surrendered at Bergen County Animal Shelter in Teterboro, NJ, at a few months old.  Karyn saw his potential and had him brought to RBARI.  He fostered in the evenings with Steven, one of the RBARI staff.  He received all his vet care and started his obedience training under RBARI trainers, including Karyn.  He also went once a week to visit special needs kids, where he was a favorite.  After he fostered with Karyn for three weeks, we adopted him in mid-November at 5 months old.

RBARI requires adopters to keep training their dogs.  We would have anyhow.  We're continuing to work with Karyn.  Styles loves her (and she him) so it's a great situation.  We have a big back yard with about 1/4 acre enclosed with a pool fence, so it's an ideal space to walk, play ball with and train Styles.  He also recently graduated from Jeff Burger's group obedience class at Petco.

Styles and Cooper have become good friends.  Cooper sleeps over, and Styles sleeps over at his house, and they share some quiet time together.  Two donuts curled up next to each other.  Although most of the time Styles is the young instigator of their rough play.  Invariably it's Cooper who can't wait to leave to get this indefatigable little guy out of his face.  You can just see him thinking, "Enough play, already.  Give it a rest, squirt."  Styles was a sensation at his first dog park.  When we walked into the gate at Overpeck Park in Leonia, five dogs encircled him, sniffing the new kid.  He did great.  He played with about 15 dogs, only one of whom kept trying to hump him, and made us all proud with the admiring comments he got from the dog owners.  And he's the only dog in the park who runs around to meet every dog owner as part of his routine.

His food-guarding days are over.  He ate from our hands for weeks, and soon learned to make eye contact and sit in front of his food bowl after we put it down, waiting until we say, "Okay," before eating.  And when Manette says, "Little bites," and feeds him strawberries, his favorite treat, he nibbles off little pieces until he reaches her fingers, then waits for her to give him the rest.

We've had fun with him at McDonald's.  Karyn said we should take him for a drive-in burger as a good socialization experience--the car, the drive-in window sights and sounds, the staff, ordering and picking up--and a treat of a piece of burger.  The lady who took orders said, "Oh, he a cutie," when we ordered, and Manette inched the SUV close and opened the window so he could stand on his front paws and lean out for her to pet him.  When we pulled up the lady deserted her post to run forward to the pick-up window to pet him again.  That lady isn't always working when he visits, but Styles knows exactly where he is as Manette and Zac drive in.  And he always stands in the window.

Happy first birthday, little man.

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