Thursday, February 24, 2011
Pup Fu
The papers ran a story not nearly long enough ago that roused a recollection for me, a slice of personal history that no one really needs to know about, but one I can’t just cast aside without some kind of recognition. It meant something at the time, and that means something now.
The story concerned the rescue and arrest, respectively, of 30 pit bulls and the man who kept them locked in their own filth, unsocialized, diseased, fight-scarred, underfed and overbred - enough to break the hearts of seasoned officers at Oakland Animal Control. The rescue happened in East Oaktown. That’s the part that got me recollecting:
I used to work out in East Oakland, for an animal shelter no less. Every couple months we’d find a bait dog huddled in our dumpster, too torn up for anything but euthanasia. That, thank god, was someone else’s job, some member of the kennel crew. I was with the office staff, raising cash and herding volunteers. My job required keyboard skills, unsoiled shoes, an aptitude for donor cultivation. I didn’t get too dirty as I did my daily duties. Others cleaned the litterboxes, hosed the dog runs, scooped the kibble, hauled the beasts around the shelter, went home felted, stained and dirty. Kennel staff were hardy folk who toiled under common hardships, sharing common sets of ethics. These included love of critters, honest work for paltry pay, a certain sense of gallows humor, and maybe just a slight disdain for those of us who worked at desks and stayed sweet-smelling all day long.
When I worked there, every other member of the office staff was female - I was the only “he” among them. Kennelmen held back from outright disparagement but it seemed to me they harbored doubts about my manhood. None of them said anything out loud to me, but if I passed them in the halls I felt them raise their eyebrows at each other. What kind of man just works with words and numbers when there’s dogs and cats that needed care? Some inner weakness was suspected. I would have to prove my mettle.
Opportunity arrived with yellow fur and shining eyes. Dogs were sometimes held at the reception desk so they could socialize with visitors and staff. I got to my desk through a door behind the front counter so I often got to meet the dogs that hung out there. After I’d been on the staff for long enough for others to assume a reputation for me, I found myself one day returning to my station abruptly face to face with one of our new residents - a dog, not small, quite energetic, eager to make friends with me. With her was a member of the kennel staff, a lanky street-wise boy I figured and disinclined to look on me as someone with much game to bring. But as a fellow member of our caring little shelter team, he greeted me collegially with a friendly warning: “She’s a jumper.”
I was subjected promptly to effusive canine salutations. Her tail wagged her whole hind half; her snuffly nose thrust firmly and immodestly against my trouser-fly. I reached down to introduce myself: two whiffs, then she took a bow, her forelegs stretched, her tail flagpoled, all her body telegraphing that against which I’d been warned: the dog was readying to jump, targeting my breadbasket. If I failed to react, I’d take a pretty solid pop - delivered out of joy, not malice, but hardly better-feeling for it.
The kennel-man was watching, bemusement underlaid with reluctant concern - if I got injured by that crazy dog, or even if she tore my pretty shirt, the consequences surely would come back to haunt him. Regardless of respecting me, he didn’t want to see me hurt. Except, of course, it would be funny seeing me manhandled by that happy bitch - but not enough to make it worth the trouble he’d endure for it. He ought to do something but it was like he couldn’t force himself.
The dog was leaping; kennel-dude was smirking, I was standing in the center of divergent possibilities, holding in my hands the power to succumb to fate or wrest it, redirect it, for myself. Unthinkingly I chose the latter. My right hand was out front already, extended for the dog to sniff; I turned it knuckles-up and swiftly slid the other hand down over it, my forearms crossing. The scissors trapped her squarely at the snout - she couldn’t get up off the floor. Undeterred, she bucked back down, then up again, but nothing changed - her nose encountered my crossed forearms, she was stuck where she had started. I was handling her gently - all her force was redirected, I imposed none of my own. Her goofy grin remained in place. But after one more try, again abortive, she stopped jumping, sat down and tractably reached up a paw to me, as I at first had given her my hand. I shook it, thanking her for her restraint.
Kennel dude stood openmouthed. I’d used a canine-calming move he’d never seen; I’d stopped a leaper in her tracks with confidence and ease. He stood a moment to assess, then shouted to the empty lobby: “Lookit that! Karate move! Tha’s awesome, dude!” These final words he’d sent my way as he at last linked up the act and actor - “soft-hands” Dan from office staff, proving himself more capable than he’d been led to expect. Whatever he had thought of me before, it seemed he’d consider reconsidering.
As the day and week wore on, the story of the thwarted leaper buzzed its way around the kennel. Men in ratty aprons started giving me a validating nod as we crossed paths. Finally, a kennel manager approached me - barrel-chested, toughened, someone who commanded the unquestioning respect of every one who previously hadn’t much respected me. “Ay Dan,” he called, the use of my true name an honorific, “show me how you stopped that jumper.” The demonstration took mere seconds, but when it was done he looked me in the eye with new recognition. I had shown him quick reactions, wise responses, strength and coolness under pressure - in a word, my manliness. He practiced my maneuver once or twice, and, satisfied he’d learned it well enough to use it, thanked me and went back to work. Nothing more was said about it, but thenceforward something fundamental changed. There was still not much for me to talk about with any of the kennel staff, but the silence seemed no longer born of pity or contempt. It was the silence shared by men whose actions did the speaking for them. I had proven that I was, in fact, a man. That truth, having been established, did not required idle recapitulation.
EVER.
