It’s not that we were actively looking. My in-laws had decided to spend the winter months in Florida and needed a temporary home for their 12-year old dog Jake, a lovable chocolate Labrador retriever, who also happens to be blind and deaf.
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but if we didn’t take the dog my in-laws were prepared to give him to a rescue or worse, put him to sleep. The circumstances didn’t leave us with options.
Foolishly, I thought we could whip Jake into shape. A sweet natured but misguided animal, no one had taken the time to train him. His bad habits — namely begging, pulling on his leash and incessant barking — had made him unpopular over the years. Still, I thought if we walked him regularly and established some ground rules, he might become manageable.
The day Jake arrived we decided it would be best to keep him to the first floor. To get his bearings, he sniffed his way around the perimeter of our family room and kitchen, leaving nose marks all over the walls and appliances. What he didn’t sniff he decided to lick. I’d walk into the kitchen and find him standing in the corner, licking one of the cabinet doors as if it was a Popsicle.
Jake’s hygiene left much to be desired. One day, while retrieving him from the yard, I found him devouring his own poop. Three waves of emotion fell over me at the sight — shock, disgust and wonder. Was this normal? Some friends had heard of dogs that do this, others thought because he couldn’t see, he didn’t know what he was eating.
In response, I bought boxes of breath cleaning biscuits, placed chicken-flavored toothpaste in his food, mint drops in his water and sent him to the groomer for a thorough bath and teeth cleaning.
The adventures in excrement didn’t stop there. I’ll never know if it was my dog or Jake, but I’d often come home to find “a present” on the kitchen floor. Typically, while I searched for a bucket and mop, the dogs would follow me around, panting and barking until I put them out. My daughter would begin to cry. And I would prepare, as the Rolling Stones song goes, for my “19th Nervous Breakdown.”
Thankfully the kitchen accidents were limited to a few random weeks. Jake began to settle in, but not without leaving hair, saliva, cookie crumbs and muddy paw prints on every inch of the first floor. As a calm-inducing mantra, I began a countdown for the day of my in-laws return.
In the end, Jake left us much the same dog as when he arrived, only with better breath.
Jennifer Hazard lives and writes in Yarmouth.