|
|
|
dog-shelter-hopping to Manhattan
Thursday, March 24 2016
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
The painting hadn't begun when Gretchen and I started the long meandering drive that would ultimatately place us somewhere near NYU on Manhattan. Jeremy had come by and dropped off some materials, but nothing yet was giving us confidence that our house would be painted by the time we returned.
Instead of driving immediately southward, we drove east across the Hudson and then deep into Dutchess County, through bucolic New England style landscapes I had never before seen. Our ultimate destination was Animal Farm Foundation, a rescue organization that, despite its name, seems to exist only to rescue and rehabilitate urban Pit Bulls. When we arrived, there was an adorable white & orange Pit lying on a bench, and Gretchen and I soon found him to be adorably snuggly. Gretchen isn't normally into light-colored dogs, but now she was adding this dog, whose name was Kenai, to the list of possibilities for a third dog to ease our transition for when Eleanor succombs to her lymphoma.
We'd come mostly to look at a dog named Skyler, and she was brought in for an introduction in a special room designed for this purpose. This was in the context of a light interview with several of the employees, all of whom seemed a bit saner than usual given that they were animal rescuers. For whatever reason, though, Gretchen didn't bond with Skyler. Gretchen talks a good game about breedism and such, but she responds to superficial issues of appearance as much as anyone. For dogs, this mostly means she prefers traits that others reject (such as black fur or big droopy nipples), but Gretchen thought Skyler's eyes were "too small." (For my part, I thought her nose was too pointy, particularly after having just experienced Kenai's muzzle, broad as a rattlesnake's.)
Another dog they brought in to show us was Willie, who clearly had a bit of Border Collie in him. But because of his broad dome-shaped head, he'd been classed as a Pit mix at a shelter in Kentucky, and so now he was here at Animal Farm Foundation. I really liked Willie; he seemed engaged, playful, but also oddly mature and restrained for his age, like what some refer to as an "old soul." The employees told us that Willie is such a good dog that he's used at the foundation to engage with and train other dogs with temperament issues. But for Gretchen, the problem with Willie was that he didn't look "pitty" enough. She said this in a way that suggested he would be adopted more quickly, but I detected a bit more than a whiff of breedism in what she was saying. Still, Gretchen liked Willie enough to want him to be in our life, and said that she'd work to try and get Michæl and Carrie to adopt him as a second dog.
The main problem with Kenai (whom we both liked) was that he suffers from a luxating patella, a condition that cost us thousands of dollars and much aggravation to correct in one of Ramona's knees. Supposedly Kenai's condition is not as severe and one he could live with without surgery. Still, it's the policy of Animal Farm Foundation to fix Kenai's knee before adopting him out if indeed it should prove medically necessary. For me, though, it's a huge risk and one best avoided if we're still in the process of shopping for a dog.
After leaving Animal Farm Foundation, we drove down the Taconic Parkway past the two green signs advertising the supposedly-decrepit Donald J. Trump State Park (surprisingly, neither of these have been defaced), and went into Yonkers. Our destination was the new Yonkers Animal Shelter, crammed in tight along I-87 in the cheapest real estate available. There's no good place for walking dogs there, but it's a big clean facility and a huge upgrade from the old location, which was such a horror show that Gretchen and others used to put in considerable effort to relocate dogs from Yonkers to shelters Upstate.
The people at the front desk at the Yonkers shelter wore reflective vests and uniforms, indicating the utilitarian nature of their job. Yonkers is overrun with Pit Bulls and pregnant cats, and these are the people who deal with them. One of the guys at the front said we were welcome to go back and look at the animals, so we went back into a room full of dog cages and were marveling at some of the dogs, the vast majority of whom were Pit Bulls. That was when the woman who runs the place came back and told us we weren't supposed to be in that room, that we were supposed to be looking into it from the hallway through a sheet of glass.
At around that time, a beautiful grey Pit Bull with enormous Yoda ears was led through, and we had to meet him. His name was Bamboo, and it was covered with bumps from some sort of allergic reaction. But that didn't matter; he was incredibly sweet. We asked if he was good with cats and the person who was leading him decided to see. He walked up to a cat cage to sniff curiously, but was immediately met my a bristling paw which bloodied his cheek. Poor Bamboo! At that point one of the other employees came through and said, "Oh yeah, that's my brother's dog. He's a good dog! He lived with cats!"
We went outside to look at the dogs living in outdoor pens, and found a number whom we liked, including a gorgeous little black Pit with enormous hanging teats named Onyx. But there were too many questions to make any decisions today. We needed definite answers on ages and how the dogs are with cats.
Gretchen did the rest of the driving from Yonkers into Manhattan, and initially my navigating didn't measure up to her expectations. But navigating is harder in urban environments just as driving is, and I didn't think my problems with it were entirely my fault. Sometimes Google maps gets confused and starts rerouting before you've left the prescribed route, and if you don't catch that the rerouting happened, it can lead to confusion, especially when blood sugar and caffeine levels are low.
Somehow we found parking in the West Village near our first desination, a new vegan café called by Chloe (yes, it's a restaurant with a prepositional phrase for a name). The place was crowded with Millennials, and there was a line, but still Gretchen managed to nab us a table. Be both ordered the same thing: pesto subs with french fries, and I also got a cup of coffee. The subs were a little trashier than expected, especially the white-flour bun, but they tasted great. Most exceptional of all were the fries, which somehow had a light grainy texture that enabled them to pick up lots of dip (I didn't like the beet ketchup, but I loved the aioli.
We drove to our next destination, a big bookstore in the middle of NYU. (Somehow we stumbled into nearly-free parking just outside.) Tonight Gretchen would be one of three poets doing a reading, and my job was to be the loving husband in the audience for her to eventually embarrass. That came when the poem she'd intended to read proved not to be in the 3rd-edition copy of her Kind she had, and she read "Phœbe Fledges" instead. (It's a poem inspired by a sad story I'd told her.) I tried to shoot video of her reading it, though I fucked it up (and besides, Androids are too stupid to figure out which way is down when one is filming in landscape mode).
As for the other poets, I really tried to listen and appreciate their material, but it just didn't grab me at all. And one of the poets, who is actually an NYU professor, had such a dismal reading style that I found his section of the reading somewhat painful. Fortunately, whoever had arranged the reading had provided free coffee (as well as non-vegan snacks).
A number of Gretchen's friends show up for the reading, including our friends Erica and Stacy, as well as two guys who used to be her prisoner-students in the Bard Prison Initiative. After the reading, we all walked to Blossom on Carmine. The place was too crowded for us to all sit together, so I ended up with Jules (one of the former prisoner-students) at a small bar along a small piece of interior wall. We both ate deep-fried pickels and drank Six Point Sweet Action Ales (the closest thing to an IPA to be had; it was surprisingly good despite the absence of both "India" and "Pale" in its type). Jules and I talked about his job working on the marketing of a documentary and other things, though I also told him of my goofy idea of starting a restaurant called "Larry's Lupper."
Gretchen and I would be spending the night tonight at Erica's place in Park Slope. Erica is so familiar with driving a Prius and also with driving back to Brooklyn that we had her drive us there. When Erica sat down and turned the car on, she wondered where the backing-up display was. "There isn't any," we said. "I don't know if you really want me driving this thing without it," she chuckled. "Everything we have is ghetto," I later declared, "Ghetto iPhone [Android], ghetto Prius."
When we got to 5th Street in Park Slope, Erica found a slightly-too-small spot directly behind her Prius. But she had four feet in front of her car, so to get that spot all she had to do was drive her car a little bit forward. This was the first time any of us had ever opened up an additional space in this way.
Inside Erica's brownstone, we greeted the increasingly decrepit dogs. Libby now has such weak hind legs that she needs special footwear to keep her feet from sliding out from under her. And she cannot get to her feet without the assistance of a vertical pull on a handle conveniently over her haunches attached to a harness. There were also three cats, all of whom immediately started begging for food. All the cats in the household have Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, which gives them dramatically shortened lives. They usually die of lymphoma.
Gretchen and I got our own guestroom upstairs to sleep in, a rare perk in increasingly-crowded Brooklyn.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?160324 feedback
previous | next |
