Free Howl by Bark Editors Page A

cuddled for warmth and friendship.
    There was a knock at the door.
    My wife, Regina, and I looked at each other, a little annoyed and a little fearful. In our previous neighborhood, in Austin, Texas, we’d been constantly bothered at home by people asking us for money. One night I’d chased a couple of guys off my lawn because they were fighting over a prostitute. Then, the week we’d moved into this rental, Regina had answered the door to reveal a one-armed woman who was asking for money to benefit the family of a teenage girl who’d been slain in some random act of gang violence. Regina gave her a dollar. A panicked call to the neighborhood beat officer later revealed that this had been a scam. All the gang violence had moved either six blocks to the east or to the south, he assured us.
    We’d learned to be skeptical of knocks at the door. But on nights like this, even scam artists stayed home. So I got up.
    Through the slats of our door-length plastic blinds, I saw the French-woman who lived in the house behind us. A Ph.D. candidate in bioengineering at USC, she made a good neighbor: quiet, rarely home, and prone to taking weeklong surfing trips to Hawaii. We were friendly enough with her, though she never thanked us for the Christmas cookies we left on her doorstep.
    “I have a leetle problem,” she said.
    “What?” I said.
    “Eet’s a dog.”
    She opened the door further. Behind her was a medium-sized terrier. Its white fur had been torn away in chunks from its torso, leaving a hideous vista of red-raw skin and sores and eminently visible bones. The dog was soaked and desperate to come inside; it stank like an entire animal shelter full of filth, with that certain kind of desperate putridity that presages death.
    “Eet followed me home,” she said. “I don’t know much about dogs.”
    “We have a dog!” I said proudly.
    “I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m asking you for help.”
    Our dog was a neckless Boston Terrier named Hercules. His hobbies included eating cat barf, licking my ankles under the bedcovers, and moping on the couch. When we did take him for walks, we had to lift him over puddles because he was afraid of water. Particularly compared with the other dogs in this neighborhood, hungry-looking Pit Bulls and Boxers who spent their entire lives shitting in concrete lots enclosed by wrought iron, Hercules was really more Muppet than dog. Owning him hardly qualified me as an expert in canine care.
    But I’d only been in town for two weeks, and was feeling neutered and useless. This was the perfect mission to break my slump. A great surge of heroism and duty welled in my chest. I began barking orders.
    “Regina! Get me some dog food! And a bowl! No! Two bowls! And a towel! And some treats and some doggie shampoo! We’re going to clean this mutt up!”
    A few minutes later, we walked through the rain to the back house. The French girl’s place already smelled like the dog throughout.
    “Eet’s a he,” she said. “I looked.”
    The stray hovered in her kitchen. But when I offered him doggie treats, he just looked confused, like he’d been hungry so long that he’d forgotten food’s purpose. So I skipped that step, picked him up in a towel, and carried him to the bathroom. Then I placed him in the tub, soaked him with water from a cup, and scrubbed him down with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. He behaved himself. At least the water was warm.
    When we were done, he still smelled like death, but at least now it was a clean death.
    “Now what do I do?” said my neighbor.
    This woman had obviously spent so much of her youth in microbiology labs that she had no idea how to function in the world of the mundane.
    “Um,” I said. “Call a vet?”
    For some reason, instead of making the call herself, she handed me the phone book and phone. I dialed the Eagle Rock Emergency Animal Hospital.
    “Yes, hello,” I said. “I have a dog here. I found…well, actually, my neighbor found him on the