Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
I spend days two and three of my canine confinement much the same as I did day one.
Well, minus time spent with a dog trainer, because that was enough of that.
I continue writing my Unmatched piece, carefully reviewing notes from my interview with Mimi Vanderpool.
I don’t go to the gym. I walk the dog at seven a.m. At ten a.m. At one o’clock, five o’clock, and nine o’clock.
Consider becoming a professional dog walker.
I reply to emails and order groceries because I can’t go to the store. Try not to lose my mind.
I resort to doing crunches and lifting a few hand weights in my living room in a desperate effort to keep up my muscle tone, but between the lack of cardio and my boss asking when I might return to the office, I don’t know how I’ll keep up this existence.
Wednesday morning, after pulling dog hair out of my coffee and finding it plastered to my leggings, I attempt to vacuum.
But as soon as I turn on my little apartment-sized stick vac, Rufus freaks out, leaping back and forth, whining and growling at the appliance like it’s some kind of malicious robot.
I ignore him, heading straight for the hair-covered dead couch.
But when he escalates, snarling and barking like he might actually attack, I turn the thing off.
We both back away, a little surprised, before he settles back into an urgent whine. He doesn’t take his eyes off the vacuum until I’ve put it back in my front closet. Then he starts pacing and whimpering.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
I let out a long breath.
Then I crumple to my knees. I thought this would settle into some sort of routine.
I’d take care of him, meet his needs, live my life around him—coexist. He eats enthusiastically.
He clearly likes his walks. But for the past day or so, when we come home, he won’t lie down.
I can’t clean. I can’t even close the door of the bathroom to pee.
I can’t leave. He just paces around and cries, even if I’m here, no matter what I do.
This seems like the opposite of settling in.
When I raise my head, the dog is two inches from my face. His tongue curls toward my cheek. I push him away.
Wednesday, March 17, 20__, 11:24 AM
To: Kyle.Forbes@
From: Caprice_Phipps@
Subject: Re: Re: no subject
Dear Kyle,
Your stupid, smelly dog is ruining my life, and he wants you to know the mission was successful—I hate both of you now. Also, he would’ve been happier with your idiot brother. I don’t care about your reasons. Clearly you were shit at good decisions.
C
Lydia stops by on her way home from a prenatal appointment Wednesday evening, and I meet her at the door with a new level of desperation.
“Can you please just walk him up and down the hall for ten minutes while I clean?” I plead.
“He thinks the vacuum is the enemy. But I’m starting to feel like I live in a barn. ”
She takes pity on me. Even brings him outside to do his business. By the time she returns, I have sucked up literal tumbleweeds of dog hair from all over my apartment, and finally achieved a level of mental peace I didn’t even realize I’d been missing.
It evaporates as soon as they walk back through the door.
“I think Anton and Seth can get this out of here Sunday,” Lydia says, gesturing to the former couch. She unclips Rufus’s leash and watches him circle my apartment, panting. “Did you feed him tonight?”
“Yeah. Two hours ago,” I snarl. “I can’t go on like this, Lydia. I’m doing everything you said, but even when I’m home now, this is all he does. When he’s not stealing my stuff.”
She raises her eyebrows. “What does he steal?”
“The other day I caught him with my phone in his mouth—why would that even taste good? He’s taken a bagel off my plate. He steals my underwear if I don’t put it right in the laundry . . .”
She watches him circle the coffee table, another nails-on-chalkboard whine starting up in his throat. “It seems to me like he’s bored.”
“Are you sure he can’t come to The Pooch Park?” I beg. “Just for a few hours?”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Maybe eventually. But I wouldn’t even let him take our entrance test if he can’t settle down at home first.”
“They have to take a test?” I study her face for some sign she’s joking, but she just nods.
“I had to turn down a standard poodle from the waitlist last week when he snapped at Henry’s Frenchie.” She points to the top of my bookshelf. “Why is his Kong toy up there?”
I follow her gaze to the ugly cone-shaped rubber thing she ordered. “He just kept flinging it around. It broke my favorite coffee mug.”
“It should settle him down if you’re filling it with stuff he likes.”
I blink. “I’m supposed to put something in it?”
Lydia releases a slow breath, the way she’s been doing since she and Anton started childbirth class. Then she reaches on her tiptoes to retrieve the dog toy and carries it to the kitchen.
“You can fill it with food, treats, peanut butter . . . if you stick it in the freezer overnight, it will keep him busy even longer.” She rummages through my pantry, pulling out ingredients, then systematically loads them inside the red toy.
When she’s done, she offers it to Rufus, who immediately stops pacing.
He circles the apartment once with it in his mouth, but does not whine.
Then he jumps on the couch with it and starts working to get the food out.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I had no idea peanut butter was the answer to all my problems.”
“It’s good to entertain him, but I doubt it will help if he’s left alone,” she says, hoisting herself awkwardly onto a barstool. “How’re you holding up with work?”
I plop onto the seat next to her, relishing the momentary lack of noise. I didn’t even realize how pervasive the whining was until it stopped.
“Uh, pretty sure Randall knows I’m not sick. But he also knows I have a lead on a big potential story, so I think that’s keeping him off my back.”
“The one about Unmatched?” she asks.
I flinch when she says the name, even though she doesn’t. No memory stays with you quite like telling your best friend you found her husband on a cheating app.
“Yeah, that one.” I swallow. “Actually, the founder’s wife got in touch with me.”
Her eyes widen. She folds her hands protectively over her belly. “That sounds significant.”
I nod. She knows I don’t like to share tons of details when I’m working on a story, but right now it’s a relief talking it over with someone I don’t need to explain it to. Sadly, Lydia has more intimate knowledge of Unmatched than most people.
“I’m still trying to figure out the best approach.”
“And the safest one?” she adds.
I nod without meeting her eyes. “I have to admit, I’m a little freaked out. I mean, it seems like there’s a level of safety in exposing the guy. But I don’t think I should count on that.” I grit my teeth. “I just don’t want to blow the opportunity. Randall promised me a raise, but also . . .”
“Also?” she prompts when I trail off.
“I don’t know.” I exhale. “He keeps whispering in my ear about my potential. He even suggested I’m good enough for Denver Editorial.”
“You are,” she says without hesitation. “Even I can see how a story like this would do big things for your career. But you’re right to be careful.”
One of the best things about Lydia is that she never purports to know what’s best for me.
She’s been as freaked out as Theo about some of the harassment and email messages, but she never suggests I write about something else.
She knows where my passions lie. And while it’s clear she worries about me, I appreciate her faith in my choices.
At least when it comes to anything besides dogs.
“But I can’t do any of this if I can’t leave my apartment.” I cut a glance at Rufus, who’s still licking at the peanut butter.
She crosses her arms over her belly, clearly weighing several options before meeting me with a reluctant gaze. “I hate to say it, but the trainer you met with was probably right. You need a behaviorist.”
I bristle. When I look at her, she bites her lip, and that’s all I need to understand exactly what she’s thinking.
“No.”
“He’s the best in town, Caprice . . .”
“I don’t care. I am not asking that guy for help.”
“Maybe you could just do a consultation?”
“I basically did when I was at his facility the other day. He tried to take Rufus. And when I wouldn’t let him, he told me to give up. I can’t give him the satisfaction of watching me crawl back begging for help.”
“But you wouldn’t—”
Behind us, the rubber Kong hits the floor with a heavy bounce. Rufus jumps down from his throne and nudges the now-empty toy with his nose, glances at us, and starts whining and pacing again.
Lydia’s voice softens. “He needs help, Caprice.”
“What does he need?” I snap. “He has a home. I feed him. I walk him. I don’t use my vacuum for him!”
She raises her shoulders. “If I could tell you, I’d be opening a new branch of my business.
But this is what Drew Forbes does, and by all accounts he does it well.
There’s this dalmatian that comes to The Pooch Park.
The owners couldn’t leave him home either—they couldn’t even walk him.
But after working with Drew, the dog transformed. They swear he changed their lives.”
“Sounds nice.” I slide off my stool. “But I have a policy against working with douchebags.”
“I just don’t know what else to suggest.”
I shake my head, grabbing Rufus’s leash for the fiftieth time today. “There’s got to be another way. I’m taking him to the vet tomorrow. It could be his diet . . . or something. Maybe they’ll prescribe him CBD oil.”
Lydia looks doubtful as she gathers her things and follows us to the elevator, but she doesn’t argue. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Dietary issues can affect lots of things,” I say, running with this solution. “You think you’re having a crisis—but it could totally be indigestion.”
“Dogs aren’t much different from people,” Lydia concedes, giving Rufus a pat goodbye on the sidewalk before folding me into a hug. “Just try to remember . . . he’s having a hard time too.”