Long Story Short ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Olivia Bailey Bonaparte ________ After reading his entry I was inspired to finally post this entry. I�m not sure if I�ve told this story before but it�s worth telling again if that�s the case. Needless to say I fully support rescuing animals from shelters over shelling out big bucks for purebreds. When I was 20 I was deep in the throes of my first non-nuclear family with the ex. We were living in a shithole apartment in New Orleans, finishing up our senior year of college, and being dual Mommy�s to our kitten Simon. Simon had come to us by way of whining and bitching and moaning on the part of my ex. She felt that I was not affectionate enough with her and that therefore she should be allowed to have a cat. At the time I was relatively anti-cat (sorry Hunter!) and also allergic. But I said fine, which I usually did with her, and came back to a little fur ball after one of my weekend trips to Boston in the summer of 2001. Having Simon was a lot of fun and virtually no work. I remember being astonished that someone would just give us a kitten. We were party girls and often irresponsible. The fact that his tiny little life was in our hands was awe-inspiring. For the most part we rose to the challenge and nurtured him, fed him, and kept him happy. We had some bad days with him too but it was mostly a positive change. Simon got me thinking about what I really wanted: a dog. I knew it would be a ton of work and basically like adding a baby to our house. But the more I thought about it the more I wondered when I would ever have a better opportunity. I had more free time now than I would in a year when I was working full time. I discussed it over and over again with the ex and she was excited � not a dog person by far but eager to become one. After months of indecision I knew my mind was made up and I was going to get a puppy. I started thinking about what kind of dog I wanted and I even purchased puppy training books and other �How To� dog books. My first instinct was to get a Yorkshire Terrier because they were very small and could travel on a plane with me. At that point in my life that seemed like an important detail as I flew several times a year and wouldn�t want to leave a dog behind. I looked in the paper for Yorkie breeders and we even went and looked at some very tiny $500 Yorkie puppies. They were cute but also, excuse me, $500. I had the money in savings but kept thinking that perhaps it would be wiser to spend less money on the dog and more money on the supplies and vet visits that he would need. I decided that I wanted a boy dog puppy and I was going to name him Oliver Bailey. And the best way to get a dog cheap was at the Japonica Street pound in New Orleans. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from my house and I knew a few people at school who had also picked up dogs there. They had a plethora of strays and rescues. Also it was a shelter that euthanized dogs after a limited amount of time so every rescue counted. It was a Friday in February when we made the trip out to the pound. I was nervous and excited having made this decision. The pound was in a relatively unpleasant part of Louisiana, of which there seemed to be many, and it looked like a prison. We went inside and were greeted by the folks that worked there. I explained that I wanted to look at the puppies and we were immediately ushered into the dog room. Walking through the dog room I remember commenting that it felt like looking at the condemned. Our guide, a large black guy named Robert, hushed me. But there were cages and cages of full-grown dogs lying on the concrete floor with only a bowl of food and a bowl of water. The majority of the dogs I saw were pit bulls, or pit bull mixes. Many of them were standing up and looking at us as we walked by them to the back of the room. It was depressing. In the back were the cages with the little puppies in them. I�m not sure what I expected � a purebred Yorkie mix to be sitting there? � but the dogs were all clearly going to be huge. A few looked like German Shepherd mixes and all of the dogs were curled up asleep. Some had weird scars or scum on their little faces and didn�t look healthy. In fact none of them looked healthy or particularly engaging. Until� I got to the last cage. A little yellow dog with floppy ears held straight back was trying to jump out of its cage and into our arms. She had literally smooshed her nose against the cage bars and was wiggling her hind end as fast as she could. The dog had the most beautiful brown eyes that I had ever seen. I looked at the tag on the cage and it said she was a ten-week-old female lab. She didn�t necessarily look like a lab to me but was nondescript enough to pass. It also said that she had been picked up at the naval yard two weeks prior. She was on newspapers and had a bowl of what looked to be dog food. She was thin, her ribs sticking out prominently, and her hair was a patchy yellow. But her face was what sold me. I picked her immediately after looking at my ex and saying �Well, she�s a girl. It�ll be Olivia Bailey�. And with that she was my dog. I had to fill out some paperwork, an adoption form that basically said I would take good care of her. I used a false address to adopt her because my apartment didn�t allow pets and I was afraid they would call and turn me in or take the dog away if they found out. She cost me $65 and that included her spaying, which they did immediately and told me I could pick her up in the morning. The man who signed the paperwork approving the adoption � his full name was Robert Bailey. Coincidence? I got home in some sort of shock thinking about the little life that I had just found. And I�ll admit that I had a moment of �did I do the right thing?� For one thing she wasn�t a cute puppy � she was dirty, raggedy, and unkempt. I had yearned for a soft fuzzy baby but this was more of a fixer-upper. But I was very committed to my new ugly little dog. Saturday morning we went out and spent a lot of money on dog supplies � puppy food, toys, a brush, nail clippers � tons and tons of stuff. I bought her a red collar and a leash to tide her over until I could pick her color. Then we went out to Japonica Street. We waited in the veterinary side of the office for them to bring her out to us. I had a picture in my mind of what she had looked like the day before and when they finally brought her out she didn�t look the way I remembered. But someone was handing me a dog and that was just fine with me. We took her out to the car where the cat was waiting in his bag. We thought it would be a good idea if the pets met in a neutral environment, rather than at the apartment, which was most decidedly Simon�s. The ex sat in the back with the pets while I drove home. Bailey very quickly became my best friend and my savior. She immediately responded to me in a way that I can�t explain � from her first sight of me she was over the moon. When I took her home I gave her puppy food and she ate like she hadn�t eaten in months. Her little bony body was filthy but because of her stitches I couldn�t bathe her for seven days. I still loved her desperately though and felt hurt when my ex would insist that she not be on the furniture but instead tied to a chair across the room. Tied to a chair across the room? No way. I would walk her in a little cat sweater because it was so cold out at that time and she was so thin she would shiver. She couldn�t seem to get used to her leash and would sometimes run frantically in what we would call �the helicopter� because it was a circle of crazy frenzy. I realize now that she was a baby who had been cooped up in a cage for two weeks � she was probably full of energy and frantic to run. She developed a little chafing mark on her neck from pulling on the leash and I felt horrible that she wasn�t adjusting. But I walked her anyway, as much as I could. One day I was walking her toward a little neighborhood boy who was playing with his basketball. Bailey caught a glimpse of the ball, heard it bounce, and ripped her head out of her collar with one jerk. She went running, tail between her legs, down the street in the opposite direction. I was frantic and called out to her and prayed that she would stop and come to me and not end up dead or back at the pound. She did come, eventually, and we went back inside. That was the first time I realized that lots of things scared her, particularly children, and that she was anxiety-prone and very very sensitive. After seven days I got to bathe her, which I did in our large plastic keg holder, and afterward she was like a different dog! Her fur turned a rich golden reddish brown and the excess raggedy parts washed off. I clipped her nails and brushed her and snuggled her in a towel and she was beautiful! She had already started filling out from the puppy food I was feeding her and was beginning to look like a real puppy. Bailey did a lot of damage to my already failing relationship with my ex. Somehow it became her pet against mine. We would have arguments about the pets all the time. I did all the work with Bailey, which didn�t bother me at all, but then I was also told to isolate her from us because she was a �vicious brown pit bull�. She was a puppy, she was nippy, she was excited and full of energy. I couldn�t understand how my ex could not love the dog the way I did. And Bailey knew and responded to me, and I was accused of having a �lap dog�, like it was a bad thing that I was bonding with her. Jealousy. My ex and I stopped sharing a bed shortly after Bailey joined us. At first I started sleeping apart from my ex because I had to get up so early to take care of the dog and it just seemed easier. Then one morning I let Bailey in my bed after taking her outside for a walk. She laid her tiny body down next to me and just passed out. I manipulated her so that her head was on my arm and I was spooning her and she nestled into me and slept like the dead. That was probably the first time she had slept so close to another warm body in weeks. It was the most beautiful moment and I knew then that I couldn�t kick her out of my bed ever again. What she had been through, the parts I knew about, just killed me. Her life had been hard and I was her mom now and I wanted to spoil her. After that she slept with me every night. I have told the story of moving up here with her, riding in a van for a few days with her and my father. You can read it here. I don�t think I need to say how much my dog means to me now. Having her as my main companion and best friend when I moved to an unfamiliar state was a blessing. I got to have seven months from the day I adopted her where I wasn�t working full time and could be with her and be her primary caregiver. She loved living at my parents� house for two months while I looked for an apartment. We would wander the woods behind their house, I would think about my future and she would scamper around and run ahead but always turn around to make sure I was just behind. We moved into our own place and for almost two years she was my only roommate. I think you can tell from my frequent pictures that Bailey and I have a special bond. I couldn�t be luckier to have met a man who not only accepts that bond but who has fallen in love with her too. Despite her flaws, of which she has a few, he has become her father. I never expected anyone to embrace Bailey in such a whole-hearted fashion. But she and I are lucky, we are. And I am the luckiest of all because I have her, my boy, and my tiny muppet. 12:48 p.m. - 2005-03-25 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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