Stinky Dedos, the Lost Dog
I needed to walk. Maybe I could walk off the anxious thoughts that made it difficult to get any writing done. (What if the spider I saw in the basement lays a hundred eggs just because I was too chickenshit to kill it when I had the chance?)
It would be a walk through dry leaves and I was thinking about how strange it was when people described their love of autumn as though loving autumn was somehow more intellectual than loving summer because it conjured images of Ivy League landscapes. That reminded me that I felt ashamed for not applying myself in school. That, in turn, made me think of the time I cried in my professor’s office and she told me to can it.
I was only a few steps away from my house when a woman approached me. She reminded me of my Mom with her short, gray hair. She was walking a Labrador on a leash and had a Chihuahua-sized fluff ball following her.
“Do you know whose dog this is? It’s been following me since back at the corner,” she said, and gestured towards the LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood church.
“No, but I have a tie-out on my front porch. I could put him there and try calling the owner.”
I kneeled to read the dog’s tag. His name was Stinky Dedos.
I scooped the shivering dog up into my arms and carried him to the porch where I could call the number on his tag. No answer. I texted them my address. No reply.
A few minutes later, my husband came outside and started loading up his car for the day. I was explaining Stinky’s presence when a black SUV drifted past our house. It did a three-point-turn and came back. The man in the driver’s seat was ducking his head and looking up at us.
“That must be the owner,” I said.
I waved to the man in the car and he pulled up to the end of our driveway. He didn’t exit his car the way I would have expected. I went ahead and opened the passenger door.
“I don’t mind dogs as long as they don’t pee in the car!” he said.
“Heh heh,” I laughed at his lame joke.
Stinky Dedos slid back on the leather seat. We paused, but with nothing left to say I closed the door and he drove a short distance, did a three-point turn, and drove away.
“That was weird,” I said to my husband, “He didn’t thank me or seem relieved.”
“Did you ask if it was his dog?”
“No, but… he drove away. So it’s his dog, right?”
Another car pulled up and parked in front of my house and I was struck with fear that this was going to be the real owner and she was going to yell at me.
The gray-haired lady from earlier emerged. Relief.
“I just wanted to see if you found the owner,” she asked.
I told her about the man I gave Stinky Dedos to and she wasn’t convinced that I had given the dog to the owner either.
“Well, hopefully the dog is with a… nice… person,” she said, all stilted like what she really wanted to say was “not dog murderer.”
What did I just do?
After she and my husband were both gone, I was left to accomplish my brisk 20 minute mental health walk alone. No music. No podcasts. Just me alone with all the thoughts I had been pushing deep down inside with constant entertainment. Thoughts like remembering the time in grad school that IBS plus neuroticism led me to consume both Immodium and Ex-Lax in the same day and for some reason I had told cool-guy Mike Dixon. What’s wrong me?
Halfway through the walk, I received a text from Stinky’s owner, who was out of town.
My friend Emma is watching him, I’ll forward her the message. Here is her #…
The man I gave the dog to didn’t look like an Emma. My mind searched for an explanation. Was the man Emma’s boyfriend who she sent for the dog? That had to be it.
A man came to pick her up, I responded.
While I waited to hear back from the powerless owner, I wondered if Stinky was still shivering.
Great. Thank you so much, the owner replied.
The walk wasn’t working. I was more than a little bit on edge.
When I arrived home, I was greeted by the man who took Stinky. My eyes darted around. I had recently watched the movie Room where Brie Larson was abducted by a man who tricked her by asking for help with his dog.
“Excuse me, was that dog yours?” he asked, and took three steps closer to me.
I took a defensive step backwards.
“No. It’s a lost dog,” I said, “I thought it was your dog. It looked like you were looking for him.”
“I think there’s been some kind of mix-up. I’m a Lyft driver and when you waved at me I thought you were my passenger.”
The apologizing started.
I opened the passenger door for the second time, cradled Stinky Dedos, and tried to laugh off the mistake.
“I was waiting for someone to come get him and when you drove past slowly… ha ha! Too funny!”
Unamused, he sat in his car waiting for another fare.
Now that I knew he wasn’t a threat, I was left to wonder why the hell he drove away with the dog without asking questions. Did he think the dog was the passenger? Where did they go for 20 minutes? Did Stinky ever pee in the car?
I had to think about it from the perspective of this perfectly nice man too. A strange woman flagged him down, opened his car door, placed a dog inside, and walked away. Which one of us is the real dingbat?
It was too cold to wait outside, so I took Stinky Dedos into my house and turned on the gas fireplace with the storybook logs. He curled up at my feet while I tried to read a book. My mind wandered and I thought the Lyft driver might be telling all his passengers about the lady who put a dog in his car. I liked that idea.
After an hour or so, I heard back from Emma. When she arrived, she hugged me.
“My friend never would have forgiven me if I had lost her dog,” she said.
I was now free to write, but I didn’t. I think I probably made ramen or something. It felt like a failure of a morning, but Stinky Dedos had succeeded in distracting me from my constant state of mortification for at least part of the time. Maybe I could change my patterns of thinking. Maybe I could just live in the present instead of dwelling on the time I peed my Hammer pants because I was too shy to ask to use the bathroom.
Actually, I did write something that morning. I texted the story to the owner.
Weird story, I wrote.
