Dead Hookers and Catatonic Huskies
When we decided in late 2010 to move to New Mexico, Harvey’s cross-country journey became an odyssey in and of itself. We planned our move to be a two-stage affair — after a moving company packed and started transporting our possessions, we two had a cross-country road trip planned, just for the two of us. That part of the move panned out perfectly — a great trip for the two of us, Harvey happily ensconced at her boarding kennel, Happy Hound — but when Jenn and I arrived in Albuquerque we quickly found out that our moving company was days, if not weeks, behind schedule, so our plans to fly to California, pack our remaining stuff into a U-Haul and drive my truck with Harvey in it… all fell apart. As it turned out, I flew back to Oakland myself, rented a U-Haul, packed it full of our last goods, bid a few close friends a second goodbye, picked up an elated Harvey from boarding, and went to our veterinarian’s office to get her a preventative rattlesnake vaccine. Harvey’s elated mood at seeing me after two weeks of boarding quickly evaporated when she had to get shots, but the two of us hit the open road, eastbound, late in the morning that day.
Our planned two-day route was to take us through Lake Tahoe, up the northern route through Nevada, then southeast through Utah, into Colorado and finally down to New Mexico and a new life in the desert. Harvey’s foul, post-vaccination mood turned to pure obstinance when we stopped for lunch at In-N-Out just east of Sacramento. Like I’d done many times after runs in the past, I set the dog, some food and some water all in the bed of my pickup — but Harvey turned her nose up at all of it. Wouldn’t drink a lick of water, or eat anything at all. Weirdly, she also outright refused to pee or poop. I chalked this behavior up to the drastic change in her routine — two weeks straight at boarding, then straight to the vet for shots, then straight into the truck for what at that point had been a three-hour drive.
Back into the truck for our second stint of the day, we drove north and east, stopping only for fuel until we both ran out of steam in the lovely town of Winnemucca, Nevada. I’ve been a lot of shitty places in my life, but Winnemucca absolutely takes the cake. Pick your euphemism: it’s the armpit of America, where they’d stick the tube if they gave America a colonoscopy, or Hell on Earth. I tried and failed at three separate hotels to find one willing to accommodate a man and his dog, but despite all the freedom — for guns, for prostitutes, for Tea Party libertarians to freeload and graze their cattle on Federal land and bemoan the overreaches of the Obama administration — we were shit out of luck in finding a pet-friendly hotel. The last straw emerged: a Motel 6, with an advertised room rate of $28.99. Begrudgingly, I settled for this and, hopefully illustrating just how awful Winnemucca is, decided rather than walk across the street and leave Harvey alone in the hotel, I’d drive my pickup (with trailer) to the Safeway on the other side of the street to scrounge dinner. I settled on a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. It was that kind of day.
The adventure really started when we got into our room. I took one look around and immediately regretted my decision — this was the kind of room that murders-for-hire were arranged in, that human organs were trafficked in, that on-the-lam prison escapees holed up in. The room exuded a greasy feeling — the bedspread wasn’t just stained, but rather seemed to be made of stains. I set out food and water for Harvey — she continued ignoring it — and threw my sleeping bag on top of the bed. Harvey sniffed around, getting more and more agitated every time she poked her snout near the meeting point of the box spring and mattress. I picked up my phone and sent a text to Jenn, who at that point was on her sixth day of unpacking an 53 ft. trailer’s worth of moved household goods on her own:
“i think harvey smells a dead hooker under the bed in this room”
I couldn’t sleep — too many crackheads and transients and Nevadans around — and I was so grossed out by the condition of the room that I largely just lay there, starting at the ceiling while Harvey paced, wondering whether I’d contract ringworm or something more fierce if I dared shower. Three and a half hours fitful, restless hours later, I hurriedly got my gear packed, left two inches of melted, sticky Cherry Garcia tipped over on the bedside stand (it seemed apropos for the environs), hurried Harvey into my truck, and drove out of Winnemucca as fast as my weighted-down Tacoma would convey us. We watched the sun rise as we descended into Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah, and my spirits rose a bit. I’d always wanted to visit The Salt, but I didn’t envision myself doing so in a pickup, hauling a trailer, feeling as though I was fleeing a crime scene. It was beautiful out there, but really anticlimactic to visit one of the holy temples of speed with a pickup truck which, unladen, might top out at 104mph.
At this point, I feel compelled to mention that Harvey was now fully catatonic. She just sat, sadly looking out the passenger window, unimpressed by my sporadic pettings, and hadn’t to this point ate, drank, urinated or defecated for more than 24 hours. I was growing worried. I tried reasoning with her, I tried pleading, we stopped periodically for her to sniff uninterested around whatever godforsaken roadside turnoff I could find. I even tried to tickle her once thinking that might make her pee as a defense mechanism, but that didn’t work either.
What transpired was the single longest day behind the wheel of my life so far: all tolled, we drove for 16 and a half hours that day, diagonally across the entirety of Utah, into a drive-through coffee stand in Moab, into the wild green Marlboro country of Southwestern Colorado, and into America’s second loveliest burg, Farmington, New Mexico. Our new home in Placitas sits less than two miles east of I-25; I-25 happens to be the southern terminus of US Highway 550, which I picked up in Farmington. To my and Harvey’s mutual dismay, I noticed in Farmington that the mileage markers count down as you travel south on 550 — from 170. The significance of these mileage markers has never been lost on me, but on that day, after nearly 24 hours driving with a catatonic and (presumably) dehydrated, malnourished and constipated Husky riding shotgun, those 170 miles crept by at a snail’s pace.
Around mile marker 65, I made one last desperate attempt to cajole Harvey into relieving herself — at a service station in the middle of the Zia Reservation, one of the most desolate, blighted and depressing places I’ve ever set eyes on. Needless to say, she was disinterested and after I spotted her beelining toward a pile of broken glass, I gave up and hoisted her into the truck for the final stretch home.
The sense of relief I felt — we felt — as I finally pulled into our new driveway at 8:30pm that night was palpable. Immediately after letting Harvey out of the truck, I collapsed into the driveway, but my spirits lifted as Harvey took notice of Jenn coming out of the house. All symptoms of Harvey’s catatonia lifted as she and Jenn had a very waggly, panting, excited and bouncy reunion. Harvey squeaked and woofed and licked Jenn’s hand and all was right with the world. Jenn showed her the back yard, and the most amazing thing happened.
Harvey pissed like she’d drunk a case of beer, then laid down the single longest, most voluminous shit that I’ve ever seen a dog produce. Then she slurped down a huge bowl of water, wolfed down a bowl of kibble, and five minutes later, she was dead asleep on the floor of the kitchen. So began Harvey’s days as a desert Husky.
In the ensuing five years, Harvey became my sidekick, and never did I feel that sensation more acutely when we’d drive together in my truck: to our rural post office, to the drive-through for coffee, off into the mountains for adventure time.
She, with her snout just out the window, sneezing and snorting as the rush of wind blew up her sinuses, leaving ubiquitous slimy noseprints on all the interior glass, dribbling and drooling all down the dashboard, expansive wads of fur stuck to my truck’s carpeting and seat fabric — the vaguely disgusting swirl of said fur inevitably being sucked into my nose and mouth every time I rolled down a window.
She, eliciting the same fond oohs and aahs from people at drive-through windows, drivers and passengers of vehicles near us at stoplights, grizzled truckers, cyclists.
She, sitting patiently and staring at the door of whatever establishment I’d parked outside of. And every time, I gave her the same greeting on getting back in the car: “Harvs! You’re such a good girl!”
And every time I did, I’d get the same little half-waggle of her tail, that waggle acting like a reset button, or the ticking of a box off of today’s to-do list. As in, “Okay Dad, we got the mail dropped off at the post office. What’s next?”
I miss my sidekick.
