I was at the door within ten minutes of the place opening. Becky and I had gone for the long walk to think things over Saturday afternoon, and by the time we got back with our decision made, they had closed for the rest of the weekend. “What if someone else beats us to him?” Becky had asked, at intervals, the whole day Sunday. I promised to be first in line, and I was.
The woman behind the desk looked up at me, recognized me from Saturday. “I’d like to take one out for a test drive,” I said. “You wanted the dog in the first kennel, right?” she said, and she went into the pound area to go fetch him. The big firedoor slammed shut, and then opened again and she handed me the leash. “We usually take them just a couple blocks around the neighborhood. Here’s a plastic bag in case you need one. Have a good walk, Kelev!” Kelev was straining for the door, the leash taut.
It was a gorgeous, sunny morning in West Berkeley. The shelter is in a mixed light industrial and residential neighborhoood, cement block buildings cheek by jowl with Mission bungalows and cottages, effusive gardens run wild in the sidewalk verges. Santa Barbara daisies made huge billows of needle-thin flowers on dark purple leaflets. Brugmansia flowers hung redolent and gorgeous. He pulled on the leash until we were a block away from the shelter, then relaxed a bit, sniffing here and there along the way.
I wasn’t sure what I had expected. He was not boisterous, he did not nip at me for attention nor cower from me. He knew how a walk was conducted, and he got right to it with his work partner at the other end of the leash. This was supposed to be a shakedown cruise. Becky and I had agreed that if I thought he might be difficult, I’d decide against bringing him home. He was the furthest thing from difficult. I suppose I had expected more exuberance toward me, more immediate affection. But this was good, this down-to-business thing. This could work. We crossed Pardee Street and walked down Ninth to Grayson.
He turned right at Grayson, probably out of force of habit from the shelter people walking him that way, and began sniffing at a big rosemary. He was a handsome dog, all right, though what was going on with those ears? Huge enough to pick up satellite TV, I decided. Wolfy-looking tail there, for sure, always a plus, and nice tawny coloring, and though the shelter folks had told us Saturday he suffered from separation anxiety and needed lots of attention, he seemed pretty relaxed. I made my decision. Time to pop the question. I squatted, got his attention. “So Kelev, do you want to be my doggie?”
He walked over and put his forelimbs across my thighs, his mouth in a wide panting smile, looking at everything in the world except me. Close enough to “yes” for me.
A long-haired man in plaid flannel walked past on the other side of the street, saw us, smiled. “So whattaya think of him?” he asked. “I think I’m keeping him,” I said. “I wasn’t talking to you,” he replied. Back at the shelter the woman was jubilant. “Kelev! Yay! You get to go home!” “It’s Zeke now,” I said, writing the check for the thirty-five-dollar adoption fee.
We went to the Ecology Center, where I worked, only three blocks away. He stayed there with me while I worked that day, though I got precious little work done as my co-workers and I played and fed and generally indulged my new dog. At five I turned on the answering machine for the Recycling Hotline and shook the leash, and Zeke and I walked six miles home through Berkeley and Oakland.
November 4, 1991. A week from today will be fifteen years of walks.
I used to wonder what Kelev’s life was like. He was well trained but seemed to know no English. He knew how to sit perfectly well, but took an hour or so to realize that “sit” was the word his new humans used to tell him to do so. The same went for “stay” and “come.” (He was completely fluent, however, in “No.") He was housebroken — almost, anyway, as two months in the shelter had undone that somewhat — and completely at ease with small children from day one of his life with us. I have tried and failed to imagine what might have prompted Kelev’s people, who obviously took good care of him, to give him up. I would sooner live in a cardboard box. I hope their decision came without too many tears, because they cannot possibly imagine how much that decision meant to me. You who gave a tan, seven-month-old puppy named Kelev to the Berkeley Humane Society in Autumn 1991, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for him.
I’m posting this a week before the anniversary, because I don’t plan to be anywhere near the internet on the annniversary. You know where to find me: out doing the work I was born to do, my partner at the other end of the leash.
