Audi goes on the road

Afriend found her wandering in the street; she trotted up to him.

Because she looked like our Dublin, he tried to bring her around to our house. We weren’t home, but a neighbor agreed that it looked like one of ours, and so she looped a leash around her neck and called Karen at work. Maybe one of our dogs had gotten out of the yard?

Karen ran home immediately to confirm that it wasn’t our dog. It was younger, smaller and more purebred. A little Schnauzer, about a year old, apparently freshly clipped, with sparkling eyes and ears cropped in such a way that she resembled a koala bear. Facially, she did look quite a lot like Dublin.

We took her in, for we are set up for dogs, with a large and interesting backyard. We have the spare leashes and collars and bowls. And Paris and Dublin have just turned four years old and are all grown up.

I worried a little about introducing a new dog into the mix. Paris and Dublin are sisters, littermates who’ve been together all their lives. They are rescued dogs, terrier mixes who don’t always do well with other dogs—they are polite to other canines when let off leash at the dog park but sometimes on their walk they take great noisy umbrage at dogs four or six times their size. And they are very protective of their home; they demand that visitors explain themselves.

But there was no trouble. A few introductory yips, then sniffing, then the sort of passive aggressive disinterest some of us remember from our school days. Paris and Dublin were the cool clique, and the newcomer was the overeager aspirant— they tolerated her with a kind of exasperated bemusement and there was no violence. They let her play with their toys and, after a while, all three were running together along the perimeter, patrolling for squirrels and turtles and other items of doggish interest.

We figured she was someone’s darling, and we set out to find her owner(s). We thought it would be simple, that she must be a neighborhood pet, run off on a frolic of her own, and that her people—who’d clipped her hair and had her dewclaws surgically removed—would be frantic to find her. We notified the various places people might call if they’d lost a dog—animal control, the Humane Society, a couple of the animal rescue groups, the Arkansas Lost and Found Pet Network, Paul Carr’s Forbidden Hillcrest site. We checked with a couple of vets and groomers, I posted a notice on my blog (you can see pictures of her at blooddirtandangels.com) and we Facebooked it all around.

I figured that when we took her along on our evening walk through the neighborhood we’d see her on wanted posters stuck to telephone poles, or that someone would recognize her. We have harbored strays before. Generally someone is frantic to find them.

But there were no posters that evening, nor the next morning when we went out. Someone contacted me to say that she had seen a photo of the little girl on Facebook—it turned out she’d seen Karen’s post about finding her. We decided we had to call her something—in keeping with the theme established with our girls, we tried out various European cities. Since she was a Schnauzer, we thought something German.

“Berlin” seemed obvious, but in practice, it sounded too much like “Dublin.” Karen countered with “Dresden,” which I thought perfect until it also caused Dublin’s ears to perk. I suggested Bonn, Cologne, Dusseldorf. Karen threw out BadenBaden. None of them suited.

Then we hit on “Audi,” which fit the girl’s vivacious personality and zippy motor. It took her only a few minutes to begin to respond to it. Audi is a smart young lady. She learned to use the dog door in less than a day, and expressed her joy by zooming in and out. She likes soft toys and plush golf club head covers and she seems to love every human she sees. She has been sleeping where Sherpa used to, on a pad by our bed, but in the mornings she leaps up between us, disgruntling Paris and announcing her evident joy in the arrival of a fresh day.

As I write this, she has been with us four days. I no longer think we’ll find her people.

One tries not to judge. I don’t know what happened, maybe she ran off—maybe someone stole her from a yard and she escaped in our neighborhood. Maybe setting her free was the hardest thing someone ever did. Maybe they thought they were doing the best they could for her by dropping her off in a nice neighborhood, full of dogs and guilty liberals.

Maybe they were right.

Maybe they’re looking for her. Maybe we just haven’t connected.

In any case, she is safe now, and happy as she seems to have always been. It seems obvious that she wasn’t abused, though now I think her haircut might have been done by an amateur. She is not microchipped or spayed. We’ve not seen any fleas.

She is fitting in nicely, if not quite seamlessly. Dublin is not proprietary about her food dish except when she is; Paris perceives the spot on the couch to Karen’s right to be her place. Audi receives her lessons cheerfully—she lolls on her back and looks up at us with the entitled eyes of the charmingly cunning.

I do not believe we will keep her, though we have not ruled it out.

She is wonderful, but we already have two wonderful dogs and a nice balance to our lives. On some level it seems selfish to hoard joy. There are people who will love her—we’ve already identified a couple of prospective owners. Maybe by the time this column runs we will have introduced her to her new home.

And she’ll be called something else. And I will miss my Audi. And be happy for her.