The Rescue

8

Street Mutt’s pups were born on Sunday, April 9, in a big crate on the floor of a bedroom belonging to a ten-year-old boy named Teddy. Teddy named his favorite pup Joe.

Joe’s was a dark, warm, hungry world, and he knew only the sweet thing that came from his mother and the strength of the creatures all around him trying to get the sweet thing too.

Joe couldn’t know that his mother’s name was Mabel, that she was petite for a Labrador retriever, almost white, with a cute black nose, a pleasant disposition, and a passion for tennis balls. To him she was just the warm large thing that fed him and licked him and let him sleep up against her always thumping, gurgling belly.

Joe couldn’t know, either, that giving birth had been an urgent ordeal for Mabel, leaving small bloody dogs all over her crate pad to lick clean and feed with her swollen, tender teats. The little beasts jostled for position along her underbody, never satisfied, moving from nipple to nipple and sucking hard for more.

At three weeks old, Joe had become bossy and got whichever nipple he wanted and could out-wobble his siblings across the floor to Teddy when he came to play with him, which was often.

Joe loved the way Teddy looked at him and held him. As his eyes grew stronger, Joe studied Teddy’s face. He was like a god, though Joe had no concept of God and never would. When Teddy lifted him to his chest and kissed his nose, Joe could feel the boy’s heart beating and smell the wonderful smells of his mouth. Being high in the air like this should have frightened him, but in Teddy’s arms it didn’t. Joe’s trust was instinctive and unconditional. If he jumped, the boy would catch him.

Later, when Teddy began giving him meat, and Mabel was spending long hours away from the crate, and his siblings were vanishing one by one, Joe gave himself to the boy and took the boy for himself. The emotional exchange was sudden, automatic, and complete. It was easy to understand: Teddy and Joe were above his mother and siblings now. Joe couldn’t articulate it, but his mother and siblings mattered less. His decision was final. And though Joe couldn’t know it, this would happen again in his life, three times.

Now Teddy was his world. Teddy was his Boy. He was Teddy’s Dog. Those were Joe’s first four words: Joe, Teddy, Boy, Dog.

Joe didn’t know the word Team yet, though before long he would understand that Teddy and he were a Team.

That night he slept in what he would someday come to call the Team Bed.

At eight weeks, Joe began to learn things from his Boy. They started with the leash in his backyard and in the house, always a reward from Teddy’s pocket when Joe did something right.

Sit. Treat. Stay. Treat. Come. Treat.

After dark, the Boy held him on his lap on the floor in front of the TV, where a small man spoke words that didn’t seem to come from him, and a small dog seemed to understand him. It was hard to tell where the small man and dog were, and they moved strangely. Joe knew that his Boy wanted him to do something, but he didn’t know what. So he wagged his tail briefly. Sniffed the boy’s pockets for treats. Teddy watched the TV very hard, though, pointing at it, and talking to Joe. His Boy also had a book with a girl and a dog on the front.

During training — at all times, in fact — Joe naturally watched Teddy’s face and hands, and listened to his voice, then tried to do what his Boy was telling him. If it was the wrong thing, try another. Sometimes Teddy would help him: push down on his rump and pull up on the leash for sit; pull on the leash for come; tie the leash to a doorknob for stay. Joe learned fast because he wanted that kibble.

When Joe was ten weeks old, he squeezed out of his crate and followed the smell of kibble to a small room that was near where the people ate. It had swinging doors that looked like he could get through. He could hear Teddy outside the house. The Big People were gone. The kibble was somewhere in here, though, so he nosed his way in the pantry. There were shelves of food and food-like things. The smells came to him strongly and namelessly: potatoes, white onions, cheese snacks, oranges, bits of mown grass on the floor, tracked in from outside. And, of course, the mouthwatering kibble, up high and out of sight.

He pulled himself up on the lowest shelf, scratching with his hind feet for purchase, reaching blindly with his front paws, but they landed in something smooth and heavy that slid free and sent him to the floor on his back. The thing landed on top of him, clear, cold, and hard. When Joe scrambled upright, it fell to the floor and made a bonking sound. He could see it and see through it at the same time.

He tried again and fell on his back again, a long thin container landing on him this time. It wasn’t heavy like the other. Joe righted himself quickly and investigated the unusual thing. Its top had come open and a sharp-toothed blade pricked his nose. He found a tube of metal paper inside that came off in tangy metallic bits in his mouth.

Joe got the tube out and went to work, holding it still with his front paws, tearing at it patiently until he was lying in a field of shiny metal bits. Then somehow the tube rolled away from him until there was no metal paper left, only a hollow tube that Joe chewed to shreds in less than two minutes.

He fell asleep in the mess, still smelling the kibble way up there and out of sight. Which is where Teddy found him a few minutes later.

“Bad dog, Joe. Good thing I found you, not Dad.”

Even at ten weeks, Joe understood Teddy’s tone of voice very clearly, most of the time. He cowered and looked at the floor and not at Teddy. Teddy scolded him in a low voice and Joe peed, instinctively sensing that this would not make his Boy happy.

Teddy ordered Joe to come and went down the hallway to his room.

“Crate up, Joe,” he said, and the puppy looked at him, then walked into the cage. “Why did you go in the pantry, Joe? What were you looking for?”

Teddy latched the door and left the room, and Joe felt a terrible sadness inside because he had made his Boy unhappy. It was a crushing feeling, and his Boy’s unhappiness was something Joe wanted to take away. Lick it away, chase it away, bark it away, or bite or chew or whine it away. Joe heard him going down the hall and into the place where the people ate and then he heard the doors open on the Kibble Room. He could hear the crackling of the metal paper. And the thump of the heavy glass dish that had landed on him, being lifted from the floor.

Footsteps and his Boy was back.

“It was the kibble, wasn’t it?”

Joe certainly understood Kibble, and he wagged his tail.

“Did you smell it from all the way in here?”

Joe had no idea what Teddy was saying but he wagged his tail again. He could see that Teddy wasn’t unhappy anymore, so he went to the crate door but his Boy did not let him out.

Instead, for the next few minutes, Teddy hid very small amounts of kibble — just a bit or two — all around the house.

Then let Joe out of the crate, leashed him, and waved one small kibble in front of the puppy’s nose.

“Find,” he said. “Joe, find kibble.”

Puzzled, Joe sat.

“Find kibble,” said Teddy, holding the food under the dog’s nose again.

Find?

How about...

Joe led the way, his Boy just behind him, down the hallway and into the pantry. Here the smell of his dog food was strong as before. Joe lifted his nose into the rich meaty river of scent. Wagged his tail and sat, looking into the smell. He still couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there.

“Okay, Joe, that was easy. Now let’s try this.”

He led the dog into the dining room and held out some food again and told him to find it.

Joe wasn’t sure what find meant, but finding the kibbles made Teddy happy, so Joe followed his nose to the two small nuggets in the far corner. Ate them fast as he looked at his Boy.

“Good dog, Joe!”

Teddy’s voice was so pleased. His face so happy. Joe pushed his small plump body against Teddy’s leg.

There in the dining room, Joe found two more treasures under the table, and one in a wadded-up paper napkin on the seat of a chair.

Which led him into the adjacent foyer, where he discovered one nugget beneath the hat-and-coatrack, two under the mat, and one under the bench.

Then to the living room, where kibble scent streamed into him from under a couch cushion, behind the TV stand, inside a drawer, beneath the throw rug, under the cushion of the big skin-smelling chair.

“You only missed two, Joe!”

Joe charged his Boy, grabbed one of his shoelaces, and shook it back and forth with all his pudgy might.

That evening, Joe watched Teddy at the computer, the light from the monitor faint on his beautiful, expressive face. Teddy seemed to be very interested. Joe tried to stay awake but he drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming of his mother’s milk while, unknown to him, his Boy read online articles on how to train dogs for search and rescue, or to detect just about anything — bombs, guns, drugs, cash, even truffles, cancer, depression, diabetes, and bedbugs!

By the time he was six months old, Joe weighed twenty pounds and his adult form had taken shape. From his Labrador mother, Mabel, he inherited a blockish head, an intelligent face, a long tail, and her pale skin and coat. He got Street Mutt’s slender torso, long legs, tan ovals, and the jaunty terrier button-rose ears.

Day after day, he became more adept at finding the very small amounts of whatever Teddy hid around the house and in the yards and garage: dabs of peanut butter, a clove, orange seeds, a piece of toilet paper brushed with alcohol and allowed to dry, scraps of flavored dental floss, chips of bath soap, dandelions from the yard, single flakes of breakfast cereals. New things every day.

Once Teddy had given him a good whiff of the target item and said, “Joe, find!” the dog would set off, drop his nose low, and begin quartering the area — sidling oddly, switching back, veering suddenly, then switching back again. And when he stopped and raised his nose to the air, it meant he had entered the scent cone, and his motion would become more direct, with fewer changes of direction and longer angles as he quartered, narrowing the cone, following the smell to its source.

Joe enjoyed this game almost as much as chasing tennis balls or chewing cow hooves. He was always so happy to see his Boy smile, and to get that treat. Simple: all he had to do was take the target scent into his dense, copious, detailed scent-cataloging memory, then follow his nose to the thing. Some things took longer because their scent was weaker. Some took longer because Teddy tried to confuse him with hot sauce, vinegar, mouthwash, milk, mustard, ketchup, deodorant, mothballs, and the scented fishing bait that Teddy and his father used at the beach. But the smells that his Boy put with the target smells only added to Joe’s voluminous capacity to detect and isolate and find. Joe had no idea what scent receptors were, or that he would have three-hundred-plus million of them when he grew up, or that great Teddy, his Boy, would have only six million.

One day, Joe was excited to have Dad join him and Teddy for a game of finding things. Joe liked Dad, but Joe couldn’t make him happy. His face rarely changed, even when he talked. He was calm and tired and sometimes looked and smelled like he wanted to bite something or somebody. Dad left home every morning and came home in the evening. He wore dark pants and a light shirt with a patch with a word on it, but Joe had no idea what Tony might mean. He drove a large white thing with a picture of a man who looked like Dad running fast with a box in one hand and a tool raised in the other. Under the picture were more words that meant nothing to Joe, and never would:

That day Joe found the hidden things very easily. It seemed like his nose was working better, or maybe Teddy had chosen stronger smells.

When the game was over, Joe laid himself down and listened to Teddy and Dad talk. Their voices sounded hopeful and excited, made him feel good.

Joe, of course, understood only his own name and that good things were going to happen.