LETTERS FROM HOME: VISITOR STIRS GRUMBLING IN THE DOG PACK AND A RUN ON NYLONS

Oct. 29, 1998

Dear Patty,

I was awakened Sunday morning by DC screaming.

From opposite ends of the house, I've come to differentiate between the sound of a real DC emergency and simply a scary movie on TV.

Out the second floor window, she'd spied a puppy playing in the street.

Pulling on clothes like a fireman, I ran out the front door and scooped her up, no doubt seconds before she'd have been pulverized by one of the speeders who habitually terrorize our neighborhood.

She had a cloth collar, fleas, no name tag, a tick-tock tail and teeth by Gillette. Born to make trouble.

DC christened her Jane Doe.

We kept looking outside that first day, expecting the worried owner to show up. None did. Could such a tyke have strayed so far? A worse thought: Could someone have dumped her in the park just as someone else did Hank and Lucy?

DC took Hank and Lucy for a walk the next morning and littered the neighborhood with found puppy fliers. I placed a classified ad and called the Humane Society. So far, the owner is still missing.

Meanwhile, Hank and Lucy snarl and grouse about this new presence in their kingdom, sometimes make JD retreat under the couch or under the bed, though only momentarily. They're jealous, I guess.

Lucy seems not to like her because JD pays no homage to the leader of the pack. When the food bowls go down, JD sprints for the nearest one. Hank has always waited for Lucy to pick a bowl before taking the other one. This disregard for doggie etiquette upsets him, too.

He's been growling so much we may have to increase his dosage of Prozac.

Also meanwhile, JD often bites the hand that feeds him -- mine -- and has taken to nipping at DC's stockings, eliciting more screams. These sound something like joy, though.

Years ago after a Saturday night at the spots on the square in Arcata, a step from disappearing into 1 a.m. in my old orange truck, a golden retriever came running down the sidewalk toward me in front of the Alibi bar. She didn't have a name tag either but was very friendly. Thus began a two-week lesson in the care and maintenance of someone else's dog.

The mother-in-law house I was living in was the approximate size of a caboose, and pets weren't allowed. My landlady wasn't too happy about girlfriends for that matter.

The first day, a Sunday, the dog and I had a good time at Moonstone Beach. What to do when Monday arrived and my job intervened hadn't occurred to me.

I left food and water and good thoughts.

On my return that night, my plaster of Paris parrot from Tijuana was smashed, my stereo was at full tilt. The apartment looked like it had been ransacked in a B movie. No doubt the dog had spent most of the day bounding off the walls.

Fortunately, my landlady was hard of hearing. Desperate to find the owner, I wrote a column about the dog, hoping my landlady also didn't read.

But very quickly, the search for her heartbroken old owner was abandoned and the searching for a grateful new owner begun. Finally, contact was made with a family who lived on a farm out by Willow Creek and also read.

Somehow, I think they and the dog were meant to find each other. My role was go-between.

The least act of love sends ripples of joy into the world, tearing nylons and wagging tails.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.