FROM THE BOOK STARTER DOG: A VIRTUAL INTRODUCTION
When my husband talked me into rescuing a dog a few years ago, I worried about the downside: fur all over everything, arguments over walk duty. The time for a dog was decades ago, when we had a son at home to play fetch. At 65, we should be planning our next trip overseas, but Paul had always wanted a dog. For love of my husband, I said yes. But I doubted I could love any dog, much less the only flat-friendly dog on offer, a ragged-eared mutt.
He had a great story, I’d grant him that. Born unwanted in Ohio, taught to sit and stay in a prison where incarcerated people train pups for adoption, then sent to a shelter where he waited for a home until he was spirited away to Toronto by a band of volunteers dedicated to saving dogs from death.
We named him Casey. The first thing he did after galloping into our home was drench a chair with pee. He sniffed every corner and finally came to rest with his warm muzzle on my thigh.
ON CASEY’S FIRST MORNING I briefly forgot we had a dog. I padded out of bed, fuzzy with sleep, to find another creature sprawled on the sofa. This had happened a good many times before, but in the past that creature was my husband, sleeping in the very spot where I meant to lounge with my second cup of coffee and the obituaries section of the New York Times. Paul sleeps best anywhere but the bed, and the TV tends to get him nodding in the small hours. The presence of a dog—our dog—was a marvel. Oh, yes. It’s you.
Casey seemed to have expanded since the three of us had curled up with Grey’s Anatomy, two to watch and one to snore. In his languor, he pretty much filled the space, limbs every which way. His torn ear pointed straight up; the other flopped off the sofa. I perched on the ribbon of space he’d left me and stroked his flank. Up went all four paws, his way of wishing me good morning. And a fine morning it was, with Casey in it.
My ideal morning involved leisurely online perambulations in my dressing gown. At least it had until this day. But Casey needed his morning walk, which fell to me as the resident morning person. I couldn’t be late, or he’d have an accident.
Everything we knew about Casey we’d learned from his foster mum, Liz, who handed him over to us. She said
