On Monday night, Wilbur escaped from our yard without his collar. I'd taken it off because he kept jingling and jangling up and down the stairs, keeping Clara from napping. I'd forgotten to put it back on when we left to go grocery shopping.
The next day, I posted on Craigslist and went to the animal shelters in the area. I filled out a "Missing Dog" form at the shelter where we'd gotten Wilbur.
Clara wiggled in my arms while the clerk at the shelter's front desk filled out our report.
"Down! Dogs! Tats!"
"Nope. I need you to sit still. I promise we'll go look at the dogs and cats after we finish here."
"Would you like to pet a bunny after?" the clerk asked, glancing up. It was like asking William Faulkner if he'd like a mint julep. I had to hold Clara's knee up to her chest to keep her from lunging from my hip.
The clerk continued typing for a moment and then looked up at me through her bangs.
"I'm going to ask you a very strange question."
"Uh, okay."
"Have you seen anyone strange in your neighborhood lately?" she asked in a low, confidential voice.
"Um, no."
"There's just...we have a person who's been kidnapping Dachshunds," it sounded like she said.
"Oh," I replied. That's ridiculous, I thought. Why would someone kidnap a wiener dog? And why is she telling me this? Wilbur, although low to the ground and long of torso, is not a wiener dog.
After we finished the report, we petted a big, white bunny, visited all the dogs, and spoke in high, caressing tones to the kitties through the plexiglass barrier.
The first day of Wilbur's absence was faintly blissful. The house seemed very clean and quiet. But by day two I had developed a low-level sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.
"Don't worry, he'll find his way back. Wilbur's a smart dog," said Simon.
"No, he's not," I replied.
"Well," conceded Simon, "But he has the tracking chip in his shoulder."
"Doggie?" Clara asked throughout the day. "'Bur? Doggie?"
If we get him back, I promise never again to yell at him for puking on the carpet, I thought.
On Thursday night, I had a message on my phone: "Hi, this is Tameesha calling from the shelter. I have good news and bad news. The good news is we found your dog. The bad news is he's with his previous owner, and we think you need to file a police report."
I called Tameesha back and she clarified: The previous owner had relinquished Wilbur and another dog when he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Ever since he'd gotten out of the hospital, he'd been hounding (no pun intended) the animal shelter, looking for his dogs. We'd been told when we adopted Wilbur that we needed to change the registration information on his chip, but somehow this detail had eluded us. We were always under the impression the shelter had done it for us. So the chip actually contained the previous owner's information.
The previous owner claimed he'd gotten a call from a vet who'd come upon Wilbur and scanned his chip. But, said Tameesha, it was not impossible that the previous owner had actually dognapped Wilbur from our yard. She wasn't saying he had done it, mind you, just that it was a possibility. I thought I had heard the clerk at the shelter say, "We have a person who's been kidnapping Dachshunds." Actually, she had said, "We have a person who wants his dogs back."
Tameesha gave me the previous owner's first name and phone number.
"I don't think you should let him have your dog," said Tameesha. "He doesn't seem capable of caring for him properly."
It was true that Wilbur had been about twenty pounds overweight when we got him, and had seemed unhealthy and uncomfortable.
I thought it extremely unlikely that Wilbur had been dognapped. How could the previous owner have known where we lived? Still, I called the Boise Police. Well, said the police, there was no way to tell if Wilbur had been stolen from our backyard. Therefore, the previous owner--since he had the dog and wasn't giving him back-- was only guilty of withholding our rightful property from us, or something to that effect. There was no report for that kind of thing.
I had the Boise Police call the previous owner. I thought it best not to have direct contact with him. The Boise Police spoke with him and called me back. They said he was offering to buy Wilbur back, and that he really, really wanted to keep him. However, the previous owner would agree to give him back to us if we wanted him. He didn't want a police record.
No, we didn't want to give Wilbur back, I said. Could the police pick him up and bring him to us? The police thought the man was totally reasonable, and that I should call him directly. Otherwise, we should call the Nampa Police (the previous owner lives in Nampa, about twenty miles outside Boise). And yes, the Boise Police finished, it was possible, even likely, that the Nampa Police would tell me to call Boise back.
"Oh, for crying out loud," I said.
I called the previous owner.
"Hi, I'm the owner of the beagle Basset Hound in your possession," I said when he picked up.
"Isabelle, right? I'm going to need you to bring your paperwork that proves you adopted Boomer," he told me. "Is it your name or Simon's that is on the paperwork? Your husband's name is Simon, right?"
"Uh, I'm not sure whose name is on the paperwork."
"Well, whoever it is, they're the ones who need to come. With the paperwork. And they need to bring photo ID, too."
"Fine," I said. Talking with him made me feel panicky, as if he would find some way to elude us.
We arranged to meet at an innocuous public place for the hand-off. When Simon got home from work, we all piled into the car. Clara was in her jammies. We staked out the drop-off point and waited. Finally, a tall, slowly-moving man appeared, leading Wilbur on a harness and leash.
The man wore big, black, sensible shoes. His head seemed small for his body, and his glasses were thick and oddly-shaped. His teeth were bad. I sensed something like clinical depression: moments of clutching control that faded to shame, not contrition. Slow movements, as though the air were actually corn syrup.
I felt him warm to us immediately.
"Well, look at that," he said when Wilbur bounded towards us to be petted nearly to death.
"I wish there were some way we could both enjoy him," Simon told the man. "But we couldn't let such a sweet guy go."
"All that matters is that he go to a good family," the man said. He never asked to see our paperwork or IDs.
From the car, I watched him walk away. His shoulders were slumped. If loneliness made your skin blue, he would be all indigo. I hoped he would be okay without Wilbur.
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