Date: July, 2024
To: Ken Lacy
From: Joe Scheidler
Re: An Apology and a Thank You
Hi Ken—
If I'm not mistaken, you and Diane live in Charleston, IL. We had reason to be in that fair city a few weeks ago but failed to look you up, and I’ve regretted it ever since. After 40-odd years a reunion was long past due. I don’t have a good excuse but there were two things dominating my mind that day: a battery needing a charge and a dog I wasn’t sure I wanted.
We drive an electric car, and traveling to Charleston meant we would have to pick up a few kw’s along the way. We’d had little experience at public charging stations and I was fretting about it. Turns out there was a DC fast charger at the Cadillac dealer, and while we ate lunch at the deli next door the car’s battery picked up 144 miles. Easy peasy and a bunch of stewing over nothing.
I want to mention you were solely responsible for the dog I wasn’t sure I wanted. You’d shared a Facebook post from the Coles County Animal Shelter that caught Lee’s attention. It was a photo of a frightened, rather weird looking mongrel huddled in the corner of a kennel. The image haunted Lee, and by extension, me, so after a few days I agreed to have a look.
The dog was around six months old and was mostly black with silver highlights on her face. Her lower legs were brown and tan and she wore white patches on her throat and chest. Her face was bearded like a terrier, her paws webbed like a lab’s. She was bull legged, weighed a mere 25 pounds, and her history was unknown. The shelter staff named her “Agnus” (sic).
We spent time with her in an outside kennel. She was energetic and seemed happy but showed little interest in us. She had an irritating, yappy-dog voice and overall we were both fairly unimpressed. But we had decided we might be ready for a dog and here we were with the dog we’d come to see. For a few minutes we hesitated, weighing our footloose freedom against the raft of accommodations and responsibilities that define dog ownership. We considered the probability of the dog outliving us. We loaded her in the car.
Within a few minutes of getting home she shit on the floor. She was filled with unruly energy, bit us incessantly, jumped on everything, chewed anything. For the next two days we seriously questioned our decision and I concluded there was no shame in returning a dog to a shelter, no law requiring us to endure a stressful relationship with a rambunctious canid. Not all is meant to be.
She’d been spayed the day before we picked her up and was under doctors orders to be restrained. It was a challenge. There were endless distractions: rabbits, groundhogs, squirrels, butterflies, ants, all demanding her swift and aggressive response. There were limbs and logs and spruce cones and no end of things to be picked up and carried with the regality of a show horse. She was an adventurer in a new land, a hard drive starved for data, a whirlwind spinning through our peaceful homestead. By the end of the second day we were bitten and bruised and exhausted. Then around the fourth night she leapt onto our bed and snuggled into the crook of my neck and damn if she didn’t start to grow on me.
Her name meant nothing to her and we had trouble spitting it out so we changed it to “Ouiser”. Aside from Shirley MacLain’s character in Steel Magnolias we’d never heard the name, and now it was rolling off our tongues a hundred times a day. It seemed to fit the dog and she accepted it without argument.
It’s been a month since we brought her home, and while she’s improving by the day she still has much to learn and puppyhood to outgrow. Yesterday afternoon I was stretched out in the yard struggling to get the deck reattached to our lawnmower. I was in an awkward position, laying on my side, both arms occupied , trying to line up a couple holes to insert a pin. I was straining and frustrated when Ouiser pounced on my head and started licking my face and pulling my beard hair through clinched incisors. She didn’t see it as unacceptable behavior, and I tried to reprimand her but couldn’t quit laughing. My frustration vanished, the holes aligned, and the pin slid right in.
And I realized for the past few weeks Lee and I have been distracted from a world dominated by political threats and environmental disasters and endless injustices. Instead, we’ve been preoccupied with an innocent, exuberant pup driven by an inquisitive spirit and bent on discovering every speck of goodness her surroundings hold. She is good for our sanity, this dog.
Tomorrow at some point there’s a fair chance I’ll be ready to strangle her, but today she’s golden— an entertaining ball of energy ready to prove her worth and loyalty, looking to us for direction. And it’s all your doing, Ken. Thank you.
Again, my apologies. When we’re next in Charleston I’ll be sure to let you know. We’ll be somewhere near the Cadillac dealer with a bearded black dog looking out for us.
Our very best to you and Diane.
Joe
