A sign on the door says DO NOT KNOCK! DOGS WILL WAKE AND S**T WILL GET REAL. TEXT INSTEAD. We stand there awkwardly for a minute. “I’ll message Tina and see if she can give me Iris’s number.” Daniel tries to take his phone out, but Chewbarka thrashes in his arms.
I catch her as she’s starting to fall. A dog barks inside the house and the door opens. A tall white lady with a long silver braid waves her arm at us. “Come on, get inside before they all wake up.” She’s dressed in a brown UPS uniform with dog hair all over the shirt. Another dog barks and suddenly it sounds like fifty of them are going at once in every room of the house. The air smells of pee and dog and disinfectant.
Chewbarka struggles in my arms as we step inside. Daniel takes her and holds on to her like she’s a life raft.
“Come on in here,” the woman says, ushering us into a living room lined with dog crates instead of furniture. “I’m Iris.” She holds out her hand to Mom.
“Kate,” Mom says, and shakes it. “This is Daniel and Ash. And Chewbarka.”
“Cutie. Can I?” Iris holds out her hands.
Daniel reluctantly hands Chewbarka over. I look down at a fuzzy brown dog barking its head off in a crate near my foot. I squat and hold my hand by the bars so the dog can sniff me. “Hey, little one,” I say. “You’re okay. I don’t bite.”
The dog stops barking and its tail wags so hard it whacks the side of the crate. I look in the front corner at a big round bed with a German shepherd laying on it. The dog looks kind of like Zoey’s dog Rex, except this one’s all deflated. It lifts its head and wags half-heartedly before dropping its head and watching us. Next to it, in a crate with the door open, is a dog with only one front leg and one eye, wagging calmly. Stacked on top of that crate is a smaller one with a chubby Chihuahua barking and coughing.
A small white dog barrels into the room carrying an orange plastic food dish. There’s something wrong with its back legs; they stick straight out behind it and it bounce-drags them across the carpet. It’s wearing a striped black-and-yellow band around its belly and I can’t help laughing. It looks like a fuzzy wingless bumblebee.
“Cool it, Sully,” Iris says. “They ain’t here to feed you, ya hyperactive little turd.” She gives his ears an affectionate scratch as he drops his food dish. “You already had your dinner. Yes, you did. Look here, huh? New friend.” She tries to let Chewbarka sniff Sully, but Chewbarka goes bananas, trying to climb up Iris’s neck.
“She’s scared of dogs.” Daniel looks like he wants to take her back.
Iris stands and holds Chewbarka at arm’s length to get a good look at her. Chewbarka whips around like a worm when you poke it. A stream of pee comes out of her and runs down Iris’s arm.
Iris just laughs. “Oh, you’re a leaker! That’s all right. We got a solution for that.” She hugs Chewbarka close and rubs her ears, then hands her over to Daniel. “Be right back.” She leaves the room.
Daniel stands there holding Chewbarka, glancing at the dogs and crates like he’s afraid to look at them. His eyes land on the corner where I didn’t even notice Mom scratching the nose of a big greyhound in a pen. It’s the most ripped dog I’ve ever seen. Its muscles bulge out all over the place, especially its butt muscles. That dog could run cross-country for days. Its face is all scarred up, dark lines cutting through its graying fur. It watches us with big liquid eyes, one of which is cloudy.
Daniel holds his breath. He stands in the exact center of the room, like if he gets close to any of the crates he’s going to cry. Sully hop-scoots over and sniffs his leg.
I squat and pet Sully’s incredibly soft ears. “Hi, there,” I tell him. “Hello! What happened to you, little guy?”
“Found stuck in a ditch in Kentucky,” Iris says as she comes back with a pack of disposable diapers. “Most likely hit by a car while chasing a squirrel. He’s a smart little son of a gun, but he ain’t got the sense God gave a rock.” She takes Chewbarka from Daniel. “C’mere, you fuzzy little cutie.” She executes a spectacular dog diapering while standing up with the package tucked under one arm.
I laugh. “You make that look so easy. It took me and Daniel ten minutes to figure out how to put a diaper on her, and we were sitting down.”
“That was impressive,” Mom says.
“Lots of experience.” Iris holds Chewbarka up again and turns her back and forth. “Well-fed, that’s good. Tongue doesn’t stay in. You missing some teeth?”
“Yeah,” Daniel says. “They got pulled a few years ago.”
“And cataracts. Gray muzzle. What is she, about twelve? Thirteen?”
“Somewhere around there.” Daniel is clenching his fists, looking at the dog missing its front leg and an eye.
“Tiny dogs can live a long time. She might have a good six or seven years left in her.”
Daniel’s face brightens. “Really?”
“What happened to that one?” I ask Iris, nodding at the dog missing a leg.
“That’s Tripod. Found in pieces by some train tracks. Probably got the crazy knocked out of her, ’cause she’s the chillest dog you’ll ever meet.”
“And this one?” I point at the lazy-looking greyhound Mom’s still petting.
“Big Dave. Retired racer. Forty-mile-per-hour couch potato.” She takes Chewbarka to the German shepherd and squats. Chewbarka is wiggling like a fish out of water again, trying to get away. “All right, come on, you’re okay.” Iris keeps up a steady, calm patter, petting Chewbarka’s ears while she slowly inches closer to the shepherd, who lies
