Chapter 3

Breaking In

Tramp knew that pets were supposed to be owned by their family. His education in the pet shop had taught him that much. They should just do what they were told, follow instructions. But from the minute he left Big Bob’s he felt that he was part of the family, just like Shannon and Colin, maybe with a bit more control over his life.

Well, almost.

Tramp’s first night was in the basement. They gave him an alarm clock and a hot water bottle, their idea of the ideal replacement for a real mom. But Tramp knew the difference between a clock and his mom’s heart. He whined all night until they moved him up to the kitchen, but why stop there. He continued to whine and was soon moved to Shannon’s room. That was certainly more comfortable but it was both good and bad.

Shannon’s bed had a great canopy and soft blankets. At night it was comfortable and warm. But during the day, Shannon started dressing him up like a doll. She put one of her baby doll sweaters on him and started pushing him around in a baby buggy.

Her friends saw this and wanted to be part of the game. Mom, who Emmett called Liz, hid him in the big closet in a basket under the winter coats to keep the kids at bay when she thought Tramp had had enough.

That didn’t work all the time, especially when the rest of the neighborhood kids, and there were a lot of them, came to the door every day. He hated the sound of the doorbell at nine in the morning.

“Can Tramp come out and go for a walk?” They wanted to dress Tramp up, push him in the baby buggy, then hold him. The game went like this.

The doorbell would ring. Shannon ran to the door. Kids he had never seen would say, “Tramp is so cute. Can we go for a walk?”

Shannon, of course, said, “Great, I’ll get him.”

If Liz wasn’t right there to hide him in the closet, Tramp raced out the back door and under the big green hosta leaves in the garden. It was the coolest spot in the backyard as well as his favorite place to hide. The big green leaves were on stalks just long enough for him to fit under and take advantage of the shade. He liked to dig down a few inches and scrunch his belly into the coolest black dirt in the neighborhood. Too bad it didn’t make him invisible.

Shannon usually found him immediately. “There you are Tramp. Time for a walk.”

Then came the sweater and the funny hat. He lay on his back in the baby buggy, his head on a pillow.

Five minutes into the walk, he started whining, but that didn’t really help.

“Oh, he’s crying, I better pick him up and rock him,” some child would say.

He was held by a hundred different little girls, some smelled like cinnamon, some, otherwise. He was a sucker for fragrances he liked, and the opposite was true. He revolted when the fragrance wasn’t to his liking, howling and thrashing. He smiled his best “You smell good smile,” when the girls smelled as sweet as Shannon.

The buggy rides eventually narrowed down to four drivers, Shannon and her three best friends—Kristin, Esther, and Jessica— who all smelled good. Shannon had the same requirements as Tramp. At least along the lines of fragrance. Tramp was sure she could smell her friends the way he could.

 

Colin didn’t push a baby buggy. He used stilts and a new skate board. Liz took him to the hardware store and Tramp came along. Emmett was out of town on business. He traveled a lot. Colin told the hardware store guy he wanted stilts and handed him a detailed drawing with exact measurements. The man cut the pieces exactly and strapped them to the roof of the car. Colin screwed the pieces together and practiced and practiced in the backyard. He had great balance.

He put Tramp on his shoulder and walked around with four sets of claws digging in. Colin didn’t like it when his friends laughed. “So, you want to get up here?” He said more than once. When his friends didn’t, he said, “Thought so. Tramp’s got more courage than you guys.”

Next, the skate board. Colin skated on rails and steps and wooden ramps. He taught Tramp to ride alone on the board. The other boys actually helped. They would stand at the bottom of the hill, taking turns grabbing Tramp as he rolled by, just in time to keep him out of the busiest street in the neighborhood.

“You know, Tramp, you can do anything I can do,” Colin said, and the boys carried him around saying, “Next skate board champ right here.”

 

Tramp hated the dry, tasteless stuff called “Dog Food.” Liz put the little brown bits of sharp, dry, whatever it was, in a metal bowl and said, “Just for you, Tramp. All the vitamins and minerals a puppy needs.”

The stuff smelled old and dead. Tramp shook his head, pushed the bowl against the wall. Waited. Then he tipped the bowl with his paw. Just enough to make a clang when it fell back to the floor. The final, “I hate this food,” came when he pushed the food out of the dish with his nose, backed away and sat next to Colin at the dining room table.

“That’s it, Tramp. Nothing else is coming your way,” Liz said. She tried to sound firm. Eventually, whatever was on Colin’s plate made its way to the floor in front of Tramp. He ate whatever Colin was having.

The bag of old, dead, dry, tasteless, stuff ended up in the metal trash can.

They talked to him like he was one of them, giving directions. “Dinner time, Tramp, in five minutes,” “Tramp, sit in the back with Shannon,” “Watch the house while we’re gone, and stay out of the chair. You know, the one by the window.”

And Tramp did understand these things, and, most of the time, he tried to be good. He figured out very quickly what made them happy and what made them mad. But the chair thing had an issue. When the family was gone, he was the protector. It was his job, a job all dogs took very seriously. But he was little. Only when he was in the chair could he see in both directions up and down the street. That was important. So, Tramp waited for the back door to shut and the family to drive off. Then he jumped up on the wing back chair in the window and protected the house.

 

He did a few other things the family didn’t like, well, mostly Liz didn’t like. They lived a block away from a lake, right in the middle of the city. Emmett put a leash on his collar and took him for walks down by the canoe dock, not aware that he was showing Tramp a trail of scent.

The smells were wonderful—dead carp, sunfish, a hundred other dogs, geese during the summer, rubber bike tires circling on the bike path, mice, hawks, crows. It was scent heaven.

And Tramp loved the water. So, some days he just couldn’t help himself. He burrowed under the back fence and raced to the lake. He just couldn’t sit in the yard with all those wonderful smells washing up the street from a lake full of Canadian geese and giant scaly dead carp.

That was his favorite lake thing. Tramp knew when a dead carp washed up onto the lake shore. He smelled it. Five minutes later, after scratching at the back door, his sign to be let out, he’d escaped the yard and run to the lake. Then Tramp pushed the dead carp up the bank with his nose, then rolled it back into the lake, the carp between his front paws. Then he did the push-and-roll again. He repeated this until the other live carp chased him out.

By the time he got home, Shannon was a little upset. She was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, her arms folded across her chest, a scowl on her face. She started talking to him from a block away. “Tramp, where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you. You know, you’re supposed to stay in the yard.”

As he got closer, she backed up. “And what’s that horrible smell?”

He followed Shannon to the back door. Liz stood on the steps with her arms folded across her chest, a scowl on her face. “Tramp, you know where you belong!” she said very loudly, pointing to the basement.

His head down, he slowly slunk down the stairs. He went straight to his training box and burrowed under his red blanket and the three new ones the kids had added the first night after leaving Big Bob’s.

He faked cowering in the basement, until Liz called, “Had enough Tramp? Time to go outside.” She’d have the garden hose out, filled a big metal bucket with water and a special dog shampoo. Tramp sat in the big metal bucket of sudsy water while Liz scrubbed out the fatal odor. She dried him with a thick terry towel and brushed out the kinks in his coat. The brush had short metal spikey things that sometimes could hurt. He cried like they hurt.

Liz stood back and smiled when she was finished. “Sorry about the brush,” she said and rubbed his head.

Tramp was in control.