The Dogs Who Found Me
by Ken Foster
Summary
Disaster-prone writer and reluctant dog rescuer Ken Foster finds himself adopting an ever-growing collection of stray dogs, from a beagle abandoned in a New York City dog run to a pit bull in a Mississippi truck stop. Their circumstances offer a grounding counterpoint to his own misfortunes: the shock of New York City after 9/11, the evacuation o New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and the day his heart nearly stopped for good.
Excerpt
Dogs are like tattoos.
Ask folks about their tattoos and they can tell you exactly what was going on in their lives when they got them, how the idea came to them, why it seemed, at the time, a good thing to do. Even if they had lightning bolts tattooed down their face, to hear them talk about it you realize tattoos are a sentimental art. They mark their owners permanently with a visual memorial of the past. Like dogs do.
I’ve never had a tattoo, but I’ve had many dogs, and all of them have left their own indelible marks on me.
I’ve found dogs tied under park benches. Stuck in drainage grates. Running door to door in the neighborhood with half an eye out.
I’ve even had a dog delivered to me by police escort when her owners were involved in a domestic dispute.
I’ve found dogs listed online and placed listings for other dogs to find a home of their own--the dog equivalent of Internet dating.
I’ve delayed vacations by stopping to pick up a stray dog along the road.
My friends think I must go looking for them. Didn’t you just find one last week? Do people bring them to your house?
I tell my friends they don’t let themselves see them, because then they would have to do something, too. People ignore stray dogs the same way they ignore stray people, the way your friends in the city insist that they have never seen any homeless people or, when pressed, offer the opinion that these people choose to be on the street and wouldn’t want a home if they had one….
They find me. It isn’t ever the other way around. I don’t go marching into overgrown patches looking for dogs who don’t even know that they are lost. I don’t carry a net in my car that I can toss great distances. What happens instead is this: They come up to me and sit at my feet. They tap me with a paw. They loiter in my path waiting for someone to do something. They can’t talk. They can’t make signs. There is a limit to how much they can tell us.
We are supposedly smarter than they are, but clearly not more intuitive. If we had their skills for assessing a situation I would never see this: car after car swerving to avoid two dachshunds wandering the middle of a highway. Most not even slowing down.
Rescuing something takes time, and there is a risk of revealing something about yourself--your vulnerability
--that isn’t fashionable at all.
That’s what people don’t understand. You do it because it is difficult. You do it because you aren’t sure of things. You do it without knowing how any of it will turn out, or how much it will cost you or if the story will be happy or tragic in the end.
Reviews
"Generosity and gratitude power this compelling account…a profound lesson"--Amy Hempel, author of The Dog of the Marriage
"[A] charming account of a life among dogs while providing hints for would-be dog savers"--Publishers Weekly
"[Foster’s] warm, candid, and unusual account of his experience in animal rescue"--Booklist
Author's Biography
Ken Foster’s collection of short stories, The Kind I’m Likely to Get, was a New York Times Notable Book. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, McSweeney’s and other publications. He lives in New Orleans with at least three dogs.