Our Little Friends

We’d been looking for a puppy for some time, calling around to various breeders, when one of them called us to give us a phone number. “Call this guy, it’s not a puppy, but he has a nice girl he’s trying to place” she said.

A couple of months later, we were getting to know a sweet dog named Dorothy. She was 18 months old and the man we’d bought her from, Daniel, wanted her bred when she turned 2.

We were fine with that as we still wanted a puppy. When her 2^nd birthday approached, we contacted one of the other breeders we’d previously talked to, Marjorie, this time about a stud.  Dorothy was “ready” right after her 2^nd birthday, so we went to have her bred. While we were there we learned quite a bit about Marjorie’s dogs and she offered to help us place some of the puppies. Dorothy’s former owner, Daniel, was also going to help with placements.

At the beginning of a very hot summer, 9 healthy puppies were born. They got bigger and bigger and of course louder and hungrier by the day. They finally got to the age when it was time to let them go to their families. We had 2 responses to ads we’d put in the local papers and were keeping one, so that meant that 5 would be going to homes near Marjorie or Daniel and one would be staying with Daniel. They both lived in Michigan which was 7 or 8 hours from us by car. The two local families picked up their dogs and we made plans to go to Michigan with the others. Our van was getting up there in age so part of the process of leaving was a visit to the mechanic for a “check-up” on the van.

We decided when we would go, talked with the breeders and made reservations at hotels they recommended.

The day finally arrived. It was 80 degrees by 7:30 am so we were dripping with sweat when we finished loading the puppy crate, supplies, luggage etc. into the van. Lastly, we put Dorothy in the van, loaded the puppies 2 by 2 into the crate, locked the doors and headed down the driveway. The puppies began yipping immediately and continued until we picked up a little speed. We could have calmed them down by turning on the radio or putting in a CD, but we never did either until we were out on the hi-way. The first hour was very warm, but uneventful.

The road was pretty busy with Wednesday mid-morning traffic. We saw the exit we needed to continue east. The van slowed down and therefore the puppies began yipping again. As we pulled into the “off-ramp” the van began to “miss”, sputter and stall. The yipping got louder.

“Quiet!” yelled Jim as he guided the van, partly coasting to the stop sign at the end of the ramp.

The puppies were silent.

“Do you want to turn back” Jim asked.

“Hell no!” I replied. “We’ve got to get these dogs to Michigan! It’ll be all right… It’s got to be all right!”

We were idling at the stop sign. “Look, there’s a gas station! I think we can make it that far.”

said Jim pointing across the road. At the first break in the flow of traffic, he pulled from the stop sign and guided the van into the parking lot of the gas station right before it stalled and quit.

He got out and went to talk with one of the gas station employees. A little while later he was back with the owner of the gas station. They opened the hood and inspected the engine for the possible cause of the stalling. After a few minutes of conferring, Jim came to my side of the van. My window was already open in the vain hope of catching some of the non-existent breeze. “We think we found it” he said. “They’ll have a rack free in a few minutes. We need to get the dogs out so they can put it up on the rack. There’s a grassy spot over there where they can run around.”

I got out of the van, opened the side door and let Dorothy out. Jim grabbed two puppies and handed them to me. Dorothy and I walked over to the grassy spot. I set the two puppies in the grass and waited while Jim brought the rest over. He also brought water and food so we could use this as a lunch break.  Dorothy, the puppies and I waited, some of us more patiently than others, while the van was put up on the rack and repaired. Almost two hours later Jim pulled the van up close to the grassy area. We loaded all the dogs back in and resumed our trip. The sun was high and the heat of the day was increasing by the minute.

The repair had used some of the spare parts that we always carried with us but the gas station owner had called an auto parts store down the road. We stopped there to pick up replacements for the spare parts, just in case… After that last stop, we were finally on our way and only about 3 and a half hours behind our “schedule.” We drove down the highway with both the air conditioner and the stereo going full blast.

We got near Joliet, IL right at the peak of mid-afternoon traffic and quickly realized that there was some major construction going on. Between the construction and the regular traffic, what might have been a 15-minute drive turned into an hour-long inch and wait routine.

The black roof and the navy blue exterior of the van seemed to soak up every single drop of the August sun. The interior was heating up despite the valiant efforts of the air conditioner.

At last we were out of the bottleneck and moving at a better speed. A while later Dorothy started to look “antsy” so we found a rest stop for her and the puppies. It was a good thing we did. We arrived at the outskirts of Chicago right at the peak of evening rush hour traffic and sat amid thousands of other cars. We crawled our way past Chicago and traffic eased a bit on the east side. Then, just before the Gary “exchange” the road narrowed to one lane on each side. There was even more construction underway here than near Joliet. Traffic was at a virtual standstill.

The late afternoon heat danced on the roofs of the cars in ripples. The sun glared at an angle just below the edge of the visor. Exhaust seeped in despite closed windows. One by one the cars ahead sifted through the narrow space between orange cones and blinking caution lights. The puppies were getting restless. We turned up Led Zeppelin which seemed to help. More than 2 hours passed before it was our turn to pop out onto the four lane hi-way after the construction zone.

By this time, we were running as low on gas as we were on good humor. We pulled into the first gas station we could spot and filled up. Jim checked all the “vitals” of the van. We agreed we needed to find a place for the dogs to run a bit. We left the gas station and found a nice shady park for the dogs. After that little break we got back on the hi-way and travelled on. All of us, the puppies, Dorothy and the humans were hot and tired so the only sound in the van was the music from the CD. Dusk began to fall. We drove on and on.

Dusk turned to a hot, starless and humid night.

“We’d better find for a hotel for tonight” said Jim as we drove.

We had left without firm hotel plans for the night, figuring there would be plenty of rooms available on a Wednesday night.

We soon began to feel like Mary and Joseph on that long-ago night.

Hotel – 3 miles. No vacancies.

Hotel, Gas – Next Exit. No sign, but no vacancies.

On and on we drove, pulling in at each hotel.

Finally about 40 miles south of Kalamazoo we pulled up to a “Budget Beds” hotel.

A man with a lovely Australian accent was at the front desk.

Yes, they accepted pets and yes, they had exactly one room left.

We stood at the front desk for a minute, basking in the air conditioned the relief that the long day of driving had finally come to an end.

Key in hand, we went up to the room, unlocked the door and figured out where we could put the crate for the puppies. We made a few trips back and forth with luggage and what not.

We let Dorothy out next and took her up to the room after she’d had a minute to walk around a bit. With everything situated in the room, we began to bring the puppies up, each carrying two.

Since the crate had to be the last thing to come to the room, we deposited the puppies in the bathroom and closed the door. We went back for the other 3 and put them with the rest.

The final trip was to bring the crate up to the room and took only a couple of minutes.

While I set up the crate Jim went to the bathroom and opened the door.

“Hey! What are you guys doing?” he exclaimed.

All 7 of the puppies were wet and huddled together over by the toilet. There was water all over the bathroom floor. 7 little heads turned and looked at him.  I stopped what I was doing to see what the commotion was. I picked up the wet little monsters and put them in the bathtub.

Where had all the water come from, we were both wondering.

“Aaag! Those little…” Jim began. He was bent down by the toilet and had discovered the water source. The water line that fed the toilet was made of braided metal. Our little darlings had chewed a nice hole in it with their sharp puppy teeth while we were fetching their crate. Jim found the shut-off valve for the water line. We cleaned up the water with some towels and checked all 7 little mouths for metal particles. I finished assembling the crate while Jim kept close watch on the bathtub. All the while the hotel room was filled with some rather colorful mumbling from two tired and cranky humans. Dorothy had staked her claim to one of the beds and was fast asleep. We stowed the puppies in their crate, turned out the lights and went to bed.

In the morning, we delivered two puppies to families waiting at Marjorie’s place and headed off to Daniel’s. Following detailed directions Daniel had given us over the phone we easily found his house. We pulled in the driveway and opened the side door of the van. When Dorothy got out, she immediately recognized where she was and began running laps around the spacious back yard. We unloaded the puppies and carried them out to the yard so they could run as well. A while later we all of the dogs in Daniel’s kennel, we got in the van and went to the hotel to check in. Daniel would pick us up a little later and we’d all go out for dinner.

Our room was in the back section of the hotel looked to have been built in an earlier era. We parked, grabbed our bags and went to the room. It was a nice, clean and spacious room but it was stuffy and nearly as hot as it was outside. We found the air conditioner controls, turned it up to “full” and set about unpacking a few things. Daniel came and took us to a nice Chinese place for dinner. Back at the hotel after dinner, we opened the door to a surprise… the room was just as stuffy and even hotter than when we’d left. We learned from the front desk that the air conditioner for our section of the hotel was broken. We spent a sleepless night in the heat.

In the morning, as we pulled out of the hotel parking lot, a sign at a nearby bank read 99°.

At Daniel’s house we met two more of the families who were getting puppies. We then said our goodbyes to Daniel and the 4 puppies that were staying behind, got in our van and headed for the hi-way. Passing through town, several outdoor signs agreed that it was 104°.

It felt more than that inside the van that had been parked in the sun all morning. 

Before we reached the hi-way, we pulled in to a convenience store with gas to fill up the van and hopefully find some lunch. We were waiting for a break in traffic to pull out from the gas station when the van began to sputter.

“Oh no! Not again!” we said in unison. Jim backed up and pulled up close to the building.

We sat there with the engine idling for a few minutes until Jim said “This heat’s not good for the engine.”  There was no more sputtering so Jim went back to the station driveway and pulled into the flow of traffic. We made it out onto the hi-way with no more sputters but we drove ahead without any music playing so that we could hear if the engine started to “miss” again. It never did.

 As we drove along, Jim began to cry. 

“They’re gone! My boys are all gone!” he sobbed over and over. He cried all the way to Jackson and a little way past, occasionally asking me to hold the wheel so he could dab his eyes with a Kleenex.  I sat stoically in the passenger seat, holding back any and all emotion. Dorothy was huddled up against the side of the crate where our puppy, Sarah, now sat alone. We rode the all the way to Marjorie’s town in silence.

We stopped first at the hotel near Marjorie’s to check in and drop off a few things then went out to Marjorie’s place. Dorothy and Sarah leapt eagerly from the van and we all went to greet Marjorie. She saw Jim’s tear-stained face and gave him a big hug. “That’s one of the hardest parts of breeding” she said. He was fighting not to start crying again so he just nodded. 

In the morning Jim took the van to fill up with gas and check that all was in order for the trip home. We left as early as we could, anticipating the construction delays we’d had a few days ago. We made good time through Michigan. When we approached Gary we braced ourselves.

Lo and behold, there was no bottleneck! Traffic moved through the construction zone at a steady pace. It was Saturday, so the machinery was idle and the crews were not working.

What a relief! We breezed through Chicago and found the same ease of passage near Joliet.

The miles flew by and we were past Joliet, clipping right along.

About 30 miles west of Joliet a few large drops of rain appeared on the windshield.

Soon it was raining steadily and then it seemed we were driving straight into a thunderstorm.

The storm intensified as we crossed the Iowa border. The wind picked up and the rain poured down so heavily that we had to pull off the road.  Poor Dorothy, who was afraid of storms, had curled up into a ball next to the crate. The rain let up a long enough to get back out on the road and get going again. Then it got even worse. Jim pulled off and this time there just happened to be a parking lot close by where we could sit and wait. Jim turned off the engine and we sat absorbing the symphony of wind, rain and thunder. Now and again, Jim would whisper reassuring words to Dorothy. After nearly half an hour the wind let up and the rain slowed.

Jim turned started the engine and we were moving again. Driving west we drove out of the storm. It had disappeared by the time we pulled in our driveway. A cool breeze greeted us as we got out of the van. It was good to be home.