Milk Dud’s brothers and sisters were friendly and outgoing in that indiscriminating puppy sort of way. The second I stepped out onto the fenced-in deck where they played at that house on Mercer Island, they came running up to me as outgoing young puppies do, greeting me and inviting me to join in their puppy games.
Milk Dud, however, stayed close by his mother’s side. He didn’t resist when I went over to pick him up and walk around with him in my arms, but as soon as I set him down, he made a beeline straight back to his mom. Friends have told me they would be put off by shy behavior like this, but I saw it another way. I saw a loyalty and attachment that would eventually transfer to me.
As Milk Dud grew up he stayed true to his loyal, focused nature. He had room for only two things in his life: one human and one tennis ball. Being a lab, of course, if there was water nearby he could find room for that, too.
On one hand, this meant Milk Dud was a loyal dog that hung on my every word. But on the other hand, it meant he had little patience for anything that stood in the way of him and his human and his tennis ball, and that meant I had a dog that didn’t play well with other dogs.
By the time he was three years old, Milk Dud had been thrown out of just about every open-air dog boarding camp in the Seattle area. When I would travel on business, I would have nowhere to put him except a traditional kennel, dog solitary with barely enough room for a big, muscular guy like him to stand up and turn around. I left him in a place like that once, and I couldn’t bear to do it again.
In February 2003, I needed to make a short trip to China to inspect a shipment before it left the factory. Having nowhere to board Milk Dud while I was away, I punted and did the next best thing – I called my parents and asked them if they’d take him in at their farm 1,000 miles away in California. My parents said of course they would watch Milk Dud, so I put in for vacation time at my day job, booked a ticket for a Hong Kong flight leaving from San Francisco, threw Milk Dud into the back of my car, and drove him all the way to my parents’ farm in California. I had dinner with my parents, and the next day I left Milk Dud at the farm and took off for the airport in San Francisco.
I first saw her walking through the terminal in San Francisco, where we were both wandering around killing time before our flights. I thought she looked beautiful, elegant, and confident, but there was no time to strike up a conversation. My flight was about to board and I needed to get to the waiting area.
Imagine my surprise to spot her again just a few minutes later, coming down the escalator into the same waiting area. That waiting area was serving two separate flights though, so it was entirely possible she would board the flight to Melbourne instead. I kept my fingers crossed she would go to Hong Kong.
…
[This is an excerpt from the chapter “No dog, no Turkey” in A Tight Wide-open Space.]