Chicken Soup for the Cat and Dog Lover's Soul Read online

  The boy’s intent expression melted into a faint, tranquil smile. The tension gone from his frail body, he laid his head alongside Niatross’s powerful head, the same head that jerked a man off his feet just hours before. The two were secure in the only kind of embrace a horse and a wheelchair-bound child could have. Boy and horse looked like old friends, exchanging a wordless greeting understood only by them.

  Slowly, steadily, Niatross lifted up his head to look down at his new friend. With a flick of his finger, the child spun the wheelchair around. Still smiling and sitting a little taller now, he disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared, into the chilly night.

  Ellen Harvey

  A Duchess in the Desert

  In January 1996 when I visited Qatar, on the Arabian Peninsula, the emir invited me to return in March for their annual “Festival of the Horse”—and, most intriguingly, to ride in the International Qatar Horse Marathon, popularly known as “Desert Storm.”

  The race, I knew, was one of the most grueling in the world. It asked everything from rider and horse alike to go twenty-six miles over sand. I was reasonably fit at the time, but I wasn’t riding fit. Could I withstand hours of competition in hundred-degree heat?

  Still, I was tempted by the emir’s proposal. If I rode, an oil company would sponsor me and they would donate a significant sum to Children in Crisis. I decided to do it.

  As soon as I declared I would race, the press pegged me as a mad and frivolous publicity hound. The betting was that I would pack up a quarter of the way through, pose for the cameras, and thumb a ride to the nearest oasis. The Daily Express even ran the headline, FERGIE RIDING FOR A FALL.

  But I had given my word, and the more that I heard I couldn’t do it, the more intent I became.

  In England I went on a fiercely healthy diet, pushed my workouts to seven days a week. By the time I returned to Qatar, the race had taken on larger significance. Now it was a question of integrity, of my ability to stay the course and be the serious person I claimed. I could not expect to win the race, but I knew that I had to finish. Only then could I show my doubters—including the toughest one, myself—that I was for real.

  When we took a look at the horse they’d assigned me, my equine consultant, Robert Splaine, could tell straight away that he wasn’t fit enough to last. Then our luck turned; we met another rider, who happened to have available a seven-year-old chestnut gelding named Gal.

  Gal was an Akhal-Teke, a Russian breed once ridden by Alexander the Great. With their lanky bodies and thin skin, Akhal-Tekes are bred to thrive in the desert, and they are famous for endurance. “Just remember,” his owner told me, “my Gal loves to be spoken to. Just talk to him and he will help you.”

  We lined up the next morning across a broad expanse of light sand: forty-six ready steeds and their riders, almost all of them men. Behind the horses were twice as many cars and jeeps and ambulances—including one open-topped car filled with British press, their huge lenses bristling like monstrous antennae, and every man jack of them aching to immortalize my failure.

  Minutes before we were off, a bank of dark clouds rolled in, then burst, drenching everyone to the skin. At the starting gun there was chaos, and it was all I could do to keep my wits about me. Horses reared and motors roared and everyone charged off in what seemed like a dozen different directions. It was then that I discovered that I had saddled a racehorse. Gal took the bit and was gone, in a flat-out gallop, as if he were sprinting six furlongs. He just wanted to win, and he didn’t know the finish line was twenty-six miles off.

  Once I had been like Gal, I thought, always pushing past my limits until I flamed out. Now I knew better: Slowing down wins the race.

  Finally I regained control, and we settled into a gentle trot. I’d been prepared for heat, but not the damp of a fluke storm. The rain added weight for my horse, and distance to the course, since we’d have to skirt several bogs where the water had pooled. And it churned up the sand and stones till the footing was heavy and treacherous. I was dripping wet and scared. The rain had changed all my equations.

  In advance of each water station, where open containers were handed out, Robert would lean out the window of the jeep and shout, “Water!” When it was time to douse Gal’s neck and shoulders, he called out, “Horse!”

  About halfway through we reached the vet station, where the riders had to dismount and walk their horses in to be checked for soreness or rapid heart rate. Gal was in great shape, but my own legs barely functioned after rubbing so hard on the saddle.

  The going was lonely. The wet desert stretched out before us, flat and monotonous. The universe was brown. Would it never end? Three miles from the end, Gal slowed from a trot to a walk, then a slower one. Each step was more labored than the last . . . and then Gal stopped. I don’t want to go on, my horse was telling me. I am tired.

  I was used up myself, but the thought of quitting repelled me. I had to pass the line.

  But neither could I be cruel to my horse; I could not, would not, force him. As the car idled alongside I asked Robert what to do.

  Under the rules, Robert could not leave the car, but he trained his keen eyes on Gal for a long moment. Then he said, “From what I can see, with the distance you have left, you’re fine.”

  Thus assured, I appealed to my horse as a friend, “Gal, you have got to trust me here. I know that home is the other way, and it looks like we are going into the middle of the desert. But you have got to trust that there is something out there—you have to believe enough in me to know that I will get you through it.”

  By that point I was crying, and I said, “Because if you don’t believe in me now, we are going to fail, and we can’t fail. Because then they will say, ‘There she goes again, just being her usual stupid, crazy self.’”

  Gal stayed stock still, and my heart dropped. I knew that Gal and I would go as far as our joint spirit carried us, but we’d need to tap into our deepest reserves; we’d need to make our leap of faith. I tried one last time: “Will you go on? When the whole world has given up on me, will you go on?” And then I heard the saddle creak, and I felt those weary limbs heave into motion. Gal trusted and believed in me when all logic stood against it. My horse took a gamble and walked on.

  That kindness killed me; that heart and courage laid me out. There was so much potential on this earth, so much greatness in its creatures—how could I ever feel hopeless again?

  A mile or so from the finish, Gal rounded a bend and spied the grandstand. He got excited then, because he knew I had not lied to him. A half-mile out, he broke into a confident canter. That was the way he went across the line, cantering freely, as fresh as a romping colt.

  After I peeled myself off the saddle, I made sure Gal drank first, then I took my turn. I wanted to take care of that horse forever.

  Sarah, Duchess of York

  Boris in New York

  It was nearly midnight on a rainy Christmas Eve.

  Barbara Listenik walked the cold dark streets of Queens, New York, alone. “Excuse me,” she said to a stranger in front of an all-night market. Showing the man a photograph, she asked, “Have you seen my lost dog?”

  Only hours ago, Barbara had been on her way to La Guardia Airport to pick up her four-year-old boxer-mix dog, Boris. Barbara had moved to New York one week previously, hoping to further her art career, while Boris stayed behind with a friend in Florida. New York was such a big place; Barbara found it overwhelming and sometimes lonely. And now that she was settled into her new apartment in Brooklyn, Barbara couldn’t wait to see her best four-legged buddy. It’s the perfect Christmas gift to myself, she thought as she waited in line at the airline baggage counter.

  But then an airline employee took Barbara aside to tell her there’d been an accident. During offloading, Boris’s carrier had opened, and he had escaped. Several baggage handlers and airport police had chased the frightened dog across busy runways and through a terminal jam-packed with holiday travelers. But Boris had eluded them al
l, and now he was running loose somewhere in neighboring Queens.

  For several hours Barbara and the baggage handlers and police canvassed nearby neighborhoods searching for Boris. Then Barbara returned to her apartment for a photo of him. She then spent Christmas Eve showing the photo to strangers and calling Boris’s name until her voice grew hoarse and she felt nearly frozen from the icy rain.

  Christmas morning, Barbara resumed her search. Thinking of how frightened her dog must be, she found herself crying as she ventured into yet another bleak alleyway. Boris had never known cold weather or the big city with all its unfamiliar smells and loud noises. And there were so many cars and trucks to avoid. What was worse, Boris had no collar or ID tags on. For safety reasons, the airline insisted that animals not wear their collars during transport. It seemed hopeless—she was just one person trying to find one small dog in an enormous city. She trudged through the streets, calling the dog’s name over and over, until she was exhausted.

  Bright and early the next morning, Barbara began telephoning area shelters. Boris wasn’t in any of them. But he had not been reported dead, either, which Barbara considered a good sign.

  Soon Barbara was back in Queens posting fliers to utility poles and inside markets and laundromats. She asked everyone she met if they’d seen Boris. No one had. But then toward evening one man told her, “An off-duty transit cop was just here asking about that same dog.”

  Barbara was surprised and touched. Well, Boris, there’s at least one person in this big, cold city who cares if we’re reunited.

  What Barbara didn’t realize was that there were many others who cared. Many hundreds of others, as it turned out. For as word of Boris’s plight spread, people began telephoning Barbara with messages of support and more than three thousand dollars was contributed to a reward fund established by a local newspaper.Well-wishers from as far away as New Jersey turned up in droves to join the search.

  Meanwhile, an animal welfare society began organizing search parties. Every weekend more than a hundred volunteers fanned out through the neighborhoods bordering the airport. Barbara marveled at this show of support as she thanked her new friends for their help and their words of encouragement.

  But after seven weeks Barbara began to lose hope. Maybe it’s time for me to get on with the rest of my life, she considered as she traveled home to Brooklyn late one night.

  There, Barbara discovered fifteen messages on her machine. Only she was too depressed to listen to them. She was afraid they would be more false leads. So far Barbara had looked at over a hundred strays that turned out not to be Boris. Each time she’d felt a little bit of herself dying deep inside.

  When the telephone abruptly rang, Barbara picked it up without thinking. It was one of the volunteers searching for Boris. “I think we found him!” the woman said.

  A young college student named Johnny had been on his way to a family function when he spotted one of Barbara’s fliers at a cab stand. “This looks like the dog we’ve been feeding behind the empty barber shop next door,” he told his wife. Johnny telephoned one of the volunteers, who traveled to Queens to see for herself. She’d been trying all night to reach Barbara with the good news.

  Barbara suspected it would turn out to be another dead end, but she hurried anyway to the address that was only two miles from the airport. Sure enough, her heart sank when she was escorted into the tiny house to see the dog. This stray was bone thin, and his coat was solid gray.

  “Boris is fawn and white,” she murmured, crestfallen. “I’m sorry—that’s not my dog.”

  Tentatively, the pup approached Barbara. He sniffed once, then began wagging his tail. Their eyes met.

  “Boris? Is that you?” Barbara gasped. He had lost fifteen pounds, and grime and road tar had turned his coat completely gray. But there was no mistaking those loving brown eyes.

  “Boris! It is you!” Barbara exclaimed. An instant later her knees gave out, and she collapsed onto the floor. “Oh Boris,” she said, laughing and crying as her faithful companion began licking the tears from her cheeks.

  Before they left, Boris padded over to Johnny and offered up his paw. “If he wasn’t your dog, I was planning to keep him for myself, he’s so sweet,” Johnny said as he took the proffered paw.

  At home Barbara gave Boris a much-needed bath. Now that they were together once again, she finally lit the holiday lights and celebrated Christmas. She then stayed up all night feeding him dog biscuits and gourmet pet food. She was too excited to sleep; she kept trying to absorb the fact that Boris was really there with her.

  These days Barbara and Boris enjoy spending time with the many kind people Barbara met while Boris was M.I.A. Flying Boris to New York had been her big Christmas present to herself, but Boris’s present to her had been even bigger. He’d given her a whole city of friends.

  Bill Holton

  The White Dog

  “We can’t leave her here,” I said, turning a resolute face to my husband, “We just can’t.”

  The white dog was in a small fenced area in someone’s backyard. She had a rough wooden shelter and food and water, but she was obviously never walked—large piles of excrement covered the dirt floor of her enclosure. She pressed herself eagerly against the fence as I petted what I could reach of her.

  The backyard was visible from the parking lot of the school, where my husband Larry and I had parked our car and gotten out, intending to go to a game in the gymnasium. Seeing us, the dog had started barking. Always interested in dogs, I walked to the edge of her yard. She was a creamy-white color and looked to be a white shepherd/ golden-retriever mix. She had the kind face of a golden retriever and a set of cockeyed ears, one upright, the other flopping gently over at the tip. My own dog Lucy was a white shepherd-mix, too, and I was struck by the resemblance.

  I walked over to her pen to get a closer look. As I approached her, she lowered her head and started to do a rear-wiggling dance of happiness. I put my hand up to the fence for her to sniff, and she whimpered with pleasure. As I petted her awkwardly through the chain-link, she leaned heavily into the fence and sighed blissfully. The moment I took my hand away, she began to bark, stopping only when she felt my fingers on her touch-starved body once more. Her coat was muddy; the food and water bowls were grimy.

  That’s when I told my husband I couldn’t walk away from this dog.

  “She’s okay,” he said, slightly exasperated. He knew I often became less than rational when it came to animals. “Look, she seems healthy, and she’s got food and water.”

  “But look at this pen she’s in—it’s filthy!” I argued. “And she seems so lonely.”

  “Maybe they’ve been away or been ill,” he said.

  “Maybe, but it can’t hurt to find out what her story is.”

  Larry shrugged. He knew me well enough to know when it was useless to argue any more.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but I walked around the house and marched up the steps to the front door. I knocked immediately, not giving myself time to reconsider my plan. What was I going to say?

  While I waited for a response, I looked around. There was a rusty car up on blocks in the front yard, and the front porch was crammed with bulging garbage bags. Some were ripped, so that trash was strewn across the dirty floorboards.

  A teenaged girl came to the door and eyed me suspiciously, “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to talk to the owner of the dog in back,” I said brightly.

  “That’s my brother’s dog,” she said, and a slack-faced young man of around twenty appeared beside her. He stared at me blankly.

  “Hi. It looks like you must be very busy—and have no time to walk your dog,” I smiled, hoping my voice wasn’t as condemning as I felt.

  “I never walk her.” He spoke in a flat tone, neither defensive nor ashamed.

  “Oh,” I said. There was an awkward silence while my mind raced, and I tried to think of something more to say.

  “Well, I noticed
her right away and I thought, what a beautiful dog, she’s so white. You see, I have a dog at home that looks just like her, and I thought it would be nice to have a matched pair, so I was wondering if I could buy her from you—”

  The girl interrupted me, “How much will you give us for her?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “We’ll take it,” she said, without a moment of hesitation. Her brother nodded in agreement.

  Dizzy with relief, I fished a twenty out of my purse and handed it over. I hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

  As I turned to go, the brother called after me, “Her name is White Fang.”

  Not any more, I thought. I could think of no name that suited the white dog less.

  Larry and I went to the game, but I spent the whole time thinking about the dog. I was eager to get her out of that awful cage and to give her a large dose of the attention she craved. I intended to find her a new home that provided a life that was full of comfort, fun and especially love.

  When the game was over, I hurried over to the dog’s pen. She was as happy to see me as before. I fumbled with the latch to the gate, my excitement making me clumsy.

  Finally I yanked the gate wide, expecting her to bolt. My husband was waiting with a leash to catch her as soon as she left the enclosure.

  To our surprise, she didn’t move. She stood motionless in front of the now-open space in the fence. It seemed as if she didn’t fully register what was happening. Then her brow furrowed slightly, and an expression of mild bewilderment crossed her face. She took two steps forward, then stood still again, half in and half out of the pen. She looked up at me and when I smiled at her, her tail, held low, wagged once or twice uncertainly.