Soulmates with Paws (Excerpt)...Available January at Online Bookstores

 By Cal Orey

Woman’s Best Friend 

(Excerpt Soulmates with Paws: A Collection of Tales & Tails)

At 20, I wanted to join the Army, train dogs and travel.  I never made it into the service. I may have failed the male-biased aptitude test, but I still love dogs—all breeds, sizes, and ages. So rather than globetrotting in a uniform, I found myself hiking around the country with a beautiful 6-month-old black Labrador retriever named Stone Fox. Stone Fox and I walked and hitchhiked to the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, Deep South, East Coast and even Mexico and Canada. We were on the road like John Steinbeck and his Standard Poodle Charley for more than one year. Taking care of my carefree and upbeat dog and letting him take care of me helped me become a happier and more confident woman in mind and body. He was the dog of my life…

 A DOG LOVERS’ CRATE

We were lucky to find the widow’s ad for domestic help because I read “No Pets Allowed” in every other “Rooms for Rent” advertisement in San Jose, California. When I applied for the live-in housekeeper position, I explained to Mrs. Thurman that Stone Fox was my best friend and we had just finished traveling cross-country in search of America. The widow, who was soft spoken, said she needed a maid who charged cut-rate prices, and I needed a little R&R for a while. It was self-preservation in a nutshell.

I am not a hypocrite, so I must confess that if I didn’t have my young black Lab with me, I wouldn’t have lasted a minute. Living with the widow would have been too confining at best. But I was in luck because the widow was a dog lover. Her place was a blue and white trailer house—not great for a big dog—landscaped with red bark chips scattered around cacti shrubbery. But there was a creek one block away, which I suggested could be a good dog run. (Later it became me and my dog’s refuge.) So, the widow decided to ignore the “No Large Pets on Trailer Court Premises” rule. Rules are made to be broken, we agreed. Our “we love dogs” motto prevailed.

The widow had the will to subsist inside her coop because of Tweetie, her 11-year-old, devoted Yorkshire terrier, the kind of small pooch that yaps, begs, and wears frilly bows. (I favor larger breeds.) But the spoiled dog did liven up the widow’s low moods, I must admit. I often watched her talk to Tweetie about trivial matters like, “The air is bad in the kitchen” (after she finished frying her bacon, tomato and onion sandwich).  And important issues were covered, such as “Should we sell the Oldsmobile?” and “I don’t want to have the operation for my osteoporosis.” Despite the dog lover’s woes, I felt secure inside the widow’s coop, complete with its colonial style furniture, lacy curtains, and color console television. I didn’t even feel deprived when I was told my fifty-dollar-a-month allowance would be cut in half because of her “too many bills.”

One evening, while returning from a good romp around Quailhollow Creek with Stone Fox, the trailer manager, Ms. Weed, confronted me as I was entering Space 88, the widow’s lot. She spoke of the trailer park regulations, emphasizing that dogs over 15 pounds were not permitted. I told her Stone Fox was my seeing-eye dog straight from San Rafael Dog Training Center for the Blind.

“It’s just a matter of time,” I lied, “before my vision will fail me—for life.” Ms. Weed glared at me with that cosmetic smile of hers. I bet she had plastic surgery. You could sort of tell because her face was too perfect. But it didn’t really match the sloppy way she dressed (purple polyester dress hiding an older woman’s body. She looked like an overweight senior spayed cat, I thought. As she adjusted her large straw hat, she studied me: a hippie girl dressed in baggy blue jean overalls and a peasant blouse, and barefoot. I brushed my shaggy light brown hair out of my eyes when she suggested I should keep my 70-pound Labrador on a very tight leash whenever I walked him on the Quailhollow premises.

That night I confided in the widow almost everything. I told her how Stone Fox and I traveled. A lot. How we hitched and hiked through high and flat deserts of the southwest, fighting off cowboys in the prairies. (They tried to run us off the road. Stone Fox barked and growled. I felt protected.) How we were stranded on on-ramps during a blizzard in Cheyenne, a sandstorm in Winnemucca, and a monsoon in Tucson. And I told her that through our good and bad escapades we learned more and more about each other, and our bond of friendships strengthened...