I
Years ago, I lived in a very bad apartment complex. The week before I moved out, the property manager1 quit after a resident assaulted her. The day after I moved out, I returned to collect a package and found myself in the middle of a police raid for human trafficking in the building over.
But this isn’t a story about that terrible apartment complex (believe me, I have many). It’s Friday, which means this is a story about my dog.
We lost Lacy in October, and to honor her memory I am sharing one story about her each Friday for the rest of the year.
II
Years ago, I lived in a very bad apartment complex with a very good dog. One of the things that made this very bad apartment complex very bad was The Hill.
Imagine a steep hill.
Steeper.
Steeper.
Steeper.
Yeah, that’s probably about right.
This hill was so steep, that when a water pipe cracked one February, causing the water to freeze along the slope, only big cars with 4WD could leave. The rest of us were trapped at the bottom, like crabs in a bucket.
The management was “aware of this issue”, but decided it wasn’t a priority for most of a week.
But this isn’t a story about the very bad apartment complex. This is a story about my dog.
III
Years ago, I lived at the bottom of a very big hill with a very big dog. To one side of the very bottom of the very big hill, there was a dog area. Lacy used to run and run to the dog area. If an unwise person was along for the drag, they would hold the leash, being pulled down a (much smaller) hill through mud and dog deposits. The wisened man would let go, just at the peak of her dash, letting her tear down the small hill on her own.
When she had done her business, the leash could be calmly collected.
Strictly speaking, this was an on-leash dog zone, and aside from the climax of the initial dash to get here, we adhered to that rule strictly.
However.
Occasionally in the late hours of the night, we would meet other dogs at the bottom of the small hill (which was itself located at the bottom of the large hill), and we would unclip our dogs to let them play and frolic together.
IV
One night, Courtney and I returned from a date in the city to find two dogs running around the parking lot. It was 11:30 at night, but these dogs were in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, and not in the dog play area.
Ah, we said, surely this is a late-night play session. Lacy’s been cooped up while we enjoyed ourselves. She can join the fun.
And so we took Lacy to the hill to potty, and when she had done her business and we saw that the other dogs were still running and chasing each other, we unclipped Lacy to allow her to join the fun.
Only we had misread the situation, see.
It turns out this was not a late-night playtime session. What had happened, as we would later learn, is that a new family had moved into the very bad apartment complex at the bottom of the very big hill. And they had moved in with their dog.
Unfortunately, their dog had slipped her leash and was running loose. She knew that she was in trouble, and also understood that the trouble would be postponed until she was actually caught. And so she pulled a rabbit.
A second neighbor had brought out his dog to try and lure the other one to it.
And to this delicate mix, we tossed in an 80 lb ball of wild Labradorial energy. She ran, tongue flailing and tail wagging straight through this precision operation. The dogs scrambled. And only then did we realize that we had added chaos to what had been a carefully plotted ploy.
So now our dog was loose, and not wanting to be caught as well as the other. The owner had been out here for an hour, and felt like they were making progress until our Uber showed up and we unleashed Lacy in all her massive puppy playtime energy.
We had, as they say, misread the room.
Oops.
V
But this isn’t a story about my dog. This is a story about a rotisserie chicken.2
Aha, said the second neighbor. I know how to lure the dog out. I have a fresh rotisserie chicken that I can use as bait.
Sure, said the first neighbor, clearly exhausted (and very British. I hadn’t mentioned that before, but she was very British and very tired sounding). And so the second neighbor retreated and returned with a hot rotisserie chicken. He held it up like bait and the white fluffy British3 dog carefully stepped beneath the single light illuminating the dog area at the bottom of the hill (which is, of course, at the bottom of the big hill).
She took two cautious steps forward, but the chicken man overplayed his hand. This was, as we mentioned, a smart dog. He made a grab for her collar and she bolted back, behind the apartments and into shadow. Resigned, he lowered his arms in a gesture of defeat.
And the moment, the very second that entire, fresh, steaming rotisserie chicken passed his waist, out came Lacy from a perfectly concealed crouch in the shadows, darting out, snatching the chicken in her mighty jaws and running off to devour it.
A long moment passed where we were stunned and silent. Laughter broke out. The chicken man was resigned to his fate. He had offered it as bait, and knew there was a chance he wouldn’t get to enjoy it. Lacy had played him, and he’d put it within her reach. And then we realized the danger of letting Lacy eat the chicken (the danger was bones), and so we carefully coaxed it away from her, breaking her little heart.
Eventually, we captured the dog and all went to bed. Lacy, triumphant, returned home with tail raised high and breath smelling of chicken. And only a few weeks later, we left that terrible, terrible place.
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When we moved into this apartment complex, the rule was that you could have 100 lbs of pets. Lacy, who was pushing 90 lbs at the time, fit in great, and became fast friends with this property manager. She would come in, jump on her, paw at her dress, or knock paper off of her desk, and the property manager would just fawn over her. She eventually started keeping treats in the office that I think were exclusively consumed by Lacy. After we’d been there for a year, the property changed hands (this happened a lot, no one wanted to own it), and the new rules were two dogs, no more than 50 lbs each. Of course Bethany (the property manager) wouldn’t kick out her darling Lacy, so there was a brief period of time where, legally speaking, Lacy was considered to be two dogs in a very large trench coat. ↩
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Okay, this is also a story about my dog. ↩
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I mean, presumably ↩