Hank

Every year around this time, Jeff and I look at each other and are like, “I wonder what Hank’s doing?”

Back when we lived in Oakland, it was in a neighborhood that our realtor gently referred to as “transitional.” (Should you ever be faced with this bit of real-estate lingo, know that it is code for “semi-regular drive-by shootings.”) Anyway, we loved our house and lived there for a few years before coming to realize that falling asleep to the sound of muffler whistles and waking up to the neighbor’s rooster was losing some of its charm. It was around the time we began discussing moving to Portland that Hank came into our lives.

I was sitting at our dining-room table on a rainy April afternoon after work when I heard a car pull up, a couple of doors slam, and, just as quickly, the same car peel out. And all of a sudden, tied to the utility pole at the side of the house was a very large, extremely skinny, epically sad-looking dog.

I like dogs. I go to dog shows, I accost strangers on the street to pet their dogs; I have a kind of dog-specific Tourette syndrome that involves yelling “Cuuuute!” in the general direction of dogs I drive past. It’s a problem. I once spent five minutes cooing over a grumpy-looking English bulldog in Greenwich Village before even noticing that Adriana from The Sopranos was holding its leash. So, naturally, my first instinct with this dog was to run up and hug it. My second was to call Animal Care and Control and report an extremely big pit bull on my property. I mean, cute, yeah. But what was stopping this adorable creature from biting my face off with one snap of its giant, James Caan-esque jaws?

So I spent the next several hours on the phone. Animal Care and Control was closed for the weekend and the department's outgoing message instructed me to call 911 for any stray animals who could be considered dangerous or potentially dangerous. Speaking of potentially dangerous, you know who’s got much bigger fish to fry in Oakland on a Friday afternoon? 911. They told me to call the SPCA. Who told me to call private rescue agencies. And so on. The rescue places told me they were at capacity with pit bulls and pit mixes; the SPCA told me that the pit bull situation was so out of control in the city that if this dog didn’t pass Animal Care’s screening he would be destroyed immediately. And 911 more or less told me to jump up my own ass.

Meanwhile, people passing by my house yelled at me about how wrong it was that I had my dog leashed to a pole in the rain. And this dog was looking both sadder and sweeter by the minute. Jeff and I finally decided that we could move him into our basement for the night, give him some food, and see if he got along with Oscar. And that’s how Hank came to be our dog for a whole, semi-blissful week.

He was, indeed, a really sweet dog who, I like to think, was abandoned because of a Ferdinand the Bull–type refusal to fight. Or maybe his family just couldn’t afford to feed him. That wouldn’t surprise me, because frankly neither could we. This dog was never, ever full. Jeff once came into the basement to say hi, and found Hank kicking back, calmly eating a mirror, like, “Oh, hey. Mmm. Tasty. Got any more of these, perhaps in a Cool Ranch flavor?”

We named Hank and fattened him up and took him to get neutered so he’d be more adoptable, but we couldn’t keep him. Our own dog was not down with the interloper and had begun stonewalling us. Plus, he was too expensive. Plus, we were now definitely considering moving to a place where people would be less likely to abandon dogs on our lawn. So our adoption search began. We made him a MySpace page and listed his interests as “Getting adopted” and his turnoffs as “Not getting adopted.” Anyone who remembers how freaking insane MySpace was in 2006 won’t be surprised to hear that we were contacted almost immediately by two Mills college students. They showed up to meet him with a collar that I actually think was already personalized with his name, and all 110 pounds of him waggled and yipped and was like, Yes, hi, hey, I like you, do you have mirrors at your place?

So he left with them, and we haven’t seen him since. It’s actually a little weird that I spent more time embroidering his portrait than I actually spent with him. Hank’s two moms, if by some crazy chance you’re out there, let me know how my old pal is doing.