Collections - 5. Chapter 5 -- Ringo

Ringo

Our neighbors have a little dog – and this isn’t going off into “And Bingo was his name,” or “He would have murdered all the Jews,” depending on which childhood song you’re remembering. Coincidentally, the dog’s name is Ringo, after the famous Beatle. But Ringo-the-mutt is tiny, not much larger than a Chihuahua, though furrier and black-and-white. And he occasionally manages to creep under our neighbors’ front gate. Last night, as I was finishing up walking our dogs, I noticed that Ringo was out in the street again.

Our suburban street isn’t particularly busy, but you don’t want your dog playing in it, especially when it’s getting dark. I used our dogs, on their leashes, to back the loose Ringo safely into the neighboring alley, then rang the bell on Oren and Dee’s front fence, expecting to smile at their familiar apologies and thanks. Nothing. I rang again. Oren and Dee have three kids, all under five, it was eight o’clock on a Friday, and many of the lights in their house were on. Even if the family was out, how late could it stay?

Ringo obviously couldn’t tell me, though he continued to yap away. Our dogs were being polite, something the male, Rocky, isn’t known for. So I knew I had seconds free before he started to levitate toward Ringo and try, one more time, to knock me into Urgent Care. I backed Ringo further down the alley, then took our dogs home, quickly fed them, and headed back to Ringo, leash and snack food in hand.

Ringo doesn’t like strangers. He bounces away and yaps at them. But I knew he was trying to get home because when I was still in my driveway, across the street, he was trying to squirm back under his gate. I waited, hoping he’d succeed. But, as we all know, what comes out doesn’t necessarily go back in, as we also learned in childhood from the unmusical Pandora.

So I crossed the street and tried luring Ringo with food. It works with Rocky all the time, but not with Ringo. More backing away and yapping. I tried dropping the food on the ground and backing away, figuring if nibbling distracted him long enough maybe I could slip my leash around his neck. But he’s a small, smart, yappy, distrustful dog, and the more I waited, the further he backed. Then, the more I pursued him, the more he ran down the alley. Finally, he’d run the entire length of the maybe hundred foot alley which borders Oren and Dee’s house, and he was in their rear neighbors’ front yard.

Now I know those neighbors, too, at least well enough to wave at, but I didn’t want to have to explain, in the dark, at now after 8:00 o’clock on a Friday night, why I was borderline trespassing. Also, reportedly, the only thing people in our neighborhood seem to have more of than dogs is guns. So I retreated. Meanwhile, Ringo had disappeared into the bushes, and I thought maybe he’d stay there or find a back way through his fence. Though that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get out again.

So I went and rang Oren and Dee’s bell, not expecting much and getting it. I also tried to slide their front gate open. It’s motorized, like many others in our neighborhood, but sometimes, you can ease the gates a foot-or-so back. Great protection. In this case, it didn’t move. Meanwhile, the yapping Ringo was approaching down the alley. I knew I couldn’t get near him but figured I might be able to get behind him and drive him up the alley, across the street, and into our fenced-in front yard. That would at least keep him safe till Oren, Dee, and their kids came home – and how much longer could that be?

In order to get behind Ringo, I had to chase him all the way down the alley again, then maneuver behind him in the bushes without raising the concern of the possibly armed neighbors. Then I had to chase him all the way back up the alley. And why did I care? If Oren and Dee were foolish enough to leave their dog in their front yard when they knew he had a history of squirming under the front gate, at what point did that really intersect with my life? Well, because I have dogs. And because they’re clever and sometimes bored so have been known to investigate escape routes from their otherwise happy home. And I wouldn’t want to come home to find either one of them dead.

So I got behind Ringo and chased him up the alley. But he wouldn’t cross the street. In fact, this time, he wouldn’t even go near it. He tried to nose under his gate again, so I knew he was working with me. But when I tried to get near him, to possibly help, he’d yap and circle and back away. Though he wouldn’t back in the direction I wanted. In frustration of having him so close to safety, without actually being able to pick him up and carefully dump him over the four-foot fence, I tried the knob on the people gate next to the car gate. Of course, it was locked. I’m tall enough to reach over the gate and try the inside knob, but our neighbors are as smart as their dog, and that knob needs a key to open, too. Though it seemed our neighbors were somewhat behind on their maintenance, and feeling some play in the gate, I was able to jiggle it open. Then I backed away. Ringo, seeing the gate open and the tall guy far enough into the street to be harmless, ran for home. Which is all I wanted to begin with. I closed the gate behind him and headed home.

Except our neighbor Barbara had heard Ringo’s yapping and had come to investigate. Barbara’s about my age, has two dogs of her own, and is very concerned about their welfare. She also does Good Deeds for other neighbors, some older than she is, some younger. She feeds their pets and dogs, tends their gardens, and takes in their mail and newspapers when they’re away. When I told her what had happened, she was concerned that Ringo would get back out, because she’d seen that happen before. And Ringo wasn’t offering any assurance by staying comfortably curled up near his front door. Instead, he was just on the other side of the gate, yapping and yapping. I told Barbara that Oren and Dee had probably taken their kids out to dinner so would no doubt be home soon, but Barbara pointed out a couple of places around and under the front gates where Ringo could still squeeze out. I said we’d just have to hope he didn’t.

And that’s where I left it – though I did hear Ringo continue to yap for the next several hours as I read. But he sometimes did that even when Oren and Dee were home, and the noise was far enough away to be ignored. Even our dogs did that as they lay in bed beside me, and Rocky’s pretty sensitive to canine alerts. The quietest bark from the dogs next door sends him flying off the bed, slamming out the dog door, and rushing to their aid.

Now my partner, Tom, was off teaching, and when he came in around 11:00, he said, “Did you know there are police cars on the street?” I said, “No.” I hadn’t heard any sirens and obviously the dogs hadn’t. To confirm that, they looked up lazily at Tom, listlessly wagging their tails because they knew it was too late to beg for any food. Tom said, “Yeah, there are a couple of cars out there, and I think the police are apprehending someone.” That seemed possible because someone had recently hopped over another of our neighbors’ fences, this one without spikes, and broken into their car in the middle of the night. Generally, we have a very safe neighborhood because of all the barking dogs. But even they have to sleep.

When Tom mentioned the police, I thought for a moment that maybe another neighbor had complained about Ringo yapping for five hours, and the police had come to investigate. But our small, overworked police force has better things to do, so I didn’t mention that to Tom. I certainly didn’t think the police would be called if Ringo had simply gotten free again and unfortunately gotten himself knocked off. I hadn’t heard any sudden screeching of tires or brakes, and, besides, it would have to be a hate crime to involve the cops.

This afternoon, as I was water-frugally sponge bathing my car in our driveway, I heard Oren’s voice. Then Barbara’s. Then the word “dog.” So I walked down the driveway to back-up Barbara and confirm to Oren, that, yes, Ringo had been running loose again and that I’d somehow managed to wrangle him back into their yard. But that wasn’t what Barbara and Oren were talking about. They were discussing the police.

It seems that after I’d left Barbara, she was still worried about Ringo getting free. So she’d gotten some pieces of wood from her house and put them in all the gaps under and alongside Oren and Dee’s fence. When Oren, Dee, and their kids finally came home around 11:00, Oren had pressed the remote in his car to open the driveway gate, and one of the pieces of wood that Barbara had propped against the gate fell. Oren immediately decided the lumber was there as a warning signal to whoever was inside their house robbing it. So he reflexively called the police. Soon, in Oren’s telling of the story, there were four squad cars and eight police officers, and they went into the house guns drawn, looking for a gang of thieves. Of course, they found nothing but the yapping Ringo, still obediently in his yard. And since Barbara already had gone to sleep and had no idea about the stealthy police, and I hadn’t heard them and didn’t know about the wood anyway, Oren didn’t really understand what had happened the night before until moments before I arrived, when Barbara was explaining to him about Ringo. Then we all made the connection and laughed. That’s the pleasure of having friendly neighbors.