Just Like a Person

My kids asked us for a dog again this past Sunday morning.

The only objection I have to getting one is that no one will be around to care for the poor thing while we’re out all day. My wife isn’t a big fan of dogs, or cats for that matter, and that’s another factor to consider.

My family had two dogs when I was growing up, and my dad has a chubby little beagle. Yet this morning, when my son and daughter pleaded their case for a puppy for the umpteenth time while my wife and I read the Sunday paper together, I remembered another dog I encountered a long time ago.

Back in the summer of 1991, before we had our first child, my wife and I were visiting friends in their new home. It was early Saturday afternoon, and we were seated in the living room at the front of the house.

Our friends, Debbie and Dave, had a large bay window overlooking their front lawn and offering a view of their quiet suburban street. I was seated on a sofa facing the window, my wife beside me, while Debbie and Dave sat on the couch near the window.

We chatted for a while, enjoying the conversation, and Debbie asked us to stay and share an early dinner with them.

I was the first to notice that there was some sort of commotion across the street.

A middle-aged woman was screaming, running across the yard of the house directly opposite us with a broom in her hand. She reached a tall wooden gate leading to the backyard, heaved it open, and disappeared from view.

Dave stood and turned around.

The woman’s shrill voice was loud enough to be heard above the air conditioner, and my wife and Debbie heard it too.

Dave and Debbie were still new on the block and hadn’t met everyone who lived on their street yet, but Dave knew the people across from them.

“Something’s going on at the Dawsons’ house,” he said.

Then he looked at Debbie.

Within seconds, all of us were peering through the window. A man ran into the backyard of the home where the woman had disappeared. Then more neighbors—apparently husbands and wives from the surrounding homes—came running to see what was happening.

“You’d better go,” Debbie said.

She held Dave’s arm, but she looked at me.

I was the cop, and it made sense that I go investigate.

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I headed out the front door with Dave in tow.

“Hon, be careful,” my wife called after me.

She always calls me “Hon,” short for “Honey.”

Part of me was peeved at having to deal with some off-duty nonsense. The other part hoped it was nothing serious and that I could do my best “Nothing to see here, folks, go on home” routine and get back to my beer, which was getting warm.

As we approached the gate, the same one the woman had charged through, I could hear the collective sound of a lot of people talking.

Her screams were the loudest, piercing through the clamor.

I rounded the corner of the house and saw a group of about ten people standing in a half-circle near a five-foot-high stockade fence, all of them looking grim. Many had apparently come from homes on the next block, over the back fence.

A woman who looked to be in her sixties had taken the screaming woman with the broom aside near a screened-in porch. The older woman held her hand and comforted her as she sobbed.

Dave said something to me, and I waved him off.

Without thinking, I stepped through the crowd saying, “Excuse me, excuse me,” in my deepest, most commanding voice.

People stepped aside.

At the center of the group was a large German shepherd lying on her side, lifeless.

A man spoke when I approached.

“She took off after a cat, jumped the fence, and her collar got hooked on one of the fence posts.”

He was tough-looking, a hardworking type, with weathered, tanned skin that came from laboring outdoors for decades. His eyes were moist, and whoever I was to him in that moment, he was asking for help.

I knelt beside the dog and touched her side.

She wasn’t breathing.

I moved one of her front legs and put my ear against her chest.

Everyone was staring.

Then they fell silent.

What could I do for this poor dog?

I didn’t know.

But I could still hear the sobbing near the porch to my left, muffled now, barely audible.

It was her dog.

“Katie. Oh, Katie,” the woman said.

No heartbeat.

No breathing.

I picked up the dog’s head and cupped her snout in my hands. I puffed air into her mouth with my lips pressed against my thumbs and saw her rib cage expand.

My God, it works, I remember thinking.

After some klutzy maneuvering, I developed a rhythm: one breath for every fifteen chest compressions, which I managed by moving her front leg up and pressing where I believed her heart to be, one hand over the other.

It didn’t take long for me to become winded.

Soon, I was dripping with sweat.

“Katie. Oh, Katie.”

I could still hear the woman.

Then someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I stopped and looked up. The sun blinded me for a moment, and I saw a woman dressed in surgical scrubs standing over me. Her name tag, which also had her photo, identified her as a nurse.

“Is it just like doing a person?” she whispered.

I nodded.

“Yeah. That’s how I’m doing it.”

She knelt beside me.

“I’ll do the compressions,” she said.

Apparently, she’d been watching me, because she placed her hands where I had mine and waited for me to breathe into Katie’s snout again.

We kept it up until I could barely breathe anymore.

At one point, I took off my glasses and tossed them onto the ground beside Katie’s head.

The man who had first spoken to me knelt on the other side and put his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay, buddy. Take it easy.”

I looked at him.

What he wanted to say was:

I think you did all you can do.

The nurse looked at me.

I lifted my head and saw the woman near the porch. Her hands were clasped together, and the older gray-haired woman who had been comforting her was watching me.

“Could you go a while longer?” I asked the nurse.

“Yeah. Just tell me when to stop.”

I tried.

I tell you, I breathed and gasped and cajoled young Katie, but she was gone.

My heart raced, and sweat ran into my eyes.

Finally, I gave the nurse a nod.

It was over.

I remember the nurse saying something like, “We did everything.”

I pursed my lips.

Using the fence for support, I stood, pulled my T-shirt down, and found the distraught woman at the back of the crowd.

Her eyes said it all:

Go back. Try again. Keep going. Why aren’t you doing something?

I could read her mind.

As I drew near, her shoulders sagged and she began to weep aloud.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am. We did all we could. I’m afraid she’s gone.”

She fell into the arms of the older woman.

I turned and walked away.

As I did, I was stunned to see two solemn-looking Suffolk County police officers standing near the dog.

I learned later that the older gray-haired woman had called them while I was performing CPR on Katie.

“Hey, what happened?” one of the officers asked.

I told him about the cat, the fence, and Katie’s collar getting caught.

The yard belonged to the man who had first spoken to me. He had found Katie hanging there and taken her down. He called the dog’s owner and told her what had happened, and she ran over screaming, still carrying her broom.

That’s where Dave and I came into the picture.

“You’re a better man than me, doing CPR on a dog,” said the other officer.

I eyed him to see if he was being sarcastic.

He wasn’t.

He looked down at Katie’s body and shook his head.

There would be no investigation.

No crime scene.

No notifications to another agency.

The officers wouldn’t even be required to write a field report.

It was a dead dog.

They could call in the job to the dispatcher and go to lunch.

In the background, a woman could still be heard wailing.

Back at Dave and Debbie’s house, my wife and her friend waited near the door.

“What happened to you?” my wife asked.

She looked frantic.

“It wasn’t good,” Dave said.

“Oh my God. Go. Go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror.”

My wife covered her mouth as I walked past her.

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was too dazed to argue.

I could hear Dave telling them what happened as I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light.

The whites of my eyes were filled with red dots, and my face was covered with them too.

I looked like I had been beaten with a sack of quarters.

All I could think about was that I had to report to work the next day, explain my complexion to my superiors, and tell the story of how I performed CPR on a dead dog.

I was in for a lot of teasing.

And I’d be dishonest if I said I didn’t regret what I had done for a moment as I stared at my startling appearance in the mirror.

I never saw that woman again, though we still visit Dave and Debbie.

Yet every once in a while, such as when the kids tug at my wife and me for a puppy, I see Katie.

dog collar police officer fence cat German Shepard nurse CPR puppy