When Canine Theft
Strikes: the Amity Robbery
An epic saga of one
young lady’s heroic crusade to retrieve her stolen dog
A story of kismet and
wonder
.. ..
It was Saturday, the 27th of June, 2009. I
arrived home from an eight hour class to my loyal companion, Amity Jane Lieb
Aabye Maximilian Lutoslawski, my bitch of three years.
But let me start from the beginning.
Amity was no ordinary bitch; she was special. Everything
about her was special. I can say that objectively, even though I’m biased, but
let’s continue. One day when I’d just moved to Portland, after contracting
Toxic Mold Poisoning, I received an email from some people that I’d wanted to
room with who had to fill their vacancy more quickly than I could get here:
they had another room open! I went to their duplex to meet them and was greeted
by a wonderful creature, Coaltrain the Catahoula Leopard Dog (state dog of
Louisiana, possibly the only state that even cares to have a state dog). Even
though I’d raised no more than 57 Dalmatian dogs in my childhood (my parents wanted
their kids to be their miniature money machines, but that’s a different story) I had
never met such a fantastic beast; Coaltrain was handsome, he was affectionate,
he was intelligent, he was everything you could want in a man, but he was a
dog. The same night that I moved in with my future good friends, he came and
cuddled on my piece of foam-core on the floor and I couldn’t resist writing a
freeform Haiku about him the next morning:
Slumber in the space behind my knees and....
I don’t move for fear....
You’ll leave....
.. ..
Since meeting a one Paul Nelson (of It Plays in Peoria) at a
poetry slam, I’d been inspired to write a haiku every day. Most days I fail:
A haiku a day....
Is the only way....
To pretend that I’m a write-....
.. ..
But this day, in February of 2006, I had succeeded. I posted
it to my Livejournal. But just the Haiku itself wouldn’t do the dog justice; I
needed a photo to show my readers the glory that is the rare dark Catahoula. So
I looked it up on Google Images, and to my delight the first page of results
had a tiny female Catahoula puppy named Medley being advertised by the Oregon
Humane Society.
Tim was in the kitchen when I found it. I showed him. I
asked sheepishly about getting a sheep-herding animal; how I’d been wanting my
own dog so badly. He was reluctant but curious, and disabused me of the notion
that I could get a dog because our landlord had an outlandish $1,000 dog
deposit, and we had two animals already in a tiny three bedroom duplex. I went to the Humane Society to check her out anyway, and fell instantly into
not-so-dormant puppy-lust.
Unbeknownst to me, back home Tim had immediately gotten onto
his iBook (or whatever you call those old tactile nightmares) and then shown
Lela, Coaltrain’s owner and his girlfriend, the puppydoggy.
I came home and was accosted in the kitchen. Suddenly, my
wildest dreams were coming true. Though I’d looked at about 30 places and
talked to many people before moving here, none of them had wanted to let me get
a dog after moving in. I kept telling people, “We’ll go to the Humane Society
and pick a pup out, see if she gets along with the other animals, I’ll be
solely responsible. I’ve done this before, people!” I’d given up hope and
settled for a basement room riddled with toxic mold. Because of the constant
rejection on this front, I’d never even bothered to ask my current roommates
anything regarding pets, yet they were saying my own words back to me. “We’d
like to go meet her tonight, we’ll take Coaltrain. We already called; they said
they have a special room for doing just that.”
Perfect.
The next day, I adopted that little whippersnapper and
dubbed her Amity, meaning friend, friendly, or friendship. There are quite a
lot of theories that the things you name exemplify that name’s meaning. Amity
is certainly no exception; she’s the rule. She was attacked by three feral cats
once on a walk through Northeast Portland after a dog-park run, and all she did
was sit there and yelp, wondering why these mangy felines hated her so much
when all she wanted to do was be their very best mate! Along those same lines,
she licks spiders. She recognizes real and conjured up faces. She lets homeless
kids unleash her from the Portland State University campus. She’s kind of an
idiot; a kindly idiot.
Getting back to that Saturday evening, I felt bad for my
dog. She’d been at home all day alone while I was having a wonderful time in
class and my roommates were on the honeymoon of their dreams on the Wrong
Coast. (If you didn’t know, America has two coasts: the Left Coast and the
Wrong Coast.) “Amity hates being alone!” I thought to myself, sort of out loud
because apparently living alone has that effect on me. “Such an extroverted
dog, who wants to greet every stranger and meet every animal and insect… she’d
be happier tied up on campus where there are people and dogs about. My class is
only a few hours tomorrow… maybe I should finally listen to everyone who tells
me that I’m crazy for thinking someone would steal a dog, and take her to
campus tomorrow where she’ll be loved on, and then we can go to the dog park.”
Amity cocked her head in agreeance, and it was decided.
I visited her on breaks to reassure her that her existence
was still duly noted and appreciated, and felt pretty bad having to go back to
class; she wasn’t having the good time I’d thought. But a lot of the kids
around between Smith and Cramer knew her by name, so she had a following, and
that meant she’d been getting lots of backrubs. She uncharacteristically whined
when I left to go back to class, though, and I already knew that though this was the first time I'd tie her up it was also the last.
As I stepped down the last steps of Cramer Hall and
proceeded out the doors to head home, a feeling of trepidation engulfed me. I
shivered and stepped into the sun and saw possibly the creepiest thing I’d ever seen; an
empty, leashless bicycle rack and a full water bowl. My bitch was gone!
My friend Jackie and I frantically looked all over campus,
talked to people, filed a police report, called the Humane Society, filed with
Animal Control, talked to the microchipping company. I couldn’t believe I was
going home dogless. I spent the rest of the night gathering all the photos of
her possible to make a Photobucket album. I updated her Facebook page, and
created a MySpace profile for her. I webfliered all of my friends and asked
them to pass along a well-orchestrated message to anyone who lived in Portland
or knew people that lived in Portland. I finally conked out after leaving
dramatic Facebook status updates about wanting my dog back. I woke up the next day
to find a message from my classmate and friend, Jane, who had a Facebook message
from another classmate, Anna; she had seen a street girl take my dog. Once
she’d posted about that, it sparked a memory in another classmate, Michael, who
had also seen her being taken.
Now that I knew where to look, I enlisted the help of my old
roommate, Lela, the only voice of reason in my desperate, sleepless, dogless, delirious haze of existence. We made a flyer at Kinkos after my friend Mat told me they’d
do a certain number for free. We printed up 200 of them and went to all the
spots we knew that people in the homeless community hung out; NW Waterfront
Park, Outside/In, My Father’s House, etc. Some of the first people we talked to
were sure they’d seen her, at Saint Francis, all the way across the river. We
went there. No dice, gumshoes. Carman Sandiego ain’t here, we haven’t seen her.
I couldn’t sleep, so after I dropped Lela off I went to the
west end of the Burnside Bridge and started chatting up anyone who was awake,
which was a surprising lot considering it was 3am. A one Blaze (Blaise?) had
seen her just noon prior in Pioneer Square. I drove around looking for any
homeless people I could find that were awake to try and find out more. I ran around China Town whistling my special whistle, looking for sleeping bags that rustled at the sound. Big
Mike, who I’d seen more than a few times around town, told me to go to bed (as
he was in his), but then started listing off places to go and times I should be
there. Sisters of the Road Café, New Avenues for Youth, Blanchet House, Union
Gospel, ‘Red Door’ (St. Vincent du Paul or Salvation Army, I can’t remember). He
also told me where not to go if I was going to continue to walk around in my 25
year old female body in the dangerous streets of Stump Town. The tweakers were
up that way, methheads and the like. Stay below such and such block. I thanked
him, and went home to shower, check my email, brew up a French press, update
Amity’s profiles, and was back underneath the Burnside bridge by 7am. Testimonies
kept piling up. I was getting close, I could feel it. Tuesday would be the day
I’d get my mutt back! But then I remembered thinking that on Sunday, and on
Monday.
In Pioneer Square around 9am I ran across some kids with a
Pitbull. I asked them if they’d seen my dog, showing them one of the few color
flyers before handing them each a black and white copy. They hadn’t. They
thought about it more. This was a regular occurrence; no and then yes. They
weren’t sure. They mused about how my dog looked like a dog Kay used to have, a
one Mirage. But no, they couldn’t be sure they’d seen her.
I looked down at their Pitbull with pathetic, defeated sadness,
longing for my dog. Surreally, that dog was wearing my dog’s leash; a black
Lupine leash with silver fleur de lis all over it, the same my stepmom had
given me for Christmas! “Surely you’ve seen my dog; that’s her leash! Where did
you get that?” I asked, trying hard not to sound incredulous.
Some ‘fat bitch’ that they ‘hated’ named ‘Shadow’ had traded
it for some cigarettes, they said. Suddenly they were washed over with the
realization that the dog Shadow had and my dog looked the same, and had the
same name. They couldn’t believe she stole her! She said she’d gotten her from
Craigslist! She said she’d paid for her vaccinations, gotten her fixed,
boughten her tags! How could someone steal a dog, how horrifying, how cruel,
how wrong! This was the same reaction everyone in the homeless community
genuinely had towards dognappers, but I knew logically that something was off; these kids weren't to be trusted.
Then Kay, the girl holding the leashed up Pitbull, told me
the most deflating news; Shadow had said just yesterday, my dog in hand, that
she was leaving town that evening.
I started pacing and crying. I called Lela again; all
morning long I’d been giving her excited updates about how I was close on the
trail. “Did you get your leash back?” she asked. I hadn’t. She recommended I
call the police and get my leash back from the street kids. They gave it to me
willingly. We shared a cigarette so I could ‘reimburse’ them for their
troubles. They brainstormed how they’d be tying up the dog they did have, and
settled on a scarf, knotting it like sailors even though those three girls
must’ve been the combined age of 40. I asked them to stick around to add some
testimony to my police report. They did, for about 15 minutes. Kay left, saying
she was going to class at Outside/In, whatever that means. The cops never
showed, and they never called back, ever.
I kept on keepin’ on, and hoofed it to Sisters of the Road
Café.
Big Mike was there. People were warmly receiving me,
accepting flyers, asking me questions about my dog. “She’s this tall, she’s got
hairy toes, etc. etc.”
My phone rang. Some number I didn’t know. I picked it up,
excited.
A girl on the other
end said they knew someone who thought they knew where my dog was; she passed
the phone on to a male friend of hers.
“I know where your dog is right now.”
“I’ll give you 50 bucks to keep her there.”
I ran to New Avenues for Youth, where my dog was supposedly
kenneled while the girl who had her was eating some breakfast.
I rang one of their several doorbells at one of their
several entrances. A clean looking twenty-something male came and asked me what
I needed. At first he must’ve thought I was homeless because of how haggardly I looked
from running around with barely a shower to hide my sleeplessness, because his demeanor completely changed after I made my statement.
“Have you seen my dog? Someone called me and told me she’s
crated in there while the girl she’s with is eating. She was stolen on Sunday.
Please, I really need her back!”
He took the flyer. He looked uneasy.
“I can’t tell you who is in there, and you can’t come in.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you who is in there; you can wait at
reception, but you can’t come in. But I will tell you this; that dog is here
every morning.”
I waited in their entryway for ten minutes. I got another
call, from another number. It was someone else; they said they had my dog. They
were where I was! But was it my dog? Did two different people think they had Amity? What if it was only one, and they'd never call back? What if they both showed up and it was neither?
Whoever had last called came ‘round the corner after some confusion about which
side of the building I was on. I came out the door. My dog! Two young men,
Jackson and Jay, were escorting Shadow and Amity toward me. Against all my
fears that she wouldn’t care, that bitch was so happy to see me. I hugged her.
I cried. I laughed. I kept thanking, profusely, just as my fundamentalist
Baptist mother taught me to, with abandon.
Shadow gave her back willingly, the same shame written all over her that I'd noticed earlier in Kay, and then I learned more; Kay, not Shadow, had stolen Amity. Kay had traded Amity for the Pitbull I’d seen her
with earlier that day.
I took Jay and Jackson to an ATM, and got them $60 for their
troubles, which they were apparently going to spend on dope. We had a
celebratory cigarette. I asked them about themselves, and told them basically
the same story I’ve been writing here, but in shorter form. They looked bored.
In my overjoyed state I talked about how they should share the reward money
with Shadow; I felt bad for her that she'd lost a dog herself. No, no, they said. Shadow and Kay had about five dogs each. Shadow
and Kay traded dogs with other people all the time. Shadow and Kay stole dogs
from all over the Southeast and Southwest areas of Portland. SE was the best
because people don’t go looking for their canine comrades across the river.
Sometimes Kay and Shadow traded dogs for cigarettes and the like. Who knows
what to believe; I’ll choose to believe all the worst that I heard, and then
some. For all I know, those kids are all in cahoots to gain reward money from
the dogs they steal.
I left not knowing what to think, but feeling ultimately
happy that I had my dog back. The first thing I was going to do was take her to
visit her best dog friend, Coaltrain. Say his name around her and she goes nuts
looking for him. She was excited. Coaltrain and his new brother, Tim’s new
Catahoula, Cooper, would soon re-acclimate her to a happy, normalized existence.
We were headed to Lela’s, where I immediately shoveled some crepes and jam down my days empty esophagus. The absurdity and disgustingness of the situation
hadn’t quite struck me; I’ve only recently begun to become angry. I was so
grateful to everyone that had helped me find my dog. I was in awe that I had
actually pulled it off and gotten her back. If I hadn’t done this or that she
wouldn’t be here at my side. Thank goodness I webflyered. Thank goodness I had
the aid of a friend with more sleep to help me not spend hours designing a damn
missing dog flyer. Thank goodness that the entire homeless community was so
helpful and kind that it inspired a continued incessant search. Thank goodness
I had such good friends spreading the word around, giving me support, keeping
an eye out in the streets of Stump Town.
As soon as we started walking from the ATM, Amity, with humiliated expression, began peeing and pooping everywhere. Those kids had never even taken her to ‘get busy’!
When we got home and I got her lamb and rice dry food out, she wasn’t excited
and she wouldn’t even eat, probably because she'd been fed donuts for three days. (I tried to block out of my mind the extreme likelihood that they had fed her garlic, onions, chocolate, grapes, raisins, etc.) If I went outside to check the mail, she freaked
out. I noticed early on that some of her vaccination tags had been crudely
taken from around her neck, likely to prove some sort of responsible dog
ownership for past or future canine robberies. It took her two full days to
recover, but she thankfully has some resilience. Now she is clingier than ever,
though (which is good because I don’t currently have a boyfriend). She's also more satisfied with her boring dog-food only, no-treats diet; eating exactly the same food day in, day out.
Anywho, after my own recovery from my three day trek into
the meanish streets of old Vanport, later that week I wrote a truncated teaser
version of this saga to the Willamette Week, the Portland Mercury, Street
Roots, KATU, etc.
None of them have apparently been interested in covering
this story, and yet hundreds of people have asked me to regale them. So, this
is for all of you; if you passed on my webflyer, if you kept an eye out when
you were downtown, if you joined me in my search, if you merely sent positivity
my way, thank you. Thank you so much. You have all made the difference, and I
hope this story will serve to make one itself. I’m sure you can glean any
possible didacticism here for yourselves.
.. ..
All
appreciation,
Adeleine
.. ..
http://www.myspace.com/amitydog