What are you doing here?” my wife, Joyce, exclaimed.
I found Joyce on our deck, gazing down ecstatically at a dog. It was a roly-poly, short-legged, blond-and-white Welsh corgi, ears up. He regarded Joyce with a delighted grin.
Uh-oh, I thought.
Our own two dogs, after reaching extreme old age, were buried on a little hill overlooking the pond. Now, on her walks in town, Joyce visited other people’s dogs - Spike the basset, Sophia the Samoyed, Pogo the black whatever. She would say, every so often, “Shouldn’t we get another dog?” But I had come to relish the freedom of doglessness.
Now this corgi had trotted onto our deck as if he owned it.
“He’s tubby,” I pointed out. “He obviously has a wonderful home, where they’re munificent with kibbles.”
We traced the corgi to new neighbors, a half-mile up the road. They were upset to learn their dog had wandered down the road, dodging cars. The corgi’s name, we learned, was Nosmo King, inspired by a “No Smoking” sign.
In the months afterwards, when I crossed the road to check our mailbox, I would sometimes look up the hill and see an animal silhouetted against the sky. A wolflike head, pricked-up ears. A coyote? A fox? It seemed too short-legged. It would gaze down the hill at me, as if mulling over what to do. Then it would turn and vanish back up the road. Only later did I realize it was a lonesome corgi, mustering the gumption to make another run for it.
On a morning when red maple leaves lay on the lawn, Joyce glanced up from her desk. Through her office’s sliding glass door, Nosmo grinned at her.
That day marked a change. Afterwards, no matter how his owners tried to confine him, several mornings a week Nosmo played Russian roulette with the road’s rushing chromium bumpers and showed up on our deck. He would stare in the glass door of Joyce’s office, grinning. Let in, he would roll belly up, his stubby legs waving in the air, mighty pleased with himself.
One of us would reach for the telephone. But we always found ourselves speaking to our neighbors’ answering machine. Since they worked, Nosmo was alone all day.
“If we don’t do something, he’s going to keep running down the road and he’ll be killed,” Joyce said.
“What can we do?” I said. “He’s not our dog.”
Whenever Nosmo appeared at our door, we would drive him home. He hopped into the car eagerly, ready for an adventure. But we would only imprison him in his house’s breezeway to wait for his owners to return. He would watch our receding car through the breezeway’s glass door, stricken. He had chosen us. We had turned him away. Looking back as we drove off, Joyce looked as stricken as Nosmo.
One day she made an announcement: “From now on, when Nosmo escapes and comes down, he stays with us until somebody is home at his house.”
So, every few days, Nosmo would show up. We would take him in until evening, when his owners returned. On his initial visits, he had shot us searching looks before venturing into a different room, unsure about the local regulations. Now he had the air of a nabob who had bought the place ... and paid cash.
One evening Nosmo’s owners called us. They had to go away for two weeks. They asked, “Could you take Nosmo while we are gone?”
A few nights after Nosmo began his visit, I found Joyce looking worriedly at our foster dog as he slept on the rug.
“Do you think Nosmo looks right?” she asked. “He doesn’t chase sticks any more.”
It was true. He no longer raced back clenching a thrown stick in his teeth, eyes flashing, daring anyone to wrestle for his prize. Now when Joyce tossed a stick, he just watched, wistfully. Then he would sit dully.
“We have to take him to the vet,” Joyce announced.
After the examination, the veterinarian told us that Nosmo’s condition was serious. He had a herniated colon. He had already had one operation for this condition. Now he needed another operation, and it was no sure thing. But without surgery, he would slowly die.
When Nosmo’s owners returned, Joyce gave them the news. A few days later, she called them again to hear what they had decided. When she put the telephone down, she looked shaken.
“They’re afraid the operation is useless, and that they may have to have him put to sleep,” she told me.
Joyce slumped at the kitchen table, her chin resting on her hands. Her eyes welled with tears. Without the operation, Nosmo had little hope. And even with the surgery, Nosmo would always need extra attention. Since his family worked all day and he was alone...
“What more could you do?” I asked. “You’ve been Nosmo’s guardian angel. Joyce, he’s not our dog,” I said finally.
For a moment Joyce stared out the window at the end-of-summer fields, the grasses already turning gold and tan. And then she recited a line of verse, by Robert Frost. It was one of our favorites: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
After a moment, Joyce added her own line. “He chose us,” she said.
Joyce called Nosmo’s owners with an offer: “Let us do day care - we’ll be his nurses.”
After his successful operation, Nosmo became a dog with two homes. En route to work each morning, one of his owners dropped him off at our house. Every evening, on our way into town, we returned Nosmo to his owners.
Mornings Joyce took Nosmo for a long therapeutic walk. I would watch them from my office window, the concerned-looking woman, the little dog, wandering toward the meadow or into the pine woods across the waterfall.
“It’s beautiful here - I’d forgotten,” Joyce told me one day. “Now that I’m walking Nosmo, I’m appreciating my own backyard.”
Two years passed. And then Nosmo’s owners changed jobs and moved to a city apartment that allowed no dogs. Our day-care dog officially became our dog, full time.
One month after Nosmo became our dog, Joyce was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, acute leukemia, and abruptly went into the hospital. Every day I brought Nosmo to her window, so she could look out and see him grinning up at her. “My therapy dog,” she called him. When she finally came home, weakened but on the mend, Nosmo was there to greet her. He had no tail, but his entire body wagged with joy.
Joyce was hospitalized again, and then a third time. Each time she returned home, Nosmo greeted her by throwing himself on his back, waving his flipperlike legs in the air and grinning. Joyce could feel her spirits rising. She could almost feel her immune system stepping up. “Nosmo,” she would say, “you are helping me to recover.”
As I write, I am looking out my office window. On the back lawn, Joyce is throwing a stick, Nosmo is barking, running, leaping for the stick. He must secretly feed on TNT, he has so much pep. And Joyce is laughing. She, too, radiates life and energy.
I stand at my window, watching Joyce play with the dog, and I think about guardian angels.
I know they exist, for I have seen one with my own eyes. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen two.
- Richard Wolkomir