Driving Miss Daisy - To This, That And The Other Vet!

by Denise LeBeau

In 1990 I found myself with the moon, stars and planets aligning just for me, and finally lady luck smiled broadly on my meager existence. I had moved to New York City five years earlier with high hopes of getting a great job and having my own apartment. At that time, naiveté was on my side, and I did not become discouraged, when what I thought would take a few months, took years.

I was twenty-three years old before I was able to get my own apartment with my own lease! After showing forty points of I.D. and having three guarantors, I had a studio apt on Thompson Street, right across from a school yard, which became an impromptu dog run when school wasn’t in session. The cherry on this double fudge sundae of delight was the fact that this was a “dog friendly” building, an unexpected score for someone that had been trying to harness her Siamese cat and make her walk on lead for the last few years.

But let’s back up to the whole “cat as substitute for a dog” issue, I was missing my dog that was left with my mom when I struck out on my own, and a chance encounter seemed like the perfect solution. I was having some coffee at a café on Greenwich Avenue down the block from my then apartment, shared by many, when I saw a gentleman reading his paper with an Abyssinian on his shoulder. “Glory be to me,” I thought when I saw you could have a cat in public on a leash, all my pet needs were about to be met. My then paramour thought it would be a great idea to get me a cat for my birthday, after I told him that would be what I wanted.

Somehow Abyssinian translated to Siamese at Fabulous Felines on Third Avenue, and for my twentieth birthday I received a kitten of Siam origins. I was truly the happiest, and as soon as Catspur had all her shots it was time to go out and explore the world. I pictured us sitting in the park together, taking in a movie, and being the fancier pair at the café.

Our first outing was to a Perry Street Fair, where Catspur seemed very annoyed at checking out vendor booths. Then she started incessantly meowing, until people started yelling at me to take my cat home. I decided the street fair was far too busy and forayed onto a quiet side street where maybe Catspur would prefer to trot along rather than being carried. As soon as I put her down, she immediately went between two wrought iron fence posts where it took me forty five minutes to get her to come out. Repeat this experience once or twice a week for the next three years, and you can see where I was elated to learn that my new lease included legal dog companionship!

In the first week at my new apartment I met a young woman about my age that had a Yorkie. So I started reading up on them: big dog attitude, in a small dog body, that sounded right for me. I had it all planned out, I’d name my new Yorkie “Stork” and had similar fantasies to the one involving my cat: going to the movies, sipping in cafes, but this one had the extra bonus of palling around with Matthew Broderick while his black and white mixed dog, Sally, frolicked along with Stork at the schoolyard. Oh, yes I was already casing who’d be our dog and human friends. It was all meant to be!

It took about two weeks before I could work up my courage to ask the young lady the name of the breeder that she got her Yorkie from, as I too was looking for a dog. “Looking for a dog!” she said a little too excitedly. “Yes looking for a dog,” I replied, “and I want one like yours.” Well, she tells me that she’s a realtor and that in one of the apartments that her company manages, a dog has been abandoned – allegedly the owner had skipped town, stopped paying rent, and left his dog, and would I be interested in that dog? I don’t see why not, a dog’s a dog, and if you know of one that needs a home, that must be the dog for me. The one hitch is this dog is a black Chow, and they don’t know if he’s good with people or cats! Perfect, I’ll take him! Again the enthusiasm of youth overcoming any foreseeable pitfalls!

The next day she brought me home this Chow, no one seemed to know his name, so I named him Monsignor as his big fluffy head looked like one of those hats. He seemed as interested in the cat as he did for a bath, a liver treat, filet mignon or going to the park. Chow’s just have this noncommittal imperviousness to their surroundings; they could take or leave any offerings, and basically stand around like a super model waiting to be adored, but not caring either way. He was a perfect dog in all aspects. He could walk down crowded St. Marks Place, and it was like parting the Red Sea, people just got out of his way.

People remarked at how good-looking he was, and he was very popular with the local thugs, they wanted to buy him from me. Sorry not for sale! It was glorious; he was even very popular at my office, where one of the perks of working for an artist is the ability to bring your dog to work. Ah lady luck just kept on smiling, until one day as I was walking along Lafayette Street during lunch to take Monsignor home; she decided to give me a big downer frown. Okay, so I’m just about a block from work, in front of a gas station, when this beat up BMW almost runs us over. Whoa, I think, what a jerk – where’d you learn to drive, when he slams on the breaks and jumps out of the car. His hair’s a mess, his eyes are going in opposite directions, when he points at Monsignor and yells “Chin-Chin”. Where I counter with “no, Chow-Chow” – thinking I’m clearing his delirious breed identification up, when he yells “No that’s Chin-Chin, that’s my dog.”

After a few minutes of bickering, he says that the realtor’s stole his dog because he owed them back rent, and that he had not abandoned him. Hum, Chin-Chin Monsignor acted with his usual condescending aloofness, and it was hard to see any recognition in his eyes or gestures. But he treated me that way too, and I had been giving him special treats, walks and affection for the last month, perhaps this was his dog. When ravaged maniac started describing the dog’s bowel movements, I knew this was not going to have a good outcome, he wasn’t giving up, and what if he had seen me come out of my employer’s building? We could be harassed on a daily basis. With great reluctance, I handed over the leash and promptly started crying and walked back to work. Everyone at the office was as shocked as I was, and we all started looking in the yellow pages for pet stores and kennels in the city –calling frantically looking for a Chow puppy, because I wasn’t going home without one.

The same paramour that had given me a cat was now on hand at Pedigree Pups on the Upper Westside to buy me my advance birthday present, a cream colored Chow I was told they had. We get there right before closing only to learn that their Chows were in a kennel somewhere in Long Island, there were no Chows in the store, but there were ten week old Golden Retriever puppies. Golden Retriever puppies! I’ve gone and went to heaven. They put each pup in a baby’s basinet so you can check them out individually, and I chose the blondest, fluffiest ball of fur for my own! A thousand dollars later, I was told I would not be getting any presents for awhile! Great, who cares? I’ve got all I need, a new puppy we named Daisy to fulfill all my pet fantasies! By this time I had made friends with all the human companions of the dogs in my neighborhood, except Matthew Broderick, I don’t know where he and Sally were dogging it up now, but I was sure that Daisy and Sally would be fast friends. I was to be the envy of the whole canine community – while I couldn’t afford a pair of socks in SoHo, I was going to trump every yuppie by having the greatest dog since Lassie.

I held onto this fantasy for about a week, at which time I noticed a weird bump on the back of her head. So being of industrious stock, I applied calamine lotion and waited for the mosquito bite to subside. It was this ingenious DIY style that also had me substituting olive oil for linseed oil, which offered similar results (note to art students: don’t paint with olive oil, and don’t cook with linseed oil, just trust me on this one). About three days later, the mosquito bite became quite a mass of red itchy bumps on the back of her head, and went from the size of a dime to a dollar. I quickly recognized that my vet skills were not up to handling whatever has happened on Daisy’s head, and we went to the vet clinic at Bide-A-Wee, a trusted place where I’d been taking my cat.

I was told they would have to do a “scraping,” this was something that sounded bad. I winced while they scraped, and a quick look under a microscope diagnosed Daisy with demodectic mange. “What the heck is that?” I asked quite frantically. The vet explained that it’s not contagious (just as I started feeling itchy), that it’s the mites that all dogs have, and people have in their eyebrows. Disgusting and thank goodness were the two thoughts that popped into my head. This can’t be hard to cure, I figured, modern medicine and all. He sent me home with some topical cream and said this should fix it.

By the end of the second week of having taken Daisy from the pet store, she had lost all the hair from the back of her head to the base of her tail. She was scabby, red, scaly and basically gross to look at. It was at this time, a second vet on St. Marks was seen. This time this second vet said that Daisy had a much compromised immune system and was basically “damaged” goods, and the best treatment for her would be to put her down and get a dog whose immune system was not so compromised.

I thought my ears were going to start to bleed. I thanked the vet for his worldly advice and asked if I was not to going to kill my dog, what treatment might work. Mitaban dips are the next stop on the demodectic treatment trail, but he wasn’t sure that a dog so young would withstand the procedure. “We’ll take our chances,” I said, and left with a mask, latex gloves and the toxic tincture called Mitaban. It was around this time, when the vet bills were about $500 when it dawned on me that this was getting expensive and I’ve only had the dog for two weeks, surely my boyfriend was generous but the well would run dry eventually, and I’d better get some of these costs defrayed by the pet store. Surely, they would help!

So I took Daisy with her bill of sale, and the two vet receipts up to Pedigree Pups on a Saturday morning. I was prepared for them to be aghast at the defective product they had sold me, and would gladly give me all the funding I would need to get her healthy. We saw the same salesman that sold me Daisy, I was so happy that this was going to be easy. The look on the man’s face seemed to say quite quickly that this was not going to be as easy as I thought. “What’s the problem?” he asked as I waved receipts in front of his face. “Well the dog you sold me has some severe health problems, and while we don’t want to return her, we do want you to pay our vet bills,” I said very matter-of-factly. “That’s not possible, our store policy is that if you are not satisfied with your purchase, you can exchange the dog for a new one,” he said making a motion towards the Samoyed pups sitting in a playpen with stuffed animals toys that weren’t one quarter as cute as they were.

Let Zeus strike me down, but for a split second I glanced at those dogs, as cute as baby seals, with their regal white ermine coats, and then back at my scaly, scabby dog that looked like some kind of burn victim, and thought, “why not?” Scaly and scabby vs. white, cute and fluffy – seemed like a good trade for me. Except there’s always that little voice in the back of your head, that never lets the easy way out seem right. “Where would Daisy go?” I asked innocently enough. “She’ll live out her life as a guard dog on a farm,” this you-know-what said straight to my face.

This set off a chain reaction of alarms! Daisy had the quintessential Golden personality, i.e. – she couldn’t guard a fly; also, somewhere in my subconscious I knew she didn’t come from a farm. So I told him, no, we don’t want another dog, so what else can we do here? The next compromise that Mr. Salesman offered was for me to give them back Daisy and they would totally refund her purchase price. “Thanks, but, no, this isn’t going to work for me,” I told him. “That’s the best we can offer,” the salesman retorted, as he started to retreat to the backroom. I was pretty cool through the whole exchange, but I began to shout, “fine, we’ll be here next Saturday, and the following Saturday and every single Saturday to stand outside and show the public what happens to their dogs after they buy them from here!” This made the man look queasy, and he finally relented and gave us our money back.

Relieved to have full purchase price refunded, I turned away from protests against a pet store, to an active pursuit of getting Daisy healthy, by any means necessary. This started with the Mitaban dips. The first time I dipped my dog in this stuff, I was sure we were both going to pass out. I carefully followed the directions, a little drop in a tub full of water, seemed simple enough. One drop into the tub created a scenario akin to pouring a bucket of water on a block of dry ice. The sound, smell and smoke are not something one could ever forget quickly. As soon as I dutifully dipped my dog in this toxic cauldron mixture, everything turned red and I felt as though I was about to faint, when I grabbed her out of it and we both ran outside. My scaly red dog, was now soaking wet with poison and I was basically hallucinating; while we walked off the effects of the first dip. It was at this time I ran into a friend told me about a good vet on Seventh Avenue, perfect I thought lets get some experts onboard. I really didn’t think either of us could survive much more “dipping”.

To the Village vet we went! Again I was shocked and dismayed to hear words like damaged, compromised, immune system and destroy be bandied about like I was talking about getting my bike fixed. Again, I had to explain that death wasn’t an option, and what does he recommend? Mitaban came up again, we’re already on that I explain, and I want to know exactly what is it about these mites that could kill her? Like do mites enter the blood stream and go to the heart? I was assured that the mites wouldn’t kill her, but because her immune system is so compromised (again with the immune system!) that she could die from infection or some other disease that compromised immune systems can’t fight off. Okay a few hundred dollars later, I had more Mitaban, and I was on the look out for other diseases. This began a ritual of careful cleansing of her bumps, and all over massage to make sure there weren’t any lurking diseases manifesting about.

Around this time of supreme ugliness we finally met Matthew Broderick and Sally. And just as I predicted Daisy and Sally frolicked about, Daisy with her tennis ball, Sally with her Frisbee. Everything was going well, until, Matthew realized my dog had some kind of crazy disease - which he quickly started grilling me about (not the conversation I had envisioned, which went something like “gee, our dogs get along so well, we should have you out to our home in the Hamptons where our dogs can play in the surf. Our dogs are such great friends, you should come out every weekend!). The end of our conversation went something like this, “well it’s not contagious, I know it looks bad, and there are types of mange that are very contagious, but she doesn’t have that!; why would I let my dog infect yours…” my words lingered in the air as he gathered his Frisbee and his dog and scurried away.

Cut to small school children in their pristine Catholic uniforms screaming and running “ewww, what’s wrong with that dog?” only to have the kiddies running terrified from scabby dog, while scabby dog bounds gleefully after them. Suddenly, my bold reserve morphed into weepy self pity. I’d walk Daisy and cry. Around Washington Square Park we’d walk, too embarrassed to even use the schoolyard any longer, for fear celebrity types might be afraid of catching something from my dog, Washington Square seemed more anonymous and forgiving. Until the 20/20 Barbara Walters special aired, I don’t know this because I saw it, I didn’t even own a TV at the time, but because the pedestrians of the Park had seen it, and started pointing and screaming at me: Puppy Mill Puppy! You have a Puppy Mill Puppy! I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded bad, and I was generally already walking and crying and spending all my hard earned cash on vet bills. How much more could I endure?

It was also around this time that I began to give up. All I wanted was a nice dog to be best friends with, to follow me around and do fun stuff. My boss for the whole time I owned Daisy, the artist Robert Rauschenberg and his first assistant, the artist Darryl Pottorf were extremely supportive. While Bob lived in Captiva, Florida, he frequently stayed in New York – in the five story building that he owned that was his curatorial office, pied-de-terre, and exhibition space. It was on one of these visits, that as Bob petted Daisy lovingly, that Darryl said “she’s such a good dog, she just doesn’t know that she’s ugly!” For some reason those words resonated new clarity into my mission, yes, she’s ugly, but she doesn’t know it, and it’s not her fault.

The next stop was to the head of the Dermatology Department at the Animal Medical Center – when one of my not afraid of infection, dog buddies mentioned it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they had a dermatology department, yes I’d better go there! It’s about a grand to even walk through the doors of AMC in New York City, and at the time, they only took cash! So with an advance on a month’s salary we went to see Dr. Schulberg. It was like visiting the wizard! Surely, this is the answer we’ve been waiting for. After getting all the awkwardness out of the way quickly: no I’m not getting a dog that’s not damaged, yes we’ve already been doing Mitaban dips, I understand all there is to know about the immune system complications and I’m aware that infection can be a problem, what else can you offer me? I got the strangest answer that only a grand can buy you! “She might out grow it,” this kind vet said! This was the only vet thus far that even offered this as a possibility. “Thank you doctor, a grand well spent,” I thanked her and on my way I went.

So off to the holistic vet on Eldridge Street, I’d heard very positive things about him, and thought that we should stop just trying to treat the systems and look at improving the immune system. Surprised to hear about “lethal injection” as an option, we went on to discuss what was good and bad for the D dog. Fillers and preservatives were very bad, so I started feeding the most expensive natural dog food I could find. I’m pretty sure I supplied the owner of Creature Features with his new wheels, but it was worth it.

Besides being perennially broke from Daisy, my boyfriend of the last few years also broke up with me, because he said I was becoming obsessive over Daisy. He just couldn’t understand why I was spending all my money and all my free time on trying to help a dog that had turned his parquet floors into a weird pyramid configuration. Oh, yes, Daisy was also slow to be housebroken, she would pee in his apartment in her favorite corner, and apparently parquet floors start to mushroom up if they are constantly watered.

We also moved from my groovy SoHo apartment, where I could see twenty-seven water tanks to a place where the ugly and the freaks are embraced – the East Village, Alphabet City to be exact. Now I could see twenty-seven crack whores from my window but we had a floor through penthouse apt, and no one would make sounds of disgust as we walked down the street. It was around this time, that I didn’t care what Daisy looked like anymore. After having tried to shield her from infection and coddled her because I thought she was going to die at any moment, I did a 180! I decided if she could die at any moment, we’d better live some noteworthy moments! I started taking Daisy to the East River Park and running with her, and just letting her have a grand ole time. She made plenty of dog friends in the less than hygienic East Village, where even squatters had dogs! And sure enough, at about a year old, something strange happened. Her scabs started to heal! Her fur started to grow back!! By a year and a half she looked like a normal dog, almost like a Golden Retriever, but not quite!

The rest of our story ends with many picnics in the park, walks with incredible amounts of pride, and we even had a Saturday morning ritual of rollerblading down to Battery Park City to eat bagels while looking at the Statue of Liberty, with our neighbors that had a rescue Schipperke! Daisy lived with me in pretty good health for the next ten years, until spleen cancer took her from me. But in typical Daisy fashion, her exit was as expensive as her entrance into my life, because I only wanted my little Golden girl to live. I would have given anything for another day, month, year! The Animal Medical Center got another month’s advance, and I got another month with my dog. After much dedication, money and sacrifice she was the best dog in the whole world, but I would never ever get another pet store bought or puppy mill dog again ever. Once your eyes are open to the idea of puppy mills, they never close!

Puppy mills are the most insidious parasite on the face of the pet industry. They play upon people’s emotions, they see a cute dog and they want that dog. They are willing to believe anything to get that dog, even if it means perpetuating an industry full of infection, deceit and misery. If I knew then, what I know now, I would have gotten another rescue dog, from a legitimate broker of homeless dogs – a rescue. Eight months after Daisy died, the Twin Towers came down, and Catspur died about three weeks after this monumental event. Bereaved beyond consolation, I stopped at a local shelter, the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition, just to look at some potential pets. We started with some cats, and thought we’d better look at some dogs. There was a Shepherd mix that was displaced because debris from the Towers was going to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where he lived with his pack. This was an older dog, but he had all his fur! When I asked how he got along with cats, as I had another kitty that he would have to live with – they said, “we don’t know. If he tries to bite your cat bring him back.” Much like my ill-fated Monsignor, he walked in, made one woof at the cat and sat down. He’s been disease free, behaviorally sound, knock wood, for the last six years!

This story is dedicated to Margaret LeBeau, whose tenacity, determination and conviction have been an inspiration to my life. She is responsible for making my steely resolve so steely, to the great benefit of my dog Daisy.