The story of Max

To my friends who are particularly animal lovers,

Here is a short story long on a neighborhood dog who I love and is asking for some attention and help.  Do you have words of counsel on this situation?  Do you have ideas on how I should be approaching this?  Or most importantly, do you want to help me in anyway to help this dog?

Meeting Max

One afternoon, Mike, comes home after taking our husky, Sequoia, for a walk.

“Hey, I found this dog around the corner, who lives in this family’s stairwell,” he tells me.
“What do you mean he lives in the stairwell?” I asked, curiously.

“He sleeps on this platform, that leads up to some apartment units.  I feel really bad for him,” Mike replies with sympathy.

A few days later, we take a walk to the corner where the stairwell dog is.  He is a German Shepherd with ears that are too big for his face.  He barks at us, perhaps because he smells Sequoia.  Mike reaches through the bars to scratch him on the head.  The place reeked of dog urine and dirt so I watch him from a distance.  There was nothing enticing about this dog–not his smell nor his heavy barking.

A few weeks later, I pass by him again, with Sequoia on a leash.  I pause to say hello to him.  He barks for a moment and then lays his head by the bar so I can pet him.  He is eager for physical contact, I can sense it as he rubs his head into my palm.  He has soft eyes and a gentle touch.

I look around his living area–a small bowl for his food, a raggedy round pillow as his bed cushion and feces hanging around the bottom part of the stairs.  Underneathe the stairs is a plastic dog house.  It looks unappealing to sleep there, right by where he does his business.  He chooses sleeps on his dirty pillow, which has been slept on for so long, it has lost all of his cushion.  I feel bad for him, knowing that every time I have passed by him, he stays in the stairwell and doesn’t seem to get taken out for walks.  Nor have I ever seen his owners socializing with him.

I tell Mike later that night that my heart has opened up to this dog and we have to help him.  I wasn’t sure how he could be helped, who takes care of him, or anything else about the dog.  But I was sure that he isn’t living in fair conditions, and he deserves more than living out in the cold because he is a loving and sweet animal.

Weeks pass by and I go say hi to the dog more frequently, once a day if I can remember.  Mike and I like to go to the liquor store across the street and buy a pack of cheese for him.  He is always very eager for treats when we come by.  I end up giving him Sequoia’s dog bed so he can be warmer at night.

One night, we went by to visit him and saw that a young woman was also there, saying hello to him.  We told her that we came to say hi to the dog, too.  She says that she goes to see him twice a day.

“Do you know who his family is?” we ask her.

“It’s the family that owns this record store.  A man and his grown-up kids.” she says.  “Are they friendly?”

“They are polite but not very friendly.  I asked the man once if I could take the dog out for walks but he said no.  It seems like he is here as a guard dog,” she says.  People in the neighborhood are particularly scared of big dogs like so it wasn’t a surprise.

We learned that his name is Max and that other people have been paying attention to him, too.  The woman said that she and other neighbors have asked Animal Control to check him out.  They always say that he’s not in bad enough condition to take him away.

The news was disappointing– two of the possible things we could do to help the dog has failed in the past.  Later that week, I decide to call up Animal Control again.

“Oh, you mean the dog on Sacramento Street, the shepherd?” the operator asked.  “He’s actually fine.  We’ve gotten many many calls about him and we’ve done about 20 checks on him.  He’s always got food and water.  The owner says he takes him out at night… I don’t choose to house my dog like that but there’s nothing we can do for him.” I try to argue that many times when I’ve crossed by, he doesn’t have food or water, and that his den is often filthy.  She insists that he’s okay and I give up.

I contact animal rescue organizations and they tell me to try to convince the owner to give him up.  One morning, I write a note on an index card, asking the folks if they are thinking of selling their dog.  If so, we love Max and would love to buy him.  Here’s our number.

No response.

Mike and I came to the conclusion it wouldn’t be a good idea for strangers to talk to them about their dog’s bad living conditions. We needed to find neighbors who were friends with Max’s family.  We talked to a good number of people and learned the history of the family and Max.

The family has been in that corner building since 1993, and so has the dog.  Max was supposedly a “vicious dog” and he would’ve “tore you apart” when he was younger.  People recount that he’s been living in that stairwell for the last 15 years, and none of our neighbors have ever seen him go for walks of any sort.  Not many of our closest neighbors are good friends with the family but they encouraged us to just go and talk to them.

The other day, I planned an excursion to go into the record store, make a purchase and sneak in a conversation about the dog. “We live on the other side of the block and we’ve been meaning to ask your family if we can take your dog out for walks when we take our dog out,” I asked this younger woman who was working at the time.

She said that her father takes the dog out every morning to the Marina at 5am and insists that he’s doing just fine. Afterwards, we told our neighbors about this conversation and they said that she was lying.  No one has ever seen the dog leave that place.

Mike and I have not bolstered up the courage to go and talk to the woman’s father.  Her father is a older man with a stern  demeanor.  Mike is almost certain that he will just say no to us.  I, on the other hand, am too nervous to talk to someone about something that is so close to the heart.  I also do not want to cause too much commotion about it because I live too closely to him and don’t want to risk neighborly tensions.  The most we have done recently is buy him a fleece coat to help keep him warm at night.

It breaks my heart to see such a dog like him be stuck in this place for the remainder of his life.  My deepest desire is to get him out of there and find  a loving family for him, which may end up being our family if Sequoia approves. Taking him out for walks may only the short term solution to give him some fresh air and exercise.

But there’s no way us strangers can convince a family we’re too fearful to talk to give him up or even let us take him for walks.

Any ideas or know anyone who can help? He is on the southeast corner of Sacramento and Prince St. in South Berkeley, outside of Reid’s Record Store, if you want to befriend him.