Commander Canine and the Case of the Russian Pancake Hound
By: Stan Denski
Photo By: Stan Denski
My best friend in Indianapolis was a Russian historian at IUPUI. A couple years ago, though it doesn’t feel nearly that long, he lost a battle to cancer. Now that the cloud of loss and sadness has dissipated a bit, I find myself thinking of some of the more interesting times we shared. This is one of my favorites. On a Tuesday afternoon in March I was sitting in my office just south of 54th and Keystone and, as I usually did most afternoons, I was looking over numbers and watching the small company I ran move, like the slow but irretrievable movement of a glacier, closer and closer toward “non profit” status. A phone call from Scott was a life preserver tossed into my sea of red ink. A friend of his had been in town for the weekend and I had not spoken with him since late the previous week. He sounded very down, almost as if he’d been looking over the same numbers I was just looking at. “Some workers left the gate open Saturday and the dogs got out.” He told me. “The dogs” were two mostly feral hounds with the personalities of juvenile correctional center residents who probably ought to be tried as adults. “Lilly” was an attractive black and white 60-pound mixed breed who pretty much went into a homicidal rage when confronted by things like dust settling on the floor or a cloud passing in front of the mid-day sun. “Sive” (adapted from some Russian name and which I’ve probably misspelled) was a slightly larger mix of a Collie and a very very hysterical person. By Tuesday Lilly had somehow found her way back home, but Scott’s favorite, Sive, was still missing and, after four days, things weren’t looking good. Scott lived a few blocks from the Butler University campus on the city’s near north side. He’d blanketed his neighborhood with flyers offering a massive reward for Sive’s return but had received no calls. He drove in a criss-crossing pattern from his home all the way south to 38th Street, down alleys and side streets, stopping regularly to call the dog’s name in the tireless fantasy that Sive would come running out from between some houses with a “Where the hell have you been?” look on her face. Unfortunately, coming up with a lost dog in the city of Indianapolis makes the old needle in a haystack thing seem pretty manageable by comparison. As anyone with the unfortunate experience knows, losing a dog in this way is worse than losing one to a fast moving car or disease. The dog isn’t gone in one burst of sadness that then gradually recedes; instead, the sadness collects in pools and puddles that you step in for a long time. Even a smart lost dog is a bit like a mentally retarded child who doesn’t quite remember where he lives and is just out there in the world trying his best to cross major highways and find something to eat. Add to that – how shall I put this? – Sive wasn’t the brightest bulb in the doggie chandelier; not by a long shot. But I digress. On most days I would leave work about four or five o’clock and drive east to Emerson Avenue and head south from there to my home in Irvington. Occasionally I would make a detour to The Chatterbox for a drink and stop by Mass Ave Video to see what was new. On those days my route would change and I’d cross over to Meridian and head south to downtown. I’m telling you all of this so you’ll understand the mind-numbing collection of coincidences that amassed that day culminating in what came to be known as “the miracle of the dog rescue” and explains why, until my friend became to ill to leave the house, I never paid my own bar tab again. That Tuesday, after I spoke with Scott, I decided to stop at The Chatterbox for a drink and headed south on Keystone, took Fall Creek over to Meridian and started driving south. At 16th Street I was in stopped at the light when the bus in the right lane started up and passed me I did a quadruple take as I saw Sive, the legendary lost dog herself, standing on the corner of 16th and Meridian looking even more confused than usual. I turned around the block and doubled back, parking at a gas station a block west of Meridian and 16th. When I called her name and tried to approach her she, possibly sensing the sort of things I’d one day write about her, looked at me and ran the other way. The next time you hear someone say that Indianapolis isn’t a “real” city, take them to the corner of 16th and Meridian at four-thirty on a weekday and tell them to either cross against the light or take it back. Even smart dogs have trouble with urban traffic patterns and when I found Sive standing on the sidewalk across from the International House of Pancakes she was watching the cars and trucks whizzing by with the exact same look on her face you would expect to see on the face of a squirrel faced with a tricky calculus problem. As I came around the corner she saw me and ducked into the parking garage of a motel that sits just south of the corner. When she came back out onto the sidewalk a moment later I stepped back to the edge of a small grassy island set back from the street and sat down on the edge of the grass. She slowly worked her way over toward me and came up behind me and sat on the grass. I offered my hand and said her name a few times; she crawled over, sniffed my hand and began to lick me. I petted her and took my belt off and threaded inside her collar. Once she was on a leash she calmed down and I walked her across the street, put her in the car, and drove her home. The reunion later that night was very emotional. Tearing up, Scott asked “How… how… I don’t under… how on Earth did you find her?” “Actually,” I said “it was really pretty easy. I just put myself in the mind of the dog. If I were a dog, I thought, what would I want? A few seconds later, it suddenly came to me: Pancakes! A little cross checking in the yellow pages determined that the closest place to get a stack of buckwheat cakes is the IHOP at 16th and Meridian. I got in my car, and picked her up while she was waiting for the light to change.” “Case closed.” I said, and tucked the cape of my Commander Canine costume back into my pants. “Whatever. Drinks are on me,” my friend said. And they were. The unexpected thing was how finding that dog made me feel. In reality of course, I had nothing much to do with it. In a sense, it was really like having an accident at 16th and Meridian, only instead of my car being in the body shop and wife being mad, my friend was happy and the insurance company was never involved. It is the kind of thing we all hope we might get to do for our friends. In a broader sense, it is the kind of thing most of us want to do for strangers too. |
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