Through the Fence

The first time I saw Alice was on Instagram. I was elbows deep scrolling through the followers of the pet account I had set up for Edgar, our one-and-a-half year old Olde English Bulldogge, when I saw Alice’s face. It was posted by a small family hobby breeder that Edgar “followed.” Her face was white, and her eyes—one brown, one blue—stared sadly though a chain link fence. The post caption stated that she had returned to their home after three months with a family. The breeders were looking for a new home for her—somewhere with room where she could be cozy inside with a family most of the day. She was barely six months old.

Curious, I messaged the breeders, the image of Alice’s face singed into my mind. They said that the they had taken her back from her “owners” after finding out that she has been neglected. She was underweight, scared, and covered in scabs. They were working to bring her back to health.

“Oh I wish I could get her!” I’d said.

But I kept returning to look at that picture of her, sad eyes staring longingly through the wire fence.

Days passed and my heart ached for this little bulldog, taken back to her old home, unsure why her chosen family didn’t love her. Courage (or audacity) began to bubble inside me. I took a breath, loaded the picture of the bulldog on my phone, and walked up to my then-boyfriend (now husband), and showed him the picture. “We need her,” I said. “Edgar needs a sister.”

“She’s cute,” he said.

“She was abused. The breeders took her back.”

He stared. “No!”

“They want her to have a loving family. And I love Edgar so much... I just want another one!”

My boyfriend turned to face me. “Where is she?” he asked.

“Indiana.”

We lived in southeastern Massachusetts, over 1,000 miles away.

He barely took a breath. “Okay. Let’s get her.”

That weekend, we spent our spare time coordinating our cross-country trip with the breeder. Due to the length of our drive, they agreed to meet us on the eastern border of Indiana, saving us a few hours of driving time. We packed up a cooler of food, booked pet-friendly hotel rooms, grabbed toys and food for our first bulldog, Edgar, to join us on the road trip, and left Massachusetts just over a week after I had seen the picture of the sad bulldog staring through a fence.

***

We met the breeder and her family in the parking lot of a restaurant. They took the puppy out of the car and said, “She’s a little shy, so she might take some time to warm up to you.”

Alice immediately peed on the pavement and then ran up to me, butt wiggling, and stuck her head between my knees. She tilted her head to stare up at me, as if to say, “Are you my new home?”

“Her name is Reba, but we just call her Pretty Girl,” the breeders said.

My boyfriend and I agreed that she was certainly a Pretty Girl, but definitely not a Reba.

We let Edgar out of the car to meet his new sister, and he bumbled out like a dizzy bowling ball. The family laughed at how big Edgar was, and said he looked just like Alice’s dad. We said our goodbyes and got back in the car to drive home, ready to brainstorm a replacement name for “Reba.”

“Louisa,” I suggested as we drove, our new bulldog sitting in my lap. “Like the author, Louisa May Alcott. To fit Edgar Allen Pup.”

My boyfriend shook his head and stretched one hand off the steering wheel to pet Edgar, who whined in the back seat. “No. That doesn’t fit her.”

“Then what?”

Minutes passed.

“Alice,” he said. “Alice.”

“Like Alice in Wonderland?” I asked. “I guess that’s literary.”

“Alice,” my boyfriend said again.

I looked down at the wiggly ball of white and chocolate brown. “Alice.”

And on the interstate in Ohio, just east of the Indiana border, Alice began her trip home to Wonderland.