Stepdog by Mireya Navarro Page B

just ran around nonstop. He was definitely trouble. Then there was this big, incredibly intimidating pit bull named Brownie. That was the sweetest, nicest, most docile dog. He weighed about one hundred pounds. He was scary to look at. And he was completely dominated by this fifteen-pound Boston terrier named Molly. She pushed him around and kicked his ass. She was humping him even though she was a female, which is a sign of dominance. Brownie didn’t realize he was one hundred pounds and could kill her in a second. I mean, this was a funny house.”
    Jim didn’t find a match that day, but Jackie invited him back a couple weeks later, after she had inherited a new bunch of oddballs. So there Jim sat as Jackie brought the dogs out one by one. One of them was fat. Another one was skinny. Tall. Short. There were plenty of cute dogs, Jim thought, but none of them seemed quite right.
    â€œI wanted a short-haired dog and I wanted one that wasn’t too big and I wanted one that had a sweet temperament, not too many neuroses.”
    Yes, we know. Picky, picky.
    Finally, Jackie said, “All right. I think you’re going to like this one.”
    â€œShe opens the door and in bounds this spotted ball of love,” Jim said. “And Eddie took one look at me and I think he just knew. He latched on to me and he was just not going to take no for an answer. He was on my lap. He was cuddly. He was sweet. He wagged his tail and his whole rear half wagged.”
    Yes, it’s called finding a sucker.
    â€œHe was a little bigger than I wanted. He was a male and I wanted a female. But there was no doubt in his mind that he had found a home. I had virtually no say in the matter. I brought Arielle and Henry to see him a few days later and they really liked him. So we took him home.”
    â€œThat’s so sweet,” I said. “How old was he?”
    â€œWell, they thought he was about a year old, but it was just guesswork because he was found on the street in the San Fernando Valley, behind a dumpster. It was clear he had been abandoned. He was kind of mangy.”
    That made Eddie probably fourteen in dog years now. Great, a teenager. I smiled empathetically, looking at the “ball of love” napping. In his catatonic state, Eddie, indeed, seemed cuddly enough. I looked at Jim and . . . was that mist in my boyfriend’s gorgeous blue eyes? It had obviously been love at first sight for him too.
    But Eddie almost blew it. On his first visit to a dog park with his brand-new family, Jim let him off the leash to frolic and sniff around. All was well until Eddie spotted a pug puppy and mistook him for a ham sandwich. In no time the pug was halfway down Eddie’s throat and would have died if Jim hadn’t rushed over and successfully pried the nearly asphyxiated pug out of Eddie’s dripping jaws. Arielle and Henry were hysterical. The pug’s owners—two little kids with their mom—were traumatized. The mom, in typical California fashion, immediately threatened to sue. But her bouncy puppy showed a quick recovery right then and there, so this story had a happy ending for the pug, not for Eddie. The next day Jim took him back to Jackie and told her he couldn’t deal with an aggressive dog. She promised intense rehab. One week of doggie boot camp later, Eddie returned for good.
    Everything was peachy again in Eddieworld—except for no more dog parks for the mutt—until four months later. That’s when I showed up.
    I reached out for Jim’s hand and kissed him. As Eddie snored softly, I had a feeling I would have much preferred Molly the dominatrix. I like smallish dogs that don’t feel like a full-bodied roommate. And I don’t like males that live to mark their territory. There was more in Eddie’s unsavory past, as I would find out eventually. But it was easy to ignore Eddie in my blissful state with Jim. Our courtship continued to be nurtured by