Dogs ride in the backseat
Every word of this is true.
No names have been changed to protect anyone.
No names are mentioned.
It was a while ago.
I didn't have a girlfriend.
I hadn't had a girlfriend for quite some time and I wanted one. I mentioned this to an ex-wife and she suggested I get a dog.
I'm allergic to cats but some dogs have been okay for me. We had a poodle when I was young and the poodle was okay. My sister once had a very hairy dog — a big, hairy dog — and that dog wasn't so okay. When I talked about the dog thing with my ex-wife we agreed that a poodle would be a good choice. She would get me one.
But she didn't.
Time went by.
No dog. No girlfriend.
A co-worker announced that it was time for me to get a dog.
She drove me to the pound in Manhattan in her Jaguar XJ12 and then stepped back while I looked over the potential adoptees.
I walked slowly through a room with rows of cages from the floor almost to the ceiling.
As I walked down the first row all of the dogs I saw looked lethargic, all except one. The lively one was almost crying out, "Come on, let's play!" But he didn't look anything like a poodle.
I stopped momentarily but then kept walking. Walking past all the other cages, the high ones and the low ones, I didn't see any dog that looked like a poodle.
I took another lap around
Again the lively dog seemed to be saying, "Come on! Let's play!"
He had longish hair, not the short, curly, hair of a poodle. He was black and brown, about forty pounds. A medium size dog. I took him.
Somewhere in paying the forty dollar adoption fee (was it forty dollars a pound?) I missed the part where I was supposed to get him neutered. My concern was how well he could ride in a car.
We had come in a nice Jaguar sedan. The dog went into the back seat. He seemed happy to have found a new owner and he seemed happy to get a ride in a car.
Now at this time in my life I was alternating between the New York City penthouse and the country (inactive) farm which meant a drive of several hours from one to the other, which was why I needed a dog that was good in a car. (At the time I would have been happy to have found a girlfriend who was good in a car but the dog was the best I could do. Oh, and not all dogs are good in cars. Later I had a dog who would shit on the drivers seat when I left her for ten minutes to run into a store.)
Mostly I drove back and forth from city to country in a big old gray Bentley S2. It had nice fold-out picnic tables in the back, like the fold=down tables in front of airplane seats, and when we stopped for takeout, the dog could have used the picnic table, but I don't recall ever pulling it down for him though I sometimes was tempted to.
Sometime after the adoption I looked over the dog's papers and discovered he had originally been named "Brutus." I had already named him "Billy" and I wasn't tempted to go back to Brutus. "Brutus" sounded, well, brutal, and a bit rough for a frisky, friendly young dog. He was about six months old when I got him.
In his lifetime only one person knew where the "Billy" name had come from. Billy, a large man, was the empresario of the neighborhood topless bar near my old office. It was fairly small and very democratic, catering to men of all ages and occupations. The person who recognized the origins of Billy's name, like myself, had been a regular.
Now Billy (the dog) was quite happy to ride in the back seat of the Bentley. I trained him to always ride in the back seat of a car. He took to the training well — he was a smart dog — and he always jumped right into the back seat, happy to sit or stretch out on the fine leather upholstery. Once I put him in a Chevy Suburban with vinyl upholstery and he threw up on it but he didn't try to climb over into the front seat. Then one day we went for a ride in a Ferrari. The Ferrari didn't have a back seat.
This was a 250 GT/L, the "Lusso."
There was a film that had a Lusso in it supposed to be ex-Steve McQueen. $1 million was mentioned as the cost. Lussos were pretty rare as only a few hundred were made. I had two of them. Not from Steve McQueen but one had been owned by a once-prominent rock star. But the Lusso didn't have a back seat.
I remember seeing a Lusso at a dealership shortly after I had come out of the Army. At the time I never imagined that some day I might be owning one much less two. But, of course, by the time I got mine they were far from new. And they didn't have back seats.
This posed something of a dilemma for Billy. He was a good dog and wanted to do what was right when we took our first ride together in the Ferrari — but there was no back seat.
Knowing he wasn't supposed to ride in the front seat of a car, Billy gingerly crept onto the luggage ledge behind the seats and tried as best he could to flatten himself out. Then he looked at me and his eyes said, "I'm doing the best I can do."
While he could fit on that ledge behind the seats that was intended for luggage and, when new, would have had leather straps to hold down a small suitcase, there was nothing to hold down a dog. If I hit the brakes hard he would come flying forward, against the back of my head, pushing it down. I wouldn't have been able to see the road. Dangerous!
So the rules changed for 2-seaters. He was allowed in the front seat. Still, Billy understood that, when there was a back seat, that was where he was to ride.
When we got into convertibles, like the 275 GTS, there were other issues. But that's another story.
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