Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family Read Free

from dawn to dusk.
    But to say that the neighborhood is dog friendly would be an understatement. At Halloween, canine residents compete in the
     neighborhood’s annual costume contest and dog parade. Contestants have included a Batman whippet, a
Wizard of Oz
cowardly lion Bernese mountain dog, a Cinderella Chihuahua, a Minnie Mouse pug, and a Madonna Lhasa apso, all strutting their
     stuff.
    They competed against creatively attired Rhodesian ridgebacks, Australian shepherds, dalmatians, Havaneses, Border collies,
     Scottish terriers, and, of course, an army of mutts. (One year, the champion was Santiago, a one-year-old pit bull “biker”—in
     a leather jacket, leather cap, white T-shirt, and blue jeans.)

    It was in this dog-friendly world that my own cocker spaniel, Katie, found a home. Over a period of nearly fifteen years (via
     more than 20,000 walks) my curiously intelligent dog explored every inch of Battery Park City.
    I can see her now—trotting along the Hudson, racing for tennis balls in the park, chasing squirrels, snoozing under a willow
     tree, stealing nacho chips at our local Mexican restaurant, taking sunset cruises on a local sailboat, greedily licking my
     pistachio ice-cream cone on a hot summer night, and, like all dogs, searching for the best smells and tastiest treats available
     to her.
    But this is not just a story about a precocious dog.
    It’s about how that dog had the power to turn five neighbors into a real family—racing up and down a 120-foot hallway between
     apartments, pushing doors in with her paws, herdingher “pack” together, and trotting outside along the Hudson, her spirit a magnet to all.
    Through her soulful eyes, we witness antics and family adventures spanning everything from Hollywood high times to the terrors
     of 9/11, one dog creating a family circle that embraced and transformed each of its members, including me.
    Of course, none of what I’m about to tell you was planned—or expected. In fact, I sometimes ask myself: What if I had never
     moved to Battery Park City at all? Was everything that happened just an accident, coincidence, or luck?
    Or was it fate and destiny?
    I can tell you I definitely believe in the power of
proximity
, for who we’re physically near is so often who we wind up being close to.
    And so, I now invite you to enter my little world in a town built on water.
    Like one of those online maps that allows you to zoom into any city, then zero in on the neighborhood, street, and building,
     come on down to Battery Park City… and find out what happened—
up and down the hall
.
    New York
    May 2010

C HAPTER O NE
Faux-Paws
    A s a kid, I was never a “dog person,” to say the least.
    In fact, I was terrified of dogs.
    It all began with “Strippy”—a menacing black-and-white spotted English pointer, who was always barking furiously at the top
     of his lungs in our neighbor’s yard.
    There he was, all seventy pounds of him, nervously pacing back and forth on a long metal chain, or sitting ominously on top
     of his green-and-white doghouse, surveying his kingdom from above.
    Strippy was the king of the mountain—and I was his prey, frightened by his incessant barking and growling. We might as well
     have been living next door to a
lion
, for to me it amounted to the same thing.
    On hot summer days on Bondcroft Drive, a quiet street in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, my sister Joanne and I would race
     through the sprinkler or splash in a small wading pool. But we weren’t entirely carefree, always keeping a wary eye on this
     seemingly dangerous animal, just thirty feet away.
    I would later understand that the source of Strippy’s frustration was being chained up all day. After all, pointers are fullof energy and go-power, tireless as hard-driving hunting dogs. They love to gallop and roam.
    So it was no wonder that Strippy was so high-strung, lacking freedom and exercise. His owners kept him restrained, they said,
     to prevent him from running