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Overview
By turns funny, moving, tender, and inspiring, Gracie's tale is a treat for every dog lover. There is Gracie's first morning, racing around Dan in the snowy yard. Gracie's first determination to prove to her step-sisters, Dottie the Dalmation and Sarah the Black Lab, that she's one of the girls. Gracie's defiant romance with a pint-size charmer named Byron, a Boston Terrier from the wrong side of the fence.
Then born of necessity, the eureka moment: When Gracie's delicate constitution starts turning into anorexia, Dan teaches himself how to cook, and in three days is baking her the cookies that will spur her appetite, launch Three Dog Bakery, and transform their lives forever.
Courage. Compassion. Kindness. Soul. Tenacity. And joy, above all, joy. These qualities Gracie possessed in abundance, and shared with everyone, human or canine, who had the good fortune to cross her path.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780761153627 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Workman Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 03/04/2003 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| Sales rank: | 650,502 |
| Lexile: | 1010L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Dan Dye is a co-founder of Three Dog Bakery and co-author of Short Tails and Treats from Three Dog Bakery and Three Dog Bakery Cookbook. He and Mark Beckloff live with their dogs Claire, Dottie Mae, and Joe in Kansas City, Missouri.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Kansas City Blues
Blue is a nice word for how I felt. I must have looked like a cliché of mourning: gray late-November Sunday afternoon, me in raggedy sweats and a two-day beard, slumped down in a Sears Barca-Lounger that looked almost as good as it had the day I rescued it from a Dumpster my freshman year in college. All I needed was a half-empty bottle of whiskey, a crow on my shoulder, and an ashtray full of unfiltered cigarette stubs to finish the picture: Man Grieving Lost Loved One. It didn't make it any easier that the loved one was my childhood best friend of eighteen years — my dog, Blue. The phone could ring all day; I just sat and stared at it. I wasn't trying to avoid people. I just didn't have anything to say. Except to Blue. And she couldn't hear me anymore.
There aren't any diplomats or charm school graduates among my friends and family members, so their attempts to comfort me about Blue usually had the opposite effect. "She's probably happier now" was a favorite, along with "you can always get another one"— though nothing could top "thank God it was only a dog!" Only two people managed not to make me feel worse. One was Anne, my friend and fellow copywriter at Midwestern Company, who had lost her beloved golden retriever, Arthur, only a few months earlier. The other was Mark, my best friend, new housemate, future business partner, and generally the soul of good sense, skepticism, and bad taste.
Mark Beckloff and I had just gone in on a house together, a dilapidated "mansion" on Holmes Street in the heart of Kansas City. We planned to fix it up and sell it for a cool profit that would let us bankroll our business idea — as soon as we came up with one. For now it was our home until we did well enough to live somewhere else, or one of us pulled a Double Indemnity on the other — something I almost never considered. Blue's passing hadn't left us entirely dogless, because there were still Sarah and Dottie, aka "the girls," Mark's canine contribution to the household. He likes to think he's their human companion. Reality check: The girls are Mark's proud owners. Sarah's a two-year-old black Lab mix who's always in a good mood, especially when she's eating something Mark has to wear the next day. Dottie is an uncontrollable force of nature in the deceptive form of a year-old Dalmatian. Dottie wreaks havoc when she's in a good mood; only her spots keep people from mistaking her for a tornado.
Sarah, Dottie, Mark, and Anne gave me the most valuable gifts you can offer someone who's grieving: solitude and, occasionally, quiet company. Then one frigid morning a few weeks later, Anne added another great gift to quiet caring: distraction.
It was one of those bitter late-January days when you start wondering if a foot of snow might take the edge off the cold, and Anne, who always says her blood is too thin for Missouri winters, came into the office looking unseasonably happy. The fun-loving, energetic mom of two kids, Anne has the kind of call-'em-like-I-see-'em honesty that people associate with Harry S. Truman, who came from the same hometown. She's also a former prom queen with a way of flirting that always reminds me of a waitress in a greasy spoon — you know she doesn't mean it seriously, but it still makes you feel special. And once in a blue moon I get the eerie feeling she can read my mind.
I was a little suspicious about her good mood despite the single-digit temperature, and asked what was up. "Nothing!" she said brightly. How was her weekend? "Fine!" When I finally demanded to know what was going on, she pretended to be indignant: "Can't a gal be happy for no particular reason? Is there a law against being happy around here?" I knew better than to keep trying and went back to my work, which was just as well since we were up against a tight deadline on a new print-ad campaign for the Oh, So Delicioso! account.
They were expanding their "authentic sauces" line beyond "a bit o' Italy in every drop!" to "a bit o' Spain" and "a bit o' the Orient." Anne guessed that the company's authenticity experts must have logged grueling months of fieldwork in taco-terias and chop suey joints across the Midwest. (Market research had just told us that our leading contenders, "Oh-so es buen-o!" and "Ah, so — it's Oh-so!" didn't have the authentic foreign feel so prized by regular consumers of exotic canned goods.)
Anne left for lunch with a breezy "later, handsome!" but more than an hour later she wasn't back yet. I ran out to grab a slice at La Pizzateria Rusticana.
When I got back I found Anne crouched under her desk. I was just starting to think that the pressure of the Oh-So account had finally pushed her over the edge when she stood up, staggering under the weight of what looked like a small pony. She was beaming at the creature in her arms: a puppy. A squirmy and, for the moment, little Great Dane named Merlin.
He was a funny-looking guy, blue merle coated except for his cocoa brown eyes and the dark mask around his mouth that looked like a purple puppy version of Fred Flintstone's five o'clock shadow. His ears had just been cropped, and they were taped flat over his head with a bandage that reminded me of the bonnet on Whistler's mother. The way he was squirming around, you would have thought Anne had doused his fur with itching powder. Everything tickled him — if a puppy could laugh, Merlin had a case of the giggles. As it was Anne was doing enough giggling for the two of them, dropping barmaid lines like "baby, where ya been all my life?" in her husky alto. It was as if someone had taken my mature, wisecracking, accomplished colleague and replaced her with a wisecracking seven-year-old girl. If Merlin had been a man, I'd have worried about the spell he was casting on her, but it's hard to doubt the intentions of a puppy. Watching them, the Oh-So deadline vanished.
He wasn't even two months old and there wasn't much dog body to speak of yet, but he was bursting with puppy energy, all excited about being alive. As I cradled him in my arms, all the wonderful things I missed about Blue melded into one amazing and ineffable force I felt thrumping away in Merlin's heart — dog spirit. I wondered if I'd ever feel that force in my own life again.
Anne was transformed. Every day for the rest of the week she came in bubbling with stories and Polaroids of Merlin in action — getting a bath, wrestling with the dirty laundry, gnawing on his own tail, eating, sleeping, breathing ... The temperature hadn't clawed its way above the twenty-degree mark in five days but Honolulu Annie hadn't even mentioned it, let alone taken personal offense the way she usually did. The reason was obviously Merlin. I could see how cute he was, and how much joy he gave her ("Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right in the middle of the rug. Adorable."), but by the end of the week I realized that I just wasn't sharing her joy. I was starting to narrow my eyes and grit my teeth whenever I saw her smiling. It was a subtle change, but she picked up on it.
"Something bothering you, hon?"
"Ha. Me, bothered? Never."
"You sure about that?"
"Yep."
"Maybe something you can't put into words?"
"Look," I snapped. "If something was going on in my subconscious, don't you think I'd know about it?"
"Hmm. Well, let me know if anything does bother you, okay?"
Not likely. I felt the way you do when your best friend falls in love, and suddenly the running buddy who gave you all that no-strings attention is focusing the spotlight on someone else — in this case, someone who generally has his face in a bowl of soggy kibble. Merlin was a walking reminder of everything about Blue that was gone. It seemed like everyone I knew had a dog, and they were all so darn happy about it. I couldn't even get away from it at home, since Mark had the girls, who might as well have been his shadows the way they stuck to his side. (Of course, real shadows don't shed, or beg for treats whenever you're cooking.) The girls were great in their way, especially if you have a soft spot for hyperactive narcissistic adolescent canine maniacs — which the historical record seems to suggest I do. And even though Sarah and Dottie hung out with me more and more, I could never shake the thought that they weren't Blue, and they weren't technically mine, even if we were living under the same leaky roof.
At the stroke of noon, my phone rang. "Listen, Dan, I hate to bother you ..." It was Anne, calling from the other side of the office. "... but I have a problem, and I really need your help."
I turned halfway around to look at her, but kept talking into the phone. "What kind of problem?"
"Well," she said, with a serious look. "It's Merlin's sister. She needs our help!"
It sounded like a call from the Justice League. I tried to swivel all the way around but ended up dropping the phone on my foot. "Oww — Merlin has a sister?"
Five minutes later we were in my car.
CHAPTER 2Finding Grace
As we drove shivering to the breeder's house in my five-year-old, partially heated (driver's feet only) Hyundai, Anne told me that Merlin's sister was the last of the litter, and because she was deaf, no one wanted her. I don't know anything about Anne's family tree, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that she had missionaries swinging from every branch. Her eyes burned with the fiery zeal of the righteous, and I felt like the heathen locked in her sights.
Picturing a Great Dane breeder I half-expected to see a rambling and weather-beaten old farmhouse, maybe with a barn ingeniously converted into a state-of-the-art kennel, all the furnishings in (what else?) Dane-ish Modern. One of the farmhands — Clem — would eye us suspiciously until we mentioned dogs, and then his leathery skin would soften with a warm smile as he asked if we'd come "to speak a whelp from the last litter" then send us "up the road a piece to see the old man" — Zeb. All right, maybe Iwatched too many episodes of Lassie when I was a kid. So I was surprised to crunch up a long gravel driveway and pull up in front of a tiny 1950s ranch-style tract house. As I put the car in park, I could see that the attached garage had been turned into some kind of rec room, and the garage door replaced with sliding glass patio doors.
I turned off the engine and tried to make sense of the strange picture in front of us. Hanging inside the patio doors were pieces of fabric that ended in tatters three or four feet from the floor, as if hungry sharks had shredded defenseless curtains in a feeding frenzy and would soon be coming back for more. I'm not sure what expression was on my face (probably the one I save in case an elevator cable snaps), but I'm certain that Anne was studiously ignoring it. As we got closer to the house I realized that the grime on the glass doors was actually a million slimy nose and pawprints, which covered the glass like a camera lens smeared with butter to shoot the close-ups of an aging star.
Anne motioned to the doors. "Don't be shy — have a look!"
Peering inside, I could make out a herd of very large animals in various states of repose around what looked like Ozzie and Harriet's living room on bad acid. I was about to ask Anne where the dogs were kept when I realized — these were the dogs!
I'd always known that Great Danes were big, but in the same way I knew it about dinosaurs — I'd never actually seen a grown one in person. These were the biggest canines I had ever seen, and there seemed to be dozens of them! Great Danes the size of small cows sat up quickly on couches and chairs. I wouldn't have been entirely surprised to see one of them set down his pipe while another peered at us over a pair of reading glasses. When they saw us, some twelve angry hellions kneed and elbowed each other to get closer, crashing against the glass. A couple of them propped themselves upright, standing more than seven feet tall on their hind legs, looking down at me and howling for flesh. I thought of those amazing aquariums where you can go almost nose to nose with a creature that could be Jaws's delinquent nephew while some smart-aleck tour guide announces, "Just think — all that stands between you and three thousand pounds of prehistoric death drive is a flimsy little piece of glass!"
A deafening roar arose from behind the glass. The word barking does as much justice to the sound they made as crunching does to the noise of a jackhammer. If you haven't spent time around this giant breed, the first time can be a frightening experience. I expressed my fear with a three-foot backward jump — right into Anne.
Luckily, that flimsy glass was tempered against even the kamikaze attempts of raging Great Danes. As I helped Anne to her feet, she batted her eyelashes and said, "I like a man of action."
"Yeah, well," I said, brushing the gravel off my jacket, "if you meet one, say hi for me." She responded with a succinct punch to my shoulder, walked to the front door of the house, and rang the bell. I walked backward. If the glass doors didn't hold, I wanted to see 'em coming.
The door was opened not by Clem or Zeb but by a short, squat man named Al, who grunted and let us in. With his sleeveless undershirt and unlit cigar, he could have been Danny DeVi-to's uncouth older brother — not exactly what I was expecting. The other thing I wasn't expecting was the smell.
Imagine walking into a solid wall made of all the foulest odors you've ever smelled. Let it ferment for about thirty years and you'll have a mild sense of the stench that occupied Al's house and pressed the walls outward. I could tell that Anne wasn't exactly enjoying the experience either, but she was having a good old time watching me. My eyes teared, my nostrils burned, and my inner ear seemed to think I had been launched into weightless orbit around the earth.
After quick introductions and small talk about Merlin (Al's side of the conversation consisted mostly of nodding and the occasional "yup"), the breeder extended us a grumbling invitation to have a look at the creature he called "the little mistake." When Al opened the door to the rumpus room the dogs exploded in our direction like a multiple-warhead missile. I could tell now that they were less intent on devouring us than on bathing us, sniffing us, and then reporting the results. After about a minute of slobbery pandemonium I noticed Al pointing at something and trying to shout over the noise. He was saying either "Dasher threw up and a goner" or "That's her — the runt in the corner."
There, in the farthest corner of the room, all by herself, was the loneliest little dog I ever saw: a snowball of white and gray fur in that rolling sea of black-patched harlequins. Anne had never told me that this puppy was albino to boot. Merlin's sister was lying on the bare cement floor facing the wall, oblivious to the mayhem surrounding her. The other Danes seemed to sense that something wasn't quite right with her. Maybe it was her color, her floppy un-cropped ears, the way she didn't respond to the sounds they heard bubbling around them — but they left her alone. All of them — even her own mother. All she had for company was a dirty, gnawed-up tennis shoe and the threadbare terry-cloth belt from an old bathrobe.
A dog big enough to bear a saddle mistook Anne's pocketbook for a chew toy, and while Anne tried to reason with him I knelt down next to Merlin's little sister till we were almost eye to eye. It was a face I would never forget. She looked at me with huge blue eyes (think Paul Newman or a cloudless sky on a summer day, only bluer), the right one rimmed in black as if she'd gone just a bit overboard with the eye liner. Like most Great Dane pups she hadn't begun growing into her skin yet, and it hung on her tiny frame like an oversized velvety jumpsuit. Her ears hung down like the flaps on an old aviator's cap, making her whole head look heavy with theburden of sad secrets. She raised her eyebrows as if to ask, Can I tell my story to you? Then she barked — a short, quick bark, not loud at all but deep, like it was coming from way down.
"That's a new one." Al was still standing in the doorway. "Never heard her make a peep before. Dumb albinos."
She seemed startled by my close presence, but she got to her feet like a clumsy young foal and sniffed me. When I smiled, her short little tail went up like an antenna and started wagging, though she stayed a couple of inches away. The second I began petting her, though, she came right up and started licking my face, my hand ... every part of me she could reach. Just as I was wondering if anyone — human or canine — had shown her any affection at all in her short, lonely life, she did something unique in my experience of dogs. She raised her forehead to mine and very deliberately nuzzled my nose. Then she stepped back, looked into my eyes, came forward, and did it again.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Amazing Gracie"
by .
Copyright © 2000 Dan Dye, Mark Beckloff, and Richard Simon.
Excerpted by permission of Workman Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword (vii)1. Kansas City Blues (1)
2. Finding Grace (9)
3. Here Comes Trouble (17)
4. Little Miracle (29)
5. Smell the Flowers (35)
6. Sister Trouble (43)
7. First Love (71)
8. The Gracious Gourmet (93)
9. My First Christmas (109)
10. Auld Lang Syne (121)
11. A Bakery for Dogs? (135)
12. GracieAs Prime Time (181)
13. Motherly Grace (217)
14. Goodnight, Gracie (235)
Epilogue (247)