Remembering an escape artist named Stash, who stole our hearts
By Nan Graham
Each year, my favorite Christmas card was always the homemade one from Louise Grant featuring her rescue dog, Stash, an 11th-hour escapee from Death Row at the kill shelter. Never was there such a rag-tag animal whose appearance was as startling as this homely canine’s. She seemed to have been assembled by a deranged blind man with only remnants: A scruffy terrier mix, her coat was a wiry scraggle; every day was a bad hair day for Stash. Her long thin too-tall legs were disproportionate to her scrawny body. I suggested Stash needed a dust ruffle to mask her proportions.
Stash’s one redeeming feature? The most beautiful enormous brown eyes since Omar Sharif’s in the film Dr. Zhivago.
Louise’s father, Oscar (quite a card himself), when asked what breed of dog Stash might be, would answer, “She is an East Tribecastan terrier.” When the questioner looked skeptically at the unfortunate little dog, Oscar delivered his punch line, “We’re very lucky. Those terriers from West Tribecastan are really ugly.”
Her tragic flaw: She managed to escape every confined space in the dog pound . . . and then in Louise’s home. No fence too high, no yard too secure. A canine Houdini. Stash was named for her habit of “stashing” food under the sofa in preparation for leaner times. On the plus side, Stash managed to bring home the blue ribbon in every Ugly Dog contest she entered.
The Yuletide cards pictured Stash in various ensembles with an appropriate holiday pun: “Bark the Hairy Angels Sing” or “Do you Hair What I Hair?” Stash would sit stoically while Louise arranged the homemade costume for each photo shoot. If the Biblical Job had a dog, it would have been Stash. The mutt should have been named Patience. Her soulful eyes staring straight into the lens, Stash sat motionless for retake after retake. . . a real feat for an escape artist dog who never met an enclosure she couldn’t crack.
The Stash cards never fail to make me smile at the long-suffering, decked-out fleabag with the clever captions. For seven years, the tradition continued until the beloved Stash died of heart failure. “It was the one thing Stash couldn’t escape from,” Louise sighs, putting the cards back into the little red box alongside the first prize blue ribbons.
Nan Graham is a regular Salt contributor and has been a local NPR commentator since 1995.
