Gringo, Coyote, & Róisín

I was lonely. The last few years had been hard. I went through a breakup and custody battle. My ex had moved on to other relationships including a failed marriage and some live-in boyfriends. Early on in the journey, I decided it best not to have a woman in my life. I dated a few who were awesome, but was fearful of dragging them into the ravages of the battle. These were women who deserved to start relationships tabula rasa. On top of that, I saw how upset my kids were over the various people who’d shown up in their lives only to suddenly disappear and become verboten. “Never mention X, Y, or Z’s name again!” Their mom would say. It devastated them. To steal from Neil Young, the madness was too much sorrow.

I wanted a dog. My baby, Lulu,

stayed with my ex, so while I got to see her fairly often, I needed a companion. In 2004, I was in the Mexican border town of El Centro I grew up in. I was with my friend, Danny Trejo. After breakfast, we saw two small chihuahua mixes wandering down an alley behind Brunner’s Place off Imperial Avenue. At first, I thought they were with an old lady they were following, but she shooed them away. Danny whistled and they came running as if they’d been expecting that whistle their whole lives. One was black with white markings, the other white with a few streaks of black. They were both male, didn’t have collars, had mange, and had clearly been living on the streets for a while.

“What should we do?” I asked Danny.
“You got to keep them, Holmes. They need you.”

I'll write a lot more about Danny, but he's one of the most ardent dog rescuers I've ever met. He once told me to visit dogs in the pound. "Don't forget," he said, "they're doing time. And when you're doing time you live for visitors." I took them to a local vet where they were weighed, given shots, fixed, and treated. The info I received from the vet surprised me. Even though they were roughly the same size, the black one weighed twice as much as the white one. She also told me they weren’t the same age and from different litters. Based on their teeth, the black one, she said, was roughly a year old and the white one six months. I was surprised, but it made the narrative more interesting. I thought clearly they were siblings, wandering the mean streets of El Centro, scavenging and surviving, but it turns out they weren’t related. They'd somehow found each other and became a dynamic duo stronger than the sum of its parts. They play fought endlessly, but when they slept, the black one would lie on top of the white one to protect him.

I loved them. Based on an in-joke from a movie I was working on, I named them Gringo and Coyote. They were my favorite couple — brothers, protective of each other, fearless.

I took them back to Los Angeles and they moved into my home in Fryman Canyon. It was the only really fancy house I’ve ever owned. It was huge, with a pool and a tennis court. I worked on the fencing around the back of the property so they would have a safe domain, but they were masters of escaping. My children loved them. Sunny Amoreena and Don Miller Robinson came from Australia and moved in with me for awhile and Gringo and Coyote were immediately obsessed with Sunny. They would sit patiently on either side of her on the bench of a Yamaha Grand Piano while she and Don recorded music.

I was offered a job in Melbourne. A junkie kicking heroin had been sleeping on my couch for a few weeks and I made the hard decision to allow him to continue living there while I was in Australia to take care of the dogs, in case Don and Sunny had to leave.

He was a lovable guy, but an eternal fuck up. I’ll call him Kevin. Kevin had grown up wealthy in Newport Beach. His drug problems started early in Junior High. His father was a hard-working Mid-Westerner who started a frozen pizza company, sold it for thirteen million dollars and moved his family to California. He went through what I would go through years later — kids with substance abuse issues, countless rehab programs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, in his early-thirties, Kevin wasn’t even allowed in his father’s house. The month before I went to Australia, a group of us were having breakfast after an AA meeting and everyone basically decided that it was my turn to take Kevin in as they had all already given it a shot.

So I went off to Australia to do “Ghost Rider,” a five-month gig. As part of my deal, I had a number of round trip tickets to come back and see my children every other week. I realized early on in the job that I'd have to sell my house in California to ensure I could keep up my child support payments and pay the mortgage on the house I bought my ex. During one of my return visits, I had a hastily arranged meeting with my realtor, put the house on the market, and left Kevin in charge keeping up the place.

One night back in Melbourne, I received a late-night call from my realtor. He was alarmed. He told me he showed the house to an interested couple and when he arrived at the appointed time and rang the bell, Kevin shouted out from a second story balcony that he’d be right there, but left them hanging on the doorstep for twenty minutes. When he finally answered the door, he was in his underwear, high-as-a-fucking-kite, and had two black eyes. There was dog shit all over the house and hypodermic needles everywhere.

Not the most impressive showing in real estate history.

I called Kevin and he admitted he was using, seized the engine of my BMW, and wrecked a GMC Yukon I owned. I couldn’t have been more fucked. I asked Don and Sunny, who were in New York, to return to California as soon as they could and get Kevin out of the house. They said they were sorry, but had to get back to Sydney.

I flew to LA and kicked Kevin out. Miraculously, despite the shooting gallery it had become, an offer had been made on my house. I accepted it and went into overdrive trying to figure out how to pack my stuff, organize the move, find a place for the dogs to live, and do it all while still working on "Ghost Rider." The night before I was moving out, Don and Sunny returned to LA for business. She was going to so a record produced by Van Dyke Parks.

For months I'd noticed a big pack of coyotes who would come out of Fryman Canyon at dusk and gather in front of my house knowing there were two, little dogs who lived there. I was obsessive about keeping the doors closed. That evening, there was a menacing vibe in the air. I was driving back to my neighborhood and had a bad feeling. When I got home, I found the front door wide open and Don upstairs.

“Where are the dogs?”
“That’s weird, mate. They were here, but I haven’t seen them for the last hour or so.”
I panicked. I ran around my backyard and the tennis court shouting for them. Not finding them,
I got in my truck and drove like a banshee down my street. I stopped in front of a house that was under renovation and started screaming, “Gringo! Coyote!”

I realized a work crew of Mexican guys packing gear into a storage shed had stopped working and were staring at me. I immediately realized how insane this looked, a white guy with long hair and a beard in a four by four screaming "Gringo" at the top of his lungs. It was akin to hate speech. I jumped out of my truck.

“I’m sorry! ¡Lo siento!” I said. “I’m looking for two dogs, one black, one white.”
One dude looked confused.
“Estoy buscando mis perros- chiquitos, uno blanco y el otro es negro. Muy chiquito. ¿Los has visto?”
He looked to his crew. They shook their heads.
“No. No los hemos visto.”
I thanked them, ran back to my truck, jammed up my driveway, and found Don standing by the garage. He was shaking.

“What happened?”
“I walked down the driveway with a flashlight and saw a pack of coyotes. A big one had Coyote in his jaws and was just about to shake him when I threw the flashlight at them and they ran.”
“Where’s Coyote?”
“He ran up here and we’re looking for him.”

We followed a trail of blood and found Coyote in the kitchen. He could barely breathe. There was blood all over the floor. We wrapped him in a towel and I took him to the Studio City Animal Hospital where he was rushed into surgery. Three hours later, a vet came into the waiting area.

“Coyote suffered a severe neck wound, but we were able to stitch his esophagus. I don’t want to give you false hope, but I think he’ll be alright.”

That night we didn’t sleep. The next day Don and Sunny moved into a house they rented, but the owner wouldn’t accept pets. I had five days before I had to return to Australia to finish the film. I found a hotel that would accept pets and nursed Coyote back to health. He was so resilient, it was amazing. But I still had to find a place for them and the clock was ticking. I asked my ex if she could keep them in her house since the kids loved them. She said no because she was afraid they escaped too much.

“If I build a pen, will you keep them?”
“If you can do it fast enough, okay.”

The next day I had my contractor build a big fenced-in pen for them in her backyard. They had a home and the kids were delighted.

I went back to Australia. Two weeks later, I was standing in some stadium doing a scene where Nic Cage jumps a bunch of helicopters on a motorcycle

when my ex called with an ultimatum. “These dogs are a nightmare,” she said. “They’re always getting out of the backyard and running down the street. I’m taking them to the pound.”
“Why aren’t they in the pen?”
“It’s too much of a hassle. I can’t deal with this bullshit. I’m taking them to the pound.”

I begged her to give me a day to find a solution. I called Don and Sunny and told them my predicament.

“Jesus Christ,” said Don, “what’s wrong with her?”
It was a rhetorical question. He’d known her as long as I had. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Two hours later, Don and Sunny called with good news. They went to a pet shop asking to put up flyers and a woman said she was interested in the dogs. She and her husband had just moved to LA from New York and it turned out they were friends with my kids’ Godfather, Jesse Peretz.

“You found them a home?”
“Yes, mate. They’re heading over to (name redacted's house) now and picking them up.”

I finished the flick in Australia, flew back to LA, and moved into temporary digs at the Oakwoods on Woodman in Sherman Oaks. I missed Gringo and Coyote terribly. I got the number of the new owners, asked how the dogs were, and if they were happy with them or wanted to give them back.

The woman was clear. “We love them. They’re part of our family.”

I purposely didn’t listen when she told me their new names and thanked her for her kindness. At least they had a good home. Yes, they had destroyed numerous couches by pissing on every piece of furniture in sight, and yes, they strayed like the badass Mexican street warriors they were. Even though they had made it out of El Centro and were in a great place, I found it hard to live without them.

When the dogs disappeared, my kids were incredibly hurt. My ex told them I’d arranged to have them taken to the pound. It's something I'll never forget, and most likely, never forgive.

A couple of years later, in 2008, I’d moved into a new house and wanted a dog. I’d never had a dog that wasn’t a stray or from a pound, but I was obsessed with the idea of an Irish Wolfhound. My cousin had one and though they look like little ponies, they are the most loving creatures imaginable. I was working on a show called “Life” and spent my free time between setups scouring the internet for Wolfhounds.

I found a breeder in Corning, California. I was very familiar with the town. Since 2002, I’d owned a house in Southern Oregon and Corning was a common gas/restroom/food stop for me and my kids. I sent the owner of the kennel an email with my info. He immediately called. His name was Omar V Herman and he was as colorful as his name suggests.

He explained his long history with pure breeds and all the accolades his dogs had won. I got the sense he didn’t talk to people very often and wanted to keep me on the phone for hours. I told him I couldn’t make promises, but on my next trip to Oregon, I’d stop by his place.

A few weeks later, I drove north to Oregon and stopped in Corning and called Omar. He seemed flustered that I assumed I could drop by at any time. I was wary of the situation, but I told him I’d be driving back through in three days and would see him then.

The dogs weren’t cheap. An Irish Wolfhound puppy was $4500. He told me they were special. I knew that, but the whole business of selling dogs has always been deeply suspect to me.

Three days later I pulled back into Corning. I called Omar and he told me to give him half an hour to get everything ready. Again, I was wary, but I had a cup of coffee and put his address into my navigation system. I was directed to a dirt road on the outskirts of town. His was the only house on the street. It was broken down and lonely. I saw some large structures I figured were the kennels. I parked and rang the doorbell. Someone said something unintelligible from inside and I stood on the doorstep waiting for about ten minutes. Then an older woman appeared from behind the house.

“This way,” she said, with a thick accent.
“Omar is having a hard time physically,” she said. “I’ll give you a tour first.”

We went back to the kennels. The cacophony of dogs barking was unsettling. It was bedlam. There must have been a hundred and fifty dogs. They had St. Bernards, Mastiffs, Bernese Mountain Dogs, and Wolfhounds. All massive breeds.

The old lady started sweeping an open caged kennel that looked like it was part of a cell block.

“Which dogs stay here?” I asked.
“Mastiffs.” She sighed and leaned against the fence, using the broom for support.
“You have to do this every day?”
She nodded.
“I start down there,” she pointed, “finish down there and start all over again. Everyday. We have to feed all these dogs and clean. Oh, Lord."

I was shocked. In fairness, the dogs didn't look emaciated, but I did the math. One hundred and fifty huge dogs, caged up, a dying economy, the state of their house — I knew this woman and these dogs were in a tough spot.

“Where are you from?”
“Poland.”

I figured she was in her late sixties, maybe seventy. She was strong, but life had kicked the shit out of her.

“I met Omar in Chicago and he promised me this big life,” she said, sweeping her hands in an expansive, exasperated gesture. The revelation was so abrupt, it was startling. She had revealed the tragic arc of the last forty-five years of her life in an instant. “He said he owned all these fancy stores and traveled the world. Now we are here with these dogs. And everyone is losing their homes and they don’t want dogs. They’re too expensive. We can’t afford to feed them. I was working in a shop at the time.”

My mind flashed to her in her younger days. A pretty young emigre in Chicago. I looked at the lonely, yellow hills towering over the back of their property. The effects of the drought were obvious. Even the grass was barely clinging to life.

“We can go inside now.”

She led me into the house. It was more shambolic on the inside. We found Omar sitting in a room in the far corner, next to a walker.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said. “We just wanted to get everything ready for you.”
He apologized he couldn’t stand because of his diabetes. I studied his legs. They were enormously swollen. The man was in a bad way. I figured he must be in his early eighties.

Around him were pictures of him in his younger days at what looked to be low-level dog shows. Regardless of decade, in every photo, he stood next to a dog flashing the same Betty Crocker ready-to-bake smile. His wife sat down.

“Oh no, dear,” he said. “You have to get the Wolfhounds.”

I’d told him earlier on the phone I wasn’t sure I was buying an animal, but at that point, I knew I wasn’t going to leave without one. If I could, I would have pulled a tractor-trailer onto the property and taken all of them. I knew the burden was too much for this Polish lady. Omar was clearly incapable of doing any of the manual labor running a kennel like that required. I was scared for every soul in the place.

While we waited for the Wolfhounds, Omar told me some fanciful tales about his past and his history in the world of exotic breeds.

His wife opened a back door to the room and ushered in a mama and five Wolfhound puppies.
“Look at them, they’re beautiful,” he said.

The mother looked broken, her puppies gathered behind her against the wall.

“It’s the hair, the Wolfhound hair,” he said. “Tremendous dogs!”

One of the puppies caught my eye. She looked scared and was burrowing into the corner of the room. I immediately knew her name, Róisín. She was my Irish rose, so she was going to get my favorite Irish name.

Omar got down to business. “You can have the mom if you want, or a puppy, or all the puppies….”
I could hear the desperation in his voice. I was sure I was the only “customer” they’d had in months.

“I’ll take that one,” I said.
“Wonderful. Dear, will you get the paperwork?”

Omar had the air of a carnival barker from the 30s. Before I ever met Omar, my friend Steve Frejek and I had driven past Corning dozens of times on our way to Oregon. Outside the city limits is a sign that reads: “Corning- The Olive Capital of the World.” Every time he saw it, Steve would break into a monologue where he'd ape a Howard Hawks-type voice— “You can always tell a gentlemen from Cooohrning,” he’d say. “A Coohrning man carries himself straight, tall, and proud.” Then, as if speaking to a woman in the room, he’d say, “Doll, why don’t you skip into the kitchen and whip up some sammies for me and the boys? We’re gonna rehearse for Solvang- going all the way to the State Finals this year!” Anytime we were near Corning, Steve would become this guy, a throw-back, barbershop quartet character waxing on about Corning and some fictitious singing competition. It cracked me up for years. Now it gave me chills. Omar sounded exactly like the character Steve created. It was like he’d channeled him.

“I used to travel the world! The Japanese love these wolfhounds! It’s considered a sign of wealth to have a large dog in Japan! I can’t tell you how many I’ve sold over there.”

He was beaming and big-shot shit talking, but there was a deep desperation to him. He reminded me of Jack Lemmon in "Glengarry Glen Ross."

I wrote him a check for forty-five hundred dollars.

He studied it.
“It’s good,” I said.
“Oh, I wasn’t worried about that. No sir! You sure you don’t want the mama? She isn’t fixed. She’s a champion!”
“No, thank you.”

Omar told his wife to get me the paperwork verifying Rosie’s authenticity.

“If you show her, she’ll win you a stack of trophies. Breed her- oh breed her. But not too early. Wait until she's one and a half."

I knew I’d never show or breed her, I just wanted to get her out of there. I was torn about taking her from her mother, but I knew Rosie had to leave Corning.

We dealt with paperwork, I signed something, and Omar struggled to his feet, grabbing his walker. “I’ll show you out.” He handed his wife the check. She started crying. I didn't know the source of her emotion. Maybe she was thankful the money would allow them to buy food for the next month for the dogs. Maybe the process of puppy milling crushed her.

“It was nice meeting you,” I said. She nodded and smiled, wiping her tears. “Take care of yourself.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “I always try.” She was made of tough, Eastern European stuff.

I went to my SUV, got a blanket, and wrapped up Rosie in it. Omar struggled to walk down a make-shift ramp in front of the house. Róisín was shaking like a leaf. She was only ten-weeks-old. Irish Wolfhound pups don’t really look anything like they do when they’re six months old. Their wiry hair hasn’t grown out yet. She was all eyes, beautiful, brown/gold hued eyes.

I opened my rear hatch and made a bed for her.

“No! No,” said Omar. “Put her up here with you.” He opened my passenger door. “She’ll snuggle with you all the way back to Los Angeles.”

I hadn’t anticipated the heaviness of the situation. This animal was terrified. Their souls are as developed as ours. Degradation, abandonment, and change is terrifying for any animal. But I had already committed, I couldn’t go back. I made a little bed for her on the passenger’s seat and gently set her on it.

“You’ll be best friends before you’re out of the driveway!”

He couldn't have been more off target.Before I made it out of his driveway, I realized Rosie had shit all over the front of the car. It was intense. I beelined to a truck stop, threw away Rosie’s blanket, bought all the baby wipes and paper towels they had, and put her in the back while I cleaned the car.

The poor girl was terrified of me.

We hit the road for the five-hundred-mile journey back to LA. Still shivering and frightened, at some point, Roisín fell asleep. I got home at two A.M. and carried her inside the house. She immediately ran under my kitchen table and buried herself in a corner by the wall. I made her a bed put out some food. She didn’t budge an inch from the spot. At four A.M., I fell asleep.

The next day, I called my best friend, Gilles Marini, and told him I bought a dog. He came by my house with his wife Carole who was able to coax Rosie out from under the table. Carole has the purest maternal instinct I’ve ever come across in a human being. Rosie felt safe with her. For the next few days, Carole would visit and coax Rosie out of her hiding spot. Four days after moving into the new house, she was running around the backyard and sleeping by my side,

Then she grew. And grew.

By the time she was four-months-old, standing on her hind legs, she was as tall as me. We slept together every night. I hadn’t slept with a person, much less a dog, in years and it was comforting to have her. I had to be careful with her, though. Giant breeds are prone to joint disorders if they’re allowed to run too much when they’re puppies. She would get so excited when I got home from work, she’d knock everything off the walls. Wherever we walked, people would stop and stare. One night, driving to Oregon, she met up with a group of Great Danes at a rest stop and they just stared at each other in amazement. I figured they'd never encountered a fellow dog they could look at eye to eye.

I could go on and on about the joys and terrors of Rosie in the mountains of Oregon and I will some other time. There was one incident where she inhaled barbed foxtails that got stuck in her throat. She was having a hard time breathing, so I took her to the local vet. They said they had to put her under to remove the foxtails, as they carried infection. When I picked her up that afternoon a vet took me to see her. Rosie was sedated and out of it. The vet was very kind and said she loved Rosie. She handed me some antibiotics and said she gave Rosie a rattlesnake booster shot. When it came time to pay the bill, the vet said I owed $110 dollars. I was shocked. When Coyote was operated on, it cost me four grand.

“A lot of vets in big cities charge crazy money,” she said. “Up here, people can’t afford it. Unfortunately, sometimes they put the dogs down themselves.”
I asked how much it would cost to fix Rosie.
“$150”
“Someone quoted me $2000 in LA.”
“That’s LA. And $150 is expensive up here. It’s because of her size.”

Shortly after that, I landed the job “Terriers” in San Diego and knew I couldn’t take Rosie, so I hired my friend Manny to housesit to watch her. It was expensive, but necessary. She needed constant attention.

In the beginning, Manny lived at my house, but shortly into the stint, he started taking Rosie with him to his house. He and his husband had four smaller dogs and had recently lost a big one. Rosie fit right in. When I came back from the job, Manny got teary when he brought her back. I could tell. My girl had fallen in love with another man and he’d fallen for her.

“Manny,” I said. “Do you want to keep her?”
He broke down and nodded.
“She belongs with you.”

Emanuel was the greatest dad Rosie could ever have. He and his husband, David, gave Rosie the greatest life. She was with a pack of dogs, they all loved each other, and she was treated like a queen. When I’d visit her, she'd get so worked up and excited I couldn’t bear it.

I didn’t tell Manny, but it was too hard to see her. Her expected lifespan was seven and a half years. Once I was in LA and Manny told me to come by and see her. I didn’t think either of our hearts could take it.

Six months later, Manny called to tell me she passed. Peacefully, suddenly. It was, as I'd feared, a heart attack. We cried on the phone and I thanked him for what he’d given to her.
“She gave us everything,” he said.

Thank you, Emanuel and David.

RIP beautiful Róisín.
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