But it's just a passing spat. Soon Charlie and Perdida are side by side, wearing their seat belts and gazing contentedly out the window, just another couple of commuters wending their way through the streets of Boston's Beacon Hill. Except that Charlie is a shepherd mix and Perdida an American Staffordshire terrier. They are among the 18 or so dogs that Donald Bement drives five days a week to the Common Dog daycare center in Everett, five miles away. "He loves it," says Lisa Bolger, 31, as she drops off Kramer, her weimaraner. "He knows where we're going in the morning, and he can't wait to get here."
This being one of Boston's more affluent neighborhoods, the dogs on the bus tend toward the high end of the canine gene pool. Bailey and Amie, owned by venture capitalist David Muller, 51, are clumber spaniels. Speckles, owned by real estate developer Lyle Howland, 43, is a braque d'Auvergne, imported from France. On the other hand, there is Charlie, Perdida's reluctant paramour, who, says his owner, attorney Alycia Goody, 48, is "probably the only mutt at this stop."
The dogs' well-heeled owners pay $335 a month for the combination of daycare (which includes water slides, comfy couches and plenty of space to romp) and bus fare—and not every dog qualifies. The dogs are vetted for temperament at the daycare center and then, and only then, given a trial run on the bus. "You've got to have a special dog to ride on the bus," says owner Chris Murphy, 30. "In no time at all a dog can chew through the harness and make a run for it." So far, only one—a shepherd mix named Ally—has actually escaped. "She was out the door," says Bement, 21. "Someone down the street had to catch her because I couldn't keep up."
Since its beginnings in 1998, the bus—which makes its first pickup right outside the Bull & Finch pub, the real-life Cheers bar—has become something of an attraction itself. (Bement does a brisk side business selling postcards showing the dogs hanging out the bus windows.) But just as on school buses, the passengers sometimes get a bit out of hand. "A few times," says Bement, "I've had to put it in park and go in the back—but just because the dogs were barking, not to break up a fight. They're pretty good unless someone taps the window or a strange dog goes by."
Most days, says Rhonda Greenwood, 31, Common Dog's operations manager, the a.m. trip is decidedly calmer. "On the ride back," she says, "they're more excited because they're going back to their owners."
Mike Neill
Tom Duffy in Boston
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- Tom Duffy.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
