The Dog Ambassadors

I’m an odd candidate to find in Dog Hell. I’ve never had one of my own but have felt a camaraderie with them forever — the playfulness, the up-for-whatever, a bit reckless but well-meaning.

Cats, I had all my childhood and would find myself in the occasional staredown, in which each would say to the other, without speaking, and with more than a bit of pride: Well, I don’t give a crap about you, either.

It was more a mutual standoff than a genuine dislike. I respected their independence.

But the covenant was broken one day in Bonita Springs, Florida.

I was heading back north, collecting my best clips from the Naples paper, seeking a new gig closer to home. I lived with a guy named Sean, who looked like a bald Barry Manilow, in a place on a canal that is now a hotel. At the time, there was a home, with trees draped with a fruit that looked like an elongated orange with nipples. I still have no idea what it was, but we realized early on that it made killer margaritas.

I had my last one in hand, my cut-out story clips (yes, seriously — it was 1998) splayed out on the carpet.

Sean’s cat, whose name I’ve exorcised from my memory, walked into the room, stared me down like a prizefighter, and maintained eye contact as he sat down on my best stories … and wiped his ass.

In the other universe: I was at an event recently at Bide-a-Wee in Westhampton, when a dog from the facility ambled over to me, I believe unscripted, placed her head on my lap, and looked up at me and didn’t let go.

It was cutest dog I’ve ever seen: white face with a black patch over her right eye, bigger brown patch behind that, black nose with a big pink splotch.

I would’ve adopted her on the spot and still in my heart consider her my dog. But I couldn’t, because my autistic son, Dylan, now 22, is terrified of dogs, and has been his whole life.

We’re not really sure what happened. At some point, when he was very young, what must have seemed to his unique mind to be a terrifying creature got too close, possibly trying to be friendly — and it’s locked in forever. The yippiest little pocket poodle or designated attack dog, it makes no difference: In his presence, it will absolutely terrify him.

This complicates things, as his favorite thing to do — just about the only thing he can do right now outside the house — is swim in the ocean. And where there’s a beach, there are dogs.

We’ve tried many other things. Nature trails have become what we call “nature sprints,” so quickly does he seek to blaze through them. (And this was prior to the latest challenge: an unquenchable urge to jump over the rails and into any waterway we encounter.)

We keep trying, desperate to add some variety to his life. And so one day I sought to reclaim an old favorite from his childhood: a ride on the train from Riverhead to Greenport, and a ride on the carousel once we got there.

We were somewhere between Riverhead and Mattituck when the screaming started — utterly out of nowhere, piercing, abrupt, random to my mind, probably focused and logical to his, extremely upsetting, no doubt, to our fellow passengers.

There was no way out: Hopping off in Mattituck a fork from home with no car was not an option. So I found the quietest car and tried to settle my pounding heart and my agitated boy, and by the time we had reached the carousel, I felt three-fourths human.

And the carousel ride started well, like a time capsule to 2008, when his giddy, megawatt smile could light the place with each rotation. But about halfway through I heard a telltale sound from the other side of the room.

“Ah, f---!” yelled Dylan. (I like to think he didn’t pick this up listening to me during Giants games.)

Now I’m sprinting around the room in a circle, trying to catch up to him, dodging horrified parents right and left, counting down the seconds of the longest carousel ride in human history.

We go to Flying Point Beach every Saturday and Sunday, where there is lots of room. And lots of ambient noise.

And lots of dogs.

There was a time when I treated most encounters as if every dog walker knew Dylan’s entire history — how many dogs had gotten too close and terrified him, sending his day (or week) into a tailspin. How he had expressed his terror in the only way he knew how — by turning it on us.

Too often, I let the compounded pain we had experienced as a family serve as my guide in addressing these situations, when I should have treated it as it was: a family, a couple, a jogger, enjoying a beautiful day at the beach with their best friend, with no knowledge of any of this.

So I hatched a game plan: Anytime an unleashed dog came within 50 yards, I’d jog down and strike up conversations with complete strangers, ask them politely if they wouldn’t mind just hanging on to their dog’s collar as they pass, that I had an autistic son who was terrified of dogs.

Almost without exception, they’ve been extraordinary, understanding, compassionate, as they looked over at the grown man who looks just like me methodically making sand castles nearby.

But it’s not that that’s stuck with me. It’s what’s happened recently as word got out.

We’ve got a little gang down there, regulars in their regular places. The stocky Brazilian guy, always solo, about 50 yards to my right. The guy in the Italian soccer jersey who runs — ironically enough — with his dogs and his own autistic son.

And our beach friends Doris and Christian, who sometimes take such long walks that when they head off toward Southampton I half expect to see them emerge from Bridgehampton, having circumnavigated the globe.

A couple of weeks ago, Dylan was coming out of his worst stretch ever. He wouldn’t eat or sleep or bathe. He was distraught, violent and destructive.

And I can’t even get into the tough part.

But the beach, like with so many of us, can cast a magic spell on Dyls, and with the resumed regular trips to the beach he started to re-emerge.

Only one thing could potentially make it go south, and it seems like everybody sensed it.

I was preparing to jog over to the owner of an unleashed dog when I saw Doris, who was closer, jump up to do the same. I watched as she went through the story, the other woman nodding. She leashed her dog and went on her way and waved.

But another was approaching from the other direction — and the woman who had just been told took it upon herself to stop the new woman with the new dog, went through the story, the other woman nodding. She leashed her dog, walked past us, and waved.

And whatever else was wrong with the world at that given moment could not penetrate the lightness I felt.