For Thursday, Jan 5, 2005 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 778 words


In the dog house


I bought a dog kennel. It’s out in the middle of the Nevada desert. I believe in the three cardinal rules of real estate – location, location, location. What better place to pen up dogs so they can’t run around than out in the middle of nowhere?
My new business is a small cinderblock structure consisting of a 10 x 40-foot office and ten kennels, five on each side. The gray building sits in the front right corner of a .6 acre piece of property. The place has water, electricity, septic. It even has a few dogs.
It also has a built-in tenant, Michael, who has lived in the office and single-handedly run ARF, the non-profit Animal Rescue Foundation, over the last decade.
He is sanctioned to take in stray wolves. Not every shelter can say that. Michael had a wolf when I first met him. He kept her about a month before a tribe of Native Alaskans adopted her and released her into their outback.
Why did I buy a dog kennel? In Nevada? In the desert? That’s a story that ties together multiple threads of influence and need into a great harmonic, or perhaps moronic, convergence. I have my neck out, my head in the chopping block, my butt on the line, my feet in wet cement, my fingers in a vice, and my thumbs on the red and green buttons. In other words, I’m taking a risk. I’m also helping out an old man.
If you’ve been following, you know I also have a small mini-storage business out in the middle of the Nevada desert on an adjacent .6-acre parcel. Michael is my manager. I hired him last year when I bought the 34-garage business from an elderly couple who live in the California foothills. The old man broke his hip and couldn’t take care of the place anymore.
When I drive out there to work on the place -- spreading blacktop, digging French drains -- I spend plenty of time at Michael’s kennels. He helps me. He loans me hoses, water, electricity; he fixes broken doors. Then we sit in his office to escape the heat and drink bottled water. I visit with the dogs and cats.
On one spring visit he told me, “I’m worried. The owners have the land up for sale. What if someone buys it and runs me off?”
“That would suck,” I replied. “You’re the wolf whisperer. These dogs need you, and you need them. And I need you. Who would run my business?” Michael shrugged and fired up another unfiltered Camel.
“How much do they want for it?” I asked.
“Fifty-five thousand. But they said they’d sell it to me for twenty-five thousand.”
“Why don’t you buy it?”
“I don’t have twenty-five thousand dollars. Besides, I don’t want to own property. I don’t want the taxes and the paperwork and the b. s.”
I chewed on this awhile. For months I chewed. I chewed and chewed. Then I took a real estate attorney out to dinner. We chewed and chewed. Then we talked about dog kennels. I wanted to know if there was a way I could loan an old hermit who lives in the desert with dogs and feral cats $25,000 and feel safe about it. I would then use the property for collateral. He said, “You bet.” Then on a napkin he wrote the general language of a few legal contracts I would need written.
I spoke with Michael. “How about if I loan you the money, you buy the property, then deed the property over to me and I’ll forgive the loan? Then I’ll be your landlord and I won’t run you off and I’ll lower your rent, to boot.”
“It sounds like a good idea to me,” said Michael.
“What would the owners think of our arrangement?”
“They’ll be fine with it. They already told me I could do whatever I wanted with the property once I owned it. The old lady, the deceased owner, was a dog lover. She built this kennel. Then I took it over.”
I hired a Nevada lawyer. Explained the situation. I paid him $200 to write up a promissory note, deed of trust, and a few other documents. Michael and I visited a title company office last fall and opened an escrow. With my loan he bought the land, and now this month he will deed the land over to me.
I promised Michael he could live there as long as he wants. I will help him with his worn-out signs, drum up business. When he goes, I’ll try and rent the kennel again. If no one bites, I’ll build more storage units.