Thought I’d Have More Time

He was just a dog.

But his passing devastated me, for a while. I felt untethered, as if a light wind could just carry me away. I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And I didn’t want to leave the house, because it was his house, too. It was where he lived - where we lived - after I adopted him, and it was where he was happy. I was like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, afraid to leave the sidewalk and cross the street (which is a reasonable concern in New York City, I’ll grant you).

Duke and I were together six years. And if it sounds as though I’m describing a relationship, that’s because I’ve concluded that it was one. In fact, it was the longest relationship I’ve been in since getting divorced.

Our beginnings were inauspicious, if somewhat lucky, somewhat happenstance. Many relationships are, I suppose. It’s not like Duke and I met in the produce section at the grocery store; that trope is passe, and I don’t know anyone who has met anyone that way. No, this relationship started in the manner that many do these days: online. And I was ready for a new relationship. Ready to start “dating” again, if you can call it that.

I had had German shepherds before. Yes, like dating, some people have a “type”. Mine is German shepherd; my sister Nora’s is Labrador retriever. Oh, I had been with other breeds, that’s for sure. I had grown up with collies – my parents had a string of collies over their lifetime. They got their first one when I was 12; until then, they were never sure that a dog would work out for us, with my history of allergies and asthma. So, “when you’re 12” became their refrain when we kids asked when we could get a dog. That phrase was also used by my parents in other situations, such as when we (my twin brother Terry and I) lobbied them to let us climb (well, hike) Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite. As Terry points out, at least we got the dog; we never got to climb Bridalveil Falls.  That first dog my parents named Coley. Full name Colleen McGillacuddy, but shortened to Coley, which was suspiciously also the name of a great Notre Dame halfback of that time, Coley O’Brien. This also started a trend of my parents naming dogs with some sort of Irish reference. Coley was followed by Guiness, Mick, Barney (the one exception to the Irish moniker) and Hurley.

So my dog archetype was collie, and I always thought I’d get one. Didn’t happen. My now-ex Cathy and I adopted a crazy mutt of a dog early on, of unknown breed. I wishfully concluded Smokey (named after a local wildfire) was in fact a basenji, an African hunting dog, because he has an upright tail, like a skunk, and rarely barked. Probably all mutt, in reality. He was very athletic. He kept jumping the fence (no matter how high I built it) and taking himself on long walks in the neighborhood. I discovered how far he tended to ramble when, on long walks with him myself, someone would remark, “Oh, I’ve seen that dog before. By himself.”  Smokey also endeared himself to neighbors – I think – on Halloween, while we were having the house remodeled. The incomplete second story allowed access onto the roof over the front door. Smokey let himself out there, and barked at approaching trick-or-treaters below. Crazy, like I said. With kids on the way, we decided we couldn’t give Smokey the activity and exercise the needed, and we ended up giving him to a young, fit firefighter who planned to lead a very active life with him.

I wasn’t done with dogs, though. Daughter Bridget came along, and then Carrie, and I really wanted them to grow up with a dog. Cathy still resolutely refused to consider a collie, and instead bought me a book, The Art of Raising a Puppy, by the monks of New Skete, New York, who apparently specialized in raising German shepherd puppies. And by the way, I’m amazed at the ability of monks to build successful monasteries around what are, for the rest of us, just really fun activities. Hey, do you wanna raise puppies? Come join our monastery! Like beer? Wanna make it? And drink it? Come join our monastery! I’m surprised there aren’t monasteries dedicated to growing pot, or playing baseball all day. I mean, for the price of a little celibacy and a wardrobe of brown…I suppose it would be hard to run the basepaths in a robe, though. Anyway, the idea was for us to get a puppy and to raise it – and by that I mean it would be MY job to raise it - correctly, so it wouldn’t be a Crazy Dog like Smokey.

The first problem with this plan was it required a German shepherd puppy. Cathy was convinced, and she wasn’t wrong here, that a German shepherd would be perfect for our family. Smart. Loyal. And most importantly, DISCIPLINED. I was not opposed to this at all, and could easily shift my preference from collie to German shepherd. Trouble was, German shepherd puppies are expensive. Especially for a young family.

Cathy, in her resourcefulness, discovered German shepherd rescues. We went down to the one in Burbank, and when we walked in with two young kids, they said, ”Oh, we’ve got the dog for you.” Shadow was a two-year old male, raised by an older gentleman who contracted cancer, and so Shadow was used to a not-so-active lifestyle marked by plenty of people food. He was great with the kids, a gentle giant, a rare combination of two desirable dog traits: good with people AND other dogs. We had him eight years before he passed away at the age of 10, underscoring two unpleasant truths: first, that we outlive our dogs, and second, that big dogs, especially German shepherds, don’t live nearly as long as we’d like them to.

Our second German shepherd was crazy little Ellie (see previous post), who ended up going north with Cathy after our divorce, and sometime later I found myself ready to “date” again. I was attracted to Duke as soon as I saw his picture online (and if that’s not what online dating is like, I don’t know what is). Rhonda, a local dog-walker and baker, had posted Duke’s picture on Facebook: Duke needed a new owner. Rhonda lived next door to Duke, whose owner had been in a motorcycle accident and could no longer care for him properly. Truth is, he had never cared properly for Duke, who had been left in the yard during rainstorms and rarely walked. Rhonda, being a dog person, knew this. Rhonda was also the mother of JoJo, whom I had coached in middle school volleyball. Duke was a beautiful two-year old German shepherd and I responded enthusiastically about adopting him. Because I was the first to respond, I got the nod, and Rhonda later told me she figured that if I could handle coaching middle-school girls, then I could probably handle taking care of Duke.

My daughter Carrie, then a high-school senior, and I went down to meet Duke on a rainy February day. I didn’t know how that would go; there’s a bit of uneasiness the first time meeting a male German shepherd. Duke walked over to us – starved for human contact – and Carrie established the tone of their relationship right away: she grabbed him around the midsection and hoisted him high in the air, all 110 pounds of her handling his 80 pounds. Rhonda was aghast, but it was perfectly fine. Duke was ours.

Carrie ended up having her own, unique relationship with Duke, and he had a whole other life with her and her friends, a life of adventure. She took him hiking in the local mountains, when his joints still felt up to that. He would hang with Carrie and her friends at our outdoor bar and fireplace. I’d go to bed, but enjoyed looking down from upstairs and seeing Duke, Carrie and her friends in the glow of the outdoor fire. When she and her friends went out, I’d have to leave the bedroom door ajar so Duke could go downstairs and greet Carrie when she came in.

Otherwise, he was my dog. When Carrie was away at college (and she was really away, in Scotland), it was just Duke and me. We had each other. And yes, he slept on the bed (until Nell kicked him off – there was room on the bed for a human and a dog, or two humans, but not two humans and a dog). He had no sense of geometry, or spatial awareness: he thought it was just fine to sleep crosswise on the bed. After a while he’d start off on the bed, and rotate between the bed, the floor next to me, his dog bed, and an easy chair by the window – into which he barely fit. Again, that lack of spatial awareness. He thought he was a much smaller dog, maybe a lap dog. He loved sitting next to me (or anyone else) on the couch, which I absolutely allowed him to do. In retrospect, Duke might have even thought he was a cat. Duke loved cat treats, would line up for them like the cats did. In turn, one of my cats, Cricket, thought of himself as a dog. When I fed Duke in the garage, twice a day, Cricket would leap up on the workbench, expecting a few pieces of dog kibble himself. In fact, Cricket still does that, months after Duke is gone. It doesn’t help, I guess, that I haven’t had the strength or inclination to get rid of Duke’s dog food or his toys. Duke always came and thanked me after I fed him, and like most dogs, had an internal clock that told him it was mealtime. About 10 minutes before his established mealtimes (which seemed to get earlier and earlier over time) he would appear before me and just stare at me. It must be weird to have not only your mealtimes but your choice of food determined entirely by someone else,

I think that Duke was incensed, or at least found it unfair, that the cats could jump up on the counter or on the table, giving them access to food that he had no access to. So occasionally he would jump onto the table as well, figuring that if they were allowed to, so was he. Duke was ever confused about what was acceptable and what wasn’t, and I suppose that’s typical for anyone who enters a new living situation. He was a runner at the beginning. The first day I took him home I let him run across the street to say hit to my neighbors James and Laura – Duke loved meeting people – but he kept on running, to the corner, and then and then around the block. I chased him into a backyard and grabbed him. He continued to do that for a while; the open gate, the open door, was just too much a temptation after being locked in his previous yard for so long. He loved his walks (what dog doesn’t? As a friend observed, a dog thinks he won the lottery every time he goes on a walk) and Duke was convinced that the only time I put shoes on was to take him for a walk. As I reached for my walking shoes he’d go nuts, turning in circles and grabbing a shoe, gently mouthing it. He insisted on having the leash in his mouth for the first block or two (who’s walking whom, anyway?) and then he pulled hard on the leash, so eager was he to make his appointed rounds. And I’ll say this about Duke: he was an absolute ambassador of goodwill. People’s faces would just light up when they saw him on a walk. Because what’s more beautiful than a handsome German shepherd? If I took him to a brewery, which Carrie loved to do, he was very popular. He would greet anyone who came to our door, then run and get a toy from his toy box to show them. Usually it was his deflated volleyball, which he loved, and was gentle enough with, as he was with all his toys.

He was “anxious” at the kennel, according to the kennel staff, but they loved him, as did anyone who met him. They greeted him like Norm from Cheers when he came in. They said he loved the ball, and he nearly broke the door down to get to me when I picked him up. Duke would jump into the car anytime a door was open (as would Ellie and Shadow - are all German shepherds like that? Shadow even jumped into someone else’s minivan at a playground, sat in the back seat, as if to say, okay, where are we going?).

Duke was far from perfect. He really didn’t like other dogs. Had to be housed separately from other dogs at the kennel. And I crossed the street when walking him, if another dog was approaching. Little dogs just hated him, automatically, which I suppose is very smart of them. And Duke returned the favor – he did not like little dogs at all. He was not a running dog by any stretch of the imagination – his bad German shepherd hips saw to that – and he wasn’t really a hiking dog, ether, as his hips worsened over time. Bridget and I took him on a five-mile hike up in Ojai a few years ago. I thought we all had a great time, but it may have been too much for Duke, and it’s a shame dogs can’t verbalize what they’re going through, can’t let us know they’re in pain or don’t like what you’re making them do. He paid me back several weeks later, when I took him on another hike. We were about a quarter mile up the trail, a steep hill climb, when Duke just stopped and looked at me, as if to say, “I know what you’re doing, you fucker.” He turned around and starting walking back to the trail head. I could not call him back. He’d had enough of this hiking shit.

But he was absolutely my shadow, my boon companion. Wherever I was in the house, there he was, too. On the couch beside me. On the futon when I worked in the office. If I headed upstairs he’d bound ahead of me, no matter how much of a head start I had. He came into the shower after I was done to lick the showerpan, and that was pretty much the closest he ever came to getting a bath. I had him groomed just a couple times, and the amount of fur that came off! “Oh, you have a German shedder?” a man observed to me once on a walk. Months after he is gone, I am still finding wisps of Duke fur, little bits of Duke, in various places in the house. Duke pre-cleaned the dishes in the dishwasher, which I found very useful, and he was eager to clean up any pot pr bowl or pan used in cooking (for this reason Thanksgiving was probably his favorite holiday). He sat at the corner of the table – Carrie’s corner - waiting patiently to clean up dinner plates, and fully expected me to give him the last bit of peanut butter toast. He knew what the can of whipped cream was, and expected a squirt of it – because good boys get treats.

Duke died last September. It was sudden enough. He’d been having some neurological problems; starting in March, he’d go into a seizure every once in a while, maybe once a month. I took him into the vet, who had seen this type of thing before. The only thing that might control it was a twice-daily dose of heavy barbiturates, and I demurred; I figured that would change his personality and quality of life, for the worse. The seizures would happen once a month or so, and would put him in total rictus: teeth bared, legs churning, loss of bladder control. It would take him several minutes to return to normal Duke. On a Sunday in September he had seven seizures. He ended up in the backyard, and never pulled out of the last one. Could not raise his head. I cradled him as he passed, after calling Bridget, and Nell, in tears. Bridget and Chris got here as soon as they could. Nell accompanied me to the emergency vet, where I said goodbye to the very physical, furry presence of Duke, heavy and significant even in parting. I made arrangements to get his ashes, which I had never done for any other pet.

Duke’s passing devastated me, for quite some time. Now, denial is my stock in trade, my modus operandi, and for months, I just couldn’t believe he was gone. He wasn’t there waiting for me at the back door, ball in mouth, gyrating around. How could that be? He wasn’t there to pre-clean the dishes, lick my cereal bowl. Wasn’t there on the bed with me, or on the couch, or in his chair. I walked around the house just saying godammit, godammit, godammit. I cried every day over him for a week, every other day for a month.

One night I dreamed he was back. I had walked out onto the sidewalk, and he was under the lemon tree. I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed him. He felt real. The heaviness that was Duke. He ran across the street and I followed him, grabbed him. Oh no you don’t, I was thinking; I wanted to get him back safely into my house as soon as possible. But I kept wondering, in my dream, if this was real. He had two leashes on him, one with an address a few blocks away. He had been right under my nose! I made all these plans, including changing the ending of this story. I was ready to text folks about his return. Then I woke up. And reality set in.

The depth of all this very much surprised me. It didn’t surprise my sister Nora, a dog person if there ever was one. She has a blog, Dog Daze, with a presence on Facebook and Instagram, where she extols the virtues of our relationships with dogs. She has had a run of Labrador retrievers in her life, and has grieved over every one of them. “Grief for a dog is different,” she told me. “A dog’s love is pure.” It occurs to me that she’s exactly right, and I hadn’t really realized this. Duke’s love for us was, like that of all dogs, constant, forgiving, unwavering, and obsessive at times. Like all love should be.

Nell and I have been together almost four years, and so she got to know and love Duke (he and I were kind of a package deal). Duke took a shine to her – most animals do, they can recognize a good person – and they became close. In turn I think Nell recognized how close Duke and I were. She recently sent me a New York Times ”relationship” article, in which a reader concluded that her most significant relationship -  indeed, the love of her life - had been with a pet. Nell said, somewhat jokingly,  that was her fear, distant though it might be, of the story I’d write some day: the human relationships being distilled down to two sentences, and it otherwise being all about the pets.

Apples and oranges, I think. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Love of and for a dog can maybe even enhance a human relationship, rather than compete with it. As far as Duke and I are concerned, it was absolutely love on both sides. And had I been like that other writer, jaded perhaps by the frailties of human love (which I decidedly am not! It’s Nell and me, for the rest of the journey), then I could say, with assurance, that because of Duke, I have known love. In fact, one of the most significant relationships I have ever had was with…a dog.