High-res version

people who live with dogs in their homes are a breed apart.  at a glance, they may look like regular people, but don’t be fooled by first impressions.

a closer look reveals that they have dog hair all over their clothes and bed linens and occasionally in their refrigerators.  a dappling of nose smudges leaves an opaque, chagall-esque residue on all the windows of their cars and on any glass surfaces in their homes, but only up to dog-nose level.  each of their coat pockets contains, among other things, at least one poop bag (for which, incidentally, they have discovered many alternative uses to simply picking up dog disposables).  not infrequently, they turn down invitations to social gatherings because they just want to stay home and watch a movie on the couch with their canine companions.  they go for long walks to nowhere in particular and goad their walking partners with invented sightings of small, furry, woodland creatures.  they create facebook pages for their charges and post photos of playdates and park outings (also videos.  with sound.).  for these reasons and many others, strangers often accuse them of anthropomorphizing; friends chide them for shirking human contact; and even parents have been known to question whether there is commission of any unnatural acts.  [author’s note:  maybe it’s only my mother who did this?  but i digress.]

all of this may have some truth to it, and i do understand the hesitation for someone who has never shared life with a dog before.  i, myself, was one of those people . . . once.

there was an occasion when i volunteered to keep a law school professor’s dog at my apartment for a week while she went out of town on vacation.  on day one, he wasn’t allowed in the bedroom and could get on the couch only after i had put a sheet on it to protect it from unwanted dog hair.  by day two, he was sleeping in the bed, going with me on errands and watching late-night movies with me.  i especially loved that we loved the same sorts of things on television.  but he wasn’t my dog, and when i gave him back to my professor at the end of the week, i was more than slightly relieved.  after all, having a dog on a full-time basis seemed like an awful lot to manage, what with my own life and grocery shopping and going out with friends on the weekends.  i didn’t even consider getting a dog of my own back then.  it just seemed like such a commitment.

not unlike the preliminary mental acrobatics one engages in about whether and when to have children, the pre-dog-commitment exercise involves a series of internal debates between your mini-naysayer and your mini-yeasayer, seated on opposite shoulders and using your head as their gladiator ring.

before you bring a dog into your life, the naysayer’s analysis always suggests, you must admit to yourself that it’s a completely impractical undertaking.  dogs require so much time and attention, what with all the walking and the playing and the feeding and the bathing.  they need more space than whatever the size of your home offers.  they’ll bring dirt and bugs into your home, mess up your furniture, and generally devalue all your belongings.  there will be food costs and vet bills, and they’ll need a whole mess of dog stuff.  they’ll cover everything you own in dog.  having a dog is clearly a bad idea all around, the naysayer concludes.

and still, the yeasayer convinces you to maybe just peek in the classified ads, or drive lurchingly slowly by the petsmart on adoption weekends, and eventually you’ll find yourself phototropicizing in the direction of all of the facebook crossposts you can find about shelter dogs who need “forever homes.”  before you know it, you’ve got a wet muzzle in your eye, attached at the far end to a very waggy tail with a whole heap of doggie love in between, and your life is suddenly and irrevocably altered.

many dogs out there are considered “rescues,” which basically means they were snatched from the jaws of peril, from unfortunate and dangerous man-made circumstances foisted upon them by their former humans.  their adopters bring them home with the promise of a better life (hey, that’s a sure thing, right?!).  but after joining a human household, invariably there will come a point in each dog’s life when their individual peccadilloes will become so challenging that their humans will seriously consider running away from home.  then, without notice, the moment of bonding attaches, and there is no turning back.  human and dog will be inculcated in each other’s lives, forever and for good.

you see, the thing about living with dogs is that they become so surreptitiously intertwined with your every movement–with the most seemingly unimportant yet intimate moments in your day, with each of your comings and goings–that you hardly even notice how enmeshed you have become in one another’s lives.

and then it hits you.

a friend takes your dog for the weekend while you go out of town, and you come home late at night, having planned to get your dog back the next morning.  then you open the door to find no one sprinting to the door to greet you, no one waggling an obscure body in the middle of the entryway to prevent you from getting inside,  no one sticking a tongue in your nose as you lean over to set your things down on the floor.  you plop down on the couch to read your mail, and no one leaps up next to you, sitting with half a lap on your own and staring at you in the face expectantly.  you go to the fridge and open the door, searching for bobby fischer or at least a snack, and no one tries to edge you out in case there’s a loose bit of cheese on the lowest shelf that needs to be snarfed.  worst of all, no one follows you into the bathroom, just to be near you when you take your shower, and circles circles circles around on the bathmat until finally selecting the perfect location for a deep sigh and a short snooze.  you brush your teeth, and no one stares up at you with with deep, loving eyes projecting the kind of adoration one imagines only the likes of popes and rock stars ever enjoy with any regularity.

suddenly your life is bursting with the most exquisite emptiness you have ever experienced, and you call your friend, even though it’s after midnight, and announce that you’re coming over to pick your dog up right now.  and when you get back home and jump into bed, you swear a silent and to-the-death oath that you will never go out of town again if you can’t take your dog with you.

needless to say, the years and years you spend with your dog are full of milestones and nothing muches, summits and nadirs and everything-in-the-middle, day-to-day stuffs.  you coach each other through challenges and celebrate each other’s accomplishments.  and there are never harsh words exchanged, misunderstandings, or unforgiven outcomes.  it is, quite literally, all good.

sure, there are emergency vet visits because someone ate an entire chocolate cake off the counter or started growing something out of her shoulder that started off as a perfectly ignorable bump but then became a tiny shrunken head that had to be eradicated.  sure, there are things that fail with age and stuff that sort of happens, like glaucoma and arthritis and heart murmurs and really bad teeth.  then, there may be surgery to remove a diseased eye or a cancerous limb, or there may be a laminectomy to relieve nerve compression on the spine that causes paralysis (which you find out only later can be reversed with loads of patience and love and care).  but at each turn, you find a way to raise the financial and emotional capital to do what needs to be done to give your adopted, cross-species child the quality of life she deserves, because she deserves so much, and she asks so little.

so when the day comes, and it always does come, when your fur-bound love’s spirit has outlived her failing body, you give her the greatest gift one being can possibly give another being–the gift of freedom from limits.  and when you have to lay your heart-friend to rest, you sit beside her with her head in your lap, and you hold her with all the love in your being as her soul escapes its temporary container and explodes into streaks of vibrant oranges and purples, encircles you, and nudges up against you one last time before it flies out the window and up to the sky.

people who aren’t dog people just can’t grock why you’re so upset.  after all, she was just a dog.  but those who have ever known the love of a dog will drop whatever they’re carrying in their arms and offer you their embrace and their deep condolences, and they’ll tell you about the dogs they’ve loved and lost and about how you never forget them, no matter how much time passes, and how they come to you in dreams and bring you loving messages as if they were fetching them from beyond.  and for that moment, you’ll feel a connection with another human that engages all the good in the world and fills you with hope.  and you’ll thank your maker that your yeasayer won in that gladiator ring all those years ago, and you will be grateful beyond gratitude that you were entrusted with the love of such a brave and mighty being.

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it was exactly one year ago today when my girl, otter, flew out my window at the ripe old age of 12-1/2.  this story is for you, my sweet girl.  my heart bursts with the love it carries for you.  still.