Author Archives: Scott Bowles

What I Miss

Crow | The HollywoodBowles

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/where-to-start/ The only failing of dogs is that they don’t outlive us.

That’s become acutely clear over the past day. There’s a ringing in my ears, as if a flash bang went off in the house. I know it’s the tinnitus of absence. But there’s a larger void.

For the first time in my adult life, I’m without a canine companion. And that’s only because I count my college days as adulthood. Esme’s northern passage also marked the end of a duo — Teddy & Esme — the first buddy-cop movie to ever play out before me in my 8 dog years.

While my parents were never animal nuts, my sister and I are, particularly for wolf cousins. Caroline and I are of one mind on this: Cruelty to animals should be punished twice as severely as cruelty to humans. At least humans have therapy.

I guess that would have made Ezzie a therapy dog, because god knows she was an emotional salve. While Teddy was easily the alpha dog — from his size to his cartoonish personality — Esme set the rhythm of every day I’ve spent in this house since we moved here in 2009.

If I were lost in a column here in the office, Ezzie would stroll back to remind me: It’s dinnertime, dummy. Fetchtime, too. Oh, and bring a baggie; I left something warm for you in the backyard.

A Breakfast of Champions | The HollywoodBowles

Without a word, she was the crossing guard. She taught me: close doors; latch the gate, pick up your shit, check your suit for fur so you don’t look a corporate tool for Big Dander.

So it goes with all furred family members, it seems. What miracles! that meeting of the mind across species. That we would evolve to have the same endgame in mind: a safe, loving home that stands until the carousel stops. A home so intricate-yet-synchronous we could only hope for such symbiosis with homo sapiens.

And let’s bow back to our furred roommates for a moment. No matter your shortcomings, real or imagined, no matter your demons, manifest or budding, No. Matter. What. You are a rock star, they tell us. You hang the moon every night.

There’s something about that surreal bond that sets off meth-level dopamine hits in my brain. Maybe that’s what I’m jonesing. The problem with losing a love is that you can picture what you remember, but cannot see what you really miss: that aura of presence.

And I realize, here in the office, where nothing reminds me of the setting sun except memory and a wristwatch, that the question really isn’t a question at all: Another hound will roam these grounds someday.

Maybe two.

Archives for November 2014 | The HollywoodBowles - Page 2

Esme Bowles (4/10/09-10/19/20)

Esme was the smartest dog I ever knew.

She literally taught herself to fetch. Watched Teddy — he would just chase a thrown ball, taste it, and run to the next distraction. Ezzie figured out as a puppy that if she brought it back to her human, he would be tickled and throw it again. And again.

For Esme, with Love and Slobber | The HollywoodBowles

She’d learn to sit and find a toy on command. If Teddy did something he was not supposed to — like crap on the couch or eat my leather wallet — Esme would actually leave the house when I awakened. I would come to learn Teddy had misbehaved through her cues: If I heard her exit when I walked in from the bedroom, I’d know to brace myself.

Esme was perpetually cold. She’d laze on her back in triple-digit Valley heat.

Teddy | The HollywoodBowles

She treated guests as if she’d never had company in her life.

Teddy And Esme | The HollywoodBowles
Esme, teaching my aunt Lessie how to fetch.

She loved the car as much as her brother.

dogs in car
Freedom!

She did not mind a little 420.

Esme | The HollywoodBowles

She stood her ground, regardless of size.

A Confederacy of Dunces; Teddy; Esme

And she stood guard.

Fred Flintstone | The HollywoodBowles

Her favorite thing, though, had to be the 5 p.m. fetch. Since we both required evening meds — her for a brain tumor, me for the transplant — we’d rush our way through our evening doses to beat a path outdoors.

There, we’d play Esme’s version of fetch. More of a hide and fetch, I’d say.

Any dog can chase a ball and bring it back. Esme preferred you hide the toy and send her on a search mission. She would do this for more than an hour, and I usually wilted in the sun before she.

The night before she died, Esme did something for the first time in her life: made a noise.

I knew Esme for 11 1/2 years, and not once did I hear her bark. Not. Once. She may yip the rare dream, and snored like a motherfucker. But she made Dirty Harry look like a gossip queen.

Last night, though, she gave a soft, sustained whimper. Twice. I came to her bed to see if she was dreaming. Her eyes were wide open, her head against a blanket. I sat next to her and scritched her belly. The whimpers stopped. I rubbed her until she nodded off.

She was reminding me the time.

“I know,” I told her.

She knew too.

Triangulation

Teddy And Esme | The HollywoodBowles - Page 2

Esme’s right front leg gave out last week. A day later, so did the rest of her body.

It seemed sudden, but it wasn’t. Our fetch-runs turned into fetch-walks — so comically deliberate I created a movie trailer entitled The Grudge Fetch.

Now, she is a tripod. Getting in and out of the dog door is a one-minute geometric exercise. She no longer hops on the bed. Or gets in the car. Or gazes out the front window curtained specifically for her. Now, about the only reason she moves is when she smells food.

But that, too, is waning.

I had the “quality of life talk” with the vet. But how do you gauge a dog’s happiness? They are the model of optimism. Teddy was run over by a car as a puppy and suffered a compound fracture. After a horrifying yelp, he sat there, grinning, leg pointed the wrong way, as I frantically got dressed to get him to a hospital.

So it is with Esme. With the exception of a whimper on that tender foot, she’s lodged nary a complaint. Just snores away in a cat bed she has made her own.

My father saddened himself to death. While his death certificate cites heart failure at 84, the truth is he outlived his family, his friends, his reason for living. He hardly owns that patent, I know, but I consider myself fortunate to hold no claim to its inheritance.

And I think Ezzie is with me. There are all sorts of reasons. This morning, as I grogged awake in the jacuzzi, I heard a scrape, jingle, and soft thud against the tub. Esme had hobbled her way up the wooden steps to lay in the sun at my side.

I rubbed her belly from the tub until I pruned. Then I stepped over her and carried her onto the couch, where I write this piece.

Sometimes, just wanting it is enough.