I came across your collar today Sorting what remains So faded These eyes Can barely make you out But pretty in pink I breathe you in And jingle jangle For a moment I think you’re here To know me No me Into the drawer to fragrant past days
In honor of National Make a Dog’s Day, let’s do so with four-pawed Factslaps (E&T Remix):
As of 2018, Americans own 89.7 million dogs.
The world’s oldest dog died at age 29.
Dogs poop in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field.
Humans and dogs first became best friends 30,000 years ago.
Every dog’s mitochondrial DNA is 99.9% the same as a gray wolf.
In English-speaking countries, the most popular names for dogs are Max and Molly.
Dogs have 13 blood types, horses have 8, cows have 9, while humans have only 4.
Paul McCartney recorded an ultrasonic whistle audible only to dogs at the end of “A Day in the Life.”
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.
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.
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.
