About dogs…

Something a little different for your Sunday.

The first time I remember seeing my father cry was on the ride home from the veterinarian in the year 1985. I was 11 and I had gone with him to the vet that day so that I too, could say goodbye to our dog Lucky, a snaggle-toothed Schnauzer mix who fancied Tramp from the Disney movie and had been adopted by my family 2 years before I was born.

I’ve witnessed my dad cry exactly three times in my life. On my wedding day, on the day he held my newborn son Leo for the first time, and on the day we said goodbye to Lucky.

I remember each time vividly, partly because it so rarely happened, and partly because it was so powerful and so raw. When my dad cried, his whole entire body cried. Tears would stream down his face and spill over him like waterfalls. His shoulders would shrug rapidly and his chest would heave. It was as if he was letting out decades of emotion and pain. Pain he’d been bottling up, pushing down, and refusing to allow himself to feel.

Saying goodbye to Lucky was a pain he couldn’t push down. It was too much. Lucky had been there with my dad and for my dad through everything. Through 5 kids and two marriages. Through a physically and emotionally abusive mother to those kids who would one day just up and walk out the door. Lucky was with us as we played in the snow, for big family BBQs and summer kickball games with the neighbors on the cul-de-sac. She was our dog.

I loved Lucky so much, and was so fiercely protective of her that when those same neighbor kids would make fun of her for being small, or for having funny teeth that I would threaten to punch them if they didn’t stop. And because I was the kind of kid who was just crazy enough to actually follow through with a threat like that (and did many times) they would stop.

Lucky was more than a family pet. She was, as anyone who loves dogs knows — family.

But they’re really so much more than that at the same time.

Throughout my 49 years on this Earth, the only time I didn’t have a dog was during my college years in Boston (when I would still come home to our dog Shady every holiday and summer).

When I first moved to NYC, I adopted my boyfriend‘s Pit rescue Lucy as my own. We then rescued a dog in Harlem who had been living under the takeout window at the McDonald’s on 125th street for a year — an Australian Shepherd mix as the vet later told us, and we named her Bear.

Lucy and Bear made the journey from the big city out to the Jersey suburbs, and they were with us during those first, truly happy years of marriage.

Bear succumbed to cancer at the age of 5, and Lucy made it all the way to 14 before we had to say goodbye to her.

When I was pregnant with my first child, my father-in-law showed up with an 8 week old chocolate lab puppy with bright green eyes. I didn’t know he was bringing me a puppy, and my then husband CERTAINLY didn’t know, and was not at all in favor of the idea, but it was absolutely impossible to say no to taking this dog, and I was pregnant, which meant that I got what I wanted. So, he became mine, and I named him Otis.

Otis was my first baby really.

He was this great big doofus of a dog who was as lovable as the day is long while also being dumb enough to eat an entire box of dishwasher tablets (and survive somehow).

He was here when I brought my babies home. He was here for the first time they walked, or talked or fell down. He was here when my father, my mother and my brother died. He was here when my marriage ended. He was here all those nights I would put the kids to bed and sob while worrying about how I would ever be able to support them on my own. Otis was here when Covid hit and the lockdowns began. Otis was here. When the kids would scrape their knee and cry, he would comfort them. When my kids were at their dad’s and away from me for overnights for the first time in their lives, he would comfort me too.

And then one day, around a month after the lockdowns began, he stopped eating. And I took him to the emergency vet but due to Covid, I had to wait in the parking lot during his exam.

When the doctor came outside, he was visibly shaken. And I heard the words “riddled with cancer” and “weeks maybe months”… coming out of his mouth but I couldn’t catch them. I wouldn’t let them land in my ears because then they’d travel to my mind and then they’d be real… weeks after I had buried my big brother, months after my marriage had ended, and with the world shut down due to an unprecedented pandemic, my 12 year old best friend, my first baby, one of the great loves of my life, was dying.

And it broke me.