It was somewhere around the middle of 2019 when both of my daughters joined Sara's years-long campaign of just sort of thinking out loud about how great it would be for us to have a dog. Which means it was somewhere around the middle of 2019 that it became clear to me that the matter had officially moved from "What if?" to "Get ready to start Picking Up Dogshit in the Cold, Buddy."
The next question, as far as I was concerned, was what kind of dog would make sense in a two-bedroom apartment that already housed four people and a cat. I'd never owned a dog, so I opened negotiations with what made sense to me: "Um, a small one?"
Sara, on the other hand, had grown up with dogs.
(The first one I met: a boxer named Bernie, who sprinted to the front door of her parents' house to greet her the first time I ever visited her family for the holidays. Sara had trained him to rear back on his hind legs, stand up and hug her; when she walked in, he was very happy to do his trick. And when I walked in behind her, he was very excited to do it for/to me, too. But while Bernie had exuberance in spades, he lacked both second-jump-ability and spatial awareness, which is how he wound up just rocking me straight in the balls with his front paws. Truly a perfect start to Meeting The Parents.)
Sara explained to me that we were going to get a big dog, because big dogs are bigger and thus better than little dogs, who tended to be yappy. Also, we were going to look for one that wasn't a puppy, because that kind of energy with two small kids in a comparatively small space seemed like a recipe for disaster. Also, a recipe for me, the one who works from home and would need to do most of the heavy lifting in taking care of the dog, losing his mind very quickly.
OK, so: Big, chill, older dog who's great with kids, who doesn't mind cats, and who's mostly fine with laying around an apartment as opposed to running around a yard. Where were we going to find that?
Luckily, we knew a guy. That guy was my mom, who volunteers at a shelter.
She said there was this one dog that was so good they used to bring him out to adoption outreach events in the community as, like, an example of how good the shelter dogs could be. In spite of his evident inherent goodness, though, they could only find a foster spot for him, not find a full-time placement.
Maybe it was because he was seven, "a senior dog." Maybe it's because, while the paperwork said "mixed breed," that face screamed "pitbull," which tends to scare folks away.
Maybe we could come meet him at the next event, she said. His name's Lugar.
We didn't wind up doing that, but we saw pictures of him — like this one ...
Look at that goddamn rockstar. (Photo via Animal Care Centers of NYC)
... and watched a couple of videos of him playing at the animal shelter, and holy crap, did that dog seem pretty great.
We set up a formal "meet-and-greet" appointment with his foster host at the shelter in Manhattan. After he padded out to meet us, the first thing he did was walk up to the girls, lay down in front of them, roll over, and show them his belly.
At that point, two more things became clear to me:
If I didn't sign whatever papers the staff at the shelter put in front of me, Sara and the girls would ensure I did not make it back to the apartment alive.
When we first brought him home, the folks at the shelter told us to be patient — that he'd likely be skittish at first, but that eventually he'd feel comfortable enough to start thinking of our home, and of us, as his.
It would take some time, though, they said; keeping his stuff around him as much as possible might help ease the transition. So, that first night, we dragged his bed to the foot of ours, hoping that might make him comfortable enough to sleep in our room.
When we started getting ready for bed, he walked into the bedroom, stepped on his bed ... and immediately launched off of it onto ours, did a quick turn, and plopped down at the foot.
He would spend every night of the next four-plus years on the bed. (Many days, too.)
Over time, aided by me frequently working late nights, he became more brazen with claiming bed territory — up to and including literally just sleeping on my side of the bed, head on the pillow and everything.
It's not always easy to move a dead-weight 75-pound pitbull in the middle of the night in the dark. Sometimes, I had to settle for shoving him over juuuuuuuust enough that I could, like, ride the edge of the mattress.
Sometimes ... OK, look, sometimes that meant I wound up spooning the dog. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm proud of it. But I'm not going to pretend I'm ashamed of it, either. This was a very huggable dog.
(Don't you look at me like that. You think you can sit up there, all elite and cloistered in your ivory tower, and judge us working men who sometimes spoon their pitbulls? I judge you.)
We only brought Lugar to dog parks a couple of times. People told us we should — that it was good to give him the chance to get off the leash, run around, play with other dogs.
Both times, he sprinted straight for another dog's ball and, in short order, wound up growling, barking and tangling with that other dog. Running, grabbing him, back in the harness, apologizing, hustling away, heading home. Does not play well with others.
We never knew what his life was before he got to the shelter. Based on what we could see, though, we figured it wasn't good. He came to us with broken teeth and mangled ears that got infected a lot — "cropped," they said the term was, but this version of it apparently done by someone who A) didn't really know how to do it without hurting the dog, B) didn't really care about hurting the dog, or C) both.
Instinct or experience led him to lunge at almost every dog he saw, which meant walking him around the neighborhood in meandering dotted lines, like the kid from Family Circus. Sometimes, though, he wouldn't growl and lunge. Sometimes he'd see another dog and just lay flat down on the ground, mewling. He did that at the vet a lot. He fucking hated the vet.
Maybe whoever had him first raised him to fight other dogs. Maybe he did it, and it hurt him. I have no idea what capacity a dog has for hate or fear or anxiety. It just seemed like the best thing I could do was keep him close, keep my hands on him, keep him safe. Sorry, he's not really friendly.
Which, by the way, was bullshit. Get him around people, and he was the sweetest goddamn thing you ever saw in your life.
Gleefully padded up to every child he saw, bowing his head for pets and scratches. Helicopter-tail for the older ladies on our floor, who'd tack an extra few minutes onto every walk because they were so happy to see their friend. Rolled over to show his belly for everyone.
Accosted everybody who came into our apartment, not because it was his job to guard us, but because every new person was another potential source of attention. Pet him once, and he would not leave you alone, trying to become your new 75-pound lapdog.
Some people would go white as a sheet as soon as they saw him, which I understood; lots of "No, you go ahead, I'll take the next elevator." Some, though, were nervous, but curious: Is he friendly?
He looks like a monster, but he's a total mush.
Sometimes, they'd reach out and pet him, and his tail would go bananas, and they'd laugh. Two days made.
He kept making days, even as he entered his Age-12 Season. But things also started to get harder.
It used to be that, when he would suddenly start throwing up or stop pooping, you could pretty easily figure out what the problem was: the girls fed him too many sticks on that walk to the train spot, he'd swallowed a piece of rubber from the tennis ball he'd torn apart minutes after it was given to him, etc. A couple times last year, though, we couldn't quite figure out what was going on.
He'd stop eating in the morning, or sometimes altogether. Which would lead to a trip to the vet. Which would lead to tests and dietary changes. Which would lead — eventually, for the most part — back to normal.
When we got to Sara's mom's house for Christmas break, Lugar began not eating very much. OK, no problem: boiled chicken and plain white rice, just like the other times something didn't seem to be agreeing with him.
Except he wouldn't really eat that, either. And soon he went from "not eating much" to "not eating anything" to "not moving very much" to "can barely get up or walk" and "constantly shivering."
So, while I went to a co-working spot to record a podcast, Sara took him to the vet. While I stayed there to write a column, she let me know: Not good. We'll talk when you get home.
Every word of the news was bad. Nasty unidentified growth on his spleen. Enough internal bleeding that he'd need a blood tranfusion just to be able to potentially withstand surgery to biopsy the growth. If it was malignant, then chemotherapy to try to treat the cancer. And, if all that works, you've put your geriatric guy through hell, just so he could get from 11 to 12 — with no guarantee it won't come back, that you won't have to do it all again, that you're not just heaping pain on pain just to delay feeling the pain yourself.
So we decided to swallow hard, and just feel the pain.
Olivia wanted to know if this meant she couldn't play fetch with Lugar anymore. I told her yes, it did, but we still get to keep loving him, thinking of him, remembering him, looking at pictures of him, and talking about him if we want to, even if he's not physically with us.
The main thing Siobhan wanted to know, though, was why I wasn't crying. Why everyone else was crying but me.
I gave the answer I had: Well, kiddo, everybody processes their big feelings differently. I do feel very sad, but that hasn't come out as tears. I'm sure it will, but it just hasn't yet.
If I'm being honest, though, I was wondering that, too.
I don't think I cried much when I found out my brother died. He'd been sick, the kind of sick people typically didn't shake, and I knew that. And then, one morning nobody was in the house, and the phone rang while I was watching ... Wimbledon? French Open? ... and it was my dad calling from my brother's place to tell me the news, and what to tell people when they called the house to ask what was going on, because that would be a big help.
I don't think I cried much when I found out my friend Sean died. I knew it was coming — he'd told us he was done fighting the cancer, that it was all over but the shouting, and I'd cried that day — but when it actually happened, I was writing, and his mother-in-law called to tell me. She asked me to call a bunch of our mutual friends to let them know, because that would be a big help.
If I'm remembering right — and I might not be — I didn't cry much on the morning my father died. I remember being in the car on the way to the hospital, my brother driving (different brother, it'd be a fucking crazy story otherwise). I remember both of us frantic, laughing at whatever thing we were listening to on the radio or whatever we were saying to each other to fill the space between the place where our dad was alive and the horror movie where he wasn't. I remember being in the waiting room, and then us circling his hospital bed, and not being sure if he was already gone or was about to be, and saying goodbye. The only thought I remember from that time was, "Help Mom."
So when Sara told me what the vet said, and we made the decision that this was it, I went straight to what needed to happen next.
Talk to the girls now, make space for whatever they feel. Call the vet in the morning, set it up. Talk to the girls again after that, tell them it's OK to feel sad, and to make sure they give Lugar lots of love for the next couple of hours in between playing iPad games. Carry Lugar out to go to the bathroom, then down the stairs to the car, set him up in the hatchback, wrap the blanket around him. Make sure everyone else gets a chance to say goodbye.
Make it lighter for them. Make it your problem. Be a big help.
When it was time, the vet asked me if I had any questions.
Can I be with him when it happens? I don't want to leave him alone, because, no offense, he fucking hates the vet.
The vet didn't take it personally, said of course, started explaining. We bring him into the back to put an IV catheter into his arm, but then we bring him back out, and you get as much time as you need with him before we do it. Whenever you're ready.
OK, ready. Well, as ready as we're gonna get.
He could barely walk, but he went with the assistant, came back with the IV. Didn't even have the energy to try to chew off the bandage holding it in. Just laid down, sprawled out, sighed in my general direction. I took his collar off, scratched behind his ears, grabbed the fur on the back of his neck, kissed him on the top of the head.
Knock-knock. Whenever you're ready.
First, the sedative to calm him down. Probably unnecessary, since it looked like all the fight had left him; maybe he at least caught a buzz on the way out. Next: what the vet very directly described as "a massive overdose of barbiturates."
Before the second shot, though, the vet stopped, said: You know, right now, he can still hear you.
So: lean in. Any famous last words for the trip over the Rainbow Bridge?
I'm really sorry. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You did good. You worked hard. Go get some rest.
I knew he was gone before the vet told me; his tongue had never come out of his mouth like that. No more shivering, no more shaking, no more pain. No more playing, no more scratching, no more spooning. No more anything.
I waited a minute after the vet left, but I didn't really need to. Whatever he was — whatever he'd been to us, been for me — wasn't there anymore. I wrapped his collar around my wrist and drove back to tell the girls it was done.
One thing I think we're getting right is that we're letting the grief unfold and evolve, hit us in waves when it does. We gave away a lot of his stuff: some treats and assorted accessories down in the lobby to be picked through by the dog owners in our building, some of his geriatric diet food and not-chewed-up toys to the shelter. But we didn't just get rid of everything. We're not ready for that.
Liv took his red Kong bone and a picture of the two of them together playing fetch, put them on her windowsill, told us she was going to start praying there every night. We're lapsed Catholic heathens, so I'm not sure exactly how she's praying; I'm pretty sure she's praying for him to come back, though.
Siobhan skipped praying and went straight to deciding that Ghost Lugar was going to sleep with her, because now he wasn't too heavy for the top bunk anymore. Silver linings.
His bed's still laying in the living room, with his collar and his harness laying on it. Whenever someone bumps into it, I hear his tags jingle, and I get this catch in my breath. But then I remember.
I miss having to push him down to the foot of the bed. I miss the way he'd jump up on the bed after I'd set up the podcast shit, and how I'd have to worry he was going to bark or moan or shake his collar and we'd have to stop recording the show. I miss being proud of him when he'd be so good we didn't have to, a perfect silent audience for my bullshit.
I miss him letting the girls lay on him, watching him just kind of sigh beneath them, like one of the animals who got used as household appliances on The Flintstones that would turn to the camera and say, "It's a living." I miss the times he'd get so wild at bedtime that it was impossible to keep the girls from getting riled up, too.
I miss the way that walking him would organize my day, help me organize my head. I miss how Sara would try to get him to come in to the bedroom while I was still watching games, and how he would stop at the door, turn to see me sitting on the couch, and trot back over to join me.
I miss taking pictures of him. I miss taking pictures of us together — just about the only time I really took pictures of me, because it felt like there was something worth looking at, worth remembering.
I miss being out in the neighborhood with him, even when it's cold or rainy or both. I miss the occasional feeling of hilarious invincibility that came with walking a pitbull through Flatbush while blasting Cam'ron or Wu Tang or PUP or whoever in my headphones. (I've been listening to "Sleep in the Heat" a lot. The last two Virtute songs, too. Steer into the skid.) I miss how that invincibility would get punctured when he would get scared by another dog — how I'd grab his harness and hold him close, how I'd tell him that he was all right, that we were going to keep moving.
I miss when he'd keep moving.
I process things by writing about them, but that doesn't always get me anywhere; I wish I had some grand unifying point to arrive at here, but I don't think I do. (Maybe it's that you shouldn't be afraid to adopt an older dog? Yeah, this part sucks, but the stuff before was pretty great. I don't know.)
I'm sure we will get another dog at some point, and I'm sure I'll love that dog a lot, too, because now I know how. I had a Premium Teacher.
Thanks for showing me, Lugar. I'm really sorry. You did good. You worked hard. Go get some rest.
