LIFE, DEATH AND OTHER LESSONS FROM MY DOG
He wasn’t in pain; that was the main thing.
For that I was thankful as I watched my dog, Redden, lying motionless on the veterinarian’s examining table. An hour previous the sixteen-year-old pup had cried out in the middle of the night — a cry I’d never heard before. By the time I got to him he was limp, his eyes dilated and unfocused. I bundled him up against the January cold and rushed him to a 24-hour emergency veterinarian clinic.
The crisp, young female vet examined Redden with her stethoscope, palpating and checking reflexes. I watched, painfully aware that when all the stethoscoping and palpating were done, a decision would have to be made, one of those life-or-death ones. As the vet worked, I tried to figure out what that decision was going to be and who was going to make it?
When Redden and I were first introduced decades ago, he wasn’t even my dog. I was a green, self-conscious kid studying cinema at USC. A cute coed in the apartment nextdoor asked if I could babysit her puppy — a cute but hyperactive cockapoo — while she visited San Francisco for a few days? I said yes. The coed never returned.
That’s when this little dog began a lifelong teaching assignment, starting with my first lesson — mopping. During those first few weeks, Redden went through every puppyhood disease known to modern veterinary science. He literally went from both ends for days. I couldn’t get this little fellow outside fast enough as he would eschew out of one of his two ends the very best that Alpo had to offer, like one of those overstuffed burritos I was just learning to eat at the corner taco stand. It occurred to me to write a scientific paper on how this dog defied the laws of conservations of matter. “He isn’t even my dog,” I’d mutter and mop.
My roommate at the time was one of those orderly, always-hang-up-your-clothes kind of guys, and was not particularly pleased with little Drippo. Still, he paid for a share of Redden’s pills and shots. After a couple of days without a slipup, my roommate magnanimously admitted he was becoming quite fond of the little tyke. “He is kind of cute and all and…” — we were interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of Redden letting his ends do their thing, this time on my roommate’s bed.
Sometime later and sans roommate, Redden and I learned something together — we enrolled in dog obedience classes. He learned to heel, fetch, stay, and jump over hurdles; I learned that I had a canine wunderkind on my hands. Redden scored 194 out of 200 points during a prejudging trial — higher than any dog in the class. However during the final judging Redden “messed the ring” — an automatic disqualification. I appealed to the judge whose intransigence can be understood — Redden had lifted his leg on the judge’s pant leg.
Eventually Redden was properly house-trained and also “train-trained”, as we began taking yearly train trips across the southern states to visit my hometown. I learned to be ready at a moment’s notice to take Redden out for a walk during short stops in El Paso, New Orleans and Birmingham. During these trips Redden spent many happy hours blissfully staring out at the purple mountains and vast prairies, never tiring of the scenery.
After Amtrak stopped allowing animals on trains (possible due to Redden chasing a conductor the length of a Pullman car) he and I traveled cross-country by car which he much preferred — the food was better and the walks more frequent. He loved barking at the stupefied truckers over the CB radio.
There were also many trips by plane. And even with a double dose of tranquilizers, which he gobbled down greedily, Redden still enjoyed his favorite travel game: escaping from his cage in the baggage compartment of the 747 before final approach.
As he got older, Redden preferred to let me travel alone while he enjoyed a few relaxing days at a West Hollywood pet hotel with a highly pedigreed clientele. During one such visit, Redden accepted an affectionate poodle’s invitation and slipped under a fence for a brief but passionate interlude. The poodle later gave birth to a large and very mixed litter which in turn gave birth to a rather embarrassing lawsuit. Redden was named “correspondent”.
I worked hard writing for TV and films, pounding away at an old Remington, and Redden became my severest critic, gnashing away relentlessly at the volumes of wadded sheets raining down from my desk. When things began to sell, I traded up for an electric model and then a word processor. The only technology that impressed Redden was a squeaky toy which he invariably plopped in my lap at a critical writing juncture. When I was assigned to write an episode of a show starring a dog, Redden provided inspiration: lolling his tongue and cocking his ears.
Through the years, Redden watched girlfriends come and go, giving many of the less decisive ones a nudge or two. After more than a decade as bachelors together, Redden begrudgingly gave my hand in marriage to a girl who had won his undying respect by doggedly refusing to be “nudged.” My bride came to care deeply for Redden as befits any proper stepmother.
In his last years, Redden went through the usual variety of illnesses that afflict older dogs: tumors, arthritis, infections. Fleas, which had only been a minor annoyance when he was young became a allergic nightmare. His eyes became blue-white with age; mine became tearful from watching my once beautiful puppy becoming old and feeble.
“Have you considered euthanasia?” I was snapped back to reality by the vet’s compassionate voice.
She had completed her examination. Redden had likely suffered a stroke leaving him in a possibly-irreversible coma. I was honestly unprepared for the conflicting emotions welling up within me. I turned to my wife who, fully torn as myself, refused to make the decision. In the end, he was now finally “my dog” after all.
When they shaved his forearm and pumped a massive anesthetic dose into his fragile veins, Redden heaved two great breaths and was gone. For weeks afterwards, I would come home at night and rush to let my phantom dog out, only to be surprised not to find his furry face waiting for me. His food bowl, empty but for the cat’s meager tracings, would mock me gently as I passed it on the stairs.
Redden’s pain is gone now, his tumors in remission, and the arthritis calmed. His eyes are clear again, just as when he was a rollicking pup. And somewhere from the Vistadome lounge car of a Superliner, Redden sits watching those purple mountains and majestic prairies as long as he pleases. And those fleas that tormented him? Call me morbid, but I like to think of those parasites as they slid into the crematorium with him. In a way that he could not defeat them during life, in death Redden did have the last bark.
And he may have had something else to bark about. Within a few months after his passing, my wife and I were blessed with children, twins. From then on our lives would be devoted to raising creatures of our own “genus phylum” and, yes, mopping up after them.
I smile even now to be reminded of all those other life and parenting skills that he taught me — patience, compassion, trust and caregiving. Without slighting any of his human counterparts he was the best, the truest teacher and friend I believe I will ever have.
