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The world has to stop
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The world has to stop
  Katy helps me with a quilt. There is so much happening in the world right now. So much of it is hard, and cruel, and sad. But my dog died and for a time, that is all the grief I can deal with. So this column is a homage to Katy Big Dog. You might think that, like paying respects and sending flowers when someone dies, all the attention comes too late. The answer’s the same – these things are to make things easier for those left behind.  Besides, Katy and I had a mutual admiration society – she thought I was smart and beautiful, and I thought she was, and we reassured one another of these facts daily, each in our own way. Katy came to live here when she was a puppy. There was a commotion in the neighbor’s back yard, which was fenced but had an always-open gate then. The commotion turned out to be a poor, thin German Shepherd-looking female dog, with puppy in tow, being avidly pursued by a large male dog. She had run into the neighbor’s yard and was making frantic circles around it, having lost the gate. The puppy was trying to keep up.  Sean and I stood at the fence and called her, and she made her escape, going by us sideways in case we tried to kick her, with the male dog hot on her trail. A few moments later, we realized she’d left her puppy behind. Sean was 12 then. He scooped up the puppy and ran after the mama dog, but she was out of sight in seconds, and we both knew we were stuck with this puppy. And what a puppy. Her backbone was razor-sharp, and you could count her ribs. She had no hair on her legs or tail, just scaly gray skin. I was afraid it was mange, and kept her away from the other animals until I could take her to the vet, expecting Dr. Novak would recommend putting her down.  But it wasn’t mange, it was allergies, and when we started to feed her, she started to re-grow hair, and it turned out to be long, silky, curly hair, and she turned out to be a tremendously large dog who looked like a long-haired black Labrador, only with a strange, huge, square-shaped muzzle and enormous jowls. Katy took massive drinks of water and when she was done, usually had a pint or so saved in her jowls. She would then find someone who was sitting down somewhere and wipe her face on their lap. Katy slept by the side of the bed, and every morning when I put my feet out of the bed, she would nibble my toes very gently and make me laugh. Then she’d sing her morning song: “Ro-ro-ro.”  Katy’s first toys were the kids’ action figures. We called them her “babies.” She carried them around, hidden in her voluminous jowls, and slept with them. She hid them, along with bits of food, under the bed. If you told her to go get her “babies,” she would disappear and come back with one of them, prancing sideways and waving her plumed tail like a flag.  We had to be very, very careful not to refer to anything else in the house as a “baby,” because babies got pretty well chewed. Katy fell in love with a plush duck that emitted a recorded, “quack-quack-quack.” She learned to squeeze it in the right place to make it quack, and then learned that we thought this was clever, and would give her treats when she made her duck quack. Finally we had to hide the duck, as she began following us around with it, quacking it every couple of minutes for treats. Katy shared my breakfast with me every morning. She was especially fond of bagels with cream cheese, and oatmeal – she liked any sort of cereal, unless it contained cinnamon, or I put banana in it. She really detested bananas. Katy was never a watchdog. When people came to the door, she barked and ran and hid under the bed. She was afraid of hats, and of a pair of pajama pants I once wore that were printed like a Jersey cow. Coming in from the back yard and finding me in them, she began barking frantically and hid until I changed. She may have thought I’d been half-eaten by a crazed cow.  Katy’s back legs stopped working before she died, but she still wanted to be where we were, and would crawl with her front legs, so we carried her from room to room. She probably didn’t weigh 60 pounds at the end. We all spent time sitting with her Wednesday, stroking her ears and telling her what a good, smart, pretty dog she was and how much we loved her. Once, she managed a feeble tail-thump for me. Katy died about 4 p.m. Wednesday. She was 14. Sean and Eric dug her grave in the back yard, in the stunning heat and the hard, hard ground, and we all said goodbye.  It will be weeks before I stop listening for her steps, for her scratch at the back door, for her “ro-ro-ro,” and “ah-WOO,” and the half-hearted “boorf,” delivered over her shoulder, with which she met danger, real or perceived. In a few days, I’ll rejoin the rest of the world, and watch the news, and be saddened or frightened or elated by what’s going on. Goodbye, Katy Big Dog. I won’t forget you.  |
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