Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "dogs"

Perhaps our human relationships and experiences with love can be better because we have loved a dog or a cat.

In this week's blog post, I explore the relationship between the ability to love an animal and the ability to love a person.
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What Binds Us

Two years ago today, we had to let go of our precious girl, Coco. She was fighting heart disease and the effects of old age. We knew it was time and she let us know she was ready. Still, it was hard. She wasn’t the first dog we’ve lost—but in the intervening years, grief had lost its edge.

We’d had to put down my first dog, Channing, after an attack by a neighborhood pit bull. For a decade he’d been my most constant and cherished companion, predating Stanley. I was, to put it mildly, devastated. It wasn’t until we adopted Coco that Stanley stopped looking at me with anxiety and inexpressible sorrow. Weeks after we got her, I was talking to my mother on the phone and something she said made me laugh. She paused and said, “You know, after Channing died I didn’t think I’d ever hear you laugh again.”

It was only then that I realized how deep and visible my grief had been. Coco’s ashes sit on a shelf in the library beside those of Channing.

I made an appointment for that Saturday at 3. Stanley left work early and met us there. I’d spent the entire day holding Coco, loving her, but he hadn’t seen her since early that morning. He walked into the exam room where we waited and said “I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not,” and dissolved into tears. I sat opposite holding Coco and watched this handsome, strong man, my rock, falling apart before my eyes. I thought, not for the first time, there is nothing harder to watch than another’s grief. Especially when it is someone you love who is grieving.

“She’s gone,” the vet said quietly then discreetly withdrew. I left the room shortly after knowing that if they came for her while I was there, I would fall to my knees, clutching her, still warm, body to my chest and refuse to let go. Instead, I went outside, lay on the pavement, cured into a ball with our other dog, Toby wrapped tight and cried like I would never stop.

Stanley stayed with her in that bright, clean room, the saddest place on earth, until they came for her because he d-said he didn’t want to leave her there alone.

And now two years later, there remains an empty corner in my heart, where she used to sit. And now two years after her loss, and ten years after we first brought her home, I remain unsure: Did I rescue her? Or did she rescue me?

Read my original post about losing Coco here.

I have lived with dogs for 22 years. Channing, Coco, Toby of York (Toby), Victor Lorde Riley (Riley). But I have been with Toby the longest. Like an old married couple, we are familiars; we know each other’s quirks and preferences; we are comfortably with the rhythm of our life together as the tides wash us up against each other and pull us apart, secure in the knowledge that it will also bring us back together again. We take comfort in each other’s presence even when I am writing and he is sleeping at my feet. Our nearness is enough.

Channing, Coco, Toby, Riley. I have learned so much from living with dogs. This post is all about what I have leaned form the canine companions I’ve been lucky enough to know.

Approach every stranger as if he or she was a friend, a potential ally. If they respond by throwing shade your way, hike up your tail and walk away.

Help your friends. Coco used to always rush to the kitchen door to greet me when she heard the garage door open. After she went deaf, Toby would run to her bed, wake her and lead her to the kitchen door.

Live in the moment; don’t project your expectations and fears on every adventure. This was the hardest for me to learn/adapt. In truth, it wasn’t until my doctor started me on Klonopin that I gained the ability to live in the moment—Let he who has not needed pharmaceutical intervention cast the first Prozac—to not imagine the worst possible outcome of every adventure.

Allow no room for self-pity; be determined. Six years ago, Toby ruptured a disc in his neck. He ended up paralyzed from the neck down. We rushed him to Penn where surgery was performed 18 hours after the rupture. We saw him the day after his surgery. I am loud; stress and anxiety make me louder. I will never forget turning onto the ward, where Toby was being exercised to keep his muscles from atrophying. He couldn’t walk or stand but hearing my voice, he wiggled on his belly moving, painfully, slowly, towards the sound of my voice. I don’t think I’ve ever cried harder than I did at the moment I witnessed him, paralyzed, doing his best to get to me.

It’s not always in the words. Because dogs are non-verbal, I’ve learned to read non-verbal cues: is he feeling unwell? does he need to go out? Is he too hot? The hardest cue they give you is when they have had enough living, when they want you to let them go. People will break your heart regularly and for various reasons; a dog will break your heart only once and that is only because he can no longer shuffle alongside you on this mortal coil.

That brings me to the next thing I’ve learned from having dogs: the heart breaks; the heart heals. After losing Channing, after losing Coco, the pain was so great I didn’t think I could love another but then it occurred to me that they were each such wonderful dogs that the best thing I could do to honor their memory was to rescue another. I’d grieve for each of them whether I had another dog or not but how much less selfish to give another dog a chance while healing.

Be your best self. When we adopted him, Toby was…difficult. We were his fourth home in his 18 months on this earth. He was loud, determined, slightly out-of-control. In short, he was a canine version of me. With patience (and a very expensive trainer) he calmed down a little. About a year or two ago, a man approached us and asked what kind of dog Toby was. “Silky terrier,” I responded.
“Is he a good dog? he asked as my friend rolled her eyes.
“He’s the best dog he knows how to be.” I responded. “I can’t ask for more than that.”
I can’t ask for more than that from him and I can’t ask for more than that from myself. Thus, I try to be my best, most authentic self, every day. I am, the best man I know how to be. No one can ask more of me.

Never borrow someone else’s voice. What I’ve observed and what has had the most profound effect on me is this: dogs, learn. They learn from us, from each other, from other dogs they encounter. But, they never become another dog; they never borrow another dog’s voice. They may bark at the same things but it was always their own bark, their own voice, they add to the cacophony. When I started writing seriously, I was determined not to borrow another’s voice. It is always my voice, a bit too honest, too strident, perhaps, left-leaning, and determined, but always my voice.

All of these lessons influence my life and my writing. You can read about my newest book, In His Eyes which incorporates at least some of these lessons here.

To see photos from this post, visit my blog here.

Even now, after all is said and done, after thirteen years together, after he is gone, I find it hard to explain Toby and me.

December 10, 2005. Princeton, New Jersey: The first time ever I saw his face.

There was snow on the ground. The air was frigid and dense with the hope of finding “the one,” and at the same time like a vacuum of held breath. Above the chaos, a leaden sky sagged, gray and heavy with inarticulate hope.

“Is that Toby?” I asked a woman walking by. “It is,” she said. He was as handsome as he was in his pictures online; I leaned down, breathless, and he, unexpectedly, jumped into my arms, landing on my chest. Our hearts collided, seemed to stop for a moment and continued to beat in synchrony; his next exhaled breath matched mine exactly. The next breath, drawn in surprise, also in synch.

We were Toby’s fourth home in less than two years. I spoke to his original owner once, just briefly. He explained that Toby had behavioral problems, which had prompted him to give Toby up for adoption. Their vet he added had “suggested neutering Toby would fix the problem, but I couldn’t do that—I just couldn’t do that to him,” he said. So, he gave him up for adoption. I have held that first owner in contempt from the moment those words fell from his lips.

Toby.

Toby accepted me as I was. My whole life, I’ve struggled with not being enough: I was never smart enough, or butch enough, or good-looking enough. For Toby, I was not only enough—I was everything. Perhaps that is what makes dogs so special to us; we are always enough and everything.

Once in the park, a stranger admired Toby’s good looks, “Tell me,” he said, “Is he a good dog?”

“He,” I responded, “Is the best dog he knows how to be.”

The stranger thought for a moment, nodded his head, and responded, “I like that. I really like that.”


March 20, 2018. Mathew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital: The last time ever I saw his face.

Another winter day. The sky hung low, white with anger. From the flattened arc of the heavens, snow tumbled down, like dashed hope. Accumulating on the ground in piles and drifts, it lay there like an old mattress, too lumpy and itchy to offer comfort to the weary.

Toby licked my nose, then settled against me.

“He’s gone,” the vet said, moving the stethoscope from his chest.

Gone?

I looked down at Toby cradled in my arms, tight against me, his chest rising and falling in synch with mine. “Gone? But he’s still—”

“I thought that at first, too,” she said,” But, it’s your breathing that makes it look like he is…”

I nodded. I kissed the top of his head one last time, and gently surrendered him to her.

And now, now, I keep looking around for him, even as I stare at the stack of vet bills on my desk amounting to many thousands of dollars, and realize, I would have generated many thousands more if it would have bought me more time with him.

I seek refuge in the knowledge that I did my best for him, that it was his time to leave, that he was ready. I lean into my trust that he would not have left me if he wasn’t sure I was ready to let him go.