A Day, A Dog, a Complete First Draft

The last year of his life Johnson couldn't walk very well. His hips had started to weaken; it had been quite some time since he could jump up on the bed by himself. He would put his front paws up on the couch and wait--not very long, usually--before I saw him and heaved up his back end so he could lie down. After a while, even that was too much for him; the last six months of his life he slept on a round green dog bed on the floor. But it was his paws that were really the problem. 

I was never sure when or how it started, but one morning I noticed that he was limping, on both sides, that he was walking funny: slowly and with obvious labor. I used to walk him four times a day; this was when we lived on 86th Street, half a block from Central Park. I loved walking Johnson. Everybody in the neighborhood knew us; he had friends. It reminded me of growing up with Grapes, my childhood dog, who had neighborhood friends, too, independent from ours. It made me feel happy to put Johnson’s leash on. I never minded taking him out, not when it was raining or snowing or nose-freezing cold. It was just what we did.

Ben was working in Westport at the time, and spent most of the week in Connecticut, and because I worked at home, I had Johnson. This arrangement proved to work beautifully for us; we became inseparable. He figured out my schedule and matched it. Each day was different, I was writing a book and tutoring, but when I could take him out, he went. And at least once a day, our walk was a long one, to the park, where he would run in loopy giddy circles, prance for the sheer joy of it, nose up comically enormous branches and deposit them at my feet. One day Kevin Bacon, who also walked his dog in our corner of the park, commented, "Beautiful dog," as we stood watching the band of joyful dogs off-leash, darting this way and then, crouching in play stance, then taking off again in pursuit or being chased. I guess that means I'm only one degree of separation, I remember thinking.

Grapes had died at 13, hit by a car on our narrow street, the year I was in seventh grade. In music class that day a friend had said to me, "What's wrong with you? Your dog die?" just kidding, being silly, and I ran out of the room. Twenty years later I ran into this girl and she told me, "I never forgot that awful morning when I didn't know about your dog."

But Johnson--it was his paws. One day he was fine, the next, after the laborious walk up 86th Street, I lay down beside him on the rug where he'd collapsed on his side, so clearly thrilled not to be walking anymore. For a few seconds I had to look away. His paws, the two rear paws, were open wounds. There was so much matted blood soaked into his fur and his paw pads that I couldn't see if he'd been cut, or what the source was. After the initial shock, I looked as hard as I could. I found a magnifying glass in my little chest of treasured things and tried to see what was making them bleed, but I couldn't.

I stood up and stretched my arms, arched my back. The vet's office was half a block over and only two blocks up; it was incredibly close. But it was still two-and-a-half blocks, and Johnson weighed at least sixty pounds. I made it somehow; little did I know this was not to be the first time I carried him this far, farther even. Our regular vet happened to be standing in the waiting area chatting with someone when I came in--a man jumped up to hold the door for me--and I was crying. Johnson was limp but alert in my arms. I can't hold him anymore, I said, and she called to the back. One of the support staff came out and took him from me; the vet and I followed to the examining room. 

She wasn't sure what it was; we never found out. It seemed likely that something had irritated his skin and that he had chewed at it, gnawed at the paws and broken the skin. They were infected. He was in pain. She cleaned his paws, tenderly, as I watched, already thinking of how I would do it myself. I watched her clean the paws, put salve on them, put a nonstick layer under a bandage, wrap each paw in surgical tape. You will have to do this several times each day, she explained You will have to soak his paws in hot water mixed with the solution I give you. You will have to keep everything sterile. It will hurt him sometimes. It will take hours. It might not work. She didn't look at me as she spoke; we were both looking at Johnson, who was looking at me. Can you give me the medication right now? I asked. I knew she was trying to give me an out. I suspected she was even suggesting it. I didn't take my eyes off my dog. 

Johnson had not been my dog to begin with. Ben had gone to the pet store at the Poughkeepsie Galleria one day with our friend Alex while I was living in France on a Junior Year Abroad program. I got a dog, he told me on the phone one day, sounding a million miles away. I think I spoke to him three times that entire semester. Cool, I probably said. But I didn't try to imagine this dog; it didn't seem real. I was spending my lunch hours sunning on Mediterranean beaches and dancing at Gallic nightclubs. Vassar? Ben? Dog? Whatever. And when I came home that summer and met Johnson (ridiculous name, yes, but remember my childhood dog's name was Grapes; I offered no criticism), he was a teenager, a goofy, leggy teenager dog, and he was so manifestly Ben's that we made polite friends, but for quite some time that was all. And he remained Ben's dog, of course, very much so. But somehow, in that last year of his life in particular, he became my dog too. I had never had a dog before, not like this. I loved Grapes, but he was my dad’s.

People say that dogs are one-man animals, that they choose their person early on and never waver. This was not true of Johnson. But that last year, he and I were inseparable, and I was so focused on him, on trying desperately to keep him alive, that even my pregnancy, my first, was a little anticlimactic. I wanted a child, but the idea of having one, of actually being a mother, was so ephemeral, unfathomable, vague. Johnson, and his very real needs, the hours it took to soak and clean and bandage his paws, so he could walk, a little, and then come back in and have it done again, were concrete, immediate, there.

When I look back on this year it strikes me that my days were actually organized around our routines, his and mine: ours. He had bad days and good ones. There was precious little prancing, but when the paws were in remission he would jog a little in the park. One day he dragged a big stick over to me as I stood under a tree, a giant branch, really, and I suddenly found myself crying, squinting up at the flat grey sky to make myself stop, finally giving in and walking, with Johnson, away from the crowded part of the park where the other dog owners knew us. We walked along the path for a change, Johnson off leash, illegally, but we did this all the time. He never wandered away from me. Finally, I stopped at a bench and sat down. He stood by me, and it occurred to me I'd gone too far. Lie down, buddy, I said to him, wanting him to rest before the walk back. I had stopped crying but my head ached, I could barely look at him. I didn't want to start crying again. He wouldn't sit, though. He just stood by me, at the side of the bench, letting me rest my hand on his back.

As summer approached I began to feel pregnant, slightly, but I didn't look it yet, and it was easy to imagine that I wasn't--that everything would keep going the way it always had, that Johnson would get better. Each time the paws healed for a few weeks I gave into the illusion. Each time a new medication was mentioned, or I discovered a treatment online, I tried it. The salt on the winter sidewalks had made things worse, I told myself, although that didn't explain the hips, the way he had slowed, the times when he couldn't make it to the end of the street, let alone the park, the times I steeled myself--never physically strong--and heaved him up into my arms, ignoring the oohs and aahs I got from passers-by, surprised I could lift him at all. There were times when I felt exhausted by the routine, wanted to skip it, resented Ben for turning over Johnson’s care entirely to me. But then, there was Johnson. All I had to do was lie down beside him, throw my arm across his body, and listen to him breathe. This worked every time. He never whined, never growled, never so much as withdrew his paws when I started unwrapping, surely the most painful part of the process for us both. Not even once. When I removed his bandages, his paws looked dead already, limp and oozing, fur matted with pus and with blood. I can still remember the smell, a smell of decay.

I had found him little shoes made for dogs to keep the salt out their paw pads, but they weren't widely available the way are now--I could only find one kind, and I looked everywhere--but they still weren't quite right--not sufficiently durable, flimsy in fact, and he wore through the first ones in less than week. I bought more, brought them to the cobbler up the street, whom I'd visited with Johnson many a time, when he could still walk that far. I told him I wanted him to put real soles on them, strong ones, that I didn't care what it cost. He was a Russian man, old himself, who had always come out from behind the counter to give Johnson a pat. When I came back the next week, he wouldn't take my money. From one Russian to another, he said--I'd told him I was half--but I knew he wasn't doing it for me.

In June, our lease was up on our rented apartment, and we'd bought one, our first, for our soon-to-be family, but it wouldn't be ready to move into until the fall. We'd decided to spend the summer in Connecticut; my cousin Ellen came over to help me pack. We stayed up until past midnight, rolling glasses in bubble wrap, stopping for Chinese food, cold drinks: it was already hot, the way New York gets in the summer. The next morning we loaded up the car, and I left Ellen in it to go up and get Johnson, who'd been resting in one corner of the almost empty main room, panting, because of the heat.

When I got upstairs, the sun was streaming in the multi-paned windows on the worn yet still glossy, thickly varnished floor. I'd left the dog bed on which he was lying; all that was left was to get him and it downstairs. I helped him up, and he wobbled for a second, then steadied himself. This is the last time we will walk out this door together, I thought, dramatically, as I always do when I move. But this time it was dramatic, a little anyway. The next time I moved into a new home it would be as a mother, as part of a family of my own. Families, in my experience, had dogs. I had convinced myself Johnson had a shot--however long--at making it to winter. I had thought about where I’d put his bed. I wanted him and the baby to meet. I didn't tell anyone this. It sounds corny to me now. It also occurs to me that as long as I had Johnson to care for, I didn't have to think about caring for anyone else, this hypothetical baby, I guess.

I waited by the elevator for Johnson to shuffle over. When the doors opened, I set the dog bed down, but he stood by it, looking straight ahead, the way you do when you're in an elevator with someone you don't know or feel awkward with. I remember thinking this was funny, the way he was staring at the doors, stony-faced, if a dog can be stony-faced, but I didn't think it was funny when I realized he'd lost bowel control. Neither did he; he had almost never, in twelve plus years, had an accident. He kept looking straight ahead, unmoving, as though unwilling to acknowledge to himself or me what he'd done. I checked my pockets, knowing I had no plastic bags. When the elevator stopped in the lobby, I pressed the "open door" button and grabbed someone's newspaper from the mailbox bank. I scooped up the mess, and took Johnson by the collar, walked him slowly out to the car. I lifted him into the back, whispering, it’s okay, Buddy. It’s okay. Hang on a sec, I said to Ellen, and I walked to the garbage can on the corner and threw the mess away. Is something wrong? she asked when I got in the driver's seat. Nope, I said, looking straight ahead, through the window, at the stretch of road in front of me.

Johnson perked up a bit in Connecticut, although he couldn't manage the stairs, which Ben and I pretended to each other was not a problem. I was having trouble lifting him now, so Ben would carry him down to the spot he loved in the yard, and he'd lie there all day. We’d planned a road trip to Illinois, to visit Ben's family, in June, and against all advice, I decided we were taking Johnson along. I knew he’d be fine in the back of the car, on his trusty dog bed; I knew that nobody--not even the most conscientious facility--would be willing to do what his caretaking required. I also knew that I could not leave him, not for more than a few hours at a time. I had not know this a month before, but I knew it by then.

The trip passed in a blur. There was a lot of talk about the pregnancy, our new apartment, potential names for the baby. Johnson spent his days in Ben’s grandmother’s yard. I spent mine with him, lying in the grass, reading a book, then another one. I did not know then that this was a luxury, whiling away day after day in the grass with my dog; I continued the soaking and wrapping, administering of ointment, trimming of blood-soaked fur, but by this point it was just something I did, like cutting my nails. It got hot, hotter, and one afternoon someone noticed there were flies gathering on Johnson’s paw bandages, swarming around. Ew, disgusting, someone said, and I felt my face grow hot. He’ll have to go inside, someone else said, but Johnson hated being alone. I went inside and came back with four plastic bags, four elastic bands. I put the bags over the bandaged paws, secured them with the bands. The flies left.

On the drive back east, we stopped at a rest stop, and I filled a bowl with cold water for Johnson. At this point, he could barely walk. We hadn’t discussed it in spite of the long hours in the car, through Ohio, Pennsylvania, but it was pretty clear his “quality of life,” the vet’s phrase, was increasingly compromised. Decisions would have to be made. I set the bowl down on the grass. Ben lifted Johnson out of the back of the car, set him down gently. To our surprise, he started walking toward the bowl, stiffly at first, then more gracefully. There was a hint of a prance in his step. We watched as he lay down to lap. He couldn’t get up afterward; Ben carried him back. It was the longest stretch he’d walked in months, though. It gave me false hope. Again.

On July 3rd, Ben was at the race track, and I was trying to finish the draft of my book; I knew I needed to have it done before the baby was born. Johnson was in his usual spot on the lawn. At some point after lunch, I realized it was very lightly raining, misting, really, and I ran out into the yard. Johnson was stretched out in an unusual way; he looked long and very thin. His eyes were glassy, his fur wet. He didn’t seem to know I was there. I dug my knees into the muddy ground and slid my arms under his limp body. One last time I lifted him, carried him across the lawn, up the stairs and into the house.

That evening and night passed as a dream: disjointed, alternately chaotic and limpid smooth, with a supporting cast of unknown characters, from the vet’s assistant to the salesperson who showed me where to buy Ensure at the nearest CVS. Ben spent all night beside him on the dog bed, holding him, looking into his eyes. I spent the night upstairs, in bed, but I didn’t sleep. The next morning, when I came down, I knew. We both knew it was happening as he took his last breath. We sat there for a few minutes, as the sun streamed in the windows, in silence. Finally, we put him into the car and drove to the vet’s office, as we’d been told to do under these circumstances. I carried the body into the office; I don’t remember why. Maybe I wanted to. His body was stiff, as though frozen solid, but warm. His fur was still warm from the sunlight. It was July 4th, a holiday I now intensely dislike.

The rest of the summer was hot, and I grew larger. Our apartment wasn’t ready when it was supposed to, so we stayed in Connecticut. My days seemed long and empty. I left the bandages and salves, cotton pads and little shoes in the bathroom, the Ensure—which he had refused to drink—in the pantry. I had work, lots of it, but there was too much time. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Although we’d sworn we wouldn’t be able to do it for years, if ever, in October, 5 or 6 weeks before the baby was born, we drove down to North Carolina to pick up Sadie, a tiny silvery gray pup, the runt of her litter. Although she was also a collie, she looked nothing like Johnson. When Lily was born, in December, we had a dog to bring her home to; she is four and she has never known what it is like to live without one. I hope she never will.

Sadie was my first puppy. But she was not my first dog. Having a baby, being a mother was hard, in different ways than I’d imagined. There was both lots of time, long excruciating expanses of time, and then suddenly no time at all, with everything needing to be done all at once. I remember feeding Lily in the red chair in the corner of our living room, holding her to me with one arm, as Sadie brought me a tennis ball to throw—depositing it gently in my lap, over and over again. They were both so needy, demanding, relentless, unless they were sleeping, which they never did at the same time.

Mothering an infant is in some ways a thankless proposition, although nobody likes to say this out loud. For months, you spend every waking moment keeping this small, squirming creature alive, knowing you are singlehandedly responsible for its survival. There is no way to prepare for this unfathomable responsibility, this feeling that your time, your thoughts, your fears, your life itself, is no longer wholly your own. Except when there is. A way to prepare, I mean. I see this now. And I will never forget this dog, my first, who in so many unspoken ways prepared me to be a parent, this dog who loved me as I loved him and showed me that what you get when you learn to care for someone selflessly is the only thing that really matters at all.