A Day, A Dog

The last year of his life Johnson couldn't walk very well. His hips had started to weaken; it had been quite some time before he could jump up on the couch or the bed by himself. He used to put his front paws up on the blue couch and wait--not very long, usually--before I saw him and heaved his back end up so he could lie down. But it was his paws that made it hard for him to walk, more so than his hips.

I was never sure how it started but one morning I noticed that he was limping, but 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. It made me feel happy to put his leash on. I never minded it, not even when it was raining or snowing or 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. We were attuned to each other's needs so perfectly that 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, or sank gratefully 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 what had started it. It seemed likely that something had irritated his skin--it could have been anything--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 my 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. 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 for the time-being, but for quite some time that was all.

To be continued...