Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Diina Dog Days: For the Love of Bubba

I am going to have to say goodbye to a piece of my heart soon. And I don’t know how it will ever be okay.

My dog is a good dog. I know all people say that about their dogs. I have had dogs before. And I have loved them all. They all possessed endearing, distinguishing characteristics. But--as I think is often the case with humans--their greatest attributes also proved to be their tragic flaws. Max, my first dog, a rescued mutt, was protective, so much so that he bit anyone who came within ten feet of me. Fritz, our Dachshund, was unbelievably brilliant, and also therefore incredibly obstinate and defiant in an indisputably calculated way.  Cocoa, our rescued Cocker, was incredibly loyal, though more to my dad than to anyone else; and, as was the case with Max, Cocoa deemed most people a threat to his family. Barnaby, my Bassett, was a sweet simpleton who never deemed anyone a threat; probably didn’t know how to bite; and surely would have licked anyone with whom he came in contact, including robbers, gunmen, serial killers, and the like.

Huan is different. He is all virtue, no vice. He is goodness dogified. See, this kind of goodness could never be personified. It is too good. It is the kind of goodness that is transcendent, that typifies one’s soul, not just one’s ostensible comportment and demeanor. It’s the kind of goodness that resonates and reverberates in the world, even now, in the midst of so much sadness, when I can barely see past my tears to type.

The tears, at least the cause of them, began on August 6th, 2010, when I noticed a spot of blood on my dining room floor. One spot of blood amounted to months of massive nose bleeds. Weekly, my house looked like a crime scene. There have been tests and innumerable vet visits and so many tears; there has been hope, always followed by utter despair. Something is in his nose, and now, we fear, in his brain. The muscle in his head has atrophied; he has lost weight. And, this past week, on February 15th, 2011, he started having seizures. I don’t think I could ever really explain to anyone what watching this all over the course of these months has done to me, and the purpose of this is not to try. Shakespeare once said, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” With his earthly demise relatively imminent, I want to give life to the kindest, gentlest, sweetest, most gracious, decent, precious soul I will ever know.  I want to honor him the best way I know how. It pains me and humbles me to know that he is so much more deserving than I am capable of conveying and giving him credit for. Someone of Huan’s caliber surely deserves Shakespeare…

My boy was born on March 30, 2004. I remember when David and I went to Pennsylvania to get him 8 weeks later.  On the five hour car ride there, we saw this beautiful hawk, and I cried. I don’t really know why.  We had just decided we would name our new dog Huan after the war hound in The Silmarillion, and maybe the regal animal image of the hawk combined with the majestic expectation of my Mastiff were just so overwhelming.  Maybe I was just already in love with him, and the hawk had nothing to do with my tears.  It’s funny, though, “Huan.”  He never was much of a war hound.  Much, much more like a Bubba.  My sweet Bubba Lova, and the true exemplar of “gentle giant.”

He did give us a run for our money in the beginning, though.  He appeared to be this timid little thing and tried to sleep in my shoe the whole car ride home (though he really wasn’t little at 22 lbs. and did have some difficulty maneuvering his beefy self into a sandal). Then, when we got him home...sianara, Jekyll; enter Hyde. David and I were both on our computers when everything went black. Bubba chewed through an electrical cord. And within one week he ate a woman’s razor.  And thus began his intimate and enduring relationship with various other items that had no place in a dog’s belly.  In the years that followed, there were socks (many, many socks), bras, underwear, paper towels, pens--and, I still cannot believe it--an actual pair of pants. PANTS.  Somehow they always made their way out.  Even the pants.

He was a bit of a punk as a puppy, too--feisty, spastic, hyper. I was concerned he had dominance issues (even as I write that I am chuckling), so I took him to a “behavior specialist.”  (If you know me, you know it is I who am feisty, spastic, hyper, and it is totally consistent with my character to take a puppy to a behavioral specialist for behaving like a puppy.) She told me he was just really, really smart.  And then I took him to another behavior specialist (yes, it’s true), who also said he was really, really smart. So then Bubba and I spent a few months in obedience school challenging ourselves and aspiring to achieve our potential, and our teacher often used us as models of good training for the rest of the class. I always was an overachiever. And Bubba always has been incredibly obedient and, incidentally, very submissive. In puppy play group, he spent the hour sleeping, unless a dog got too aggressive with another dog.  Then he got up, walked over, barked, and separated the two.  When he was satisfied that the situation was successfully mitigated, he went back to sleep. Bubbas always need their beauty sleep, about 19 hours a day of it.

When not sleeping, Huan is eating; though, to this day, he will not touch a scrap of food, even his own, unless I have given him permission. David and I can leave our plates on the coffee table and walk away for…well, probably forever. Just the other day, after a “spa” treatment (a euphemism for nail cutting, ear cleaning, and teeth brushing), I left his customary bone, a treat for good behavior during spa treatments, on the ground.  I got preoccupied when the baby started screaming, left, changed her diaper, played a bit, and came back to the living room to find him sitting and staring at it, waiting for permission to take it. I couldn’t be more proud of him. (The fact that he needs permission to eat food but stealthily devours a pair of pants...well, that’s just part of the Bubba charm.)

I can’t imagine my life without my Bubba. I will miss my Bubba cuddles, the way he rests his head on my chest when I watch TV or nuzzles it in close under my chin when I sit on the floor.  I will miss seeing him greet me every day at the door, inexplicably running around frantically trying to find a bone. I will miss kissing him goodnight, and I will miss seeing his big, eager, adorable face first thing in the morning. I will miss his smooches, particularly the obligatory and bashful ones when I insist, “Mama kiss… Mama KISS!”  I will miss walking with him beside me, never pulling or trying to lead, in our little pack.  I will miss the wag of his tail and his big ears when I ask if he wants to go for a walk or if he wants a treat. I will miss him following me around the house every time I leave the room, especially as I vacuum. I will miss seeing my daughter know him and love him, and I will miss the chance to watch him patiently allowing her to pull on his ears and topple over his gigantic body.  I will miss his heart. Every day, I will miss his heart. 

I am so very sorry for all the walks we didn’t take, for all the times I was too busy for a cuddle, for all the times I was impatient and told him to “get out of my way” when I vacuumed.  And I am so sorry that there is even a chance that he will leave this world never knowing or being able to conceive of how much I love him; of how he has enriched my life beyond measure; of how utterly, ineffably blessed I am to have been able to call him mine.

Mark Twain once said in a personal letter, “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” I don’t know when my gentleman will go to his heaven, but I hope I will see him there someday--big, bright eyed, healthful, with no trace of blood or impairment, only drool and a stick or an article of clothing dangling from his jowls--walking along some no-leash-required path with Twain. Whenever he does leave me, I know that the depth of my grief will be commensurate only with the depth of my love and gratitude for this amazing creature. I don’t really know how to navigate my way through that kind of pain yet. It hurts so much already. I know I can only promise to love him forever, to fill my daughter’s baby book with his pictures, to read her this someday and tell her how much he was loved, to put this modest tribute out there so others may know, too.

And, in the end, maybe that’s how it will be okay, losing a piece of my heart, I mean. Because I will remember. And because in remembering, his goodness will endure.