A Boy and His Dog

It's funny, sometimes, the things you think about in the pre-dawn hours, when you can't sleep. Memories have a way of bubbling to the surface and teasing you, echoes of now distant times and places, as insubstantial and elusive as a morning mist, leaving behind a bittersweet yearning for what can never be again.

I've had dogs around me for my entire life; I have five hounds right now and, yes, the smart money says that they are brighter than I am. The real secret is to not let them know that. And just so long as they keep me trained to do exactly what they want me to do, it all works out for the best.

I love every dog I've had the privilege to live with, but . . . there have only really been two that have so completely captured me that when they left this world for the next, it was almost too much to bear. If you really stopped to think about it, it's a lousy deal we enter into when we bring a dog into our lives. They ask for so little in return for their unquestioning love, and they never, ever judge us; but their lives are short, and we, at least, go into the relationship knowing that they are going to break our hearts.

When I was still a toddler, my parents acquired a breed of dog known as the Otter Hound. If you've never seen on - and you probably haven't, they are a fairly rare breed in this country - they are magnificient hounds. Originally bred in the 12th Century for the English kings and nobility, the Otter Hound was used, as the name implies, to hunt otter. Proud, stubborn, faithful and playful, they are wonderful scent hounds. They are big dogs, but gentle, with a shaggy overcoat and a wiry undercoat and webbed feet, for they are water dogs - the joke goes that an Otter Hound drinks from the bottom of the bowl up. They are talkative dogs, with a melodious bay that can be heard for miles.

The Otter Hound's name was Lady Crudley. At the time, we lived in an ivy-covered brownstone my parents had christened Crudley Manor, and since every manor must have a lady . . . She was my parents' pet, yet, as only a dog can, she "adopted" me.

When I was still crawling around in diapers, Lady Crudley was always there to watch over me. If I happened to start going someplace she didn't want me to go, or someplace she decided might be dangerous, she would gently pick me up by my diapers and relocate me somewhere else . . . and thank God my parents never managed to snap a picture of her carrying me around. When I was in my crib and people came over to see the newest addition to my parents' brood, Lady Crudley had a habit of making sure everyone was on one side of it. She would then go over to the other side, jump up so that her front paws were on the railing, then stand and lean forward over the crib so that she could be sure that no one would get too close. That was something she did to the end of her days; even when I was entering into my teen-age years and my friends would come over, Lady Crudley somehow always arranged it so that I would be standing on one side of her, and everyone else on the other.

When I started going to school, she would wait for me at the front door every day when I got off the school bus. As soon as I came in, she would either take my wrist in her mouth or grab my shirttail, and take me upstairs to see my mother. She would sit, patiently waiting, until I was done telling my mother about how the day went, and then she would take my wrist or shirttail in her mouth and take me to my room. If I went out into the yard, she would go, too, just to watch. If I went out into the street to play with my friends, Lady Crudley would be there, sitting at the window by the door, keeping an eye on me. When I went to bed at night, she would come in and curl up on the floor next to the bed, waiting until I fell asleep. She never sayed in my room for the entire night, for she had other people in the house to watch over, but I know she would come in and out several times. Just to check. Sometimes, I would play a game where I pulled the covers over my head, so she couldn't see me, and she absolutely hated that. I could hear hear, pacing and snorting impatiently, and then she would grab the blankets and yank them off my head, whereupon everything would be right in her world again.

Eventually, we moved out of that house, and into another one that was across the street from a church. Every Sunday morning, when the bells rang during the services and Lady Crudley was outside in the yard, she took the opportunity to exercise her singing voice. The bells would ring, and Lady Crudley would bay along with them, a long, loud, melodious celebration of a hound being a hound. Many years later, I met the man who was the musical director of that church; he had gotten a job as a music teacher at my high school. One day, somehow, the conversation turned to the topic of dogs, and I mentioned Lady Crudley and her singing. The man looked at me and said, "That was your dog?" Apparently, when she sang, they could hear her in the church.

In the summer of 1972, my parents rented a house in the Indiana Dunes, right up against Lake Michigan. Lady Crudley was getting older, and would now only go (for her) knee-deep into the water. I would tease her by going deeper, trying to coax her out, but she would only stomp her feet and then bay at me until I came back to her. We also acquired a Cocker Spaniel puppy at that time, and I still remember how Lady Crudley would take her off down the beach, teaching her the finer points of chasing butterflies.

Lady Crudley was a joyful dog, a playful dog, with a tail that, when she was happy, could sweep a coffee table clean in no time flat. After we got the Cocker Spaniel, I can remember how amazed I was when we fed the dogs. The puppy would finish off her dinner, then commence yipping and yapping at Lady Crudley, who would then sit down and patiently wait while the puppy ate what she wanted out of the big dog's bowl. This was a dog who's heart truly was too big for this world.

Lady Crudley left when I was 13. My parents had taken her to the vet, to have some minor surgery. She had been home for about a week, but she had grown listless, so my father had taken her back to be checked on. The vet found nothing particularly wrong with her, save that she had done what we all do, gotten older. But when my father returned the next day to pick her up, they couldn't get Lady Crudley to leave the kennel. She simply wouldn't get up. Eventually, they brought my father back to her . . . whereupon Lady Crudley wagged her tail once, and then died.

The world is somehow a lesser and drabber place without her, and there hasn't been a day since then that I haven't thought of her, chasing and never quite catching butterflies on the beach.

Back in 1988, shortly after I had started a new job, the woman I was seeing at the time called me at work, and asked me if I was interested in acquiring a puppy. It seemed that her sister had rescued a dog from an abusive owner, but didn't have the ability to care for it. So I figured sure, why not? An hour or so later, my girlfriend brought the "puppy" over to where I worked, and I was introduced to a six-month-old Rottweiler weighing close to a hundred pounds. Well, so much for the puppy idea.

But I will never forget that first meeting with him. This was a dog that had truly been broken in spirit. He came right up to me, but he didn't so much walk as try not to be noticed, his head hung low, as if he expected to be smacked merely for being. When he had been rescued by my girlfriend's sister, he'd been wearing his original collar - they'd had to take him to an animal hospital and have it cut off, because it was choking him to death slowly.

That was on a Friday. On Saturday, the dog tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible in my house, on the theory that if he weren't seen, he wouldn't be beaten. On Sunday morning, I woke up early, took one look at him, and yelped. Patches of fur had fallen out, and one of his eyes had swollen shut and was leaking pus - the poor beast had the mange. Once again, he had crept into the bedroom, head low and looking absolutely pitiful, as if he expected me to beat him for being sick. Just what the hell had his original owner done to this dog? I woke my girlfriend up, threw her and the dog into the car, and drove like a madman to the nearest animal hospital.

Gradually, after a lot of medicated baths and plenty of food and water, the dog realized that nothing bad was going to happen to him. The biggest problem he now had was that I had no idea what to call him - "Hey, you!" was frequently used in those first few weeks. Then, one day while driving around in Chicago and passing through an old neighbourhood I'd lived in, I looked up at the street sign and said, "Works for me." So "Hey, you!" became Roscoe.

As a Rottweiler, Roscoe was a huge disappointment to the entire breed. There truly was not a mean bone in that dog's body - which, considering the circumstances of his first six months on this planet, was something of a minor miracle, I suppose. Roscoe wanted to be friends with everyone and everything. At the time I acquired him, I also had a cat, Ashley, that I had inherited from my mother. Roscoe was fascinated by Ashley, a feeling that at first was not reciprocated. Which is why I refer to that time as the year of the screaming Christmas Tree.

Ashley would do his best to hide whenever Roscoe was around, which by Christmas time meant that the cat spent a lot of time under the tree. The dog would circle the tree as the cat hid, whining, and the cat would commence yowling when he got bored and realized he was stuck as long as the dog was looking for him. Then, one day, something interesting happened. Ashley hid under the tree and, instead of circling, Roscoe passed on by and went into the kitchen. He then carefully poked his head out around the door jamb, and without making any noise, stared at the tree. Eventually, Ashley decided the coast was clear and crept out from under the branches, ntending to make a dash for the bedroom.

He never made it. As soon as he came out, Roscoe leapt, held the cat down with one paw . . . and proceeded to lick the cat about the head and shoulders. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing, I was faced by a very happy dog and a very wet, unhappy, cat. But Ashley got over it.

Like Lady Crudley had done, Roscoe would follow me wherever I went. He always wanted to be near me, to the point that if I stood still or sat down, he would sit down right up against my leg. When I was working at home, he would stick he head underneath the arm of my chair and just lay his head in my lap. If I let him off his leash, he would exhilirate in the sudden freedom . . . for about ten feet. Then he would turn around, run right back to me, and snuggle his shoulder up against my leg and not move until I did. At night, he would crawl up into bed with me and lay down right into my side, which is no mean feet for a hundred pound dog and no doubt aggravated my girlfriend to no end.

And he was smart as a whip, too. So smart, he actually scared me once; I looked at him, wrinkled my nose, and said, "You smell. You need a bath. Go get in the tub." And he did. One day, while I was out, Roscoe knocked over an ice bucket I kept filled with hard candy, then proceeded to eat it all - after he unwrapped them. I remember standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by all the cellophane wrappers, looking at him and saying, "But . . . but . . . you don't have thumbs!" I remember another day, coming back from the gorcery store, and finding that he had turned one of the burners on the stove on - to medium-low heat. Or one particularly hot summer day, when I was sweating like a madman and wondering why, since I had the air-conditioning going full blast, and turning around to see Roscoe lying on his back on top of the vent, enjoying all the cool air . . .

Roscoe died when he was eight years old, because of kidney failure. I swear to God, if I could have found a doctor that would have done dialysis on a dog . . . That was the first time I'd ever had to put a dog to sleep, and I couldn't even be in the same room with him when they did it. There was no other choice, and it was the kindest thing for him I could do, but it still makes me feel like I betrayed him somehow. But I know that I would give anything to have him back.

Perhaps, if there really is a God, he's on a beach somewhere, with Lady Crudley teaching him the art of chasing butterflies . . .