Thank you, Puppy
I have a lifetime to try and make good on my obligations to humankind, but the dogs are never around long enough to even the score.
Our golden retriever, Potter, died nine months ago this week. He was spending the night with his friends Joel and Leslie, who had cared for him regularly over the years in New Hampshire. He was as much at home in their house as anywhere.
We had gone to Boston to help with the grandson, and at eleven the first night away Leslie called, distraught and in tears, to say they had come out to the kitchen to discover Potter peacefully departed on the floor, in his usual spot, in his usual posture, stretched out, head tilted in the direction of traffic, positioned to keep an eye on the proceedings while out of the way.
We gave him a small eulogy on our Facebook page (maybe the last time I posted anything), which received a chorus of responses, the consequence of living in a small town where everybody knows your name and working at the front door of an inn with thousands of visitors a year. Someone asked if a postcard was to follow, as in a Postcard-from-Monadnock, and I said no: what else is there to write about the unquestioning love and loyalty of dogs?
But now we have a new, fourteen-week-old puppy, a Labrador retriever mix (of what we are not sure, maybe Boxer), and we are up in the night, looking for our slippers in the morning, putting sofa cushions up high, replacing iPhone cords chewed to bits despite countless chew toys on the floor, being mobbed by children we meet shouting, “puppy!”, getting kisses and cuddles and yelps of despair if we so much as leave the room.
Suddenly, we feel Potter, our most trusted friend, ebbing away. We feel the length of his shadow getting smaller as the radiance of new dog spreads over our days. The memory of him has been our only companion since the reality of him went away; it is beginning to dissolve as new reality leaps into our lap and licks our face.
We are resisting this dissolution as much as we can.
This is Potter’s rock I point out to the puppy at the edge of the pond. We cut a path to it through the shoreline bramble so that Potter, aching and lame, could wade in and out of the water without having to hump it over the bank. Each evening a year ago, he would step in from the rock deep enough for the buoyancy to relieve his tired legs while we sat on a bench nearby and watched the sunset against the opposite shore.
This is Potter’s bone, I say to the puppy, who discovered one while we were pruning the high-growth blueberry bushes. Potter helped me like you are helping me when I worked in the yard, keeping watch for unusual things.
That is Potter’s spot in the sun you are enjoying. You may find, as he did, that it is the perfect place after breakfast to watch squirrels jump tree to tree, fish rise in the pond, and the Phoebes dart back and forth from their nests under the porch beneath your nose.
We went for our inaugural walk with Gulliver and Molly early this morning, two Golden Retrievers that had been walking buddies of Potter for years, at a time when he was the grown-up in the pack, mannered in his behavior along the trail while they—the exuberant Gulliver in particular—cut left and right, leaping in circles around him. Today, our new pup whirled around them, biting their fur, tumbling under their feet. These are Potter’s old friends, I explained.
The pine box with Potter’s ashes is on a shelf in our living room. It needs to be placed next to the boxes holding the remains of our prior dogs, Hazel and Maggie (Mag-pie), down in the basement, in the TV room where we are together regularly. We brought them with us when we moved to the inn and found places for them on the shelves alongside the books. We never gave thought to bury them while at the inn, knowing that someday it would not be ours. We talk about selecting a location here, but there is the matter of winter: it is hard to abide the idea of them outside in the cold while we sit around the wood stove where all three delighted in curling up on the floor.
And we have not finished balancing accounts.
God willing, I have a lifetime to try and make good on my obligations to humankind, but the dogs are never around long enough to even the score. Break open a package labeled DOG and out pops love and loyalty. Fully assembled. Plug and play. While the batteries hold out, it will fetch, carry, chase, snuggle, run, jump, cock its head, raise its ears, eat what is placed before it, and meet you at the door, happy. Then it is gone.
Our new puppy waits for me by my side while I write. Every now and then, he lifts his head. Time for a walk or a swim? What about a catch? I have a tennis ball. I have three tennis balls! Would you like to rumble on the floor? Okay. Whenever.
I am behind already with this dog of fourteen weeks. How much time do I have if all goes well? Ten years? Twelve? I can never catch up.
I collected Potter from Joel and Leslie’s at one in the morning. Joel was waiting and helped me get him into the back of the car. We embraced, and I drove to the all-night emergency vet in Concord, holding Potter's paw over the seatback and repeating, “Thank you, Puppy.”
He waits as the new puppy waits, and I let the memories of him pile on. You have gone on for almost a thousand words, they pantomine. Pencils down. Enough said. You want to do something for me—for us—for all of us? It’s a nice day. Take the new dog for a walk.
Okay. Thank you, Puppy.