Catalogue of Departed Dogs
A tribute to the sweetest one there ever was
The first time my dog died, I was eleven or twelve years old. She was fifteen or sixteen, and she quite literally vanished into the atmosphere. So, perhaps died isn’t the right word. The first time a dog of mine departed from this mortal plane, I was eleven or twelve years old. Better.
Bisbee was a loving dog, a real licker in the way that some dachshunds are. But she was hard to get close to, owing to the fact that she was bitten in half by a great dane when I was about three years old. The story goes that vet put more stitches and more staples in her than he had ever put in any other dog of any size. That was the first time Bisbee didn’t die. The next time she didn’t was when she killed and tried to, kind of did, eat a skunk and didn’t get rabies.
No—not in blood, gore or murder, but in silence, she left us. On a hot June day, if I remember correctly, and my dad spent a week looking for her, over acres and acres and back over them again. He never found her. No body, no bones, no tufts of hair. She just evaporated into the ether. Enigmatic to the very end.
The next time my dog died, she wasn’t really my dog, she was my brother Moseley’s dog, but isn’t that a technicality? Maisy was a beagle, sweet and full of energy, who had very sensitive underarms, so you better not try to pick her up like that. She also liked to chase cars.
Then Pretzel died, who was my dog. Mine and Kathryn’s. She was a Christmas puppy, and I’ll never forget walking into the kitchen, fire ablaze, and her, soft like hot silk, curled in a ball on my brother’s lap. She was a protective dog, and didn’t take kindly to people coming into the bedroom where I slept (and still do sleep) with my two sisters in Virginia. She didn’t like for us to be woken up. She didn’t like to chase cars, but also didn’t realize that she shouldn’t go under them.
I was in boarding school then when my dad called me, and I remember crying in the courtyard between two dorms, neither of which I lived in. I was trapped there because I was going to meet my friends to walk to dinner. I told them to go on without me, and cried. I didn’t know death.
I got a package the next week—The Unbearable Lightness of Being and a letter from my dad:
There is an ephemeral quality to a life, any life, that can’t be overcome through material or even mental comforts. We are all here on earth for only a short time, but the soul is eternal. It is in our power to choose our devotion and our primary attachments, and when we choose the material world, there is no outcome other than suffering.
Yes, he also acknowledged that The Unbearable Lightness of Being is somewhat racy reading for a sixteen year old.
I keep the letter tucked in the pages of the book and I’ve reread it—the letter that is—every time my dog has died since then.
The next time my dog died, she also wasn’t my dog. She was my sister Isabelle’s. Holly the black lab was a Christmas puppy too, and she was sweet and only sweet. Our chocolate lab Mars wouldn’t go back into the downstairs laundry room where their beds were ever again after that, so he became an inside dog.
Then went Atlas, my stepmom Andrea’s dog. A truly glorious, full chested, long-haired, black and tan dachshund. Tolerant of cuddles up to a certain point, and uncannily good at catching mice. He was madly in love with Nutmeg who simply refused to suffer his attentions every time she went into heat. A car again.
The last time that my dog died, before this most recent time, it was Cheeto, Lovely Cheeto, my dad’s companion and one of the strangest dogs I've ever met. More of a bird than a dachshund, with feathers like down, one blue eye, and a very long eyelash on one side. She would hurl herself into your arms when she wanted to be held, and then press her face up against your mouth and nose. She liked to chew on noses and would lay on my chest while I read my book. She was in pain, and that was the worst part, because we didn’t know until it was too late.
I was driving back to New York from Virginia after Thanksgiving two years ago, sitting in standstill traffic outside the Holland Tunnel when my dad called me. It had all happened very fast. I hadn’t said goodbye.
So then I promised myself that I would always say goodbye to every dog every time I left the farm. And so I did, every time, so much so, that it just became a routine, and I stopped looking intently into their eyes when I did it, trying to lock the memory in place in case I needed to remember it, in case it ended up being the last time, and therefore worthy of being remembered.
And because I stopped trying so hard, which it’s okay that I did, by the way, I don’t remember the last time I held Nutmeg by the snout and pressed a hard kiss onto her. I just have the vague sense that I was holding her like a baby in the kitchen before I left a few weeks ago. I don’t know for sure, but I’ll cling to it.
The most recent time that my dog died was Monday. She was also not my dog—she was my brother Tom’s. A present on his third birthday and a surprise. Many of the best dogs are surprises. She was Tom’s dog and he was her boy, but she was also our dog. She was the best dog.
I realize everyone thinks that their dog is the best dog, but it’s different when I say it about Nutmeg, because people with their own dogs also thought she was the best dog. In fact, I have my own dog and I still think she was the best dog.
She was fierce and loving in equal measure, like all good women are, and she spent all of her time in one of three ways:
She could be found, or rather heard, dashing through the underbrush like a little fox, after whatever rodent or other small animal she could catch a scent of. She had a very particular bark, a cry or a rally really, that meant she was on the trail. It was a terrifying and awesome noise that set all the other dogs into a frenzy. They rarely could keep up.
When she came back from her hunts, she was generally supremely dirty with a mouth full of mud. Which meant that the second place you might find her was the bathtub, where she would stand without protest to be washed. My dad gave her a bath two times a day on average.
Once she was clean, she’d take up her post on the back of the sofa, or curled in one of the yellow chairs, or on the lap of whoever happened to be be sitting down at any given time. When you walked in the room, she would get herself up to a surface high enough for you to reach, roll over on her back, and wag and whine at you until you touched her. And then she would hold your hand with her two front paws. Not just coincidentally, like you’re rubbing her chest and that’s where her paws are, so it looks like she’s holding your hand. She would hold it, hard. Like she was fighting you to keep it there.
A few years ago, I was in Virginia on my own watching the dogs, and I decided to take them all up to the swimming pond, so I could lay about in the sun, and read my book, and go for a dip. There was a large burn pile not far from the deck where I was sitting, which was, needless to say, a slice of heaven for Nutmeg. It was not out of the ordinary, not cause for concern, to watch her disappear entirely into it.
But on this particular occasion, the hunting yelp switched into a different bark, and I became fairly certain that she was stuck. I called my dad, who called one of the men who was working on the farm at the time, and he came to help me get her out. He was able to clear away a section of branches and logs above where it sounded like she was, but he still couldn’t see her, and he couldn't feel her when he reached his arm into the hole he’d created.
It was then, unwilling to wait any longer, that I, in my bikini, got on my hands and knees and inserted myself head first, up to my hips into the dark depths of the burn pile that contained my dog. And also all manner of bugs and spiders, possibly rodents, possibly angry groundhogs, possibly snakes. I felt her tail first, and then I grabbed at the scruff of her neck. Identified which log needed to be lifted and pulled her out.
That was another thing about her. She’d let you pick her up by the scruff of her neck. I’ve never met another dog who doesn’t mind it when you do that. There she was, hanging from my grip and panting, wagging her tail, covered in dirt.
You see, I would climb into any burn pile. I’d go in up to my ankles to pull her out. And now, I can’t. Don’t have to now.
So what’s the point? No point, I don’t think. Just wanted to tell you about her. And the others. But I will leave you with my own hard-won words of wisdom that I share with people I love when their dogs die:
To love a dog is to agree to be heartbroken. They will not outlive you, unless like my great-grandmother, you get a puppy when you’re 97 or 98. They will not outlive you. The heartbreak is part of the bargain. The heartbreak is part of the bargain.
Oh this made me cry! I put both my sausages to sleep in the last two years (they each made it to 15) and I’m still devastated
Nutmeg was truly the best. Will also miss the strong Nutmeg hand holds and belly scratches.