You get another, let it be who it wants to be, and soon it'll be a part of you." I was living alone, except for runs to the nursing home so I thought, "Why not?" and let the kids know I was looking. No more.īut in a conversation with Tom Ryan (his Following Atticus was a best-seller), in which I lamented there was no way I could replace Tucker, he said, "You can't replace a dog, any more than you can replace a leg or an arm. When she died – a really horrible day – and my wife was getting past caring for another, I decided that was it for me. She ran for cellphones, my wife's specs, slippers, and even took my wife's bank deposits into the lobby, and up onto a chair, in a little purse.
Our last dog, a Sheltie mix named Tucker, was so intelligent and eager to please that I hated to ask for any favors. And if you'll google "Old Drum Speech," you'll be treated to an oration on the subject that may leave you in tears, just as it did a Missouri jury in 1870. In Edinburgh, you can rub the shiny bronze nose of the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the little Skye terrier who for fourteen years guarded the grave of his dead master, till Bobby died himself.
You see dogs nestled in the arms of beggars, sharing whatever largesse the passing parade offers. Once they've fixed on a human friend, they'll stick with him or her or them to the bitter end. They're not called Man's best friend for nothing. I'm always tickled when the Irish Prime Minister's Bernese, Bród, who seems never to leave him, disrupts official events with none-too-subtle requests for belly rubs. Like many of the features of our culture, our relationship with our dogs is expressed in many forms, from bumper stickers – "Try To Be the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are" – to ironic aphorisms – "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog!" Our presidents are often pictured with their dogs: Calvin Coolidge's white collie, Rob Roy FDR's Scottie, Fala LBJ's beagles, Him and Her Nixon's Checkers right up the present time, when the almost eerie absence of a dog anywhere in the presidential family – the first since James Polk in the 1840s and Harry Truman one hundred years later – speaks volumes. The compact they forged prefigured the much later one we're all familiar with: "From this day forward, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death." That event, lost in the mists of prehistory, and the millennia of an evolving relationship ever since, have led to this one, in which a little ginger-colored terrier, bred to kill small threats and bark furiously at big ones, settles down instead in an old man's lap and affirms that life – at the moment, at least – is wonderful. It's during those interludes, which last anywhere from a few minutes to as much as an hour, that I remember to thank those two great pioneers: the aborigine who first thought to share some of his food with a hungry, watching wolf and the wolf, who decided to cast his lot with the man and his people. She, just by being there and being who she is, has smoothed and soothed them further.
Not that I'm concerned about any of those. As I touch her, I can feel the effects of the connection: My pulse and respiration rate slow, and my blood pressure drops. The warmth of her body suffuses the two square feet of me that she occupies. If I've already picked up a book or a newspaper, I set it down temporarily on my chest and reach down to scratch whichever end of her is closer. A few seconds later, about twenty pounds of expectant little terrier leaps up, checks the territory, and settles down with a sigh between my knees, sometimes facing away, and other times, toward me. Now I put the telephone and still-half-full coffee cup on the little table beside the recliner in the office, wrap a fleece around my legs, and lean back. She's already been outside, clearing the premises of vicious robins and mourning doves, and I've washed the breakfast dishes and wiped down the counters with Lysol on a paper towel. Right after breakfast most days, Kiki and I have what I call Chair Time.
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