Dog and I (3 page)

There was no veterinarian in our little town. Instantly, I was thrown into a pickle. We'd need transportation to get her to Bracebridge. We'd have to leave her and would need transportation to get her back. And we'd need money to pay for the operation.

Males, on the other hand, need no such thing. Once the three dollars had been paid, that would have been it for a male.

My mother smiled. “But she sure is cute.”

NAMING
a dog is almost as hard as taking the pick of the litter. For days I'd been searching for the perfect name for this little blond puppy, and while dozens of names had been written down on a sheet of paper, only to be scratched out after a few practice throws, I'd more or less settled on one that seemed, to me, to fit.

“She's ‘Bridget,'” I told my grandmother once I'd carried the little thing down the street and up the stairs to her small apartment closer to Main Street.

“What?”
she snapped.

This reaction completely caught me by surprise. My grandmother was a woman normally of great good humour, but she had the Irish temperament and could be a most formidable force. Not much over five feet tall, she had for decades ruled, with absolute power, a home where her husband had long been the towering chief ranger of the local provincial park. But even in full uniform he was at all times acutely aware of who was the true commanding officer.

Being afraid of her fury was hardly restricted to the family. My two brothers and sister once watched in awe as a huge black bear came sniffing down the trail behind their log home on Lake of Two Rivers. She had been baking in the kitchen, and when she saw the bear coming closer she grabbed the broom and raced out so fast that the screen door hadn't even slammed when the bear suddenly halted dead in its tracks at the sight of this little pepper pot coming straight at him in full attack mode, broom swinging as she shouted,
“GET OUTTA HERE, YOU!”

The bear spun and bolted back up the trail so fast that, to this day (a half century on), my siblings and I are convinced his back legs outran his front, virtually turning him inside out as he crashed into the spruce cover and safety.

“Bridget,” I repeated.

“That's no name for a dog,” she said. No, she
ordered
.

I had thought it perfect. I'm not sure today where it came from, but it may have had to do with the curling blond hair on the dog and Brigitte Bardot, whose very name then was somehow held to be equivalent to a dirty joke. So now I thought, naturally, that this is what must be bothering her. You couldn't call your dog Brigitte Bardot in good company.

“You'll have to find something else,” she commanded.

Eventually we did—compromising on “Cindy,” though I have no recollection at all where that came from.

For nearly forty years I never thought again of “Bridget”—not until a distant cousin began digging through the roots of the family tree. He had been searching through church records of the Upper Ottawa Valley. Both sides of the family—Scots and Irish on my father's, pure Irish on my mother's—had come to the Valley in the days before and during the various potato famines of the 1840s. Apart from a large and unwieldy family Bible that held a few birth records, wedding registries, and haphazard notes, not much was known about those early years and, truth be told, no one had much cared before this relative's sudden interest in genealogy.

When he could not find the birth records he was seeking in the Anglican church of the town of Renfrew, he switched over to the other Protestant churches and, finally, to the Catholic church. And here he uncovered an astonishing family secret.

My grandmother, listed in the old family Bible as Bea Dowd—my sister, Ann, had even been given the middle name “Beatrice” in honour of her—had been born Catholic, baptized “Bridget O'Dowd” and, somewhere along the line, dropped both her name and her church before she married Tom McCormick, a Protestant from a farm near the little Ottawa Valley village of Antrim.

In the Valley in those days, Protestants and Catholics were often bitter enemies—my father often telling us how the Catholic kids and the Protestant kids of Eganville would gather on their church sides of the Bonnechere River that split the town and hurl rocks at each other.

No wonder she had recoiled so much at my naming the dog “Bridget.” The name was never heard again. We called her “Cindy”—and eventually she even came to it.

IN A WAY
we grew up together. Since I was eleven when I got her, we were teenagers together, and there's no doubt, looking back, that she reached maturity far sooner than I did.

She was middle-aged when I headed off to school in a city several hours to the north and, from then on, I would be home only infrequently. She, of course, was home constantly. My mother, who had fed her since that first day I carried the three-dollar puppy home in my sweater pocket, took on the care of the dog. She fed her, let her in and out, and even put up a plywood barrier into the back room so that Cindy could be in and warm in winter, but come the good weather she was out day and night.

My mother believed, as so many of her generation did, that dogs were meant to be kept outside as much as possible. She had a good doghouse built by a local handyman and put in some burlap sacks for comfort. She hooked up a chain to a clothesline so that Cindy could get some exercise. The dog, however, was now much older, going on ten, and hardly needed what was once necessary.

The problem was not my mother and not the dog. The problem was the owner, and it is a common story among humans and dogs. The kid who once could hardly think of anything but hanging out with his dog became a teenager and wanted to hang out with a different crowd. He failed at school. He dropped out of sports. He fell for a local girl and forgot completely about the old dog. The girl's father was a teacher and, out of necessity, the boy recovered at school, if only barely, and then moved away to go to a higher school. He was too busy for an old dog—even one who would still go crazy the second she saw him and moan and groan and almost hum if only he could spare a few moments of his frightfully busy and important life to scratch her belly.

I know there is nothing particularly new in this because I have heard it from others. It doesn't, however, make it any more acceptable.

A friend of mine, a lovely writer named Bob Levin, once put into words the regret and guilt felt by those who have a lifelong companion they forget to make time for. Bob's dog was also a mutt, named Rock, and he wrote about his feelings in a powerful piece that appeared in the
Toronto Star
late in 2005. His feelings of remorse, and his sense that he had to deal with them, came back to him when, of all things, he was watching a television newscast of the flooding that hit New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The dogs on the rooftops and out on the tree limbs reminded him of Rock in the way that they simply stared at those people far too busy filming to help them—a stare that said, simply, “I deserve better.”

Bob had grown up in the United States but his story of regret was shockingly similar. Rock had come from the Humane Society in Philadelphia and had been a bit of a wonder dog, smart and affectionate, part pointer, part mystery. The two were inseparable. She was stubborn but equally loyal, and had every right to expect such dedication returned.

The years went by and, of course, he went off, first to college, then into an increasingly successful magazine career. As his life became busier and busier, Rock eventually got slower and slower. She had bladder problems; they lived in a fourth-floor New York apartment and, when accidents happened, he let his irritation show. Then Rock reached fifteen and began having heart problems.

Here is how Bob described the moment when he realized he'd failed her:

I can't recall what was bugging me that day; I like to think there was something. But as we walked toward the car, she just stopped, wouldn't budge. I told her to come on and, when she still wouldn't, I yelled and yanked her leash—hard—and that's when she flashed me the look.

I'm not that stubborn, the look said. I just can't move. I don't deserve this.

She didn't and he knew it. Bob felt that his impatience and self-absorption had somehow led to what he could only call “the betrayal of a dear friend.” He knelt, hugged the old dog, and says that her heart was pounding so hard it almost flew out of her chest. A few days later the old heart gave out completely. He happened to be at work when word came, and he went into his boss's office and told her and this woman had the sense and compassion to come around her desk and hug him while they both cried. Dog lovers will understand.

My betrayal of Cindy took other routes. I became self-absorbed and then absorbed with another human whom I eventually married. We moved away to the city, two hours plus by car; and, though we returned often, there seemed barely time for a pat on the head before we were off swimming or skiing.

A quick pat and a quick hard scratch around the ears— Cindy always moaning in delight, no matter how long it lasted—and that was about it. Since she was now too old to run and keep up, she was rarely taken, rarely even considered.

Besides, there was a new model and she could not compete. We lived in a bit of a lower-class area of Toronto and the kids across the street came around one day asking if anyone would like a puppy. They had a litter of seven—lineage known only so far as the father appeared to be the black and white beast from down the street and the mother was obviously the part terrier nursing the little creatures—and they simply wanted to give them away. Free of charge. Just like in the old days.

Ellen picked out a small black and white one that looked like the suspected father, a border collie. She named her “Bumps” after a nickname her sister, Jacqueline, had picked up years earlier as a falling-down toddler and had gradually shaken off. So it was free to be used again in the family.

Bumps went everywhere with us. She swam and skied. Once she was house-trained, she slept on the bed and lay on the furniture and drove in the passenger's side of the second-hand Datsun we eventually purchased. New lifestyle. New (sort of) car. New dog.

Life could not be better—unless your name was Cindy.

My moment of realization came as a shocker. Cindy had had such little exercise—doghouse to dish, dish to doghouse, run the line to the end of the yard, run back, her feet never touching pavement or rough ground— that her toenails grew so long they began to curl back in on her. A bloodied paw and a race to the vet—there finally being one in town—changed everything.

Ellen suggested we take the old dog back to Toronto with us. The old dog needed more exercise, if only to keep her toenails worn down on pavement and concrete. Besides, Ellen argued, the two dogs would be good company for each other when we were at work. Cindy got along wonderfully with the puppy, even if every once in a while she had to snap at Bumps to keep the puppy in line or bowl her over just to show that there was not
total
indulgence going on here.

It made sense, even though I must admit the thought had never occurred to me. In those days, I will now admit, not many thoughts occurred to me.

We took her back to the city with us, a twelve-year-old sort-of-spaniel along with a less-than-year-old kind-of border collie, though it was hard on the ride down to tell which was the puppy and which the grizzled old dog. Cindy prowled the back seat, pushed to get into the front and, finally, sat staring out the back window much as any northern bush hick on a first trip to the big city.

I never expected to get four years out of her. She outlasted the car. She outlasted a second car.

Twice a day, sometimes more, she was taken for long, long walks around the neighbourhood and down into the nearby ravine. She became a favourite of the kids for the way she would groan and moan contentedly as they scratched her ears.

“She purrs,” Grace, one of the neighbourhood kids who had brought us Bumps, said one day.

We smiled. She did indeed purr.

We took her out west that second summer, Cindy and Bumps with the run of the back seat in that brief period before the children started to come as fast as puppies.

She took her obligations as older dog seriously. If Bumps was too frisky, she was put in her place. If Bumps tried to sneak a closer place in our bed, she was soon sent back while Cindy snuggled in and began to … purr.

Her intelligence never dimmed. While out West we went hiking along the steep hills of the Qu'Appelle Valley near Ellen's family's Saskatchewan farm. Bumps, ever too anxious, would tumble down the hills, slipping, falling, and making a fool of herself until Cindy came along and promptly rounded her up with a few sharp snips. She then carefully showed Bumps the dog secret to steep hills, to walk them as switchbacks,
tacking,
as it were, down the hill against the grade. It was a lesson Bumps never forgot.

I never forgot my lesson, either. That neglect—that abandonment, that
betrayal
—could have haunted me forever had not Ellen repaired the damage. It wasn't just the paw that was bleeding.

Cindy had the best four years of her life with us. She remained healthy and well right up until Ellen became very pregnant with our first, and then it was almost as if she decided to make way.

We were walking her and Bumps in deep snow down through the ravine. It was a bright, cold day, a perfect day for dog walking, when suddenly Ellen said, “There's something wrong with Cindy.”

There was indeed. She was shaking her head as if blackflies were in her ears, but that, of course, was impossible. She was stumbling as she walked. We went and knelt with her, holding her. Just as with Bob Levin's Rock, Cindy's heart was pounding. She was frightened, confused. She could not hold her balance. Her one eye seemed … dead.

“I think she's had a stroke,” Ellen said.

I nodded, unable to say anything.