The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout

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Authors: Jill Abramson

BOOK: The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout
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To Henry
 
 
The truth about getting a new dog is that it makes you miss the old one.
This reality hit me hard one spring day in 2009 when we arrived at Thistledown Golden Retrievers, near Boston, where my husband, Henry, and I had come to meet Donna Cutler, a breeder of English golden retrievers. Because it was named Thistledown, and because I knew that the golden retriever breed was started by someone actually named Lord Tweedmouth, I was expecting the place to look like a country manor.
Instead, we parked in front of a plain suburban ranch, and the only hint of the litter of the seven-week-old
puppies we had been invited to inspect—though we knew it was really us who had to pass muster with the breeder—was a sign on the front door that showed two golden retrievers and said WIPE YOUR PAWS. Why did I suddenly feel like wiping my eyes?
My heart was still hurting over the loss of Buddy, our stone-deaf, feisty-to-the-end West Highland white terrier, who had died in March 2007 at age fourteen. Our two children, Cornelia and Will, who grew up with him but flew the nest years before his demise, often mused that Buddy was my one perfect relationship in life.
Buddy, like me, was a self-sufficient type, and despite his small size he was no lap dog. Like many Westies, he was woefully stubborn and never once came when called. He could be unpredictable and grouchy around small children and once bit my goddaughter’s upper lip. He wasn’t great with old people, either; years later, he bit the leg of an elderly woman who, for some inexplicable reason, was standing barefoot and dressed in her nightgown in our elevator when the doors opened on our floor. (Happily, that incident triggered an unlikely friendship between Eve, Buddy’s victim, and me.) Nonetheless, I was madly in love and forgave Buddy all his sins. I learned a lot from him, too; among other things, he taught me that
even in stressful situations dogs have a unique way of steering you in unlikely and interesting directions.
Buddy and Jill on the porch in Connecticut
I confess that I spoiled Buddy beyond all reason. Houseguests often awoke to the aroma of grilled chicken with a dusting of rosemary, which I liked to give him for breakfast. Henry would sometimes note, without rancor, that when I took business trips and called home, my first question was always “How’s Buddy?”
Long after Cornelia and Will began to wriggle out of my embraces and find my made-up games annoying, Buddy was always happy to have me scratch his pink belly and play tug-of-war. While my children filled their lives with school, scouting, and sports—and, later, college, work, and love—Buddy remained my steadfast companion.
When Buddy was a puppy, we lived in Virginia, and together he and I would amble around our neighborhood for miles, discovering new side streets with interesting houses. Someone always stopped to admire him, which is how I met a lot of my neighbors. During our walks I was also able to let go of some of the pressure of my job as an investigative reporter, back then for the
Wall Street Journal
. Sometimes, with my mind wandering free as I pulled the leash this way and that, I would come up with a great story idea or reporting angle on
the Washington scandals that were my frequent reporting targets. Buddy, steadfast and true, was my loyal coconspirator.
I once experienced a rare eureka moment while on a walk with Buddy. I had recently left the
Journal
and gone to work in the Washington bureau of the
New York Times
, where I was on the team of reporters covering the Monica Lewinsky scandal. One day in late 1998, as Buddy and I strolled up Second Street South in Arlington, I realized that one of the people I had encountered in a document the previous night was familiar to me; he was a prominent conservative lawyer in New York. Why his name surfaced in my brain during a walk with Buddy the next morning is anyone’s guess, but when Buddy and I got home, I took out the documents I had been reviewing and found that this lawyer was mentioned repeatedly. That discovery led to a front-page story about how a cabal of conservative lawyers had secretly worked on the sexual harassment case that triggered impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. Buddy, my silent partner, deserved to share the byline on that story.
Although independent and often fierce, Buddy was always happy to see me. When my children were in their late teens, I couldn’t help but notice that he, unlike Cornelia and Will, was never sullen and didn’t
ask to borrow the car. And when I became the
Times
’s Washington bureau chief, I noted that unlike the reporters who worked for me, Buddy was unfailingly delighted whenever I came up with what I thought was an inspired idea.
Buddy, you see, was my first dog, and I had fallen hard. Perhaps this new relationship was so intense partly because it wasn’t based on words, unlike the rest of my personal and professional life. I spent so much of my day talking, reading, and writing that it was both a relief and a joy to spend time with Buddy. Except for a few simple commands, our conversation consisted entirely of my silly cooings and his appreciative grunts.
My older sister, Jane, has often observed that what she found most surprising about me was my late-in-life transformation into a dog lover. “You were a wonderful parent,” she once told me, “but I’ve never seen you so affectionate or expressive with anyone the way you are with this dog.” It was true. At work, where some of my colleagues and sources said they found my tough-girl investigative journalist persona intimidating, I was constantly pulling out the latest snapshots of Buddy and telling everyone my latest dog stories. Buddy was more than my coconspirator; he also seemed to certify me as a nicer person.
 
 
It wasn’t just Buddy. I also adored Arrow, my sister’s Jack Russell mix, who greeted me with ecstasy at her door. Arrow and I formed a special bond when I moved from Washington to New York in 2003 to become the
Times
’s managing editor. Henry—who worked at a Washington, D.C., think tank and was in the process of becoming a consultant in New York—and Buddy weren’t able to join me in Manhattan right away, so I lived for a couple of weeks with Jane; her husband, Jim; and Arrow. My love affair with Arrow was kindled during this period by the doggy bags I often brought home from the swanky restaurants where I had business dinners. Arrow, I recall, was especially fond of the grilled liver and bacon from an Italian place called Elio’s.
I grew up in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Our parents allowed Jane and me to have turtles, fish, parakeets, and even a hamster, who outlived all our other pets. (During the famous blackout of 1965, I spent hours funneling water into a tropical fish tank to provide enough oxygen to save a pregnant fantail guppy and her impending brood.) But my parents drew the line at a dog. “The city is not a good place to raise a puppy,” my mother told us. Despite
our pleas, and even though we lived across from Central Park, she was unyielding.
Buddy arrived in 1992, when Henry and I were in our late thirties and our kids were nine and seven. That was also the year my father died, so Buddy was especially welcome. Cornelia and Will told the usual children’s fib about getting a pet: they assured me that they would faithfully feed and walk this adorable addition to our family. It didn’t work out that way, of course, so I took care of Buddy, training him, feeding him, and singing him to sleep in his tiny crate. I didn’t mind, though; having new life in our house was a tonic for my grief over the loss of my dad.
Our setup in those days was perfect for an active puppy. We lived in an unfashionable corner of Arlington, Virginia, in a sturdy bungalow ordered out of the 1928 Sears catalog. The house came with a large fenced yard, and since Buddy had a little dog door he could come and go as he pleased. His purpose in life became patrolling our patch of lawn and protecting us from a host of imagined intruders. He also learned to open our mail slot; every day, he would wait inside for the mailman to arrive and then race onto our porch to retrieve the day’s post. When it snowed, Buddy would often disappear under the white mounds in our yard and then tunnel and burrow to his heart’s content. I especially loved to walk him when the snow
was crunchy under my boots—amazingly, Buddy made me look forward to winter.
Buddy was already eleven when we arrived in Manhattan, and I worried that the move might kill him. We sublet a loft downtown, in Tribeca, but happily Buddy loved all the action in his new neighborhood, including the smells of so many other dogs and the fishy sidewalk outside a high-end Japanese restaurant called Nobu.
Once Henry and I settled into our own place in the same neighborhood, I hired a dog walker named Carlos, who took Buddy for a walk each afternoon. Once, when I forgot to bring some papers to work, I returned home to retrieve them and bumped into Carlos on the street walking Buddy in a pack with three other dogs. Buddy hadn’t socialized much with other dogs during his yard-patrolling years, but now he seemed perfectly at ease with his cool city friends. When he saw me that day, he regarded me with a dismissive “What are you doing here?” look.
Before going to work, I often took Buddy to a dog run near the Hudson River where he bonded with a Scottie about his size. They looked like an advertisement for scotch when they romped together, and I enjoyed chatting with the other owners, who sat on benches and loved arguing with me about the theater, movie, and dining reviews in the
Times
. These
mornings reminded me of the years when my kids were toddlers and I made a number of good friends while sitting on benches in the playground, talking about everything from biodegradable diapers to our marriages.
One day when I took Buddy for a checkup to the veterinarian in Tribeca, I encountered a woman with two Westies. The woman was wearing a pair of plaid socks emblazoned with Westies. “I have the same pair,” I told her. She laughed and then looked at Buddy. “How old is your Westie?” she asked. When I told her Buddy was thirteen, she said, “Oh, we have an eighteen-year-old.” Since the two dogs accompanying her were obviously much younger, I asked where the older one was. “He lives in a hospice nearby, and we visit him almost every day,” she replied. I was stunned, never having imagined the existence of live-in, end-of-life care for dogs. This encounter marked the beginning of my fascination with the rarefied world of Manhattan dog owners, some of whom seek out dog hospices—not to mention dog massage therapists and dog shrinks who dispense antianxiety medications.
Henry and I were also startled to discover that everything having to do with dogs is so much more expensive in Manhattan than in Arlington. Although we live in an old, unrenovated building that used to be a spice warehouse and has no doorman, Tribeca is one of Manhattan’s
most expensive neighborhoods, full of Wall Street brokers who earn fat salaries and big bonuses. Signs reading LUXURY LOFTS FOR SALE are everywhere, with
luxury
being code for apartments that sell for two million dollars or more. A rubber ball I purchased at the local “pet boutique” cost six dollars. True, I splurged on a dog walker, but other dog owners in our neighborhood spent even more to send their pups to the Wagging Tail, a doggy day-care center on Greenwich Street.
By the time Buddy turned fourteen, he had lost his hearing, but he was still a hardy boy. In the winter of 2007, though, he developed a persistent cough. “I think it may be his heart,” said Cornelia, who was then in her second year of medical school at Columbia. One weekend, he had what seemed like a small stroke: he was temporarily confused but snapped back to his old self pretty quickly. Then, in late February, while Cornelia and I were walking him one evening, he collapsed on the sidewalk. I carried him as we raced to the vet, who told us to take him to an animal hospital on lower Fifth Avenue. After he was given some oxygen, he seemed to stabilize. We were advised to leave him overnight, and I became tearful when we were ushered in to say good night and I saw him lying in a little cage, looking so vulnerable.
At 3 a.m. the telephone rang. It was the vet: Buddy was in full congestive heart failure. “He’s having a
terrible time breathing and he seems to be in pain,” the on-duty vet reported. “I think we should put him down.” Cornelia grabbed the phone and said we would be there in just a few minutes.
Henry, Cornelia, and I dashed out of our apartment, almost forgetting our coats in our hurry, and hailed a cab. When we arrived at the animal hospital, Buddy was lying on his side on a gurney, his back heaving up and down, a tiny oxygen mask on his face. We asked a barrage of questions and tried our best to convince ourselves that Buddy could recover, but it was clear there was no hope. As the medical technician prepared the lethal injection, Henry and I couldn’t bear to watch, despite the counsel of friends who said that it was comforting to be present when a dog’s life came to a peaceful end. Cornelia, in doctor mode, stayed with Buddy to the last.

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