People and their pets

Last night I was walking down 75th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam and I saw a guy walking his dog. The dog was a big beautiful German Shepherd with grayed hair. He was clearly very old and was obviously in pain and having a lot of trouble walking. The first thing I had noticed before seeing them was a long discontinuous line of pee on the sidewalk. I had assumed it was some drunk guy peeing while he walked, something drunk and self amusing guys sometimes do :) (I haven't done that since, like high school, but i can't lie and say I've never done it) As i got closer, it became evident that it had been this old dog's laborious attempt to alleviate himself. the sight of this dog, and the owner, who was talking quietly to the dog and hugging him every few feet, caused me to lose my cool and start to tear up. it really really got to me. i had to cross the street so the owner didn't see how affected i was.

Now, I am normally a relatively stoic person. I read about the 100k people drowning in Asia from the recent Cyclone and felt horrible, but i wasn't drawn to tears. Thankfully i wasn't, because i was on the subway at the time that i read about it in the Times and that would have been awkward for an hombre like me. But historically, i break down when i see the bond between man and pet being smashed by the pet's brutally brief mortality. or when i witness a true act of love and devotion, like the woman in my neighborhood who has a two legged dog. she walks it in a stroller-like contraption that holds the dog's legless hind area in a sling and lets the dog walk almost normally on its two existing front legs. this is a dog that is getting to live a relatively normal life because this woman loves it. otherwise, in nature, the dog would have died a death of starvation and exposure a loong time ago. when i see her i get all misty. it just kills me.

When i was 19 i got a job being the doorman for a building for a summer. It was a great job because i basically sat their all day smoking and watching a little tv that was hidden behind the doorman desk. it had one of those scramblers so i had ALL the channels. and i mean all, if you know what i mean. wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more. Anyhoo, one day i was watching a rerun of Family Ties. It was the episode where Mallory's tough guy boyfriend Nick (the guy i always modelled myself after, right down to buying a motorcycle and a leather jacket) had to put his dog to sleep. there was a scene where he was in the vet's office and he had to say goodbye to the poor pooch. the dog was looking at him with such love and trust while he cried his eyes out. well, i fucking bawled. the guy responsible for a large building's security was crying like a 4 year old girl in the lobby. and this was when security was a real serious issue in the neighborhood. tears and everything, from watching Family Ties. Ironically, i didn't cry when i found out i had to put my dog to sleep when i was 9, so maybe this is an issue of delayed connections.

so last night, when i saw this connection between this guy and his beautiful, noble dog on the precipice of death. it was like a dagger to my heart. German Shepherds are like the generals of dog army. noble, smart, and strong like lions. although they can have some negative connotations because they were made in Germany recently as military dogs. that unfortunate start naturally connects these dogs to, you guessed it, the world wars and their biggest victims, the jews. but they've never chewed on me and i am jewish :) so that's good. but, for the most part, they seem very loyal and very capable of close companionship. at least this one certainly did. and so did his owner. they guy was sort of roughneck looking. he looked like a wife-beater type, you know, tank top, hat to the side, oversized jean shorts, and a low rider swagger. he must have picked the dog in his prime to go along with his tough image. but now, the toughness was gone, and he was left with a hobbling, swing hipped, old goat of a creature who could barely make it to the curb.

in the dog's brief life with his owner, there had obviously formed a serious amount of love. the guy was just so patient, and so encouraging, and he hugged the dog over and over. it seemed so out of character for him. love had cut him down and was having its way with him. i know too well what that's like. i ended up sitting on a stoop and just watching the struggle from across the street. i watched the guy help the dog, paw by paw, up his steps. it took so long that two separate neighbors walked by and each said hello and petted the dog with familiarity. each time the dog stopped and looked up and gave them a little bit of notice, but then got back to his struggle. it's this kind of thing that melts away my tough facade. its at the core of what love and death means. it plays out from beginning to bitter end in a decade more or less with these creatures. they love us with everything they are and then they suffer and die right in front of us. for my cat it was like that. it took 4 weeks from start to finish. and my cat struggled at the end like this dog. but the struggle that stings the most, is the one who loses the love and the companion. its us. we have to deal with the entirety of it, while they just have to deal with walking to the bathroom.

are they worth that kind of pain? i can't seem to get enough of it.