10/30/09

The Missus and I just love dogs.  If we’re walking down the sidewalk and a dog on a leash comes our way, she’s immediately down on her knees with a big grin on her face as the dog approaches usually wagging away happy to see her.

Living in NYC we don’t own one.  It’s one of the great disappointments of my adulthood.  Too rough on the dog.  We travel too much.  Too busy to walk one properly.  And then there’s the leash…

The lot of dogs today has become unfortunate.  When I was a kid, dogs roamed free in my neighborhood.  They all hung together and we kids knew them all by name.  Roaming free was never any trouble.  Occasionally you might hear of a dog bite, but not nearly as often as you’d hear of a people fight.

I was 6 years old sitting on the living room floor with my brother, Jim, after opening presents around the tree late Christmas morning with my back to the door.  I remember looking up into Jim’s astonished face as he looked up behind me.  As I turned around, there was my father standing in the doorway holding a 6 week old collie puppy in his arms.

What ensued was a burst of joy yet unheard in the Link household.  We got a dog!!!

Our first dog became our only dog and eventually, the only dog of my life.  Rusty, as we named him, lived with us, played with us, ate with us, protected us and died with us over the span of 16 years.  He was my first friend.  He was simply one of the family.  Mom and Dad’s kids were named Jim and Peter and Rusty.

He was kind.  Now you normally don’t think of dogs as kind, but Rusty was.  One day Fritz, who couldn’t stop chasing cars finally got hit by one in the street right out in front of our house.  We were disturbed from lunch by the honking of horns in our normally quiet and uneventful suburban neighborhood.  As we a rushed to the front door and looked out, there stood a line of cars about 10 deep – a virtual traffic jam for our quiet Briargate Lane.  All of the cars were stopped and honking away impatiently.

There stood our Rusty in the middle of the street over the body of a dying Fritz refusing to let the cars go by, protecting his pal from the metal monsters, barking at the line of cars who honked back.  Not until we dragged poor Fritzie to the side of the road did Rusty leave the scene and let the cars go around.  By the way, you’ll be glad to know that Fritz lived to eventually run with Rusty another day.

Rusty was smart.  If you were sitting in the TV room and said to Rusty, “Hey Rusty, go into the living room.”  He’d get up wagging and go into the living room.  He didn’t speak English, but he understood it.

Each morning at breakfast Mom made Rusty a piece of rye toast with butter which Dad would feed to him in bite-sized pieces.  Rusty would sit patiently at Dad’s feet until his big moment not taking his eyes off Dad.  When the big moment came, Rusty would leap to his feet nearly wagging his furry behind off and oh so tenderly take each piece from Dad’s fingers and chomp it down.  It was my brother’s and my job to remind him, “Chew it, Rusty, chew it!”  Otherwise he’d swallow it whole.

Once finished, Dad would dust his hands off showing Rusty that it was all gone and Rusty would lie back down to wait for the next morning’s treat.

Rusty knew he wasn’t allowed to be in the dining room and he knew he wasn’t allowed to beg at the table.  But on the big occasions, when the hams or turkeys or steaks cooking filled the house with the perfume that made a dog’s mouth water and their dreams turn to gravy, Rusty would wander about the house restless and wait patiently for dinner to start.  Then he would lie at the door of the dining room with his nose literally on the door jam – the line of demarcation.

It was my job to keep that nose outside the boundary of the dining room as we ate and I’d have to get up several times during the meal and go over to where Rusty lay and adjust his nose back behind the line.  He would have actually cheated an inch and a half or sometimes, especially at turkey times, I might catch him cheating up to a whole inch!  So I’d get up from the table and commandingly say, “ Hey, get that nose behind the line!”  Rusty would look up at me with sad, mournful and mostly guilty eyes and dutifully pull his nose back that ever-so-important inch.

Rusty was my pal.  We rolled together, we chased one another, he rode on the toboggan with me, we explored the woods together.  The one thing he wouldn’t do with us was watch TV.  He just couldn’t get into it.  When we’d watch, he’d sleep.  Why am I not surprised?  Like I said, Rusty was one smart dog.

Rusty was loyal.  One day my dad and Rusty walked up the street to the country club together.  Dad went in the front door of the clubhouse and since dogs weren’t allowed, Dad said to Rusty, “Rusty, wait here until I get back”.  Rusty lay down near the door to wait.

Dad did his business and when he left the club an hour or so later, he forgot about Rusty and left through the back door of the clubhouse and walked home across the golf course.  For the next two days, no one could find Rusty.  This was very unlike him.  He was always there for his next meal and he slept in the basement every night on his bed.

We would go out the door every couple of hours and call him, but he was nowhere to be found.  We were all deeply worried.  Then Dad remembered.

We all walked up to the clubhouse together with hope in our hearts, and, yup, you guessed it, there he was, still waiting outside the front door where Dad had left him wagging his tail to beat the band.

He got a double dinner that night and two pieces of rye toast the next morning for breakfast.

And, of course, I remember the day he died.  He had been having trouble getting up in the morning and could no longer walk down the basement stairs to his bed, but he could walk up them each morning for his toast, though it would take him some time.

On this particular morning we didn’t hear his paws on the stairs and so just before breakfast Mom said, “Peter, go downstairs and see how Rusty is.”  When I got down to his bed, there he was, but he couldn’t get up.  I sat down next to him and began to talk to him and he looked up at me with those big brown eyes and I remember thinking to myself, “Oh my God, he’s embarrassed.”  This magnificent collie was embarrassed.  He couldn’t get up.  It broke my heart.

Dad and I loaded him into the trunk of the car on a blanket.  I refused to ride in the car.  I had to ride in the trunk with Rusty.  When we got to the vet, Dad and Rusty went into the inner office and I sat in the waiting room.  I thought that they would give him a shot or something to make him all right.

When Dad came out and told me that the vet had “put Rusty away” at first I did not understand.  Then I got it.  I was furious.  I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.  I’m still crying at the thought.

My brother, Jim, was in college and standing in the lunch line when he read the news in a letter from Mom.  He broke down sobbing right there in front of all his friends.  My Dad said Rusty was irreplaceable.  There would never be another one like him, so there was never another dog.  We were fine with that.

But I’m not Dad.  Some day when I get out from under this steel canyon, I’m gonna get another dog.

Some day…