Here comes that seesawing feeling again. Lingering sadness at the death of the family dog. Freedom brought on by the absence. Freedom to travel not taken advantage of for reasons of work, lack of funds, conflicting schedules, family happenstance. Staying put bled somewhat of its joy by the missing animal interactions, the want of those welcome distractions.
And thus back to the void left by such a big presence.
“Have you gotten a new dog yet?” our youngest texted before coming home from college for a four-day October break. “Kidding!”
It’s coming to a head.
“I need a dog!” my wife says, semi-regularly, while I remain mostly immune, probably out of touch, fed no adorable videos of dogs acting out, no heart-tugging adoption pleas coming across “the thing I love to hate,” as I call my small, cracked, outdated iPhone 8, just one running gag among many in my aging at-home shtick.
Duster was immortalized in two papier-maché pieces by my artistic late mother — one his full, English pointer mix of a white body flecked with spots, another only his head, the black mask and brindled snout. To say nothing of the endless photos, the surfeit of nicknames. Lightbulb Head. Pushkin, from a children’s book in which a dog fears being supplanted by a newborn.
No one and nothing could supplant Duster, from the couch or otherwise. He was here in Noyac from our arrival and became the ultimate homebody, able to shut down and curl up for 12 hours straight.
The multitudes he contained ran from cute mannerisms, like carrying his food off to eat alone in a corner before returning to look for table scraps, to a rescue dog self-protective viciousness engendered by the veterinary trips we quickly gave up on.
So how to move on from this distinctive and brainy but screw-loose personality to a new dog that it’s impossible to imagine could measure up, with full knowledge of the unfairness in the comparison?
Maybe I don’t want to move on. But in light of the existence of dog walkers and kennels, the cracks in my freedom-of-the-petless argument are beginning to show. If I keep talking about a family trip to Ireland, for instance, eventually I’m going to have to shut up and put up.