The Dog Days Of December
The Bright Sadness of awaiting the Christ Child's birth while a dear friend is dying
Roscoe has been quiet today, and slower than his usual pace, which is pretty sluggish on the best days. I wish I didn’t have to see my old dog winding his life down like this, but it’s hard to miss him sleeping on his dog bed in the living room, at the end of the couch, barely moving off, and lightly touching his back left foot to the floor when he does.
He has been on ibuprofen prescribed by the vet for about ten weeks, and that has made it possible for him to get around, and to live without much visible pain. Now the pain relief is starting to fade. He is supposed to receive one of the small tablets every twelve hours. But lately, he comes to me, limping, asking for it after nine hours. I roll it up inside a piece of bread, to make a ball I pop into his mouth. He finds the pill easier to get down that way.
The Internet says that a pet losing interest in life is a sign that it’s getting to be time to put them down. It usually signals a preoccupation with pain. Be merciful, they say, and put your friend down. I know this is true, and it is undeniable that the dread day that we will do what we must approaches. Sometime in the new year, surely, but this will be Roscoe’s last Christmas.
What will I do with myself when he is gone? He has been with me through so much. How many nights have I held him in my arms, on his back like a baby, snoring, and drawing the poison out of my bitter and grieving heart?
As you know, I try to use this newsletter to reflect on the smaller and lovelier things in life, in an effort to mine hope amid the falling-apart. Some days it’s easier to do than others. Watching Roscoe’s descent is, for me, like trying to see the colors of the brilliant icons on my mantel at five-twenty, in the dying of December daylight. I know they are there, with their vivid blues, reds, whites, and golds. But I know by faith, because I can’t see them clearly, and can only perceive their dim forms. My little black dog is fading into night, and that fact (“You cannot conquer Time” — Auden) drains the color from most things. But then, it’s been that kind of year, hasn’t it?
May I tell you how he came to us? Back in 2006, I think it was, we decided that we wanted a dog. The boys were small, and small boys need a dog. Julie was pregnant with Nora. We bought a German shepherd puppy, a purebred Schutzhund, from a breeder. What’s a Schutzhund? Who the hell knows? The puppy was pretty, if expensive, but it was our first family dog, so the sky was the limit.
That dog was a nightmare. My God in heaven. A Schutzhund, as it turns out, is a dog bred for protection. What’s not to like about that, especially for a family living in a part of the city that was politely called “transitional” (meaning, the gunshots on Friday night were not right down the street)? Well, it turns out that a dog like that needs constant attention to fulfill its nature. I was working crazy hours at the newspaper. Julie had two small boys and a baby on the way. The poor dog was going crazy, having to stay in her crate for too long during the day, because nobody could walk her.
We tried a trainer. We tried a dog psychologist, who came over, worked with the dog, and said finally, “I’ve never had a dog that completely resisted me.” The dog was so anxious she began pulling her fur out. My wife was about to that point too. We had vet bills to treat skin infections, because the poor thing desperately needed to be owned by a young man who would go running with her for an hour a day.
We needed a minivan of a dog. We bought a Lamborghini. One day my very pregnant wife cried out of exasperation with the dog. I asked her how much money we had sunk into that hound — the cost of her purchase, all the vet bills (including the spaying, after she started her period, and began bleeding all over the house), the special food and treatments, the trainer, and so forth.
Julie told me, and wailed. I remember exactly where I was on I-635 when the syllables announcing the figure passed through my aural membrane. I am so embarrassed by it that I cannot bring myself to tell you.
“She’s going back to the breeder,” I said. And so she did.
We were done with dogs, I tell you. Done. What idiots we were, to think we were a dog family. Owning a dog was a supposedly fun thing we’ll never do again, by God.
A few months go by. Maybe Nora was born in the interim, I can’t quite remember. It is a Friday, and I am sitting at my desk at The Dallas Morning News. The phone rings. It’s Julie, calling from a playground, where she has taken the boys to get their ya-yas out.
A little black dog has come up to them, she said. He looks like an older puppy. Maybe he has some poodle in him. Anyway, he looks like he has been abused. The kids played with him, and we couldn’t see that he belonged to anybody. He didn’t have a collar on. We can’t just leave him here.
Then it came: “Can we bring him home, just for the weekend?”
No, we bloody well cannot! I thought. But what I said was: “OK, but on Monday morning, he’s going to the pound.”
That was Roscoe, of course. Roscoe P. Coltrane, after one of America’s great lawmen. Lucas, who was three, wanted to name him Gunshot, but we agreed that Roscoe was a good enough name for a dog.
Here’s the thing: the ragamuffin dog, with his curly black hair — turns out he’s some kind of schnauzer-poodle mix — would not leave me. He was drawn like a magnet to me, though he was also, weirdly, afraid of me. He wanted to sit in my lap, but when he sat there, his back was ramrod stiff, as if he expected me to hit him. All we could figure was that he belonged to a man whom he loved, but who also mistreated him (a theory that gained some ground when he saw me pick up a broom to sweep the kitchen, and reacted with terror).
Why does this dog love me so much? I couldn’t figure it out. I grew up with dogs, but was never really a dog person. This frightened creature craved my attention, though. Everyone in the family could see it. He was so dear, and so vulnerable. There was no question of him going to the pound on Monday. We’ll just keep him for a few more days, and see what happens.
When he ceased to fear me, which only took a few days, Roscoe would nestle into my arms, show me his belly, and when I would scratch it, open up like a morning glory in the sun. He would lie there in my arms and stare at me with these intense chestnut-brown eyes. It was uncanny, and again, we all noticed. He didn’t treat anyone else in the family that way, and though he eventually became the kind of dog who would go ask others in our household to show him attention, the bond he made with me was like nothing else.
The feeling was mutual, pretty much from the beginning. I was fast becoming a dog person, and didn’t know it. I didn’t even think about it; all I knew was that here was a creature who needed a family, and he needed me to be his alpha. And he made it so easy.
One Sunday morning, we were getting ready for church, and I asked if anyone had seen the dog. One of the boys had turned him loose in our fenced backyard for his morning constitutional, but had not let him back in. I went out looking for him, but Roscoe was nowhere to be found. Then I saw a black mass lying behind the air conditioning unit. It was Roscoe, and he was dying.
Julie took the kids on to church, and I took him to the 24-hour vet. The doctor figured out that he probably had some virus — I forget the name of it, but the diagnosis was confirmed by lab results — that he had gotten from being unvaccinated. (It turned out later that Julie, conscious of how much money we had thrown down a rathole with the fancy dog, decided to save money by waiting for the upcoming low-cost vaccination day at the SPCA. But she had taken Roscoe on a walk around the neighborhood, and he must have sniffed some infected poop, and become ill.)
Can he be cured? I asked. The vet said he had a 50-50 chance of living. It would require intensive treatment, lots of fluids, and medication. Whether he lived or died, I would be out $1,200.
I didn’t have forever to make the call. Roscoe was dying. We haven’t had this new dog but for a few weeks, and already he’s going to cost me money we really can’t afford — and he might die anyway! If I have the vet put him to sleep right now, I can just tell Julie and the kids that he couldn’t be saved. Nobody will ever know. Too bad for the dog, but we haven’t really gotten attached to him yet. We’ll forget about him.
But then I thought of myself lying to my family about Roscoe’s fate. I didn’t want to be that kind of man. And though we didn’t really have the extra money to spend to save a mutt, could I really live with myself knowing that little animal who trusted me so deeply after such a short time had been betrayed to his death?
Don’t be sentimental, I said to myself. He’ll probably die anyway, and you’ll be out twelve hundred dollars. These are the hard calls you have to make when you are a grown-up. Be a man. Make the call.
“I’ll pay it,” I said to the vet. “Do your best.”
The next day, when I was at work, Julie called the vet to check on him. It looked like Roscoe was going to make it. Can we come see him? she asked. Of course, he said. So they drove over later that day to check on Roscoe. Julie told me that when they walked in and spoke to the vet, they heard a thump-thump-thump coming from the next room. It was Roscoe’s tail slapping against the surface on which he lay, with a drip in his leg. His family had come to see him. He heard their voices before he saw their faces.
Where would we be without him? He has been perfect — except when he ate hen turds in the backyard, but we forgave him for that. In fourteen years, he has given us so much more than he has taken. I try to be joyful in this space, and honestly, I am. It is impossible for me to write about my little friend without joy, even amid the sorrow of these last days. My tears — and yes, I’m crying now as I write this — are a tribute to the joy he has brought to me, the delight in his silliness, and the consolation in hard times. My heart may be crooked, but a dog’s never is, and their love never fails.
He’s not gone yet. Maybe he will live to see the spring. But when he finally goes, his memory will endure for as long as anyone in this family draws breath. None of our children can recall a time when Roscoe wasn’t there. As long as they remember their childhood — and they have had happy childhoods, I think — there will Roscoe be. I like that.
Well, shoot. I intended to write about a poem tonight. But Roscoe is on my mind. This has been a bad year, and it feels wrong to spend this Advent waiting on the Christ child to be born while my dearest friend is slowly dying. Such is life, which, as we are told, and must take on faith, “remains a blessing/Although you cannot bless.”
Life doesn’t exist in contradictions, but it does exist in paradoxes. A joyfulness based on willful blindness to the horrors of history would ultimately be a lie or a fiction, a kind of withdrawal. But the converse is also true. Those who have lost the capacity to see that even in an evil world the Creator still shines through are at bottom no longer capable of existing. They become cynical, or they have to say farewell to life altogether. In this sense, the two things belong together: the refusal to evade the abysses of history and of man’s existence, and the the insight that faith gives us that the good is present, even if we aren’t always able to connect the two things. Particularly when one has to resist evil it’s all the more important not to fall into a gloomy moralism that doesn’t allow itself any joy but really to see how much beauty there is, too, and to draw from it the strength needed to resist what destroys joy.
— Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, from ‘Salt Of The Earth’
A reader writes about last night’s newsletter discussing an Auden poem:
I learned about "As I Walked Out One Evening" from an AmCon article of yours in April/May 2018 and the "you shall love your crooked neighbor / with you crooked heart" couplet has been with me ever since. Thank you. The wounds of my divorce were fresh and I was in a spiteful place, needing to be reminded that my heart, too, was crooked. Then, in early October 2020, after an insane six weeks of editing a Netflix special, I finally had a night off but was having a tough time adjusting to my newfound free time. I thought of this poem and decided to spend the next hour or two memorizing it, and now I recite it to myself during my morning runs and to my fiancée when we walk through the woods. What a gift. I enjoyed your meditation on it. I just got engaged so at the moment I'm living in this stanza: "the years shall run like rabbits / for in my arms I hold / the flower of the ages / and the first love of the world."
I think of walking around my city now -- like in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland "each man [fixes] his eyes before his feet" and "I had not thought death had undone so many." People are very closed off, and it seems like the worst thing you could possibly do in the company of your fellow man is cough -- you'd ignite fears that you're a carrier, even if your cough is just clearing your throat to say a distanced "good morning". In Auden's poem, "time watches from the shadow / and coughs where you would kiss". Man, does this have new significance during covidtide! While a kiss softens and lifts the heart - building trust and inviting affection - a cough does the opposite now -- it erodes trust, turning us all into the Levite and the Priest from Jesus' parable. I pray we can be people who continue to kiss after time is done coughing.
Lastly, I'll mention that I loved your interview with Jonathan Pageau/The Symbolic World a few weeks ago -- I know you've mentioned him before in your writing but I'd love to see more collaborations between you two, as you've both been important intellectual/spiritual figures in keeping me sane and grounded in the last few years.
Jonathan Pageau is a wonder. He is an artist, a thinker, and an Orthodox Christian who sees deeply into things. His website is The Symbolic World, where his YouTube talks on the meaning of symbolism in art and literature are riveting.
A reader in Paris sends this wonderful gift guide, from David Lebovitz’s blog, for those who want to bring some joy of France into their holidays. I am going to tell you right now that some people in my house are going to get bricks of salty French butter in their stockings. We Drehers brought 16 pounds of French butter home in 2012. You have to pay two to three times the price in the US that you pay at the Monoprix in Paris for the same butter, but oh, oh, oh, it is worth it.
It seems like my source of Christine Ferber confiture might have gone out of business since I last checked — but let me tell you, if you can find that woman’s jams and jellies in your local gourmet shop, but as many little jars as you can afford, because you will not taste better in all your life. Read about her here.
