In memoriam

The evening of March 17, 2004, I was working in Raleigh.  I received a call from Michelle to tell me that on her way to pick up dinner she had seen a small dog—a pug—in the road, staring down cars.  On her way back, he stared down her car again, so she stopped.  He ran under the car, and it took about half an hour and the meat from her Big Mac to coax him out.  She took him home and examined him.  He was so thin that you could feel every bone in his back.  His feet were bloody.  She fed him some Puppy Chow and, because it was a warm night, she put him on our screen porch for the night.

The next day, she took him to the vet.  The bloody feet were because of a mite infestation. His facial wrinkles bore signs of infection.  And he had heartworms.  But everything he had, said the vet, was fixable.

Ironically, we had been planning to use that year's tax refund to build a fence so we could get a dog.  Instead, we paid for the treatments.

Jax, early in our relationship

Michelle wanted him to have a strong name, so she settled on Jax.  I said that he needed a proper name, so he became "Jackson Tiberius Harrington."  For about six months, I was cool to him.  I'm sorry to say that I resented him for being expensive to treat, and because he wasn't housetrained, and because he was another mouth to feed at a time when I was growing very weary of big law firm practice and aching to do something different.

In time, he recovered.  As he got his muscle tone back, he was able to climb the stairs and--eventually--to jump, even onto the high bed we had at the time.  And I grew to love him.

I know that everyone thinks their dog is special.  But ours truly was.  He was exceptionally tough, because he had managed to survive alone for God-knows how long before he found us.  He was smart. He seemed to understand English better than most dogs.  He was always--ALWAYS--on security duty, alerting us whenever some threat appeared, real or imagined.

He had a strong antipathy for thin men.  We thought that perhaps in his early life he'd been abused by a thin man, maybe even kicked with a boot.  He had a funny-looking rib that stuck out like it had been broken and had healed funny.

But he loved women. He became Michelle's personal bodyguard.  Once, early on, she was walking him in the next neighborhood over when a black lab came bounding down the street, dragging a broken chain behind him.  The lab, excited to be free and ready to play, put his paws on Michelle's chest.  It was a scary moment, mostly because Jax was ready to fight this dog that was 5 times his size.

And he loved babies.  Whenever he could, he would lick babies' toes.  He was gentle with them and responded to their cries.

About 9 or 10 years ago, he was sitting on the couch, and he didn't seem like himself.  I reached over to pet him and he yelped.  We took him to the vet, who took x-rays and diagnosed a probable herniated disc.  It was then that we learned there are such things as veterinary neurologists.  We took him to one, who said that it was a serious problem but that it could be fixed with an expensive surgery.  It didn't cross our minds that it would be the end, so we got out the checkbook.  A few weeks later, he was fully recovered, and even though the neurologist had warned us not to let him jump, Jax was unpersuaded.

After all, he was the dog who, the day after he was neutered, found a two-pound dumbbell and was carrying it around in his mouth, like a bone.  This is the canine equivalent, I think, of jogging home from your vasectomy.

He was gregarious.  One day, we were in the living room.  Michelle asked me to toss her a Hershey's milk chocolate nugget.  My throw was errant, and Jax pounced.  He snapped up the chocolate, then, when we started yelling, ran up the stairs with it.  As we begged him to drop it, he look a look at us, smiled, then furiously chewed it up, wrapper and all, before we could get to him.

He was a pizza thief, too.

The best incident, however, was when we had laid out a five-pound roast to thaw while we ran some errands.  When we returned, it looked like a crime scene.  Evidently, one of the cats had pulled the roast off the counter.  Jax was having none of that; he dragged the roast, by now dripping blood, across the kitchen, to the dining room, and under the table, where he fiercely defended the meat from the cats' advances.  He was so proud of what he'd done that we couldn't even be mad.

Jax was a survivor of heartworms, a herniated disc, a perforated cornea that required surgery by a veterinary ophthalmologist, degenerative myelopathy (essentially ALS for dogs), and a popped-out eyeball (not the bad one, unfortunately) that eventually had to be removed, too.  Even with half an eye, however, he still had great vision.  It barely slowed him down.

He was our constant companion, always wanting to be near us.  I work from home most days, and Jax was usually next to me when I was at my desk.  When one of us was in the bathroom, he took up a security position with his back to the bathroom door, ready to protect us at our most vulnerable.

A few weeks ago, we began to notice him breathing hard, often without any apparent cause.  After one particularly bad night, I took him to the vet.  A chest x-ray revealed the probable cause of his trouble:  His heart was twice the size it should've been, so big that it was crowding out his lungs.  The vet gave him a steroid shot and antibiotics, hoping that it would give him some relief, but it didn't get any better.

Last night, he coughed and coughed and couldn't catch his breath.  About 6 a.m. he asked to go out, so Michelle took him out.  When they came back, Michelle said, "I think it's time."  And it was.  He was clearly in pain, scared, and unable to function as the dog we'd known for so long.  When the vet opened, I called for an appointment.  9:30, they said.  Earlier than I'd expected.  Michelle quickly grilled him a cheeseburger, which he ate hungrily and happily even though we were torn up and crying.  Wracked with grief, we began to second-guess ourselves, but in the end, we drove him to the vet and held him as the vet ended his suffering.

There are many upsides to bringing a dog into your family.  Companionship, unconditional love, the fact that all they want is to be fed and watered and to be loved.  The downside is that you outlive them, and when it's time, all the years of pleasure and happiness get balanced out in one cruel moment.

Jax, this morning, his final picture

Jackson Tiberius Harrington was a part of our family for 13 years, 8 months, and 15 days.  We don't know how old he was when he found us--at least a year, maybe two.  He was the best dog I've ever had. And I don't know if there is any better eulogy for a dog.