Vignettes in dog-years

I / VII. Annie

I grew up in a small suburb outside Boston. I don’t remember much from those days, but I remember my best friend C. His father was a police chief, his sister was pretty, and I don’t recall the mom at all, honestly. But above all I remember Annie, their black Labrador retriever. She was a guard dog—a retired K-9, in fact—yet so kind to guests, curling up on the couch to watch C. and me play with Legos; a great dog, truly, and why my family decided to get a dog ourselves.

I haven’t seen her in a decade. I hope she’s doing well.

II / XIV. Jimmy

We got a goldendoodle the summer before fifth grade, when we still lived in Stoughton. He was brown at the time, brown and full of joy. Being three-quarters poodle and one-quarter golden retriever, he was genetically an F1B goldendoodle, so his coat was meant to be curlier.

And it was, back then at least. One photo in particular corroborates. I don’t remember posing for it—and I’ve never actually seen the photo itself. But it was sent off to my aunt, a painter, who made a beautiful rendition which hangs in our house. I’m in a TB12 jersey with an ear-to-ear grin and he’s next to me, chestnut, his fur coiling in little corkscrews, spiralling in every which way.

He was athletic, too. When he was a puppy we set up a pen in the yard for him, and he could clear the plastic walls after just a few weeks. He had an amazing vert and it only got higher. When we moved to New York, my mom’s bed was a meter off the ground, and by then he could vault onto it with ease. And inspired by those videos wherein cats jump over increasingly tall walls of Saran Wrap, I set up a similar experiment in our basement, filming awesome videos where he clears walls of toilet paper five, six, even seven rolls high.

I use the past tense, but don’t get me wrong, he’s alive and kicking. Doing great, truly. But the past tense is fitting, because he isn’t that puppy anymore.

III / XXI. Winston

My friend H. also has a goldendoodle. Winston is a big dog, far bigger than Jimmy, though a few years younger. He lives alongside two cats, neither of which is affectionate. Winston, meanwhile, is a wonderfully affectionate dog. He greets me by rolling half over and begging for belly-scratches. I oblige and then he rolls fully over.

Winston inspired this piece. Some friends and I were at H.’s house, hanging out in the basement. It had been a while since I had seen them; we were reuniting over winter break. And Winston wanted to come down, per usual. But oh how he struggled, going step by step with all four of his fat paws, sidling down like a drunkard unconfident in his coordination. Dogs age so fast, don’t they? What is it, seven years for every one of ours?

It’s tautological to say that tomorrow is the start of the rest of my life, but the underlying sentiment really speaks to me these days. Starting college expanded my horizons so much. Not that I was particularly closed-minded during high school, but I was certainly tunnel-visioned on academics and the like. And how great and big and wide the world looks now to me; I was previously just a frog in a well.

It’s terribly jarring to feel this way and see the dogs I grew up around ageing so rapidly.

IV / XXVIII. Napoleon

Nappy is a specimen of a poodle. He has his hair cut by his owners, who work as a dermatologist and a yoga instructor; they understand aesthetics well. The process, to my understanding, eats up an entire afternoon, but Nappy comes out a veritable show-dog. He appears to be a genderbent and snow-white version of Cocoa from 101 Dalmatians, his fur trimmed into an elegant crown, a puffy tail, and luxurious boots—words fail to describe him; his coat is softer than anything I have ever felt.

My house lies on the corner of a suburban grid, our north and east bounded by the railroad and a busy boulevard, respectively. And so when I’d walk Jimmy after school we would go southwest, toward my elementary school, in Catalan numbered paths. On the way back I’d beeline north to the top of the trapezoidal grid because going along the railroad would cut the distance as the crow flies. The very last house we’d pass was Napoleon’s, and so I saw him often, nearly daily, lounging in his yard or strutting the block. He seemed to never age. And if any dog were ageless, it would be him; Platonic ideals don’t age.

But then I went to boarding school, and college now, and saw him much more infrequently. I recently saw him again for the first time in ages, and alas he too is mortal. He still looks handsome and well-kept, of course, but the difference between perfection and imperfection is everything. I am told he must be carried into their car now; he still tries to jump, thinking himself agile and spry as he once was, but often fails, slamming into the bottom of the car and injuring himself.

V / XXXV. Jimmy, again

Jimmy’s hair isn’t so curly anymore. It certainly still has texture, but it’s so much straighter now. His coat is far lighter, certainly a tan and almost a beige, and his skin—particularly near his nose—is dotted with black freckles the size of the holes in lined paper. The area around his shoulders and hips sags, and he’s visibly fatter and skinnier in the places he should be skinnier and fatter.

And he can’t jump like he used to. He sits in the backseat of our car, at least a meter off the ground. Getting in used to be one simple jump. There was a time where he didn’t even need a run-up, a time when there could be bags blocking the way or a mass of papers and coats and knickknacks raising the height another few inches and he wouldn’t care. But now he hesitates, requiring a clean landing strip, bending his legs a few times in preparation just to cancel the jump. How many rolls of toilet paper could he jump over now?

He turns nine this upcoming March.

VI / XLII. Wilbur

I don’t know what Wilbur was—he looked a mix of many things, perhaps Shih Tzu genes dominating. He was mangy and very likeable. A.’s parents got him during my time in high school, inspired by us. He stayed at our house a half-dozen times, timid, getting bullied by Jimmy mostly, avoidant-attachment to a tee.

I had two hamsters once. Neither lived long, blips in my memory so far back I don’t remember crying at their deaths, though I am told I did. And I saw a man die in New Orleans once, but that engendered much more spectacle than contemplation. Aside from those edge cases, which scarcely mean anything to me anyhow, I’ve been lucky to grow up with no death around me.

I often worried about death in my formative years, but, like quicksand and earthquakes and the Bermuda triangle and tornadoes, I wrote it off as I grew older. I knew of course it was a real thing, but I saw as much of it as I saw of natural disasters, so empirically it was the same to me—something which happens to other people in other places. So when I heard Wilbur had cancer, that he was being put down, I was sent reeling.

Nabokov opens his autobiography with the line that “existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” I agree—certainly our existence is brief—but what’s absurd to me, what I can’t wrap my head around, is that there are cracks of light so much briefer; Wilbur’s crack of light I saw in its entirety. The finitude is unbelievable.

VII / XLIX. Dasher

A few houses down from Winston lives another one of my friends, whose dog is an Australian labradoodle. Dasher hails after the reindeer, and I saw him this Christmas right after seeing Winston. It was like night and day, for Dasher is just a puppy, and he chased me around the kitchen island with youthful speed. And so the cycle goes on.