bring the noyz

My dog was old.

He was only 11 or so in human years, but as Lorne Greene once explained, that's about 77 to you and me, and that's getting up there for a big dog. He was with me for slightly over 10 of them.

Greyson was the name he came with, and as far as any vet could ever tell me he was pure weimaraner.

You know, those silvery gray dogs that that photographer guy made famous. Yeah, we've all seen the pictures. I've had the calendars, I've gotten a book or two. You can't own one of those damned dogs without having people give you lots of that crap over the years. I've got all that shit in a box somewhere.

And I'll tell you straight up now, my dear reader, I've always thought that fella's dogs sucked ass compared to mine. Because they did. They didn't have anywheres near Greyson's personality, his expressive face.

But like I said, he was old.

Old enough to where last week The Wife and I had a conversation I wasn't ready to have. You never are, but some things just can't remain a river in Egypt.

He couldn't hardly fucking walk anymore. I had to follow him around the back yard to hold him up when he shit and pissed so that he didn't fall down in it. That was a fun job. Mostly he just slept all the time. Two or three times a day he'd drag his withering body around, stumbling and falling frequently. With each fall I would wonder if this was the one where he finally broke a leg and then the decision would be made.

He never did break anything, although I think at the end he was in almost constant pain. You could see it in his face. He was losing weight, losing his appetite, and losing his strength. He had moments, brief moments when the spark and playfulness would reappear, just long enough to fool you into thinking that he really wasn't so bad off after all. But it would only happen for a moment.

It seems as though with each day it got slowly yet steadily worse. Even with the fucking $100 a bottle pills he'd been taking for the past six months.

I've known since the day he came to my home that this day would come. The vets told me when I got him that that he would have arthritis bad in his back legs when he got older. True enough. That's just what happened. As the arthritis took over his back legs his front legs carried more and more of the load. Eventually it started to be to much and he began to lose the strength and coordination in those also.

He was a rescue dog. Some sick fuck of pig scrotum licking bastard who I would still like to string up by his testicles threw him out of a car on a highway south of town when he was a puppy, around five or six months old. When he hit the ground it caused multiple fractures in both his back legs. He was already half-starved and almost dead from malnutrition. To add insult to injury, he ended up lying in a fire ant bed. You don't need further description to know how that went.

I know this from the woman that gave him to me. She got him from the woman that saw it happen and picked him up.

I remember seeing the flyer that one of my coworkers posted in the hall at school, "PLEASE HELP GREYSON" is what it said. It had a xeroxed photo of a scrawny mangy looking half bald beat-up dog and an appeal to raise money to pay the vet bills. Apparently the local Humane Society and several vet clinics thought the best thing to do was to euthanize him, but the woman that found him thought that was to terrible an undeserved fate. He was moving from foster home to foster home as they tried to raise the money to fix him and cover his medical costs.

I like to tell people that I don't know how it went from me offering to toss in a twenty to help out to him being my dog for the past decade, but honestly that's a lie. I know. I know exactly. I knew from the moment I first saw him. He was literally the most pathetic creature I had ever seen.

He broke my heart and then he stole it.

I tell people we got each other for Christmas in 1997.

When he finally came to live with me he had just had the last of the reconstructive surgeries on his back legs. There were huge gaping wounds on his back hips that needed basic first-aid care, just keep them clean, and to heal from the inside out. To keep him from messing with them he had to wear that lamp shade collar thing for the first six months he was with me.

I remember vividly that first day. The first wife was at work and I was home cleaning up for the incoming family for the Christmas holiday. He followed me around the house as I straightened, dusted, swept and vacuumed. He wandered around beside me with that damned lamp shade cone collar, bumping and banging into damn near everything, knocking shit down and making messes as fast as I was picking them up, but he never left my side.

At my side he remained for the next 10 years.

Due to his weakened and compromised state he caught some weird fungal infection in his skin. Cripes, did he ever stink to high Heaven. Every day for about six months I gently picked him up and much to the first wife's chagrin I gave him a bath in our tub with prescription shampoo.

Every day.

Really.

Was he a factor in why the first wife is now the ex-wife? She never seemed to like him. I don't know, but I like to think maybe. And if that is true then that is a debt I can never fully repay.

After the divorce in 1999, his presence and his unconditional love helped me through those dark times.

In time, he got stronger, healthier. He had that incorruptible spirit that is a hallmark of all good dogs. He was my regular jogging partner for years. His enthusiasm prompted me to get off the couch and move on many days when I just wanted to sit there with a bowl and a beer and numb my self-pitying sorrows away.

I had a couple of different two or three mile routes mapped out through our neighborhood. He'd jog at my side on a loose leash. He was never a very attentive runner. He was easily distracted by the dogs and cats we'd pass in the yards along the way. I remember at least one occasion when we were trotting along on a nice afternoon. He spotted a cat sitting near the curb in a yard on the other side of the street. I took a couple of steps over towards the middle to go around a parked car. Apparently Greyson kept watching the cat. There was a loud crash, a big whacking sound and I felt the leash go tight. I looked over and there was Greyson, lying sprawled on the ground. He ran right smack into that parked car. I laughed, boy how I laughed and I don't think myself cruel for doing so. It was slapstick humor, pure and simple. It seemed to daze him for a moment or two, but he got up and was soon jogging along beside me like nothing had happened. Although I bet he had a bit of a headache for awhile.

We frequently joked that he was part billy goat. He ate things. Everything. Anything. He ate sticks, small stones, leaves, grass, small trees and weeds. If he could get his jaws around it, chances were he'd try to eat it. There was a period of a few years when he had a fondness for eating books and papers. Somewhere deep in the bowels of my school district's headquarters there is a the official records folder of a former student that is missing all the corners on one side.

I remember once I had found an old Bible that someone had discarded. I brought it home and was going to hollow it out in the middle to hide a flask in it for part of an evangelical preacher Halloween costume. I remember coming home one evening and opening the door. Holy shit. It looked like it had snowed in our living room. Greyson, with some help from our small female dachshound, Lenny, had shredded The Bible. I remember calling The Wife at work and joking that our dogs were going to Hell.

He once ate a box of q-tips. You know, the ones with the little purple plastic sticks. It didn't seem to phase him, and for weeks it seems as though those little plastic sticks kept coming out of one end or the other. Again, with no apparent ill effect. They will probably always be found in the small backyard of the duplex we used to live in.

One day in the old duplex he ate a book, which one I don't recall. Aside from cleaning up the mess of pieces of paper and bits of binding I didn't think much of it at the time. As I said, he frequently ate books. The trick was to keep them tight enough on the bookshelf so he couldn't work one out to dine upon.

Apparently, when we went to bed that night, the door to the pantry cupboard in the kitchen was not shut securely. I got up in the morning to discover that at some point during the night, Greyson had gotten in the pantry, pulled out, and eaten an almost full five pound bag of flour. I got up in the morning and walked into the kitchen.

Holy shit. There lie Greyson, in the middle of the kitchen floor. There was flour everwhere, and well, what do you get if you mix paper (from the book), lots of flour and the moisture from his saliva and stomach goo?

There was paper mache everywhere.

That slowed him down for about a day. I don't think he ate that day. But other than that, come the next day, he was just fine.

And that was Greyson. He was indestructible.

Was.

He was already starting to slow down when we moved in the summer of 2006 to our house. I was happy that Greyson was finally going to have a big back yard to run and play and lounge in. He was happy to have much more space to move. He had a big fence line to patrol morning and night to make sure his yard was secure. He had an endless supply of neighborhood cats and dogs to bark menacingly at through the chain link fence. Menacing? Right. I don't think he fooled anyone.

Greyson was a sweet and gentle soul. I was always impressed that the horrible neglect and abuse he suffered as a puppy never seemed to impact his personality.

Perhaps it did a little. He was never a very affectionate dog. He wasn't one to snuggle up beside you. He didn't like it when you messed with him when he was lying down. He would grump at you. Not a growl, but a grump. He preferred just to be left alone mostly, affection was dealt on his terms, not yours.

But he had that weird empathy that dogs have. He could read your emotions and if you were feeling down he would lie beside you on the couch or floor and put his head in your lap. In a way that made the last couple of days much more difficult. While I doubt he understood the decision we had made regarding his fate, he certainly picked up on the sentiment of sorrow, and spent much of his last night and afternoon curled up next to me or resting his his head on my thigh as I sat beside him on the floor.

And now he is gone. Gone to the Great Unknown Beyond, where many I have loved as dearly have gone on before.

This evening I shall stand in the cold rain, with The Wife, The Boy, The Nurse and her family, our family, my family, gathered around and we shall place him in the ground in the backyard that he loved and pay our final respects.

Over the coming days and weeks I have no doubt that memories of other events and anecdotes will come to mind, as they always do in time such as these. They shall be shared by family and friends alike. We shall tell tales of a gruff but lovable "grumpy old man". When we do, my dear reader, do not be surprised if I share one or two. Or if you have one to share, then by all means please do so.

But for now, my dear reader, please join me and raise your glass high. Join me in another toast. . .

To a brotha' who ain't here.

Farewell Greyson.
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