Good By Sweet Boy

Hamilton died at approximately 7:30 p.m. February 5, 2010. He was five years, nine months old. He lived nearly two years after his diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmia. His doctor had given him a six month prognosis. He died happy and sweet until the very end.

Good by my sweet boy Hamilton, good by.

The White Bus

Every evening as Hamilton and I cross Broad and Beaver Streets a white school bus sits at the curb waiting for its passengers. Its a Blue Bird type school bus designed for adolescents painted a garish institutional white. People enter the bus carrying their belongings, usually in twenty gallon garbage bags but sometimes in reinforced plastic shopping bags with Duane Reade imprinted on them. Those on the bus always sit quietly, staring straight ahead. No one looks out the window, as if fearing what or who they may see.

Last evening a man struggled to get on the bus as he held tightly to two black garbage bags. A woman behind him, with the luxury of a back pack, yelled at him to hurry up or get out of the way. No one wants to miss the bus.

Its occupants looked freshly scrubbed. There is a drop in shelter on Beaver near where the school bus waits. It must not have any beds. It is next door to the world famous Delmonico's Restaurant, where Diamond Jim Brady often ate. They claim to have invented Eggs Benedict, Lobster Newburg and Baked Alaska. The shelter is across the street from Beaver House where multi-million dollar condominiums are sold.

Every time I have seen the bus pull away it is full. I never see anyone take a pet on the bus. I guess having a pet is one more of life's decencies not allowed the homeless.

Looking at the people on the bus I wonder how they got there. Where are their families? No one seems to have a spouse. Walking away with Hamilton I often thank God for the blessings I have received. I have a loving wife and family, loyal friends and the gift of Hamilton and my other wonderful pets. I have the income to often eat in Delmonico's. And I live in a nice apartment building like the Beaver House.

But if I was on that white bus would I be as grateful? Would I have the resilience to get on the bus and carry on?

A block away an old man with teeth like a broken picket fence and clothes held together by grime pushes a shopping cart with some bottles and papers in it. I give him $20 and keep walking.

Rusty-- a Dog of My Own

I always felt my mother's pragmatic approach to animals was the result of her being a farmer's daughter. It would be difficult to be sentimental about animals kept only for work or food. This cold calculation rubbed off on her relationship with other animals as well.

Our first dog Buster was a Fox Terrier-type dog whose purpose was to protect us from rats that would often invade our home. Once he attacked me, because of my own childish ignorance, my mother quickly calculated the benefit of his service was outweighed by the risks.

My father would have given Buster a second chance. He was a romantic, with excessive empathy for the underdog. By definition, all dogs fit that category to him. Through the years he was a one man shelter for neighborhood strays. At any one time he could have as many as six dogs in his personal pack. This was after my mother had died. She would never have stood for his St. Francis of Assisi act. It even took all his charm to convince her to let me keep Rusty, a dog that I felt was truly my own.

I was eight years old, long over the sudden disappearance of Buster after he had bitten me on the lip when I tried to pet him while he was eating. In those more innocent times we played out on the street. One day a rust colored collie-type dog was running after an older boy on a bicycle. It almost looked like he was trying to escape from the dog, but the dog was too fast and passed him and had to wait for him to catch up. The dog crouched down with its belly on the asphalt, then when the boy tried to break away on his bike the dog took off and circled it in gradually tighter spirals.

I blurted out how good looking the dog was. The boy pulled up to me and asked me if I wanted the dog. I said sure. ( My mother always scolded me for leaping before I looked.) He picked up the dog and handed him to me. The dog was light. Besides rust colored fur it had floppy ears and a short snout, with white boots and a fluffy curly tail topped with a white cap.

How old was he, I asked. The boy corrected me that the dog was a female and said she was three months old. You can tell the dogs a girl by looking between its legs he explained. Nothing there that I could see. I would have to confirm this with my parents. This guy didn't look too smart. After all, he was giving away this great dog.

I'm going to call her Rusty, I said, and I pulled the squirming puppy tight to my chest. I confidently bound up the stairs to my home. The older boy took off, standing up on his bicycle pedals to increase his acceleration.

My reception was not what I expected. Bursting into the house I proudly announced that I had a new dog. And his name was Rusty. At first only my father, sitting in the living room reading the paper, saw the object of my loud pronouncement. Then I heard my mother calling me from the bedroom. This was during the early period of her illness. Some days she was up and about like normal. Others she was in bed all day. I thought she had the flu. Even after she died a year later no one told me she had cancer. I found out years later only because I accidentally found her death certificate at the bottom of a drawer.

I walked to the doorway of the bedroom. The look on my mother's face was not kind. My father told me to take the dog out to the backyard, which was fenced in. The dog won't be able to run away out there he explained. I sat on the swing seat watching Rusty move around the yard, familiarizing herself with her new home. Her nose never seemed to leave the ground.

When you are eight time moves slowly anyway. Waiting in the yard seemed interminable. Finally my father came out. I could keep the dog. But she was my responsibility. I must feed her and walk her and keep her out of my mother's way. I never knew how my father convinced her. There was only disgust on my mother's face when she saw me holding the dog, as if she were thinking now I have this to worry about too. She knew me far better than my father. I was impetuous, a day dreamer prone to wandering off into my own world in the midst of a busy intersection. She both loved and worried about me. Having encouraged me to read and draw, to use my imagination, she also drilled into me the need for discipline and practicality to get along in the world. On the latter I was not doing so well.

My father had a simpler calculation. A dog was good for a child because taking care of it taught responsibility. Dogs, being faithful and loyal to a fault, appealed to my father. Loyalty was the trait that my father respected and demanded more than any other.

A month later I received my first Holy Confirmation. I have a picture from that day of me holding Rusty, with my grandmother and sister by my side. My father took the picture. My mother is not in the picture. She was in bed that day.

Throughout the summer Rusty and I had our adventures, most of which I imagined as I walked her around the block. My father spared her relying on me to feed her, learning what my mother already knew, that a life lived in the mind had very limited practical applications.

My mother died about a year after Rusty came into our life. The last four months of her life were spent in bed. It's puzzling to me how I never understood what was happening. I only realized something was wrong when the priest came to our house a few days before she died. I never asked why he was there. I intuited that something bad was going to happen. When nothing did that day, I let it slip from my mind and kept to my walking schedule with Rusty.

It was that following Thursday that my Uncle met me after school. I was in fourth grade and nobody had ever met me after school in all those years. That my mother was dead flashed in my mind like a billboard announcement. He stopped to buy me an ice cream. Then we walked home in silence. When we were home I was taken upstairs to my Aunt's flat. I sat in the kitchen waiting for something to happen. Soon my Uncle told me to follow him downstairs where I lived. My grandmother sat across from my father, her eyes red and swollen. My dad was in his usual chair. He looked at me and said simply mommy was dead.

I got Rusty's leash and took her outside. Several friends came up to me. I was a mini-celebrity. No one had seen a dead body taken from a home before. The goal obviously had been for my Uncle to keep me from accidentally seeing my mother being taken away in a hearse covered by a sheet. I left Rusty at home and went to play with my friends. For once I was the center of attention, the hero of our game. Rusty sat at home, no one paying attention to her.

As the years passed my walks with Rusty became fewer as I spent my time on other things. My dad was never the disciplinarian my mother had been, so my promise to take care of Rusty was easily broken. When I came home from college I gave her a pat and then mostly ignored her. Finally one day I received a call at school from my dad. Rusty had died. She was fourteen.

In the end, my father proved to be Rusty's best friend. Her life taught me the valuable lessons my parents tried to impart to me. A commitment needs discipline and fortitude. And loyalty is the foundation of any relationship.

Buster -- a Good Dog Gone Bad ?

There's been a run of bad luck in my building. First one of my neighbors lost her Bernese Mountain Dog to cancer at only five years old. Then another neighbor lost her Great Pyrenees, also to cancer. With the dog being thirteen my neighbor thought she was prepared for her dog to go, as that is old for the breed. But of course you never are prepared.

Although she was really a good dog she was not popular in the building because she was large and territorial with a deep basso bark, as you would expect from a dog bred to protect cattle and property from large predators in the mountains. She loved cats, but hated the interloper Hamilton. She was possibly an odd choice for a pet given the apartment living lifestyle of
Manhattan. But then on one of my walks with Hamilton I came across another Great Pyrenees and this dog was quiet and welcoming, issuing no threats to either Hamilton or myself. What differentiated the two dogs?

Recently someone mentioned to me that he would never have a dog. He had put down two dogs, a Rottweiler and a German Shepherd, because both had attacked his wife and children. These breeds are known to be intelligent and very protective of their pack and territory. Why would they turn on people their instincts would tell them to protect?

I had had my own experience with a dog that I thought was friendly and playful. Buster was a Fox Terrier mix. My father adopted him to give my mother some comfort around the house. We lived a block from the old Union Stockyards in Chicago. When I was a child Chicago still was hog butcher to the world. With that claim came all the attendant collateral damage, primarily rodents... rats actually, often as big as cats. They would wander from the stockyards down the alley and make their way into yards and often burrow under foundations and get inside homes, at least in between the walls.

My mother gave up on hanging her laundry outside because of the odors from the packing plants. Instead she hung them up in the attic, which worked fine until a rat poked itself out from between the eaves. The discussion with my father about that experience lead to Buster becoming part of our family.

My mother went nowhere in the house or attic without him. He had a sixth sense about rats. He anticipated a rat's appearance and before the rat knew it he was on it, his jaws locked around its neck, jerking his head until the vertebrae snapped. Once, out in the yard, he followed a rat down a hole under the garage, enlarging it furiously with his front paws until only his tail showed above the grass. He finally pulled back and reappeared with the luckless vermin in his jaw. He pranced around the yard with the rat jerking in his teeth. After his victory lap he abruptly jerked his head back and forth and the rat slumped quietly in his mouth.

My father must have thought it harmless to let me think that Buster was my dog. I was five years old and learning about life from Golden Books and comics. On television were Lassie and Rin Tin Tin. And wherever there was a dog there was a little boy just like me beside him. Of course those boys were portrayed as feeding, training and working with their dogs. I was doing none of this.

If Buster was not guarding my mother he was out on the back porch where his food and water bowl were kept. Although the porch was enclosed, my mother usually kept the door closed between it and our kitchen. If she needed Buster she would open the door and call him or go out and get him on her way to the attic. My interaction with Buster was close to zero. With my father's supervision maybe I would lightly pet him. But my mother did not share my father's indulgence of a boy and his dog. To her, Buster had one purpose, which he performed admirably.

Came the fateful day. I was on the porch unsupervised. A very rare occurrence by my memory. I was always with my mother. If she went shopping I went with her. If I was playing, she was in the room, cleaning, reading or just watching me. When she went to the attic with Buster I was left with my aunt who lived above us. How I came to be on the porch with Buster unsupervised I can't imagine.

He was eating. Maybe my mother had just finished feeding him and forgot momentarily that I was out on the porch or she became otherwise distracted, possibly by something cooking on the stove. In any case I decided this would be a good time to pet Buster like I always did with my father. Buster had other ideas. He was eating. Sharing his food with a stranger, and surely he saw me as that, was not a Fox Terrier's protocol, or any dog's for that matter.

He moved as quickly towards me as he did the rats. He lept and caught my lip with his teeth. I still have the scar. I yelled out and began to cry. Buster went back to his food. My mother rushed out ashen faced.

I was rushed to the hospital where I was given a tetanus shot. My father arrived from work. He and my mother had one of their quiet conversations. The next day I asked where Buster was. My father told me he had run away. A five year old believes his father. I did not miss Buster. I know he did not miss me. Some how my mother adjusted to the rats without him. It may have helped that the stockyards were winding down in Chicago and taking the rats with them to their new location out west.

I hope Buster was happy in his new home. He only did what his upbringing and instincts led him to do. After my conversation about the two dogs that had been put down I thought about Buster and wondered if my father had brought him to the pound. If so, he would have been put down too. It would be blood on my hands.

Goodbye First Friend

You probably met your first friend in the sandbox, pre-school or kindergarten. Hamilton met his in the lobby of our apartment building. He was a Bernese Mountain Dog, about ten months old at the time. Hamilton was three months old, still adjusting to his new surroundings.

The Bernese was a happy, exuberant dog that loved to pounce on Hamilton, at the time half his size. Hamilton was thrilled. He rolled on the floor and sprung up, challenging the Bernese to give him all he could. They played this way whenever they met, in the lobby, outside on the street or in front of the stock exchange, which is often used by the neighborhood at night as an unofficial dog run.

The Bernese's owner would often let him off leash, making me uncomfortable as I was paranoid to do the same with Hamilton. He was a good dog and came when I called but I could not get up the confidence to let him off leash. I could only think of all that could go wrong. I began to think that my lack of confidence was a rebuke of Hamilton. He wasn't as good as the Bernese. He could not be trusted like the other dog. Or worse, a rebuke of myself. I was not as good an owner, not able to control my dog as well.

After a while I began to walk Hamilton on a different route hoping not to run into the Bernese. But try as I might we would often meet up. The Bernese would jump up and slam into Hamilton, who rolled over and over and came back for more.

One day in front of the stock exchange, blocked off to traffic since September 11th, I let go of Hamilton's leash. I stood as close to the leash as I could as it dragged on the ground, ready to step on it at a moment's notice. Hamilton played freely now, able to better parry the Bernese's moves. I knew he was a good dog. I was proud that I trusted him and, truthfully, took some self satisfaction in my ownership abilities.

Both were cold weather loving dogs. A heavy weekend snowfall that first January left the streets downtown impassable to traffic. Hamilton and the Bernese were utterly thrilled and rolled and pounced on each other in the snowdrifts, leash free and without worry.

As time passed Hamilton began to go to day care. He loved it. The Bernese's owner favored using dog walkers. I spoke to her about Hamilton's day care and even offered to take the Bernese there so he could try it out. I knew Hamilton would be thrilled, but she never took me up on it.

As time passed we ran into the Bernese less. He and his owner were often out of the city. She favored her home in the country. When we ran into them he seemed less exuberant. He was nearly a year older than Hamilton. Hamilton had made a new best friend, Sawyer, at day care.

You probably remember the same scenario in your life. Different high schools or colleges or moving to different neighborhoods and the first friend drifts away. You promise to stay in touch but time and other experiences are sponges taking up your attention. Those exciting first experiences are memories you now use on days when you are sad or just feeling blue or old.

Now when Hamilton and the Bernese met, older adult dogs, they sniffed briefly but focused on us, the owners, looking for attention and, hope against hope, a treat.

A few weeks ago I ran into the Bernese's owner, but she did not have the dog with her. I rarely saw her without the dog. She told me he had Lyme disease. At first they thought he was anemic but now thought he had been bitten by a tick in New Hampshire. He was at the vet's. A week later one of the doormen in our building said that they'd found that the Bernese actually had cancer, and that he had just been taken, bleeding badly, to the 24-hour animal hospital in Midtown.

The next morning I asked the doorman how the Bernese was doing. He said that the dog had been put to sleep. The cancer was incurable, and he would have bled to death.

Is it a blessing that I can't explain all this to Hamilton? It's clear he has left the Bernese behind in his life. I guess I won't know until one day I get a call and my sister tells me that my first friend has died. Maybe he already has. Or he's somewhere feeling old wondering whatever happened to me. Or not thinking about me at all.

My Mother's Purse

Recently, writing this blog has reminded me of my mother's purse. It's black patent leather with a broken handle. My sister found it when she was cleaning out my father's house after he died. It turns out he had kept all of her personal items in a closet, from clothes to jewelry, after she died when I was nine and my sister was four. She was 43. My dad was 37. He out lived her by 35 years.

My sister thought I would want one of her personal items. She kept a few things. the rest she discarded.

Inside the purse was a dried out lipstick and a compact with powder that had turned to cake. There was a handwritten note from my Aunt Marcile, concerned that her sister seemed angry about something but she didn't know why. There was also a cardboard card the size of a cigarette pack that listed her chemotherapy schedule at Billings Hospital.

The discontinuity of my mother's death is linked with the day of my grandfather's funeral two years before. I was sitting with the adults and they were talking about something I could not understand. I felt compelled to contribute to warrant my inclusion. I looked at my Uncle Joe and proclaimed him the next to die. It was perfectly logical to me as he was the oldest with the passing of my grandfather. As a student of chronology I knew this to be certain. To this day I remember every event in a straight line of causation. I know every one's age at specific life events and birthday. I identify the alphabetical sequence of letters always by starting with the letter A. As plain as that, it was undoubtedly going to be my Uncle Joe's turn to die. I was proud to show my mature understanding of the ways of the world.

The look on my mother's face showed I had broken some ineffable taboo. She scolded me, so I sat silent, confused about the rules of adults.

My Uncle Joe died 43 years after that conversation. Despite decades of alcohol and tobacco abuse he outlived my mother, my father and his other siblings by 44, 16 and 15 years respectively.

Hamilton's illness has revealed the futility of my reliance on chronology. We have had Hamilton for only four years. I expected to have many more years of adventures with him. There have been many events and incidents that I intended to portray in this blog. Until we discovered he was ill I had only covered the first year or so of our time together.

Here are some of the stories I have yet to cover:

* The death of Hamilton's nemesis, our pet cat Gus;

* The adoption of our two new cats Julio and Pitch;

* My accidentally calling the fire department when I thought Hamilton had stepped on an electrified hot spot, resulting in five fire engines arriving on the scene;

* The bar that has become Hamilton's local.

There are many other tales I wish to share. But it has been difficult to maintain a regular schedule with Hamilton's illness even though it has imposed a new, more urgent narrative to my story. I struggle with the reliving of yesterdays with the imperativeness of today. Maybe if I retrieve my mother's purse from the attic it would help.

A Walk Deferred

The reflection in the bathroom mirror is me and yet not. If I were looking into a pool of water I'd place my hand into it and stir it up and start over.

Inside, where I register the aches and pains, I acknowledge my chronology. Outside I am building a facade with the help of my barber, a better diet and my exercise regimen. Hamilton, my dog, is integral to this external development. Since we adopted him almost four years ago I have lost over 160 pounds, the average weight of entire races of people. People were always commenting on how much younger I looked. My walks with Hamilton were as responsible for my improved health as the sensible diet and my short cropped hair and beard.

Since Hamilton's heart disease was diagnosed, our walks have been ratcheted back. As he has been recuperating, I have been walking him at the frequency and the length of his endurance. We started a couple of times a day for five to ten minutes. On our walks people commented how tired he looked. Some people were surprised that he was only three-years old.

I always took my lead from him. If he wanted to go home I would immediately head that way. If he did not want to go out at all, we stayed at home. You could not miss his intentions.

The dog that could not wait to go out, who would wag his tail furiously and bound to the door the moment I picked up his leash, would now look at me with his head down, ears back and walk away to lie down. Looking at him splayed on the floor I saw what I expected too see of myself in the mirror - a person without fight, marking time with the daily passing of light and shadows.

We gradually added a third and then fourth walk and the duration and distances became more typical, averaging twenty to thirty minutes each. He was improving with the medicine. He walked with his head and ears up, a bounce to his stride. He no longer deferred his walks. Whatever we felt in the inside we were both putting up a gallant front.