The Dogless Life

My little red dog Bisou has been gone for three months. She is at peace, but me, not so much. You don’t let go of fifteen years of another creature’s constant presence without feeling that the world has changed in some essential way. And by constant presence I mean this: if Bisou wasn’t in the room with me, I knew to open the door of the walk-in closet, where she had followed me and I had accidentally locked her in.

But it’s not her presence in the room I miss,  as much as being in relation with another creature, a dynamic that in some way grounded me and affirmed my own existence. Of course I still have Telemann, who is an exceptionally relatable cat and keeps me anchored, literally, by sitting on me. He is balanced on my lap at this very moment, interfering with my typing, and sleeps all night pressed up against me. Still, he can’t help lacking certain qualities that most dogs possess.

Dogs take initiative, for example. They wag their tails, look you in the eye, and lead you to the door, clearly saying, let’s go for a walk! or, let’s see who rang the doorbell! (most of their utterances have exclamation marks). Or they wag their tails and bring you the tennis ball—what could be more articulate? And because they obey commands, it is possible to converse with them. If I ask my dog to sit and stay, and she does, and then I release her and she smiles and wags her tail at me, who’s to say that’s not a dialogue? Then there is their extensive vocabulary. All my dogs, males and females, have understood, in addition to dozens of nouns, the pronouns he/she, and  his/her respectively. Early on they figured out that, since my husband and I addressed each other as you, the third person singular pronoun must refer to themselves.

With cats, no matter how bonded (and yes, Telemann is still on my lap), it’s not quite the same. True, Telemann knows his name and comes when called; he initiates things like knead-and-purr sessions from which it’s all but impossible to dissuade him; and he makes plenty of eloquent eye contact beginning about an hour before his dinner time. I love him in all his sublime felineness. But he is not a dog.

Nevertheless, Bisou will not have a successor. This is the end of my life with dogs, a life that began in 1970 when my husband decided to give me a puppy for my birthday. At the time, I had a four-month-old baby in my arms and my need to nurture was being amply met. But what kind of  woman says no to a man who wants to give her a puppy? So we cut out the Pets for Sale section of the paper, bundled up the baby, and went looking for a puppy, with no preconceived notions as to breed, gender, or anything else—we were callow youths at the time. We got lucky and came home with Tinchen, a German Shepherd who lived in the backyard and unexpectedly had a litter—did I say we were idiots?—and taught me what a wonder a dog could be. (You’ll be glad to hear that all my subsequent dogs lived in the house and slept in our bedroom.)

Now my dog days are over, although not my nights. Bisou and her kind haunt my dreams, compensating, I suppose, for the envy I feel whenever I see a human/canine couple walking down the street. By contrast, my dogless walks feel clumsy, as if I’d been forced to give up a crutch on which I’d come to depend.

The last decades of life are supposed to be a time to practice the art of letting go—letting go of former roles in the world and in the family, letting go of a carefully elaborated way of life, letting go of the ability to run up the stairs. I thought I’d become pretty good at loosening many of these bonds. But I was not prepared for how difficult it’s been to open my hand, and let go of the leash.