I rescued Indiana shortly after 9/11. I was living in West Harlem at the time, in a
ground floor studio with no bars on the window.
My neighborhood wasn’t great, and I had my heart set on getting a German
Shepherd (not because of the neighborhood, but just because I wanted one). I went to the CACC shelter in East Harlem and
found one – but unfortunately he was “on hold” to see if his owner would come
get him. I looked around at some other
shelters in the city, and then came back to the CACC a few weeks later. The same dog was still “on hold” so I decided
to look at the other dogs that were there.
They were all barking away except one dog – a small black lab that was in the middle crate in the bottom row. She
sat in the back quietly but something about her drew me in. I
asked to take her out back. I threw the
ball to her a few times and she came to life on the warm pavement. When I knelt down she came right over to me, sat
in my lap and looked up at me. The woman
who worked at the shelter took one look and said, “Well I guess that’s
it.”
I picked her up the following week, after she had been
spayed. We walked from East Harlem back
to my apartment in West Harlem, and at every block that we stopped at she got a
cookie. By the time she got back to my
apartment we were best buds. By that
point I had already done the two things that Indiana loved most – playing ball
and eating cookies. No, that’s not true. She loved being with her family the
most. But these were a close second.
In the first few days I had Indiana I commented how she was
a “perfect dog” because she didn’t chew apart anything while I was at
work. One of the guys I worked with at
PwC at the time said, “Just wait.” It
seems dogs, much like babies in the NICU, have a honeymoon period. Indiana’s ended, and from that point on she
ate everything. Within a week I decided
I needed to get a crate for her safety (and my sanity). The crate would come on a Friday night….
That Friday after work I came back to my apartment to a giant
mess – the usual. I was cleaning it up
when I noticed some of the torn up paper pieces said Yankees on them. “Strange,” I thought, “Did I leave old Yankees
tickets around somewhere?” It turns out
that these were my Game 1 World Series tickets (Yankees/Diamondbacks). The Fed-Ex guy had slipped the envelope under
my door even though he wasn’t supposed to (likely because he didn’t want to
return to my neighborhood). After much
panic I was finally able to talk with Ticketmaster the next morning. It turns out the $8.50/ticket (at the time)
service charge buys you the right to call them up and say, “My dog ate my
tickets” and get 4 new ones at the Will Call window.
To this day that ranks as the top thing that Indiana has
eaten, but not without contenders. She
had one of the strongest jaws and could chew through a “tough dog” bone with no
problem. Occasionally she would decide,
for whatever reason, that she didn’t want to eat something. Like one Christmas when she got a giant
rawhide candy cane and decided she would rather carry it around with her
(banging into every nook and cranny along the way); that was until the point
she decided to devour it. She ate
through the drywall in that first studio apartment in an effort to get to the
bag of food behind the closet door. She
ate through the mattress. One day Sean
and I left frozen sausages out on the counter to defrost. When we came back we almost thought we didn’t
leave them out at all. Indiana had eaten
every bite, including the foil they were wrapped in.
Indiana traveled more than most dogs, and not just because
she lived to almost 15 years old. When I
worked at PwC I often took her with me to client sites and Sean and I always
brought her on vacation. I remember the
first time I took her on a plane (I was petrified the whole flight, had used 8
bungee cords to keep people from opening her crate and kept asking the flight
attendant to check if she was on the plane).
I was working at Microsoft for a bit of time and living in a corporate
apartment. She loved Seattle. We would
play ball outside every night even when it got dark (she had a light up ball
and because she was black all you would see was this glowing thing bobbing up
and down in the air. One time some
neighbors came out to see what it was).
We would go hiking every weekend.
For the first time she got a taste of the country life – and she loved
it. I think she was depressed for
several weeks after we came back home to Harlem. Those streets were always very noisy and she
was very scared of being outside there.
I also remember driving down to Florida with her. We were supposed to fly down, but the
temperature took a nosedive and I realized it was going to be too cold to go on
the plane with her. The only option was
to drive down. I was supposed to be at a
client site in Tampa on a Monday, and Sunday night I had tickets to Simon and
Garfunkel (I was not missing that). So I
packed up the car, went to the concert, came back and got Indiana, and we left
for Florida at 12:30am (the exact same time of day Matthew arrived some years
later). We drove straight through
stopping only for gas/coffee and made it to Tampa around 5pm.
There were our numerous trips to the Cape together once Sean
entered the picture. We found the
pet-welcoming Simmons Homestead Inn in Hyannis (where we would later be
married) and although the breakfast wasn’t great, Indiana loved it and we loved
bringing her. Then Cagney (aka Mr. Cags)
came along. We got him as a playmate for
Indiana though the extent of their playing included her dragging him along the
street by his leash. Before we had kids
Sean and I took them both in the truck and drove from CT to LA, then up to SF,
then back to CT. They did snuggle
together that trip.
Indiana is responsible for at least 5 other people getting
dogs, including one of my best friends Heather (Mr. Boo!) and Sean’s entire
family (who at first were disgusted that Sean was dating a “dog person” – my
how far they have come!) Although
Indiana was “my” dog first, she is really our dog. She became a central part of our lives for
such a long time. Our vacations centered
on where we could take her. Our wedding
even featured her as the “flower girl.” She
was always more than
She was also responsible for teaching me what unconditional
love meant. No matter the day, my mood,
whatever, Indiana has always been happy to see me. She would always be in whatever room of the
house Sean and I were in, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable for her. If Sean and I were in different rooms, she
would find the spot of the house where she could keep an eye on both of
us. When she could walk she would wait
by the door and her tail would wag so hard when we came home that her whole body
shook. In her last months, when she
couldn’t move at all, she still had moments of happiness when her family was
around her. A simple pet or belly-rub
was of comfort to her.
She let me see the remarkable fathering side of Sean before
he was even a father. She let me see how
caring he could be, as he became her legs in her final months when hers no
longer worked.
When we were still living childless in the city, I remember
Sean and I talking about Indiana and my commenting that I didn’t think she
would live long enough to meet our kids (even the first one). There have been several Christmases that we
thought were the last. But Indiana is a
tough dog, and she hung in for a long time.
Long enough for Christopher to know her as a part of his life. Long enough for us to have to figure out how
to explain to him that she is gone. Long
enough to meet Matthew. Long enough to
be ready to be Alexander’s dog when she meets him in heaven.
Like Alexander, you are selfless and you are brave and you
are strong. Even in your last days you
gave me the strength to open his memory box for the first time – to hold his
precious memories in my hand. To let you
smell them so you recognize him when you meet him.
I have let him know that you will be coming. That you love to swim, and play fetch, and chew
bones, and play tug of war, and go for hikes, and sniff the grass. It has been a while since you have been able
to do these things.
Goodbye, old friend.
I owe you more than you will ever know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J8s8qHO2Xs
No comments:
Post a Comment