For the first time in 13 years, I am home alone.
My son’s at work. My husband’s running an errand. And our dog, Ted, the faithful, loving companion of this work-from-home writer, isn’t here any more; yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning — surrounded by the three sobbing humans who adored him — sweet, quirky, crazy Ted died.
It feels so strange, to be here alone. The only sound is the hum of the air conditioner.
There’s no tick, tick, tick of paws on the floor.
No fussing because he’s hungry, dammit.
No doggie snores.
No wildly barked alerts that a delivery truck (or runner, or squirrel) is near our house.
No parading of socks stolen from laundry baskets, or kitchen towels snatched off countertops.
It’s just me.
Now the air conditioner’s clicked off.
It is quiet as hell. I am all alone.
And heartbroken.
Ted wasn’t a brave or heroic dog. We aren’t even sure he was all that smart — he went through obedience school three times, after all, before we finally gave up and made ourselves satisfied with “sit” and “shake hands” and “speak”; at least he was finally housebroken. If I were a doggie psychiatrist, I’d have diagnosed Ted with acute canine anxiety — thunderstorms and fireworks and other loud noises made him fear for his life and he’d seek cover in a safe space. (The upside was that we always knew when it was going to storm.) He was also a terrible passenger in the car, so he basically spent all of his life in our house and yard, and he took it upon himself to protect both with a vengeance.
When we were in the yard, I’d find myself apologizing to anyone walking by because he would warn them away, Ted-style.
One nice neighbor reminded me that Ted was “just doing his job.” It was one of the things at which he was really, really good.
For a long time, I quite unfairly compared Ted to our dog before him: In addition to the basics (sit, shake, speak), sweet Zoey could roll over and dance. She also let us put reindeer antlers on her, and sat nicely for photos in front of the Christmas tree each year.
Believe it or not, I taught her to “sing,” (and it was just like you’d imagine a dog singing, more a cross between a whine and a howl, but to me is was music to my ears), and to say “I love you” (just like you’d imagine a dog mimicking me saying those words). Off the leash, she’d stick close to home. She escorted people around when we’d have a yard sale. She was sweet and gentle and we loved her so: she was our baby before we had our son, and after he was born, she watched over him. When people came to meet the new baby, she’d sit close by as they held him, making sure they didn’t make off with our little bundle of joy. And when the baby was starting to toddle, she let him grab her tail for balance, and she’d walk him through the house.
When she died, our hearts were so broken that we swore we’d never, ever get another dog.
But Zoey’s baby grew into a 10-year-old boy, and we decided to get another dog — for him.
We let our son choose his puppy, and he fell in love with Ted, who was absolutely nothing like Zoey.
I hope you don’t judge me as I admit here without shame that I wasn’t all that crazy about Ted after he moved in during the summer of 2009.
Ted was a wild, kinetic ball of fur with enough crazy energy to propel himself straight up from the floor, over furniture and through screen doors. He was as interested in house breaking and learning tricks as he was in becoming the first puppy to rocket to the moon.
“What have we done?” I thought over and over and over again.
When family and friends came by, I advised them as if Ted were a four-legged eclipse: “Don’t look into his eyes.” If you did somehow make eye contact with Ted, you wouldn’t go blind, of course, but he wouldn’t let you be as he energetically sought your attention.
I understood full well why my son fell in love with Ted; the two shared a similar spirit and energetic approach to life, and Ted was beautiful, with black, fluffy curls, and soulful, coffee-bean eyes.
Oh, how my son adored him.
He kept Ted company on his first night with us, and my heart melted to see the two of them asleep on the tile floor of the kitchen.
As that summer moved along, Ted became a huge hit with my son’s friends. My son adored him more and more each day.
The two played in the yard and made good use of the wooden play-scape. They went for walks. They wrestled and watched cartoons. They took naps together.
For the rest of the summer, life took on a routine: Ted and his boy played all day while I questioned my sanity.
I asked myself over and over how all of this happened. I asked the canine gods why this puppy had to be so fast, so wild, and so, so naughty?
Then, school started. For the bulk of the day, it was just Ted and me.
We had a friendly detente, but then something magical happened: We fell in love. It happened when I was so frustrated and so angry that I yelled loudly at the dog, and I realized I needed a time out on the couch to take a few deep breaths and collect myself.
Ted tick, tick, ticked over, and then he gently placed his head on my knee and looked up with eyes so soft and loving.
I don’t know if it was an apology for whatever transgression he had committed that pissed me off so, or whether it was a surrender of sorts; I came to believe that it was a bit of Ted magic.
I was touched, and, quite frankly, I was charmed.
I scratched his ears.
He nuzzled in closer.
And, boom — that was it.
Ted’s superpower truly was loving his people. It was all he had, and he did it really well.
I am the early riser in the house, and, up until a year or so ago, when I let Ted out first thing in the morning, I’d tell him: “Oh, we are so lucky! We get another day together.”
Ted was getting up in age — he had an occasional cough, and sometimes he moved stiffly — and he began to prefer sleeping in a bit. My husband, usually the next one awake in the house, took over letting him out in the morning.
But last week, on Wednesday, Ted was up early. As I opened the back door, I told him once again, “Oh, we are so lucky to have another day together.”
The next day, Ted had his regular grooming appointment. We’ve always had to give him a pill to calm him down so the groomer could do her thing; if we didn’t, Ted would come home looking like he tried to groom himself with a pair of dull scissors after a dog-sized cocktail or two.
The timing of the pill was important, and on this day, with a 10 a.m. appointment, I gave Ted his pill, hidden in a piece of salami, at 2:30 a.m.
Ted got the best grooming of his life. There was not a stray hair on him. And he smelled like heaven.
He looked so good that I took his picture.
And, as usual, he took a few hours to sleep the pill off.
But when he woke, I realized something was wrong. He was unusually wobbly as he walked, and he stumbled a bit. I feared the worst. It was after regular business hours and I couldn’t find a 24-hour veterinarian within an hour’s drive who could see him. He quickly went downhill, and the three human beings Ted loved more than anything in the world did their very best over the next few hours to tend to him.
I know that what was happening would have still happened had we taken him for help. But instead we were at home, and there wasn’t a struggle to get him into the car, and there wasn’t an agonizing car ride there and a heartbroken ride home. I believe Ted planned it that way.
I watched my son on the floor with Ted as the dog drew his last breaths, and I remembered, too, my son sleeping on the floor with his new dog 13 years earlier.
Our hearts are broken.
And the silence in the house is deafening.
