Must have been 2005 by process of elimination. That’s how my memory works; get rid of all the years it wasn’t. Not that hard, I don’t have to deal with dates before my birth or in the future. Let’s call it 2005. The wife had moved out to Vancouver with someone who she insisted was gay and later insisted raped her. It’s not really a story about her though.
It was a one dog year. Me and Herschel, Herschel and I, squeezed in tight into a little shack on the edge of paradise. A second dog changes everything. It’s good for the dogs, not so much for the human. It’s like a second kid. Me and Herschel went everywhere together. We could just grab the bare minimum; a leash, a wallet, car keys, and go. A second dog or a second kid and everything is a production.
I’ve told hundreds of Herschel tales from that year, some even true, and a few thousand from his last three months, all true. But that’s not what this is about, not this bio-flash. It’s not about loneliness either; having Herschel was the opposite of loneliness. Even watching TV in separate chairs; with the wife the silence was heavy muting out laugh tracks on the television. With Herschel we’d cast sideways glances to make sure the other was ok, was there, was napping peaceably.
It’s about one very good dog and the year I had him to myself. Even the most gregarious dog picks one human. All those sweet after school specials about a kid and his/her dog? Unlikely. A dog usually picks who is in charge or they use some sort of dog sense I don’t understand. From the moment I held his shivering little six week old body in the pound Herschel and I were one another’s dog. There isn’t any other way to say this.
It’s been years since he was put down, hip cancer, it still haunts me that I made him suffer for a few extra weeks because I couldn’t bear to let him go, and I still wake up patting his side of the bed. There’s this one memory that’s been gently and happily haunting me lately. The guy at Starbucks apologized that he no longer could give dog biscuits out. I asked him for a cup of whipped cream for Herschel.
Herschel had to go muzzle deep to get every bit of cream out of that cup and we were driving down the street. So, cream frothing on his muzzle, head out the window, smiling, we put the fear of rabid god into the citizens of Clackamas. I actually couldn’t see proper from the driver’s seat, but the image in my mind is that of one outside the car. I loved that dog.
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