A Good Boi* at Twilight

*Eight times out of ten 

He barks too much. He likes people more than other dogs, but not that many people. He doesn’t go for walks as much as outdoor sniff sessions. He’s a quirky, funny, stubborn little nugget, but he’s our quirky, funny, stubborn little nugget. As he approaches his 17th birthday, he’s slowed considerably and is less steady on his paws. His movements are more deliberate. He doesn’t see or hear as well as he used to. He pees and poops more frequently. He exhibits brief bursts of energy, followed by lengthy stretches in recline – all traits he shares with his hooman dad. 

I decided to write about him while he’s still with us because I’m not sure I’ll be able to after he’s gone. Yeah, I’m gonna be a wreck. 

Truth is, I was skeptical about owning a dog. I like dogs, and plenty of friends had and have dogs that I enjoyed. But I never owned a dog growing up, and working as a newspaper guy, with its long days and odd hours and periodic road trips, didn’t seem to lend itself to the care and feeding of a dog. 

My wife returned from a road trip to visit family and had bonded with a cousin’s dog, a lively little Yorkshire terrier, and said she would like to have a dog again. She grew up with a cocker spaniel she loved and thought the companionship would be a nice addition to our little duo. With some hesitation I said, sure, let’s give it a go. 

We settled on something in the poodle-mix family; my wife has a mild allergy to animal dander, and poodles and their various cross breeds have hair, not fur, so they don’t shed. Several months later, we saw an ad in the paper that a nearby family had a litter of cock-a-poo puppies (cocker spaniel-poodle mix) available. When we visited the family and were wondering how to choose, the guy suggested that I sit on the floor cross-legged near the puppies and see if any of them react. Sure enough, one little fellow about the size of a cornhole bag crawled toward me and climbed into my lap. 

Four weeks later, in early Dec. 2009, we brought Nappy home (brief aside: Nappy was my nickname in high school and college; I had a curly Afro and Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” was all over the airwaves at the time – “Looking back on when I was a little nappy-headed boy …”; my wife learned of my nickname from friends and insisted our dog be Nappy Jr.). He was an active, bouncy puppy who grew into a 22-pound, crotch-seeking missile. When one of us returned home, he bounded toward us and launched upward so that he collided with our bits, his tail spinning like a helicopter blade. There’s no question that he loves both of us, but very quickly he became “my dog.” 

Almost from day one, he followed me everywhere. I had to change the way I walked around the house when he was little, a kind of shuffle rather than picking up my feet because he was often so close that I frequently clipped him or stepped on him. I do roughly 99.6 percent of the feeding, walking, peeing and pooping duties. He’s disrupted my sleep pattern for years, either by flopping on top of me in bed overnight or mewling at us at 5 or 6 a.m. that he needs to go outside. 

Some quick calculations estimate that I’ve made approximately 43,000 trips outside with him and picked up about 7,750 pounds of poop. Between food, toys and vet bills, my wife jokes that we’ve spent the equivalent of two years of college on him, and he’s no closer to a degree than the day we got him. Sometimes, you just write the checks and don’t think twice. 

I concluded that any shortcomings in his behavior or training were my fault, not his. We’ve never boarded him because he’s our guy and we want him with us and because he seems to have a neurotic streak that caused us to worry that he might gnaw off a paw if he went days without seeing us. We’ve taken only car trips to places with dog-friendly accommodations since we’ve had him. I haven’t been on a plane since the middle of 2009. I wouldn’t change a thing. 

Dogs are a marvel, a blessing. They’re always happy to see us and love us unconditionally. They ask nothing more than belly rubs and ball-playing sessions and car rides with the windows open. Our little fellow is winding down. I can see it, I can feel it. I’ll be a mess when it happens and it will leave a huge hole in my heart, but I’m grateful for every day we had with him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, at least one of us has to pee.