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Goodbye To a Good, Good Dog

Posted on by Hank
R
RICKY WILLIAM HERMAN
May 8, 2003 – April 7, 2014

This morning I drove to Southport Harbor for my daily excursion with Ricky.  Only there was no Ricky.

That’s how I’ve been dealing with things since he died a week ago:  I do a lot of the same stuff I always did with him.  I go to our places, and I think, and I walk.  It’s amazing how much more ground I can cover without him tugging insistently at the leash for a sniff-fest every few feet, but I don’t get nearly as many smiles.  Or, “Oh my God, look at that face!”  Or, “Aww, is he a puppy?” — even when he was 10 years old.  I suppose I’ll keep up this routine for awhile.  At least till I sort things out, dog-wise.

I’m not as distraught as I thought I would be.  You know that thing we all do, when we hear that a friend’s dog dies?  You morbidly try to picture yourself in the same situation, to see how you’d feel?  I always assumed I’d go to pieces.  And that is what happened to Carol:  When she so much as sees the ugly green jacket that we’d both grab to take Ricky out in the middle of the night, she starts sobbing.  Same for Luz, looking at the Dolphins recliner that Ricky always chose for his afternoon nap.  But me?  I’ll catch a glimpse of his “throne” — his red-and-white striped denim doggy bed on top of the easy chair in our bedroom — and it makes me feel happy.  It makes me think about what a good, sweet, handsome dog he was.  In fact, after his emergency surgery was aborted and we were called in to say goodbye, I was stroking Ricky’s velvety ears, thinking what a good little companion he’d been, and smiling.  I wonder if the emergency room doc thought I was suffering from shell-shock.

Most of the so-sorry-to-hear e-mails I received mentioned what good “pals” Ricky and I were, and it’s true:  We spent an awful lot of time together.  Our hikes in Snout Hook (all right, all right, now I can tell you:  It was really Trout Brook), with me dragging him along as if he were a pull-toy, until he finally gave up on the idea of heading back to the comfort of the car and started trotting along ahead of me, looking back every so often to make sure I was keeping up.  Our errands around town:  I would never so much as drive to Walgreens without Ricky riding shotgun.  Not to mention our three September road trips from CT to California and back.

deck
I don’t know why this photo gets to me, but it does

It’s not the physical reminders — his red leash that made him look so dashing, his blue-and-white china bowls on the kitchen floor, his favorite teddy bear (make that his second favorite teddy bear; his favorite I left behind in a motel somewhere between Austin and Atlanta toward the end of LA/XC-3), the blue poop bags and Crunchy treats I still find when I reach into the pockets of any jacket I own — that do me in.  (Although for some reason the June picture, left, on my Ricky calendar gets me teary.)  It’s his not being there when he should be there.  Like when I open the fridge and he’s not at my feet in a nanosecond — as if he’d been shot from a cannon, even if he’d been sleeping like a log.  Or when I gather up my keys and wallet and am about to grab his leash — and then I remember.  Or when I drop a pretzel on the floor, and actually have to pick it up myself.  Or when I turn out the lights in the den, and he’s not asleep on his perch atop the pillows of the green couch, ready to be carried upstairs to his bed.  That’s when I get a catch in my throat.

We totally lucked out the early part of last Sunday, on what would be Ricky’s last day.  Carol and I both woke up to his shakety-shake after he’d slithered from his throne to the bedroom carpet, then slowly s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, ambled over to Carol’s side of the bed, struck a show-dog pose, and wagged his tail manicly.  “God, is he a beautiful dog,” Carol said.  (This, of course, before he started whining for breakfast when she stayed in bed admiring him just a little too long.)  Later that morning — it was a gorgeous, sunny day, you might remember — he and I went for a walk along Soundview.  No tugging, no fights.  I let him do his thing, and just fielded the by-now expected compliments on behalf of my handsome beagle.  In the afternoon, I sat reading on the wooden bench at the far end of our yard, with Ricky by my side.  I’m not going to all of a sudden pretend to get spiritual, and call this a premonition, but as I admired Ricky sitting regally in the sun, I put my book down and gently patted the smooth top of his head and his suede-soft ears for about five minutes, thinking, what a gorgeous dog.  What a fine specimen.

Later, after all hell had broken loose — after the vomiting and the difficulty breathing and the hiding himself desperately in far-away corners and the rush to the Vet Emergency Center and the  “Your dog is, very, very, very sick” (enough very’s, you think?) and the drop-everything surgery that turned out to be no match for the clot that blocked the flow of blood to his dying organs — I was so glad that last day had been a “good” day, and not one of those days when we were at each other’s throat.  Because lord knows, while Ricky was lovable and adorable and had his winning ways, let’s not forget he was also food-obsessed, untrainable, and stubborn as the day is long.  (One experienced dog trainer, after Ricky flunked out of his class:  “Beagles are 1,000x more stubborn than any other breed, and your dog is 1,000x more stubborn than any other beagle.”)  Which resulted in many days when I screamed at him, wanted to smack him, and kicked myself for not starting out with a nice mellow Lab or Golden.

frog
This frog still lives because of Ricky’s gentle nature

But beneath all that, a more peaceable, sweet-natured dog has never walked the face of this earth.  I know that somewhere in the deep recesses of his doggy nature he had learned to kill; I could see that in the way he’d treat his stuffed monkey when we’d play fetch.  He’d grab the thing in his jaws, thrash around violently, fling it in the air, then grab it again, killing it over and over.  The sight of my long-eared, floppety dog involved in this violent dance made me laugh out loud every time.  But actual living creatures?  Ricky wouldn’t hurt a fly or — as we learned in Montauk one day — a frog.  His encounter with the frog on the deck was fascinating.  I’m not sure what beagles are bred to do when they spot a frog, but I’m sure it’s not to lay down on their belly and gently paw at it.  And squirrels?  Ricky always gave chase, even as he got older and less spry.  And he was always dumbfounded when they’d escape up a tree.  He’d keep circling the trunk, mystified.  I never found out what he’d do if he ever caught one.  Probably paw at it, in a friendly, non-confrontational way.

And then, of course, there was the epilepsy, a large presence in his life since he was 3.  A large presence to us, that is:  Abbie, his neurologist (for Ricky, just a local vet wasn’t good enough; he had to have a Fifth Avenue specialist as well), insisted Ricky was totally unaware of his seizures.  I’ve often described the way Ricky would spring back to life after one of these episodes, kissing us and licking us as if he hadn’t seen us in years.  Abbie reminded us again and again what a good life Ricky had:  three “brothers” who’d come home from New York and L.A. just to see him; his own reserved shotgun seat in the car (his favorite place in the world); three cross-country road trips.  She also said a dog his size could expect to have a lifespan of 10 to 14 years, so at one month short of his 11th birthday, he didn’t get cheated too badly.

Though the bolt-from-the-blue nature of Ricky’s death (the surgeon called it “catastrophic”) came as a shock, there was a silver lining.  From time to time over the last couple of years, as dog owners do, I’d speculate about my “next” dog.  (Dr. B, Ricky’s local vet, well aware that Ricky was my first and only dog, and an extremely high-maintenance one at that, would say, with only the best intentions:  “Imagine if your next dog were a normal dog — like a Lab.”)  Carol, in no uncertain terms, would warn/threaten me, “If there’s a ‘next’ dog, he will be so your dog you won’t believe it.  I won’t get up with it.  I won’t clean up after it.  I won’t do anything.”  Now, before Ricky was even cold, Carol was saying, through sniffles and tears, “We need another dog.”

So where does all this leave LA/XC-4?  I don’t know.  Kind of hard to do a cross-country-trip-with-beagle without the beagle.  Do I cut the projected series short, after just the three trips?  Do I get a new dog before September, and plunge ahead?  Do I just drive with his little red collar on his shotgun seat, the way I’ve been doing around town these last few days, and write about how different it feels to be without a dog?  (A little black humor:  As most of you know, I’ve begun work on a Travels With Charley-style road memoir about my journeys with Ricky.  When I tried, pre-writing, to gauge interest from publishers, they’d say, to a man, “Your story needs a little more pathos.”  I’d ask, “So you mean Ricky has to die, like the dogs do in all those best-sellers?”  And they’d kind of nod.  Hey publishers, happy now?)

But whether or not there’ll be an LA/XC-4, Beagle Man the Blog will go on — and the Beagle Man will still be the Beagle Man, no matter what breed of dog we might wind up with.  Ricky the Beagle was my first dog.  And you only ever get to have one first dog.  The Roof Rack Report?  Hmmm . . .   At first blush, you’d say that without Ricky, obviously, there can’t be a Roof Rack Report.  But who knows what that little beagle is capable of . . .

collar
This seat is taken

Ricky’s blood brother Robby, and his other two bro’s, Matt and Greg, were all home this weekend to say goodbye.  Down the road, after things have settled, we’ll hold a memorial service in Ricky’s fenced-in run in our yard.  Nothing big, just the family remembering a good, good dog.  For now, a hearty thank you to all those who’ve already sent your condolences.  And to the rest, in lieu of flowers, please just give your dog a kiss, and think of Ricky.

LOOK FOR A NEW BEAGLE MAN POST EVERY THURSDAY.  OR PRETTY CLOSE TO THURSDAY.  COULD BE WEDNESDAY.  OR FRIDAY.  LET’S NOT GET TOO OBSESSIVE HERE . . .  :) OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

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