My Life in Dog Years (5 page)

Once more in the barn Rex sat for a moment. He was sitting there when I came in to help finish the chores. In a moment he moved to the wooden manger in front of the cows. This time he climbed the crude ladder to the hayloft, until his head was just up in the loft. He stood there for a moment, then
went down the ladder, and up and down the line of cows one more time, front and rear, then outside to check the other stock…

He didn’t stop his circling route until we were done with milking. Then he escorted the cows out of the barn—not pushing them but simply walking along with them—and took them back out to the pasture.

“He doesn’t just leave them in back of the barn?” I asked Warren.

“Who—oh, the dog?” His wife had told me the dog’s name was Rex. I never heard Warren say his name. Just “the dog,” but spoken in soft terms, with deep affection and care. Even when he called Rex, he simply said, “Come here, dog,” always soft and gentle. “Oh no—he’ll take them out to where the grass is good so they can graze. There’s no grass in back of the barn.”

“He knows that—to take them to grass?”

Warren looked at me. “Sure—why not?”

“But how could he know that? Did you teach him?”

Warren shook his head. “Not me—the cows. He watches the cows. They taught him.”

I knew then, and I know now, people who would not be able to learn that. I was skeptical that a dog could learn such things—I was very young and had not yet known dogs like Josh and Cookie—but by the end of the day I would not have been surprised to hear that Rex had learned to read.

With milking done we went back to the house for a “quick bite” after breakfast of raw-fried potatoes, a bit of venison, rhubarb sauce and fresh rolls. Rex did not come in the house—he never came in—but Warren’s wife, Emily, took him a plate of meat and potato scraps as he waited on the porch. I watched him through the kitchen window. He didn’t relax. From where he sat on the
porch he kept watching the farmyard, the stock pens, the cows out in the pasture. I thought of pictures I’d seen of lions in Africa surveying the veld—his ruff made a wonderful mane—and he maintained control until the girls awakened and came out to play.

They were young—three and five—and when it rained they stayed mostly on the open porch, with forays into the yard for toys they’d left out. The minute they went outside they came under Rex’s control. On the porch he sat near them, watching them play, sometimes reaching over with a paw to move a toy and laugh and wag his tail. When one of the girls left the porch he would move with her, staying always on the “outside” to contain her, and as soon as she’d picked up the toy she’d gone after, he would gently guide her back to the play area.

All day, or nearly all day, he stayed with the children. When the girls went in for lunch
Rex took the time to patrol the yard again, and I noted that when one of the girls went near the pigpen—she was never closer than fifteen yards—Rex stopped her and used his shoulder to physically move her back to the house.

At intervals throughout the day he would take moments—never more than one or two minutes—to make a quick run of the yard and the stock to make sure it was all doing well, but the rest of the time he watched the children. He didn’t just sit with them, or doze by them, or stand near them. He literally watched them. He played with them as well, but he was truly working the whole time and his eyes rarely left them.

“Isn’t he a caution?” Emily said, noticing me watching Rex. “It’s like having a nanny for them. When I’m gone visiting with them he stays with Warren and follows the tractor in the fields but anytime the girls are here
he’s with them. It’s so nice. There are so many things to worry about on a farm.”

It made a very full day. When we milked at night Rex ran for the cows, circled the yard and took care of all his business. When supper was done and it was getting dark I looked through the window expecting to see him sleeping, or at least lying down.

He was sitting on the porch, the evening sunlight and breeze catching his hair, his eyes open and calm, watching the yard, the pens and stock. While I looked he stood, trotted off around the yard one more time before dark, then came back to the porch to sit again, always at work.

The dog was enormous.

We lived in a small cottage in the mountains of Colorado, where I worked in construction, mostly hitting my fingers with a hammer and making serious attempts at cutting something off my body with power saws while I tried to build houses during the day
and write at night I had been looking at the local consumer guide, called
The Shopper’s Bulletin,
when I saw an ad:

E
MERGENCY
! A
M LEAVING FOR
H
AWAII FOR A CAREER CHANGE
. M
UST FIND HOME FOR LOVING
G
REAT
D
ANE NAMED
C
AESAR AS THEY WON’T ALLOW DOGS IN THE
I
SLANDS
. P
LEASE HELP
!

    All right—I know how it sounds. Nobody who lives in a small cottage in the mountains of Colorado with a wife and baby should probably even consider a pet, let alone a dog, let alone a large dog, let alone a
very
large dog—at least nobody with a brain larger than a walnut. But I had once been associated with a female Great Dane named Dad when I was in the army and had ever since had a warm place in my soul for them. The secondary force, the force that kicks in whenever I visit a dog pound, roared into my mind, the force that says,
If you don’t take him, who will?
This drive has brought me dozens of dogs and
cats, a few ducks, some geese, a half dozen guinea pigs, an ocelot, several horses, two cows, a litter of pigs (followed by more and more litters—my God, they are prolific), one hawk, a blue heron, a large lizard, some dozen or so turtles, a porcupine and God knows how many wounded birds; chipmunks, squirrels and one truly evil llama (am I the
only
person in the world who did not know they can spit dead level for about fifteen yards, hitting your eye every time?).

And so this man brought Caesar, who looked more like a
Tyrannosaurus rex
than a dog, into our small cottage.

His measurements were astounding. He stood forty-one inches at the front shoulder, his head a bit higher, and when he got up on his back legs and put his feet on my shoulders he could drip spit (his favorite hobby seemed to be disseminating spit and slobber) on top of my bald spot.

But size is relative. Had we seen him out in
the open, say from half a mile away in the middle of a large field, he would have looked magnificent. Here, in a small room, he overwhelmed the furniture.

“Isn’t he, you know,” my wife said, moving to a position of relative safety in back of the couch, “rather large?”

The man shook his head. “It’s just because he’s in here. Take him out for a run along side the car and you won’t even notice him. Why, just the other day I was talking to my girlfriend and she was saying how Caesar seemed to be getting smaller because he fit into her closet so well, kind of back in the dark”—he moved toward the door as he spoke—“where he likes to make a bed, out of the way back in the dark”—his hand was on the knob—“why, in a short time you won’t even know he’s here…”

And he was gone. I won’t say he ran, but by the time the door was latched he had
his car started and was pulling out of the driveway.

It all happened so fast I don’t think the dog even knew he was gone. He sat for a moment, staring at me, then out the window; then he climbed on the couch, knocking over the coffee table, two end tables and a lamp. He used his paw to push the drapes aside and saw the car just as it was disappearing and he made a sound like a cross between the closing whistle at a major auto plant and how I imagined the hound of the Baskervilles would sound.

Then he climbed down, moved to the front door and sat.

Staring at the door.

Waiting.

“Well,” I said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

My wife looked around at the wreckage— when he’d jumped down he’d put his weight on the back of the couch and tipped it over—
and sighed. “What do you suppose happens when he has to go to the bathroom?”

It nearly became a moot point. For a time it didn’t look as if he would live. I have never seen a dog grieve like Caesar.

His heart was truly broken. He sat by the door all that day and all that first night and when it was apparent his owner was not coming back right away, he lay down with his nose aimed at the door and waited.

Although he would drink a small amount of water, he would eat nothing. Great Danes are not fat in the best of times—all angles and bones—and within two days he looked positively emaciated. I tried everything. Special dog foods, cooked hamburger, raw liver, bits of bread with honey, fresh steak—he wouldn’t touch any of it.

The third day I called a vet.

“Does he drink?”

“Barely.”

“How long since he’s had food?”

“Two, no, three days.”

A long pause. “Well, if he’s drinking he’s not going to dehydrate. Give him a couple more days and if he doesn’t eat then you’ll have to bring him in and we’ll tube him.”

“Tube him?”

“Force a tube down his throat and pump liquid food directly into his stomach.”

I looked at Caesar. Even skinny and lying by the door he seemed to block out the light in the room. He was civil enough when we petted him but he mostly ignored us and would pointedly push us out of the way when we came between him and the door. I didn’t see how it would be possible to force him to do anything.

It was, in the end, nearly six full days before he came around. I genuinely feared for his life and had decided that if he didn’t eat by the morning of the sixth day I would take him in to be force-fed.

The change came at six in the morning on
the sixth day. I was sound asleep—actually close to comatose, as I’d been working on a construction crew pouring cement forms for basements and the work was killing me—and found myself suddenly lying on my side with my eyes open. I didn’t remember waking up, but my eyes were open and I was staring directly into the slobbery muzzle of Caesar.

I closed my eyes—lost in sleep for a moment, I did not remember getting the dog— and kept them closed. It was no good. A tongue that seemed to be a foot wide and three feet long slathered spit up the middle of my face and I sat bolt upright and swore.

“Woof.”

It was not loud but it was perfect—an exact
woof—
and he looked directly into my eyes when he made the sound. It was so pointed, so decisive and focused, I knew exactly what he wanted.

“What was that?” my wife asked without
opening her eyes—indeed, she could talk without awakening.

“The dog,” I said, “is ready to eat”

I rose and made my way to the kitchen, the Great Beast padding along behind me. On the floor were three dishes. One had held canned dog food, a second dry dog food and the third water. They were all empty, licked shiny, and I took the sack of dry food down and filled one of the bowls.

He looked at it, then at me.

“Was I wrong?” I said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

He looked at the refrigerator, at the door handle.

“Something in there?”

I swear I saw him nod.

I opened the door and he slid his big head past my leg and studied the shelves for a moment before selecting a leftover chicken, which he swallowed virtually whole, then
a cold beef sandwich I’d made for lunch— gone in a bite—and half a lemon meringue pie, before I could catch his collar and pull him back.

“Sit down…”

He sat—taking a few seconds to work his bony tail down—and looked at me and belched.

“You’re welcome. Do you have to go outside?”

He jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders—his weight compressed my legs a full inch—and then made for the door.

I was in a bit of a dilemma. We lived in the mountains with a great deal of wild country around. The owner had said nothing about whether or not Caesar would run away, but he’d only been with us five nights and I wasn’t sure he’d stay. I took his leash and hooked it to his collar and reached for the knob.

I would, I thought, hold him while he did his business (a phrase I’ve always thought oddly appropriate).

We did not have neighbors within a quarter of a mile so I threw on a pair of sandals sitting by the door, hitched up my boxer shorts—all I was wearing—and opened the door.

I should add here that Caesar’s collar was stout nylon and that the leash—which was about six feet long—had a forged-steel snap and was made from woven synthetic braid that would withstand a six-thousand-pound test and that I twisted the loop of the leash tightly around my wrist.

I think—little of it is clear in my memory— I
think
I had the door open an inch before everything went crazy. Later I would piece it together and come up with some of the details—a time-flow of the events leading up to the disaster.

I cracked the door. Caesar got his nose into
the opening. He slammed through the door, taking the screen door off its hinges, and headed down the three steps to the gravel drive and across the drive, where I believe he had every intention of stopping to go to the bathroom. For a moment I came close to keeping up but then I lost a sandal—I thought of it later as blowing a tire—and from then on more or less dragged in back of him screaming obscenities and yelling at him to stop. And I think he had every thought to stop, as I said, but my wife’s cat, a big torn named Arnie that had been off for days looking for a mate, chose that moment to return home. Arnie, of course, had no knowledge that we’d acquired a dog, not just a dog but a house of a dog, a dog to strike terror into a full-size lion, let alone a ten-pound house cat.