Monday, July 17, 2006
An Evening with a Friend
Today (Monday) was still an up day, relative to where he's been, but it was not as good a day for Friscodog's health.
He's supposed to have been on a reduced dose of his cortisone pills by now, but last Thursday when he was in such a sorry state the vet and I determined that we should keep his dose up. Cortisone causes all sorts of nasty side-effects, including renal failure, when used long-term -- but last Thursday we doubted he had a long-term to worry about.
Over the weekend, he had improved so very much that I decided to try him on the reduced dose this morning. It is my hope that this is the cause of his regression to a noticeably worse state today. He still stands, and walks, and demands treats in massive quantities and ball-throwing in more self-regulated amounts, but he has been stumbling again, and his head is tilted to the right with disequilibrium. Nonetheless -- and this has been the most heart-breaking part of his whole ailing period -- he still bursts with impatience for the next throw of the ball, the next challenge tracking it down.
I spent most of the day at home, reading, and Frisco slept much of it away in a lump at my feet. Hunger is a normal trait of his, heightened by cortisone, so he arose frequently to beg for food or for treats. It was a characteristically brutal Texas day, though, and he seldom wanted me to work him.
My dear friend, Mariah, is spending her summer in Austin before moving to Michigan for her professorship. (She willfully subjected herself to an Austin summer before taking on an Ann Arbor winter. And people call ME an extremist.)
Mariah and I would never have met, that chilly fall night years ago, but for Frisco's intervention.
I was walking my dog through the huge apartment complex where we both lived. Frisco stopped still, tensed, tail straight up, ears pricked, in that way that he always did when he sensed distant people to meet. He tore off, tail wagging, in a straight line towards his target. I barely managed to track him through the darkness, until I found him running in tail-wagging circles around Mariah, some friends of hers, and her dog, Preacher. We learned that we were both political theorists (she, an undergraduate in the UT's Government Department, I, a grad student in Philosophy), while our dogs raced each other to chase Frisco's ball, and Mariah's non-philosophical friends melted (or froze) away.
Preacher mostly won the race for the ball, because even in those days Frisco wasn't too fleet of foot, but I like to think Frisco was happy to have introduced Mariah and me. After that night I altered Frisco's nightly walks to bring me past her apartment, and on several nights she and I argued our political-philosophical views.
Despite extensive disagreements in our philosophies (she, a feminist liberal with a Buddhist/religious bent; I, an atheistic right-winger), we discovered a deepening spiritual bond. Over the following years, whenever Frisco bugged me with his ball-chasing insistence or his normal needs as a dog, even when I momentarily forgot his other contributions to my life, I made myself remember that he was responsible for my dearest friendship.
She went off to her Ph.D. program at Princeton, and I'm not sure she ever saw Frisco again. So both she and I were gratified at the coincidence that allowed us to come together at least once more before Frisco's end.
We used to hang out at Spider House, two or three of us at a time, so we all agreed to meet up there again tonight.
Frisco has recovered entirely from his sense of doom, so even with his inebriated stumbling he was eager to go for another car ride. We arrived in the late afternoon in 100+ degree heat. He knew we were in a fun place, and stood up too eagerly when I stopped the car. I'd forgotten to worry about his stability, so I didn't realize he had lurched against the car door, and when I opened it for him he flopped out and whacked himself hard against the concrete curb. Before I could even stoop to help him he had jumped clumsily to his feet, tail wagging defiantly. He immediately and frantically sought out the ball he had dropped under my car, and insisted that I throw it for him a couple of times before he was ready to trot up to the Spider House patio.
We were there a bit before Mariah, so Frisco got to stumble around a bit, checking the lay of the land and meeting the locals. I had brought his racquetball at his insistence, and his easier-to-chase frisbee at mine. He turned his nose up at the frisbee, so I obligingly gave him a few fairly easy throws of the ball. He was frustrated at his own disability, but more frustrated at my wimpy little tosses. Every time I made ready to threw it, he jumped in place and snorted at me in a kind of challenge at me to challenge him. But Spider House has always been a little to crowded for a really aggressive game of fetch with a bouncy racquetball. (Frisco has always failed to appreciate how little I could afford to replace an entire table's worth of food and drink, were he to send the ball blasting through. He's rather rude.)
Mariah arrived, and she was a little shocked to see Frisco, whom she still remembered as a relative adolescent.
Spider House seems to have existed since before time, overgrown by massive and shady Live Oak trees, and it was muggy but comfortable relative to the brutality of the outside. We sat at a table under the deepest shade. A skinny, androgynous black waiter with a mass of curls and a sleeveless tee shirt that revealed the nearly-impossible combination of gym-built pecs and a girlish waist, talked us into margaritas and some sort of chocolate-espresso cake. (Prince hasn't aged a bit, I must say.) He seemed a bit haughty, and I caught him looking down at Frisco with a hint of girlish distaste. But he brought my boy water, and the drinks and cake were indeed yummy, so I liked him fine by the end of the evening.
Frisco was able to chase his ball, with some difficulty. He played a crippled version of an old favorite game of his, dropping the ball somewhere near me, then running away and pretending to hide, his eager head tilted at a forty-five-degree angle to the right, until I threw it to him. He used to be much better at pretending that THERE'S NO DOG HERE, which seems to be an essential part of this game. I tried to be gentle on the other patrons by making the throws easy, but this clearly dissatisfied the dog.
Once, he stumbled and got stuck leaning against a well-dressed businessman, Frisco's tail halfway into the man's lap. I lifted the dog away, with an apology, and other than that incident all of the patrons seemed happy to see him.
Frisco has always put his entire mind into his fetching, and he still is a problem-solver. He was unable to run in a straight line, so he found clever ways around the patio that would get him to his destination with only right turns.
Once, the ball landed under a chair at the next table, and Frisco was unable to get his body to move him the right way to get at it. He crinkled his brow, then came at it from another side where he couldn't quite get it in his mouth, but could shove it out to the right. He jumped up and lurched over to get the ball, and stood up triumphantly, chomping it triumphantly in my direction. That's my smart boy!
A long-time friend of mine once confessed that (before she'd had a dog of her own) she had found it hard to understand how I could enjoy the eternal repetition of ball-throwing. Now she understands: this is our bond, this ball game which seems silly in human terms, but to him is serious business. I have sometimes joked that, if the house were burning down and Frisco could save either me or his racquetball, I would be lost forever. But that's just the thing: I am connected to him through the one activity that, to him, gives his life meaning and uses all his mind-power. Is there a closer bond between two people than through sharing their life's work?
Mariah and I spent hours in our usual intense philosophical conversation. We have each learned and grown a great deal since the last time we saw each other, so we had a huge wealth of thoughts to share. Of course, my attention was divided, and more than once she stopped patiently in mid-sentence, with a tolerant smile as I tended to Frisco.
Of course this was not just an intellectual night for me, but an emotional one. Mariah and I have endless years to share thoughts, but Frisco and I have no-one-knows how much time left. That, after all, is why I've stayed up all night, smoking my grandfather's pipe and writing this story. Even in Frisco's better days, my thoughts often turn to his mortality, and I am emotional. Fortunately, my friends understand, especially if they have ever met Frisco. But no matter how hard it is, I am so fortunate to have this time with him. It has made every fresh moment, every throw of the ball, every scratch of his belly, a moment rich with all the meaning that years with him have imparted. I might never have found such meaning in these things, had Frisco not survived for at least this little while.
As we walked to the car, Frisco heard the sounds of laughter from the open-air patio at Trudy's the restaurant/bar next door to Spider House. Frisco stopped still, tensed, tail wagging, ears pricked, in that way that he always did when he sensed distant people to meet. Trudy's is to the left of Spider House, the wrong direction for him, and first he trotted away to the right. He pulled himself to a halt, lurched around until he was pointed the right way, then leaned his whole body into it like a sailboat on a difficult tack, his tail wagging joyously.
Recharged by the party energy, Frisco made me throw his ball for him a few times on the lawn in front of the patio. I tried several times to tell him he wasn't allowed to go up there, but he has learned that the dying don't have to listen to "no." He leaned hard to the left, running like a drunken pup to the swinging door onto Trudy's patio.
But instead of wiggling under the door, as he would have a month ago, he crashed straight into it. He stood back, shaking his head in pain and frustration. This time he did NOT look to me for support, having heard me calling him away, but tried to wriggle his way around the side of the gate. There was a party in there, and he was GOING to get in. Except that, again, he was unexpectedly unable. He bounced back and did an awkward, frustrated somersault. I finally reached him and called him away, back to my car and to home. It took some cajoling, but he finally came.
When Frisco was a puppy, Darlene and I used to wipe his paws each time we brought him inside and onto her carpets. I always suspected that he found the paternal care rather comforting, and in recent weeks he has lain invitingly each time I bring him inside. Tonight, his toes were entirely clean, way cleaner than the carpets in the house where I'm rooming, but I gave him an especially long and careful foot massage anyway.
A friend once asked why I spent so many hours throwing the ball for Friscodog, and I have often asked why he wants to spend so many hours chasing it. Another friend asked why I spend so many hours crafting these e-mail messages, when they just bounce off into space. But Frisco's chasing his ball built a bond with me, and that bond started these thoughts going, and that led to all of these philosophical reflections, and these reflections have led to my writing, and that will lead to ... we'll see what productive end.
Best regards,
RG
