Dogs throw up. A lot. That’s not exactly news to anyone who has ever owned a dog for even the briefest of time. Dogs are messy. They poop and pee and puke. Sometimes in the house. In fact, I’ve known a lot of people over the years who have given up dogs because they didn’t want to deal with some of the sights and smells that are part of the bargain.
I always thought it was a small price to pay. And anyway, you get used to it after a while.
With even a modicum of training, most dogs will quickly adapt to a schedule that makes it easy to accommodate pooping and peeing. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast, go for a walk. Clean out the system. Not much different from their owners, really. Vomiting is not part of the program, but it doesn’t usually signify anything serious. Dogs routinely eat all kinds of disgusting stuff they are not supposed to eat—garbage, roadkill, mushrooms, dirt, even other dogs’ poop. Just about any of these things will induce vomiting as surely as a spoonful of ipecac syrup. But in most cases, it’s an isolated incident and the dog feels better almost immediately.
Cairo had been raised in a bubble, carefully trained and sensibly fed (the occasional steak dinner notwithstanding); he had never been much of a scrounger when it came to food. In short, he was a healthy dog, so when he began throwing up with some regularity in the late fall of 2014, I took notice. The first time it happened, I found Cairo in the kitchen, standing over a small puddle of yellowish liquid. At first, I thought perhaps he’d peed on the floor, which would have been strange enough. But it was too small a puddle, and the look on Cairo’s face, along with his demeanor, reflected not so much embarrassment or mischief as it did queasiness.
“What’s up, pal? You okay?”
Upon closer inspection, I could see that Cairo had thrown up a small amount of bile. This struck me as odd, since it had never happened before, but I shrugged it off and cleaned up the mess, and then took Cairo for a walk. He was a little woozy and needed a nap afterward, but otherwise okay. By that night, he was back to his old friendly, happy self. I chalked it up to heartburn (or whatever it is that dogs get that feels like heartburn) and forgot all about it.
Until a couple of days later, when it happened again.
And a week after that, when he threw up his dinner less than an hour after eating.
“Something’s wrong,” I said to Natalie. “This isn’t like him.”
Since Cairo was a retired military working day who had spent his entire career with the SEALs, I figured I could just take him to one of the veterinarians at the base. They were happy to help, but a cursory examination turned up nothing dramatic.
“He’s getting old,” the doc said. “It’s perfectly normal. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Cleaning up after Cairo became a common, although not frequent, part of our routine. Most of the time, he seemed just fine. A bit less energetic, maybe, but not sick.
In December, Natalie and I began making plans for a holiday trip. I had always wanted to visit the National September 11 Memorial and Museum (a.k.a. the 9/11 Memorial) in New York City, and this seemed like a good time to do it. Although I still suffered from migraines and back pain, and my mood varied greatly from day to day, it’s fair to say that I had improved somewhat. I wasn’t drinking or taking psychiatric medications, and my medical retirement was moving forward. I certainly didn’t feel like my old self, but I did feel … better.
I wasn’t sure how I’d be affected by the 9/11 Memorial. You might think that everyone in Special Operations would have visited at some point, as the 9/11 Memorial and what it signifies is so directly related to the counterterrorism work to which we were devoted. But that isn’t true. For me, it seemed like there was never enough time; when I was a SEAL, I used my vacations to get away from the stress of work. I didn’t need to be reminded of the horror and tragedy of 9/11; I knew precisely what had happened. I lived with the fallout every day. I devoted my life to ensuring that nothing like it ever happened again.
But now that I was no longer deploying, and I had larger blocks of time that needed to be filled, I felt a gnawing sense of curiosity; maybe even obligation. Neither Natalie nor I had ever been to New York City, so we decided to knock a couple of things off the bucket list: not only would we visit the 9/11 Memorial, but we would celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square, watching the ball drop and counting down the seconds as the clock approached midnight. To make things even more interesting, we decided to take Cairo and Hagen with us. Sterling we left with a friend (sorry, but three dogs in New York City was more than even I was willing to bite off).
We loaded up Natalie’s Mazda CX-7 and left Virginia on December 29. A seven-hour ride felt more like twelve hours because Cairo vomited twice along the way. Cairo had traveled all over the world—by car, plane, helicopter, and boat—and rarely suffered from motion sickness, so his sudden and persistent nausea was distressing, but it wasn’t exactly a shock. In addition to his ongoing gastrointestinal issues, Cairo had exhibited some unusual behavior in the days leading up to the trip. For one thing, he had no interest in playing; he simply wanted to lie around the house and sleep. More disturbing was the fact that I had caught him eating dog poop in the backyard. I don’t know whether it was his own poop, or if it belonged to Sterling or Hagen. Not that it matters. I’d known Cairo since he was three years old, and I had never seen him do this. Not once. I was so surprised that I didn’t even yell at him when it happened. I just sort of walked over and pulled him away.
“What are you doing, boy? That stuff will make you sick.”
It sure did. The first time Cairo vomited, we were crossing into Delaware on I-95. Fortunately, as seasoned dog owners and travelers, we always carried a few towels in the car, so when Cairo began grunting and retching, Natalie grabbed one and turned around just in time to give him a target. The second time was somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike. Same thing. I felt sorry for Natalie, but she didn’t complain. She was just worried about Cairo.
Despite all the adventures I had experienced in the previous decade, I still got excited as we crossed the George Washington Bridge and entered Manhattan. I’d seen a good chunk of the world, but I remained a country boy at heart, and there is nothing like New York City to make a country boy feel wide-eyed. The sheer scope of the city is remarkable—so many people and skyscrapers and cars and buses, all crammed into one little patch of land; it’s a wonder the place works at all.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is among the busiest of the year in New York, so we just tried to relax and not get all stressed out about the traffic or the crowds. It was all part of the experience. By the time we pulled up to our hotel (we splurged and made a reservation at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South so that we could walk the dogs easily and still be fairly close to Times Square), Cairo was lethargic and beat up from car sickness and the long ride. Hagen, who was barely a year old, bounced excitedly around the car.
I’d been traveling with big, imposing dogs long enough to know the protocol for arriving in a new city, especially at a hotel with valet parking. A lot of hotels do not accept dogs, but since Cairo was a retired service dog, and Hagen, technically, was a working dog in training, we were usually allowed to take them with us wherever we went. Still, it wasn’t wise to pull up in front of a place like the Ritz, in the middle of Manhattan, with thousands of people nearby, and let two big Malinois hop out of the car.
I pulled into the valet lane, put the Mazda in park, and asked Natalie to wait with the dogs. Then I got out and explained the situation to the valet.
“We have a couple of big dogs here,” I said. “They’re friendly and well trained, and we’ll have them leashed. The hotel knows we’re coming.”
The valet smiled warily and peeked into the window of the car.
“Ummmm … no problem, sir.”
We emptied the car, checked in, and went up to our room. As we walked into the lobby, some people stopped and stared; actually, most people stared. It takes a lot to get someone’s attention in Manhattan, but Cairo and Hagen were both beautiful dogs, tall and strong and impressive. Several people approached and asked if they could get a closer look, or maybe even pet the dogs. They were both muzzled, so we said sure. Even people who were clearly afraid of dogs—or at least these two dogs—stared in wonder. I guess, to them, it was like looking at a lion in the zoo; even if your response is primarily one of fear and intimidation, you can’t help but admire the animal as a physical specimen.
The hotel was beautiful, and so was the view from our room. Rather than take the dogs out for a walk right away, we decided to leave them in the hotel room in their kennels while we walked around the neighborhood. This was partly just to get some exercise after a long day of driving but also so that we could assess the size of crowds and what we’d be dealing with if we took either of the dogs out for any length of time.
Over the next couple of days, we took Hagen almost everywhere. She was so easygoing and friendly, and she loved interacting with people, especially in the park. She was a puppy who had not been trained to bite or attack and therefore could largely be trusted around crowds. We had only one minor incident with her on that trip, when someone accidentally stepped on her foot as we walked along Central Park South. Like any dog, Hagen could be unpredictable when hurt, but on this occasion, she barely registered anything more than mild surprise. Still, it taught us to be particularly sensitive to our surroundings. New York is a beautiful and vibrant city, but it’s a challenge for anyone visiting with a large dog—or two large dogs.
Sadly, Cairo didn’t get to see much of it. He was pretty sick for the first couple of days, and so we took him outside only long enough to go to the bathroom. Although he stopped throwing up by the second day, he lacked energy and just didn’t seem like himself. We didn’t want to test his temperament with strangers when he wasn’t feeling well, and he seemed content to hang out in the hotel room, anyway.
By the morning of December 31, the crowds had begun to swell to such an extent that the idea of taking Cairo or Hagen to Times Square was laughable. Frankly, we weren’t even that excited about walking down there ourselves. The very thought of it made me feel claustrophobic. We changed hotels and moved to a Courtyard Marriott in midtown where we’d have a direct view of the Times Square New Year’s party from our room on an upper floor. We ordered takeout for dinner, and the four of us curled up together on a king-sized bed and watched the festivities on the nice flat-screen television in our room. When the ball dropped, we pressed our faces against the window and watched it in real time, counting down the seconds as 2014 gave way to 2015.
It was a nice night.
Two days later, on January 2, we drove to lower Manhattan and visited the 9/11 Memorial. I wanted to take Cairo; part of the reason the trip was so special was because I thought it would be cool to walk through the memorial with Cairo by my side—not because I wanted to show him off or anything but simply to share the experience with him. I know he would not have understood, but for me, Cairo’s presence would have heightened the impact. It just seemed … appropriate.
Unfortunately, while Cairo had rallied somewhat—he was able to hold down his food—he remained lethargic and disinterested. He wasn’t a problem. When we left the hotel room, he just slept. But I’d done enough research on the 9/11 Memorial to know that it was likely to be extremely crowded, and I didn’t think it would be fair to put Cairo through an experience like that if he was sick.
We did take Hagen, and she responded admirably. It was nice to have her with us, but it would have been even better with Cairo. No offense to Hagen, but Cairo, like me, was an outgrowth of 9/11. The tragedy of that day, and the response to it, ultimately had led to our coming together. We were partners ten years later, tethered together on the ground in Pakistan, when the man responsible for the atrocity of 9/11—for the killing of thousands of civilians—was finally brought to justice.
I needed to see the memorial, to experience it firsthand. And I wanted Cairo to be there with me. He just wasn’t up to it.
Even without Cairo, seeing the memorial was a profoundly moving experience. I suppose that’s true for anyone who visits—certainly there was an air of respect and solemnity around the memorial that was unlike anything I had ever experienced—but it’s compounded, I’m sure, by emotional proximity to the event itself, or to events that have arisen in its wake. I can’t imagine what it’s like to walk through the 9/11 Memorial if you lost a loved one on that day. It was hard enough for me just to see the names on the wall and to think of the way some of those people died—forced to make a choice between jumping from the ninetieth floor of a building or burning to death within its walls. I thought of the first responders who rushed to the site and selflessly gave their lives.
And I thought of the brothers I had lost over the years, men who had died while fighting an endless and often thankless war sparked by 9/11.
I remember feeling so overwhelmed that I couldn’t speak. I remember feeling like I wanted to cry, but not being able to shed a tear. I remember feeling a profound and almost incomprehensible mix of sadness and pride as I stood in front of a display case devoted to Operation Neptune Spear and the killing of Osama bin Laden: a brick from the compound where bin Laden was found; a long-sleeved camouflage jersey worn by a SEAL on the night of the raid (the owner was unidentified, but I knew it belonged to Rob O’Neill). I remember holding Natalie’s hand without saying a word. I remember being grateful for the anonymity that the moment demanded, for being able to experience it without anyone knowing who I was.
And I remember reaching down and giving Hagen a hug, and wishing that Cairo were by her side.