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It would be wonderful if every child on earth could experience a happy childhood, free from trouble and pain. But in reality that’s not possible. Charles Busch’s childhood was interrupted at age seven by the death of his mother. While his sisters and aunts formed a loving, wacky matriarchal society around him, he found a deep well of comfort and strength from a canine source—a giant white German Shepherd named Wolfie.
Wolfie, of course, couldn’t have known that his small charge would one day become an acclaimed Broadway playwright and actor. He only knew that Charles Busch needed him, and his job was to provide steadfast company for a damaged child. He did that job so well that forty years later, Charles’s voice catches in his throat as he tells me about the giant dog that made his seven-year-old life possible.
Although Charles deeply regrets that he is too busy to have a dog right now, I discovered that in his Manhattan apartment sit two massive, antique, porcelain Chinese Foo dogs that he bought years ago in Hong Kong. They are highly stylized works of art. But it’s hard not to notice that once again he has a huge, monster-dog presence in his home, looking over him.
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WHEN MY MOTHER was alive, we had a black Miniature Poodle named Nicky. He was always driving my mother crazy, jumping up on furniture and on us, but she forgave him because he adored her.
My mother died of a heart attack when I was seven. She was forty-one. No warning. One minute, I had this wonderful, loving mother. The next, she was gone. It was devastating. It was the defining event of my childhood.
The day my mother died, Nicky went right outdoors and ran for miles. He took off. We looked everywhere for him, but we could never find him. It was hard because here we had lost my mother, and losing her dog was like losing another little part of her.
We had no thought of getting another dog. But one night my father came home from work with this little, white, fluffy ball of fur, a German Shepherd puppy. It was a big surprise for the family.
My father didn’t have any particular feelings for dogs. He was a perpetual sixteen-year-old. The death of my mother meant that he had to maintain some semblance of family life for us, and he wasn’t very good at it. He was a fun and adorable guy. All the ladies he ran around with thought so. He owned a record store in Yonkers, and probably one of his customers brought in this puppy.
But it was a good thing, because we were all sad about losing Nicky and thrilled with this new puppy. Here was this happy bundle of energy, kissing and licking us and romping around. We named him Wolfie.
I took to him immediately. He became my best friend who never moped around, was always glad to see me, never hassled me about homework. We really bonded.
They grow so quickly! In a year this tiny, fluffy puppy was an enormous, long-haired white shepherd. He knew each person in the family—my two older sisters, my mother’s two older sisters, my dad—and he had us all figured out. He loved all of us, but he made me feel special.
As a child, I felt alone, and different, at least partly because I didn’t have a mother. Wolfie was my friend. He was the one who was with me the most, and all that other stuff didn’t matter to him. He just loved me. He was there for me for whatever I needed.
Walking down the street with Wolfie was an experience. He looked like an animal from a fantasy. With his big white body and his enormous head, you could imagine he was a unicorn. When I walked him, cars would stop and people would roll down their windows and stare at us. Here was this thin, sad little boy with this longhaired, white creature. Wolfie knew they were watching, and he was proud. He carried his head high. He had great elegance.
He was so attached to me that he wouldn’t let anybody get near me. He’d bark and even bite people. It was a real problem. I didn’t have too many friends anyway, but one day, somebody from the neighborhood came a little too close to me as I was walking home from school, so Wolfie bit him. It was a horrible scene. Wolfie and I ran home, and later, after my father got home, the police came.
My father brought the policeman into the living room, where Wolfie and I were lying on the floor in front of the television. I had my arms around him, and he was just lying there, looking peaceful.
“Look at that dog, ” my father said.”He can’t possibly be the dog you got the complaint about. He’s not at all aggressive.”
“We should still take him in, ” the policeman said.”He could be a danger in the neighborhood.”
I was lying there, just holding on to Wolfie. I didn’t know what I’d do if the police took him away. My father talked to the policeman and showed him how gentle Wolfie was, and eventually convinced him not to take Wolfie.
It was interesting that he had these aggressive qualities toward strangers but he was absolutely gentle with me. I could play lion tamer and put my head in his mouth, and he would just wait. He would never think of harming me.
We had a black housekeeper named Beulah Baker who had come from down South, where she had been a pickle picker on a pickle farm. She never did do much housework, but she was wonderful. She sounded a little like Butterfly McQueen. She was very darling and so affectionate to me.
We spent so much time in the house together, just Beulah Baker, Wolfie, and me. Beulah used to teach me how to set her wigs, and I was pretty good at it. On a typical afternoon, Wolfie would be lying there on the floor, and Beulah Baker and I would be busy with combs and pins, working on one of her wigs.
Later we would watch television. I loved old movies—I still do—and I just absorbed the tragic heroines. I tend to watch the same ones that I loved as a child over and over: Marie Antoinette with Norma Shearer, Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh, I Could Go On Singing with Judy Garland, The Hard Way with Ida Lupino, Random Harvest with Greer Garson, I’m No Angel with Mae West, and a zillion others.
Then, my favorite part of the day, my turn to perform. I would mimic back for Beulah and Wolfie these larger-than-life romantic actresses in their classic roles. The afternoon would end with Beulah sitting on the sofa with this huge white German Shepherd at her feet. And I’d be singing Judy Garland songs to her.
Wolfie would sit there staring at me, very alert. He made it seem like watching this skinny little boy singing The Man That Got Away was something a dog was really meant to do. That was a typical afternoon in our house. You can see why not much housework got done.
When I was seven, as a special treat, my father took me to the old Metropolitan Opera House to see Joan Sutherland in La Sonnambula. I was amazed—it’s the story of a young girl who goes walking in her sleep, and sitting there in the audience, I was watching this magnificent redheaded lady drifting through a glorious nineteenth-century painted landscape. When I got up in front of Wolfie and Beulah, I was trying to recreate that for them, the beauty and the dreamy quality. In a way, you could say that my entire career has been an attempt to recreate that first impression.
People ask me when I write a play today, do I do any research? Well, I’ve been researching all my life.
My father remarried. His new wife had children, and the idea of moving in with a bunch of children I didn’t know was horrific to me. My father knew that. He made the offer, in the spirit of being caring and fatherly, but he knew I wasn’t going to take it. He knew I couldn’t live with him in that family, and he didn’t blame me.
So I continued living with Aunt Belle, my sister Meg, Beulah Baker, and Wolfie. My older sister was in college. They were my audience.
I couldn’t be in a school play because I couldn’t remember a line of dialogue. I started hyperventilating the moment I hit the stage. It was because I loved it too much. Being “up there” onstage was my most magical dream. I was desperate to be a child star, only no one in my family was willing to exploit me.
Then, when I was around twelve, Wolfie got sick. He started to have epileptic fits, where his whole body would shake, and he’d fall down and jerk and twist on the floor. It was awful to see. I felt horribly guilty. We were so close, I thought something I had done had made him sick.
At first there were long stretches in between seizures, but then he started to get them more often. He was really suffering. I could see that we had to put him to sleep. It was so painful for me, but I didn’t want Wolfie to suffer. With Wolfie gone, I was inconsolable. I was so alone.
We got a new dog. This one was a normal German Shepherd, normal size, normal black-and-tan color, not a huge, white giant like Wolfie. We called him Hans. He liked everybody in the family, but he was really Aunt Belle’s dog. He liked me, but he didn’t think I was the most special child on earth, the way Wolfie had.
By this time I had really gotten lost in a fantasy world. For years I had been just watching old movies and performing for Beulah Baker and Wolfie in the living room. I was flunking out of school. And I was about to go into ninth grade. That’s when my Aunt Lillian, who lived in New York City, swooped in and decided I should come live with her.
I’ve played Auntie Mame three times, and when I do it, I’m just channeling Aunt Lillian. She encouraged me to be everything I was meant to be.
I flourished with Aunt Lillian. She was an amazing lady. One hour with her would exhaust Leonardo da Vinci. She was helpless about some things and unstoppable about others. For instance, she would get lost every time she left the house, even in her own neighborhood. But she could fix a broken radio or make a matador’s costume, and she was a woman who could get the president of Condé Nast on the phone if she decided she needed to speak to him about what happened to her November issue of Vanity Fair.
Moving in with her was the best thing that could have happened to me. But it was the end of my connection with dogs. Hansie stayed in Westchester with Aunt Belle and my sister. It was kind of odd, how our nuclear family kept switching around. Aunt Belle kept house for my sister for another few years. When my sister was out of college, Aunt Belle moved to New York City and took Hansie with her. Hansie lived out his days with Aunt Belle. He had a wonderful life.
The protagonists of all of my plays are the women I grew up with in that matriarchal household. When I wrote The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, people were asking me how I could write such great dialogue for the female characters. They are women who struggle to find a place in the world, and create a new persona for themselves.
I don’t have a dog right now. I wish I did. But I think I’d feel horribly guilty every time I left the apartment. My partner and I don’t live together, for all kinds of reasons. We each have busy lives and need privacy. You could go into Eric’s place any time of the day and think you’re in House Beautiful magazine. My style is messy. My place is a cross between Sarah Bernhardt’s boudoir and a 1960s steak house.
We live down the street from each other. It works for us. But there’s not that constant company that dogs need.
The dog I’m most in touch with now is my therapist’s dog. Shortly after I started therapy, my therapist rescued an adorable part German Shepherd, part Collie. His name’s Clarence. I went in for my appointment, and the dog was right there in the room. During therapy, at one point I started to cry. The dog came right over and put his head on my knee and leaned against me. He looked up at me in that way dogs have of letting you know they want to help you.
A friend of mine leaves his cat with me on weekends. I’m not a cat person, not at all. But I didn’t expect this cat not to like me. He ignored me. I was doing everything I could to establish a bond with him. And he would look right through me. I felt very rejected by this cat. He made me feel like I was Joan Crawford, the awful stepmother.
Finally I started making his food a little more artistic—not just putting it down on the plate, but taking some time to arrange it. He liked that. He started to take an interest in me and the whole project. I didn’t know cats were like that. The whole thing confirmed for me that I really am a dog man. A dog is available for you to hug and love. Cats are kind of sneaky.
Wolfie came into my life at a time when I was completely vulnerable. And that made me bond so intensely with him. He was enormous, he was mystical, he was white. He was the constant, strong, loving, lovable dog that took care of me. It was like he came from an enchanted land. He made me feel that I belonged to somebody.
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One of the nicest things that dogs provide for us is the blissful relief of their company. They make few demands and issue no ultimatums. Dogs let us relax. They let us be ourselves. When your dog is with you, there is someone on your side. In the presence of your dog, you have his attention, affection, and devotion.
As a boy in a family roiling with mental illness, Jonathan Caouette desperately needed all those things. Jonathan is the groundbreaking filmmaker whose documentary, Tarnation, tore through critics’ assumptions of what documentaries could be. It was selected to be shown at the Sundance, Cannes, New York, and Toronto film festivals. It was awarded Best Documentary of 2003 by the National Society of Film Critics. It was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Roger Ebert called Tarnation “a triumph. A film of remarkable power.”The New York Times’ reviewer wrote, “Nobody has ever made a film like it.”
The life Jonathan showed on film was ragged and raw and painful to watch. He had started filming his family from the time he was eleven years old, first on Super 8, then Betamax, VHS, Hi-8, and mini-DV for the next twenty years. He added movie clips, pop songs, and scenes from television shows he watched as a child. He created a soundtrack from songs that he loved. He edited the whole thing at home on an iMac, with the structure of the film taking on elements of his own mental illness, which he calls a “depersonalization disorder.” The result is a combination of feverish diary for himself and love letter to his mother, whose crazy parents put her through years of electroshock therapy.
It is the ultimate reality program, giving the viewer a “fly on the wall” perspective of an unstable life. So many terrible things happened during his childhood that I was relieved to know that there were sometimes pet dogs for him to play with.
Are dogs helpful to people with mental illness? There is now significant research showing that they are. Service dogs are being trained to help people who become disabled by panic disorder, posttraumatic stress syndrome, or depression, and conditions attributed to brain-chemistry malfunction. They are taught to bring medication, alert someone that help is needed, and nudge their human during an attack of disassociation.
But it’s interesting that much of the healing work of dogs is based simply on their presence. The dog’s job is to stay near the patient and steady him if he’s dizzy, provide stability during a panic attack, nuzzle him if he loses touch with reality. Dogs are able to help mentally ill people by doing what they are best at: being there. Jonathan Caouette made that discovery with his dogs. If only he could have held onto them.
Two dogs appear, briefly, in the film. His current dog, Shiny, wanders in the background of the opening scenes, hovering close to Caouette, who is anxiously waiting to hear if his mother will survive an overdose of lithium. Shiny’s son, Miel, plays with a stick in the snow. There have been other dogs in Jonathan’s life, as I learned when I spoke to him between his trips to Mexico, where he was screening his film.
I’VE LOVED DOGS since I was about four years old. In general, my memories are tied to two things. A lot are tied to what music was on when a certain thing happened. I think a lot of people associate like that. But also, when a memory comes to me, I’ll remember the dog I had then. They were always a poignant part of my life.
My first dog had two names, Sport and Christy. What name we called her depended on what kind of mood we were in. Sometimes she was Sport; sometimes she was Christy. She had come around during a time when there was a lot of tragedy going on in the family. The family circumstances were very bizarre.
My Mom had gotten very sick and had to go into the hospital. She suffers from severe bipolar disorder.
Just before that happened, my mom got this dog from one of the neighbors. She was some kind of terrier, a dirty-golden color. I don’t know if she was a purebred or not, but she was a beautiful dog. I have this great picture of her with me when I was about four years old. She’s sitting with me, and I have my arm around her. I never wanted to go anywhere without her.
There was a lot of dram a in our house. That’s what happens when you have someone who’s bipolar and schizoid. On those occasions, I would retreat into our backyard to my Slip ’n’ Slide or swimming pool. We had this really great overgrown fig tree. I would hide in the fig tree with Christy and pull the branches over us.
I would sit alone with Sport and try to communicate with her psychically. I was trying to see if I could read her thoughts. I still do that every once in a while. You know, dogs are so hypersensitive to whistles and sounds. What would be so strange if they could actually, if not read your thoughts, read your body language? Even if it’s just a subtle look in your eyes or a changing of your face?
I would be sitting and Sport/Christy would come up and look at me as if she was trying to tell me something. Or warn me about something, maybe. She would look me in the eye and I would get the sense of a thought, and I would sit still and try to understand what she wanted to say… and then someone would call me. Or I’d hear my mother screaming. Or my grandparents would come over to me. And the moment would be broken. I never got the message.
My grandfather and grandmother were raising me. My grandmother had a hysterectomy and took a long time to recover. My grandfather had to work to pay the bills, so there was nobody available to take care of me. Children’s Protective Services got word of that and yanked me out of the home. I had to go into the foster-home system.
When I remember Sport/Christy, it seems to me that she represented the last vestige of normal family life. I was four, almost five. When the foster home happened, I never saw Sport/Christy again. It was devastating. I’ll always remember her. She was an amazing animal. After her, stuffed animals had to take over for a while.
I was in the foster-home system for two years. It was a very brutal time. I was beaten and starved, and went through a lot of abuse. There were no dogs in my life during those two years. Finally, my grandparents got legal custody of me when I was seven.
What I really wanted then was to have a normal family. And to me a normal family would include a dog. I would have these conversations with my grandmother and tell her I was getting a dog. There was never a “yea or nay” response. I was one of those people who would stop along the side of a street when I saw an animal, and whether it had a tag on or not, I would kidnap it. Now I know that was a horrible thing to do. But I was so desperate for a dog’s company. There were a couple instances where I grabbed a tagged dog that probably belonged to someone in the neighborhood, took it home with me, and fed it for a couple days. Sometimes the dog lasted a week. Sometimes it lasted a month. But my grandmother would call the pound to come pick up the dog, and I would come home, and the dog would be gone. I hope my grandparents didn’t call the pound on any of those tagged dogs. Hopefully they just opened the door and let it find its way home.
If I ever asked my grandmother what happened to a dog, she would always pass it off as “He (or she) just disappeared. I just came in the house and the dog wasn’t there.”
I was careful with these dogs. I fed them, and walked them, and slept in bed with them, and when I left for school, I always made sure the dog was locked up safe in my bedroom. There was no way the dog would have gotten out on its own. Every day when I left for school, I would pray and hope that the dog would be home when I got back.
I went through many dogs that way. Probably ten during my childhood years. I got a Chow, around the time that I accidentally knocked three of my teeth out roller-skating in the swimming pool around the corner from my house. That Chow lasted about a week. A mutt or two or three thrown in the mix. I got a precious little poodle when I was nineteen that was in the house for about a week and a half.
When I was ten, I had a dog named Boomer, after the TV show, Here’s Boomer, about this cute little stray that traveled the country helping people with their problems. My Boomer was amazing. He would follow me everywhere. We met when I walked to our local park in the suburb of Houston where I grew up, and he followed me home. After that, he followed me everywhere. There was never a need for a leash.
It was very European of us. I love how, in Europe and Mexico and all these other places that I’ve been, these dogs can be so cool about walking in these big, urban areas with all these buses and cars and pedestrians going by, and they’re right by their master.
What I really wanted, during those formative years, was to experience having a puppy, raising it and keeping it for a long period of time. But I never got that, because of my crazy grandmother. On many levels, the animals seemed saner than what was going on in my house. It was the stability factor that I got just by being with a dog in one room, the two of us, hugging each other in our own little world where there was no crazy family and no troubles.
I got so much affection from those dogs. I always let the dog lick me without making a face. I loved to let the dogs lick me on my cheeks, on my nose, on my lips, everywhere. They slept on my bed (and they still do now).
After the poodle at nineteen, I wised up. I left my grandparents’ home when I was twenty-three, and there were no animals until I was twenty-four, living in New York City, with my own place. That was the first time that I got to have my own dog and have it stay with me.
My partner, David, initiated us getting what we thought for a long time was an Argentine Dogo by the name of Shiny. We’ve since learned that she’s a mix of something, maybe half pit bull and half Dogo.
David is from Colombia. One day he got a frantic phone call from a friend of a friend from Bogotá. They were living in an apartment in New York temporarily, and had all of these puppies with them. Shiny had been born in Colombia and then flown to Miami and then flown to New York. This poor dog must have been so traumatized just by the air travel! Shiny was about six months old. It was the summer of ’97.
All those puppies were beautiful, but Shiny made the most eye contact. And she seemed like the scapegoat.
I think David and I empathized with that. There was something very heart wrenching about her, something that made her very special. The other ones seemed really macho. She’s white with black freckles all over.
She was the icing on the cake of the relationship between David and me. With her here, it was obvious that what we had was something definitely along the lines of a marriage. It felt very official. That echoes what I was looking for as a kid. We’ve had Shiny for almost as long as we’ve been together, almost ten years. So we sort of measure our relationship by how old Shiny is.
In my film, there’s a real transition when David and I got this apartment and made a family for ourselves. We lived in this wonderful railroad apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Shiny adjusted immediately. The only problem was that she chewed the hell out of everything. We had so much wonderful furniture, and she just destroyed it all. After a while, I was angry and frustrated but had succumbed to a kind of complacency about it. I collected books and CDs, and she destroyed tons of them. I had to let go and let the universe be what it was. She’s trained at this point, to a certain extent. She’s out of her chewing stage.
In my early twenties, I was working in a hair salon in SoHo as a receptionist and occasional shampoo boy during the day. Shiny was still a puppy. I walked her around. I think it’s cool to see the way people will interact with you if you’re walking a dog. I don’t think you should get a dog exclusively for this reason, but it’s a really cool thing, the way dogs connect people. People say hello to the dog, and want to stop and pet the dog, and they just start talking to you. I enjoyed that.
One day I had to take Shiny to the Humane Society clinic. I hadn’t been in New York very long, let alone with a dog, so I didn’t know all the rules. At 14th Street, I had to transfer from the N to the R train, so I was standing on the platform when this big walrus of a policeman walked up to me and said, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you have this dog here? Is it a Seeing Eye dog?”
I said, “No, I’m just taking her to get her shots.”
He said, “Come with me.”
We followed him down the platform to an office. I thought maybe he wanted to show her to somebody. He went in the office and came out and handed me this ticket. It was expensive! Three hundred dollars!
I said, “I had no idea it was illegal to take a dog on the subway.”
Isn’t that terrible? It’s ridiculous. We had a muzzle on her and were very careful with her. You would think in a city like New York it wouldn’t be a big deal to take your dog on the subway. I was in Mexico City last week, sitting in a cafe where they were serving food, and three stray dogs walked in. They have a lot of homeless dogs there. I don’t know if this is a cultural thing, or a Latino thing, but left and right, people were embracing the dogs, petting them, without any fear. I thought, This would never happen in New York.
Just after I got the ticket, I took Shiny on the subway to get home. Just before we got off at our stop in Brooklyn, Shiny peed in the subway car. She’d never, ever done anything like that before. The subway doors opened, and just before we walked off, she peed like mad. It was her way of saying, “Fuck you!” to the system.
Then Shiny had thirteen babies. We had moved to our third apartment at that point, so Shiny was about three years old. We mated her with a pit bull. David ended up walking around the neighborhood and passing the puppies out from a basket. It got to that level because we couldn’t give them away and we didn’t get any buyers from an ad. When they hear the words “pit bull, ” people tend to run and hide.
We kept one of her puppies, and named him Miel, Spanish for “honey.”Unfortunately about two and a half years ago, David was walking here in Astoria with Miel very late at night down a one-way street toward a park. A car with a drunk driver zipped around the corner and came down the street, the wrong way, at light speed. Miel wanted to protect David. Just as the car came roaring down on them, Miel jumped out in front of the car. The car killed Miel. We came to the conclusion that Miel saved David’s life. That was a really sad time for us.
When something like that happens, it changes your whole perception of how amazing these animals are. I don’t understand people who won’t let dogs on their couch and on their beds. It almost feels like, “Why do you have a dog?” Our dogs are absolutely members of the family. We have a car, and we take them everywhere.
Something has paid off recently from what happened in my childhood. I just recently converged my entire family under one roof. So I’m at the point where I’m taking care of everyone. My mother and my grandfather. We all live in Astoria now, and we have two dogs and three cats. Kind of a full house.
Besides Shiny, our other dog is Lucy. David and I found her by the side of the road in Pasadena, Texas. A guy was selling her for sixty dollars. She’s a beautiful terrier mutt. Terriers are kind of a unique subdivision within dogs, and if they’re not disciplined, they can be nuts. Lucy sort of looks like Sport/Christy. She reminds me of her, and how close I was to her. And then, the other day, my grandfather out of nowhere told me that the dog was trying to tell him something. He has never said anything like that in his life before. He thought Lucy had something to tell him, but he didn’t know what it was. So he’s basically saying the same thing that I said about my terrier when I was four. I thought that was really interesting.
But I can’t take him back in time and get him to change the way things were. All I can do is try to make things work now, with my family and my dogs.
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As a child, Matthew Phillips was upset by a Sunday school teacher who told him that there were no dogs in heaven. Though this may have been the thinking once, attitudes are changing. Today, even the most conservative of congregations may offer a blessing of the animals, and people of every religion are coming to accept the spiritual role animals play in our lives.
Buddhists have always regarded animals as beings at different stages of reincarnation. Hindus embrace vegetarianism out of respect for all living creatures. Native American cultures believe that animals have spirits. Attitudes are changing among Jews and Christians; more denominations allow clergy to bless pet weddings and funerals, and the debate over whether animals have souls continues to rage.
An old woman on her deathbed asked James Herriot, the late British veterinarian and author of All Creatures Great and Small, if she would see her beloved dog in heaven. He replied, “With all my heart I believe it.” He explained his reasoning: “If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. You’ve nothing to worry about there.”
The poet and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.”
American humorist Will Rogers wrote about the dog-and heaven controversy, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
And the French Catholic monk St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in his twelfth-century Sermo Primus, Qui me amat, amet et canem meum (“Love me, love my dog”), which seems to put a holy imprimatur on the matter.
Will you see your beloved pet in heaven? A lot depends on what you believe here on earth. For some dog lovers, a heaven without our faithful companions by our sides would be no heaven at all. Matt, who lives with his partner and two Brussels Griffons in New York City, recorded a few of his many memories of his beloved childhood dog, Brandy.
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IN THE BACKYARD of our upstate New York home, my father built a tree fort for me in an old and welcoming oak tree. I could climb up six wooden steps and be in my own world. I had a table and two chairs, and various implements that I carried from the house as it occurred to me I would need them: a plate, a fork, two towels, a bottle of instant cleansing and disinfecting hand soap, all my mother’s hair combs, her brush, her hand mirror, and, the best prize of all, her scissors.
My English Springer Spaniel, Brandy, stood patiently as I clipped little strands of her bright black and white coat, which gave me a great idea for a career—I would become a hairdresser. With Brandy at their side, my various friends in the neighborhood followed the path out back and climbed up into my tree-fort salon, where they sat down and I went to work. I told each one that their mothers would be so pleased to have their child be the recipient of a free haircut.
Acting like a complete expert, I lifted and cut strands of hair from my friends’ heads. One girl had had silky hair that had grown all the way to her waist. All this ended up as clippings on the floor. When I stood back to survey my work, I was proud of the new, short hairdos. I felt myself equal to the famous hairdressers I’d seen on commercials, like Vidal Sassoon and Paul Mitchell.
That evening, the doorbell did not stop ringing, and each time it was another outraged mother, holding her child, claiming I had deformed them. It gave me an idea of what mass hysteria must be like. Unfortunately, I did not like bangs, so I had been particularly careful to lop off any and all hair around my friends’ faces. I thought they looked pretty good. But some of these women were using words that would make a whore blush.
Brandy seemed to know that I was in big trouble. She was not allowed inside the house, so she maintained a vigil outside the living room window. She howled each time a parent started in, and she ran to the back of the house every few minutes to look up toward my bedroom to check on me.
My mother made me hide in my room. I was scared when I heard my mother’s response to all of these moms. She apologized profusely and reassured them that the minute my father came home I would be severely punished—and with a belt! This appeased the mothers but made me mortally afraid.
Finally my mother came up the stairs. What was she going to do? Was it going to involve belts and spanking and bruises? I kept my mind focused on Brandy. I could hear her outside, barking under my window. That wasn’t usual for her. It was as if she wanted me to know she was there and wanted to protect me. The sound of those barks gave me courage.
My mother opened the door to my room and said, “Matthew?” I decided to be the courageous boy Brandy thought I was. I came out from under the bed. There was something in my mother’s hands, and while I was still trembling with fear, she pushed her hands toward me. Through squeezed eyes I saw—a plate of freshly baked butter cookies. The thing my mother baked when I needed to feel better! She ran her hands through my hair and kissed me on the cheek, not just once, but several times. Then she started laughing, louder and then uncontrollably. I started laughing, too. We both laughed till tears ran down our faces. Brandy was still howling outside my window, except this time the howling sounded different. I’m sure of it, Brandy was laughing.
My parents bought a second home at Eagle Lake, about forty-five minutes north of Lake George. We were a Swiss family and our vacations always involved mountains and cold weather, rather than beaches and blazing heat. Our vacation home was a mansion, a seemingly endless maze of rooms, corridors, foyers, and secret passages. For me and Brandy, it was a hide-and-seek paradise.
The estate sprawled across the side of a mountain. It became our family’s summer and winter retreat. Each massive room with its solid carved wood door could only be opened by its own key. There were various keys to the many parlors, library, red room, blue room, sewing room, conservatory, and other rooms. Each door to each room was always closed and always locked. Always. It was a real chore keeping all these keys organized, so a skeleton key was attached to Brandy’s collar. If we misplaced our own keys, Brandy was always nearby and we could borrow her key to gain access to any of the rooms. Simply by whistling for her, Brandy would come.
The mansion was wrapped by a wooden porch. From here, you could sit and look out over the lake and the Adirondacks Mountains. When I sat on the dock, swinging my feet above the lake’s surface, the water was so clear that I could see fish on their daily travels: lake trout, steelhead, walleye, and muskie. Brandy and I spent hours there, my arm hugging across her back, looking out onto the water and the mountains. It was a powerful, majestic view that still stays with me after all these years.
Not long after the haircutting incident, on a hot summer day, my mother packed a picnic lunch for my brother Steve and me. The two of us climbed into our small wooden canoe and paddled off to meet up with our older brother, Rich, and Father on Turtle Island. Brandy was swimming the distance by the side of our canoe. She had webbed feet, a unique characteristic of all Springer Spaniels, and was a powerful swimmer. Her legs cut through the water like oars.
Halfway out into the lake, the canoe started to fill up with water. I became hysterical, not because we were sinking, but because my butter cookies were getting soaked! Brandy was barking and then just disappeared from the water’s surface.
Suddenly, a sharp push from under the canoe made us both almost fall out. Brandy was trying to prevent us from sinking, and pushed the canoe up from underneath! She repeated this action again and again, only coming up for air.
Brandy became visibly exhausted when we were still about a quarter of a football field from Turtle Island, but she kept working until we reached the shore. My father and brother were at the shore’s edge to greet us. They could see we were having difficulties but didn’t realize how serious it was until we got much closer.
My father scooped up Brandy and carried her out of the water. He held her and kissed her face. After that day, he loved that dog as if she was his fourth child. My mother, though, for as long as I could remember, always fervently referred to Brandy as
“The Beast, ” because her thick black and white coat was always covered with matted spurs, thorns and twigs. She was always into something. Brandy was incorrigible. But Brandy was no Beast. To me, she was Beauty. Her big black eyes were like pools, about to overflow. She would allow us to do anything to her, so we did do our best to keep her clean. She was never sick.
That Halloween, I wore the same costume I did year after year. That’s the way I liked it. I was a traveling hobo. I wore rags for clothing, lots of patches, a straw hat, and carried a red stuffed bandana on a stick over my shoulder. Brandy always wore her red bandana, too. She joined me on this night like she had done for years, following me door to door.
I had my usual group of five friends, and we planned this particular evening in every detail. This was serious stuff. We carried big pillowcases. We knew the good houses, and the bad houses, the cheap houses, and the rich houses. As we laughed and joked, Brandy would nuzzle our bags for a treat, and we always had an absolute blast. At the end of the evening, knowing I had to unload my pillowcase and give it back to my mother, I started to run toward home. I was right in the middle of the road when Brandy ran at me, full speed, hitting me with such impact that I was thrown backward a great distance. At that exact moment a car came zooming by, missing us both by inches. Brandy lay next to me on the dirt road, licking me and whimpering.
Good girl, I said. Good girl, I’m OK, I’m OK. That car had come barreling out of nowhere on this quiet country road. I hadn’t heard it. It had rounded the curve at great speed, totally unexpected. Where I had been, there was nothing left but a shredded pillowcase with scattered treats. My candy had been flattened.
Then it was winter. I remember running through the snow as fast as I could. I was determined to beat my brothers, who were both older, to the lake. I was so anxious to learn ice skating that I must have fallen a dozen times before I got there. Even Brandy was out of breath. The cold was biting and I could see clouds of her breath, thick and white.
Ignoring the exhaustion from my run, I proceeded to hike down the steep banks of the lake. Before I knew it, I was far from the shoreline and well onto the middle of the lake. My skates were flung over my shoulder.
I remember hearing a loud cracking noise and thinking, What’s that? Then the ice underneath me gave way. In the blink of an eye, I plunged into the freezing water. The water was unbearably cold. It filled my mouth, eyes, and ears. I was bobbing up and down, and felt a current pulling me under. I was panicked, and at the same time completely paralyzed. I was unable to scream for help. Breathing was almost impossible.
A strong tug on my jacket hood prevented me from going completely under. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my dog, sprawled out on her stomach, reaching so carefully to bite the hood of my jacket, pulling me up. She held me for what seemed forever, until my brothers finally arrived and rescued me.
Brandy got a T-bone for dinner that night and for the first time ever was allowed in the house for the evening. My mother said, “Good girl, Brandy, ” very matter-of-fact. My father just kept shaking his head. He looked at Brandy, then at me, then had to look away.”That dog, ” he said.
That Sunday, we were all packed and loaded in the station wagon, ready to return home. But where was Brandy? It was starting to snow, and my parents were getting impatient. We spent hours looking for her, but Brandy could not be found. My parents were very concerned and stopped by our neighbors, who lived at the lake year round. The Moshers promised to check for her and leave food on the porch until we returned in two weeks.
My father, the quintessential Marlboro Man in his trademark shearling jacket, seemed nervous. Sensing this made me scared, he repeated out loud, “She’s a hunting dog, for Christ’s sake, she can take care of herself.” It was starting to snow. My great-grandmother, whom we all called Nanny, held me tight so I wouldn’t cry, but the thought of losing Brandy shook me to my soul.
Two weeks later, we returned to the house. My father was doing ninety miles an hour. In that speeding car, the entire family was thinking of only one thing: Would Brandy be there? We’d had no news about her.
When we hit the driveway, my father gave an abrupt hoot. There she was, happy and jumping up and down on the porch. A little thin, as she hadn’t gotten any dog food from the neighbor. We later learned that Brandy would not allow the neighbor to enter the property, much less approach the porch. She had become very protective of the house and scared the neighbor away because she appeared to be vicious.
Brandy? Vicious? Puh-leeze!
Another scene in my head was from Easter Sunday. My family and I had just returned from church and we were looking forward to enjoying Easter festivities, with all our relatives coming for dinner, a traditional meal with braided Easter bread with eggs baked in, cucumber salad, lamb, and mint jelly (yuck!).
I’d had an upsetting time with my Sunday school teacher that morning. The subject of animals and heaven had come up, and my teacher informed me that only humans enter heaven. He said that’s because only humans have souls. Animals do not have souls, and therefore do not enter heaven.
I kept asking, “You mean I won’t see Brandy in heaven?” I was on the verge of tears. The thought made me feel physically sick.
This particular teacher made us hold a wooden match between our fingers and recite all the books of the Bible by memory before it burned our fingers. To this day, I can say them all so fast it sounds like a foreign language: genesisexodusleviticusdeutero nomyfirstandsecondsamuelsfirstandsecondkings.
It was an unseasonably mild Easter. I was wearing seersucker shorts with suspenders, a white, short-sleeve, collared shirt, and white knee socks. My mother and I had spent several hours the night before dyeing two-dozen hard-boiled eggs in bright colors, and one of them had come out an amazing shade of pink magenta.
I couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten that color; it wasn’t one of the colors in the kit. It seemed like a jewel to me, one that had appeared by magic, so I laid it carefully on the fake green grass in my Easter basket and carried it with me all day.
I was swinging the basket back and forth by my side, with Brandy tagging after me. I was feeling miserable about this dogs-and-heaven thing.
I decided to visit my playmate Robby to see what he knew about it. Robby lived across the empty cornfields. The fastest way to his house was to cut through the woods. As I followed my usual path, suddenly an extraordinary scent floated to me: the scent of lilacs. Lilacs were my favorite flower. There were clumps of lilac trees that grew in these woods. But this perfumed scent was so strong it was intoxicating. I had to find out where it was coming from. So I took a detour into the woods, to visit my favorite spot, where I knew lilac trees grew in abundance. The scent got stronger as I got closer to them. They always made me smile because they grew in big, crazy clumps of color, with huge bunches of purple, violet, and white. Lilacs are more gorgeous to me than the word “gorgeous” can describe.
Brandy and I wandered among the great oaks, blue spruces, dogwoods, and baby crabapples, across clusters of violets growing sprawled on the ground. Following the rich perfume, we went deeper into the forest, far off the path we knew, where we discovered a field of lilac trees we’d never seen before. In one spot, the sun shot down through the lilacs, creating a perfect circle of light.
We sat down. The sun was so warm and soothing that we both quickly fell into a deep sleep. I was curled in a ball, my head resting against Brandy’s solid back. My Easter basket lay askew.
We were awakened by an intense light beaming down on us. It grew more intense and I had to cover my eyes. Slowly descending from the sky were two men. Suddenly they were both kneeling at my sides. Brandy watched but didn’t make a sound.
They were angels, and they had beautiful white wings.
They were just as I have always envisioned them to be, except they were enormous. I’d guess each one was fifteen feet tall. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The light weakened and I could finally look at them without squinting.
The angels were dressed identically. Both were carrying huge swords in one hand and shields made of gold in the other. What I remember most clearly were the identical robes they wore. They were embroidered tapestry robes, heavily detailed with dog-hunt scenes, embellished with precious stones, diamonds, and rubies. The gold fabric was ornate and heavy. Brandy put her paw on the hem of one angel’s robe, and he smiled, put down his sword and caressed her head. No words were spoken.
Through the same opening between the trees came another burst of light. Before me was a figure I recognized immediately from my studies. It was God. He said three words to me: “I love you.”
Then He disappeared.
The angels stood up. In the same voice, they told me that God had prepared a special place for all his animals, where I would one day be reunited with Brandy. They told me I could rest assured that all children and all animals go to heaven.
The angels smiled and ascended back through the opening at the top of the lilacs. They were both wearing leather sandals, and that bit of leather was the last thing I saw. Then there was a final gust of wind, and the fragrance of the lilacs grew even more potent, then slowly faded away.
I picked up my Easter basket and ran home. I felt very calm and happy. My mother greeted me and was concerned to see that I was completely sunburned. According to her, I had only been gone for an hour. It seemed to me I had been gone for a long time.
I have never shared this part of my story with anyone before. Not because I thought that no one would believe me; on the contrary, I’m sure my family would have. I kept the experience to myself because I’m selfish. It was all mine. I have used it to empower myself during difficult times in my life.
Over the next ten years, Brandy, who was literally touched by an angel, saved my life and helped me avoid tragedy on many more occasions. She provided me with love and laughter. She was extraordinary in every sense of the word.
At fourteen, Brandy died in her sleep in upstate New York. I’ve only seen my father cry twice in his life. Once when we left the hospital room where my mother had undergone major surgery from a ski accident, and that night when Brandy died.
She was wrapped in her favorite blanket and buried underneath the lilac trees. I think of her often and miss her deeply. She was a special dog, a kind of angel, who came into my childhood to love and protect me. Brandy’s love felt real and strong back then. Now it’s like a place beside the lilac trees I can return to again and again. It sustains me still.
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Dogs often assume a hallowed place in our memories. The gloss of time burnishes their good qualities and fades their bad ones. But Philadelphia journalist and writer Joe DeMarco remembers the good and the bad in the dog of his childhood, a mixed breed his brother named Caesar. From a pup so tiny he could fit into the palm of Joe’s mother’s hand, Caesar grew to be a scrappy fighter, always ready to throw himself into battle to protect his family. And that protection lasted long after Caesar himself fought his last battle, leaving behind a lesson about loss that Joe relies on to this day.
Children and dogs have been playmates ever since those first wolves approached the campfires of our ancestors. As parenting becomes more and more prevalent in the gay community, it’s important to remember that children and dogs must be trained to live happily and safely with each other. Children should learn the best ways to approach strange dogs and how to treat the dogs in their family. And a hallmark of good training for dogs is that they learn their place in the pack and that their duty is to love and protect the children around them rather than seek to dominate these small humans who may not have the size or personality yet to demonstrate their own dominance.
In the best cases, children and dogs grow up together, as Joe DeMarco and Caesar did, and establish a relationship that nurtures both of them.
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CAESAR WAS DEAD. The little emperor who’d stolen all our hearts was gone after eighteen years, and we were left with silence and memories. He wasn’t my first dog, but he was the most memorable dog I’ve ever had the pleasure to call my friend.
His imperial name came from my little brother’s overactive imagination. But it fit Caesar’s regal personality, which was clear even in the squirming puppy that he was when he entered our lives.
I was fourteen, my sister and brother even younger, and we’d wanted nothing so much as we wanted a dog. A neighbor’s beautiful terrier, Sheba, was about to give birth. She had mated with a regal-looking, all-white Fox Terrier. My sister, brother, and I anxiously awaited the results of the match. When it happened, I remember my brother running home with the news that Sheba had produced a litter and that we were to choose one.
We trooped over to the house to take a look at the litter and make a choice. The squirming mass of puppy flesh was too indistinct for me to choose, and neither could my sister or brother. So Mom picked one of the puppies. We were to wait for him to be weaned and then could take him home. The waiting wouldn’t be easy, even if we could visit him each day.
A few days later, however, disaster struck—Sheba was killed by a car and the puppies had to be hand fed.
Mom picked him up, a shivering little squealing bundle who barely knew what was going on. He fit in the palm of her hand, tiny, vulnerable, and pitiful. I took one look at him and wondered how we’d keep him alive. But Mom knew more about puppies than I’d imagined. She promptly found a tiny bottle and fed him some kind of milk mixture whenever he wanted.
On the day he came home with us, my brother immediately named him Caesar. I looked at the tiny wriggling pink-and-white pup and laughed, thinking that such a big name would weigh down so small a dog. Watching him move and yawn, blink his eyes and fidget—the sight tugged at my heart and I knew that no matter what his name, I was bound to this little dog.
That was the beginning. The days turned into weeks, and he gained weight and strength and was soon standing on his own and demanding something more than milk. Next came the training—a gentle boot camp. Caesar was a quick learner and took his place among the family members in a short time. I remember staring at him and wondering how that little lump of flesh had become the handsome dog surveying his territory with an imperial air. He was like his father: shapely, sturdy, and smart. Unlike his father, Caesar’s white coat was marked with one black furry patch circling his right eye. But rather than appear foolish, Caesar managed to look dashing, black patch and all.
Small and quick, Caesar quickly became the neighborhood favorite. And he lapped it up. He loved the attention but also knew that he had responsibilities and took them seriously. He shook the windows with his barks and with his paws as he pounced on the storm door to frighten passersby. No one escaped his attention, especially not strange dogs, whether or not they had a human companion.
One incident stands out among the rest. It speaks to Caesar’s courage as well as his foolishness. But mostly it speaks to the size of his heart and the monumental lengths to which he would go to protect his family and his territory.
A man, not someone known in the neighborhood, decided to walk his Great Dane down our street. Standing outside, I saw him coming and so did everyone else—Caesar, however, was occupied inside at the back of the house. Unfortunately, his business concluded, Caesar made an appearance at the front door just as the stranger and his huge dog were passing our house.
This affront was too much for Caesar. Imagine an interloper of that size having the arrogance to walk through his realm. The Great Dane, placid and stately, had no idea what was about to happen, and neither did any of us. Somehow Caesar managed to push open the storm door. He was small and fast. Snarling and barking, he rushed at the Great Dane and latched onto his back leg.
The tall and courtly visitor was startled and let out a snuffle of surprise. He shuddered and tried shaking Caesar off his leg.
Time stopped. No one could move. Instead we all looked on, jaws agape, eyes wide, waiting for the worst to happen.
Regaining his composure, the Dane turned quickly to see what had clamped onto his leg. There was Caesar, white lightning with teeth, trying to halt the Dane’s progress. The Great Dane, with a weary expression, reached back and, opening his large mouth, grabbed Caesar. His jaws wrapped around Caesar’s rump, all of it, and Caesar let out a cry of pain.
Several neighbors screamed. I was frozen with horror. I thought this was the end for his majesty and was about to intervene when an amazing thing happened. The Great Dane did not chomp Caesar in two. Instead, once Caesar had let go of the big dog’s leg, the Great Dane promptly sat on him until his master directed him to get up.
Caesar, properly chastised and even a little terrified, sprang up and limped into the house. We all rushed in after him, took him into our arms and hugged him. He yelped with a little pain, but apart from a few small scratches due to the Great Dane’s teeth, there was nothing wrong. We applied medication to prevent infection, and Caesar took his place in a warm corner of the house to regain his dignity.
Although Caesar had his own concerns (like protecting his treasure horde under my old bed), he never failed in his sensitivity toward family members. He knew just what our emotional state was at any given time and exactly how to approach us. He knew when to lick our faces and when to comfort us by curling up in our laps, warm and solid.
He looked on when, at eighteen, I came out to my mother and the tears flowed. Caesar was there to nuzzle us both, and make us both understand that this difficult moment was nothing compared to the love we shared.
He was also a good judge of character. My late partner was a case in point. Not long after I came out, I brought Bill home to meet my family, and Caesar was at the door to greet us. Without a sniff or a growl, he immediately approved of Bill. And that was what closed the deal for my parents. Caesar didn’t like everyone and only some did he take to in that special, this-is-family way. Of course, when Bill discovered just the right place to scratch, he and Caesar were bonded for life. No one had discovered Caesar’s S-spot before, so this made Bill special, one of the pack.
Caesar was gone by the time Bill passed away. After more than twenty-five years together, the loss was numbing; grief shadowed my days. If Caesar had been around, he would have mourned with me, licked away my tears, and reminded me of the good times he’d shared with Bill. He would have known just what to do so that I would have felt a little bit better, a little less lonely.
It’s those emotional times you remember along with the fun things. The highs and lows of his life mirrored the peaks and valleys of our family’s life. Most of all, Caesar was there—always ready to comfort, to guard, to amuse.
Caesar took part in every holiday, every celebration, every illness, every sadness, and every happiness. He never asked much and always gave fully of himself. For eighteen years he was a mainstay and a pillar for us. I don’t want to think what eighteen is in dog years. But I’m sure he was immensely old—in body but never in spirit.
His body began to fail him seemingly all at once. At first he couldn’t climb stairs, then he needed to be lifted onto our laps, and on it progressed. The White Tornado had begun to slow down. Arthritis forced him to yelp with simple movements and prevented him from acting like the youngster he imagined he was. He would lie in his warm, cozy corner for longer periods, and it was our turn to stay by his side, comfort him, make him happy, and just be with him.
It must’ve been strange for him to feel so earthbound; he was a dog that was more a creature of the air, finding himself everywhere at once as no normal four legged animal could be—at the door greeting people, running up and down the stairs, in the kitchen begging scraps, always everywhere and anywhere. Eventually he was always in pain and always in his quiet little corner.
It was time, my parents finally told me, to let him go. His pain and suffering were becoming unendurable. Not long before he died, I visited him. He looked tired yet happy to see me. Sad because he could not jump up to greet me, he weakly wagged his tail. So I got down on his level and sat with him. I stroked his fur while talking to him as I had many nights before. I couldn’t stop the tears that fell when I whispered my thanks to him for all his love, even when I was a grump or was in one of my deep dark moods. No matter how ugly my frame of mind, he always licked my face or washed away my tears, his tail thumping on the floor. Even at the last, his funny tail thumped the floor, but it beat out a slow, sad cadence.
Caesar realized he couldn’t keep up. He wasn’t enjoying food or toys or anything; even standing was a painful ordeal. He knew that the time had come to call it quits. And he wanted me to understand.
But no matter what I knew to be true, I couldn’t let go. Saying goodbye has never been my strong suit. And I’ve begun to understand that this was one last gift Caesar was trying to give me; letting go when there is no other choice. Saying goodbye with some dignity for all of us. I’ve had to say goodbye far too many times to too many people I have loved, and if I’d taken Caesar’s final gift, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much every time.
I took him in my arms that night and felt his weight against my body, solid and sturdy and not apparently ready to give up. But I looked into his eyes and that liquid darkness held all the sad good-bye he could muster. He lay his head against my chest as if to say, “Good-bye, old friend. It’s been a good, long run. I just can’t do it anymore.”
Bill was there that night and realized, too, that we would never see Caesar again. I knew that inside he was all tears and mourning. But in the same way that he faced his own last illness, outwardly he was the soul of strength and steadiness. He let me cry on his shoulder and mourned along with me.
My parents, understanding that neither I nor my siblings could shoulder this task, generously took him to the vet. In their eyes I could clearly see that their hearts were breaking, but they were strong as always.
The next time I visited my parents’ home, it was silent—the stillness not shattered by Caesar running to greet me and Bill. A sadness hung in the air. Caesar’s reign was over. The house was quiet, his treasure-trove unattended, his kingdom bereft.
Somehow, though, his spirit remained. And if it didn’t break the silence in the house, it shattered the silence in my mind. That indomitable, unbowed sense of life, that hunger for action, and that willingness to love—it all came bounding out of some corner in my heart. He had taught me every lesson he had to teach as if he knew the things I’d have to meet as I went down the road without him.
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