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Job Michael Evans, the late, great monk of New Skete dog trainer, used to say that every dog trainer in the world has his secret closet of failures, dogs whom it was simply impossible to train. And anyone who said they didn’t was lying.
Evans, who passed away from AIDS in 1995, said that the challenge was what to do about such dogs, because they simply could not be permitted to live in human society. He also said that putting a dog to sleep was not the worst thing that could happen to a dog, that sometimes not euthanizing the dog was worse because then disaster would thrive for the humans and for the dog.
Any dog lover understands that dogs have physical limitations that mean we will most likely outlive them. Though we may not like it, we acknowledge that cancers, infections, organ failure, or the simple fact of old age may one day separate us from our beloved companion. But what if a dog’s problems are mental rather than physical? Is there a dog so bad that neither love nor pharmaceuticals can help him?
Jay Quinn, the talented author of the novels Metes and Bounds and Back Where He Started, faced that problem with his “boy dog, ”Travis.
Jay took full responsibility for Travis. Working with his vet, he did the best he could to train Travis, and then to medicate him when training just wasn’t enough. His story is a model for love and sacrifice, as Jay did what a loving owner must to do to protect other dogs, and in the end, to protect Travis as well.
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NO ONE CAN EVER SAY I didn’t want Travis. He was my baby, my buddy. In many ways, he was my alter ego and we glommed onto each other’s neuroses like parent and child often do. I found my entire household working to accommodate his moods and his idiosyncrasies with the benevolence sometimes extended to troubled children. I did everything I could for seven years. No one can say I didn’t.
I am a dog person. I’ve always had dogs, and I would have dogs as part of my new home with my partner. I wanted a pair of yellow Labs. However, purebred dogs would have set me back far more than my budget at the time would have allowed. Instead I combed the pet section of the classified ads for mixed-bred puppies that were close to the loving nature of Labs.
An ad appeared one Saturday in February for puppies that were half yellow Lab and half red Doberman Pinscher. The pups were waiting for adoption at a pet-rescue facility run by a veterinarian way up on the western side of Boca Raton. I called and told them to hold onto any males they had, I was on my way up.
I got a newspaper-recycle bin small enough to fit in the cab of the pickup and lined it with shredded newspapers. I knew the pups would probably get motion-sick or piddle as a result of riding in the truck on the way home. I was well prepared in that event, and in others as well. I had already gone to the pet superstore and bought metal bowls for food and water. There were two new kennels, waiting to be set up. I’d also bought teal-colored leashes and collars.
On the forty-five minute drive I thought about the mix of Doberman Pinscher and Labrador Retriever. I had friends with red Dobies, and they were wonderful animals—very protective, very loyal. I knew yellow Labs to be mellow and playful. I had myself convinced the two breeds would cancel out any negative qualities of the other and make for wonderful pets. Lab and Dobie: What would I tell people they were? Labermans? Dobadors sounder better. Dobadors it would be.
I already had names picked out. At the time, I was working for a land-surveying company. On the days I spent in the office drafting or marking up site plans to show utility locations, I listened to the local country station, KISS-FM. That total immersion in country music had leaked into my choice of radio stations in the truck and at home. My partner liked Randy Travis and I liked Travis Tritt, so “Randy” and “Travis” were ready to be claimed by the pups.
When I got to the pet-rescue place, a vet assistant took me to the outdoor kennels, explaining that all the male dogs but the runt had been adopted already and urged me to pick one of the females, agreeing that the two dogs would keep each other company while my partner and I were at work.
My heart broke when I saw them. They were living on the concrete floor of a kennel that wasn’t exactly clean. They were skinny as all hell. You aren’t supposed to be able to count a puppy’s ribs. I could count every one. The vet assistant told me the owners of the pups’ mama had dumped them there when they were only five weeks old.
he dam was a purebred red Dobie, and they had planned to breed her and sell the pups. However, a neighbor’s yellow Lab had gotten to her first, and disgusted, they’d wanted nothing to do with the bastardized offspring. She assured me that all they needed was a good home and they’d fatten right up. More fool, me.
I picked up the scrawny runt and held him against my chest. He was auburn colored and bony, with the broad brow and square head of a Lab. He nuzzled me and whined pitifully. I rubbed the back of his head gently with one finger and he sighed, laid his head on my forearm, and closed his eyes contentedly. The runty boy dog was going home with me.
I looked down to the shrill yips of a female who went defiantly for my sneaker lace. She gripped it in her teeth and tugged mightily as if to tell me to put her brother down, right now. I squatted with her brother resting on my arm and picked her up gently under her belly. Standing, I shifted her awkwardly to rest on my other arm, where she promptly bit me.
“Well, you little hussy, ” I fumed. She was much more of a Dobie than her brother. She had the long nose and slender head. Similarly colored, the little girl pup had fantastic tawny eyes, more gold than brown, more yellow than green, not unlike my own. She resisted being held and instead struggled to my other arm to lay on top of her brother, who did little to object.”I’ll take them both home, ” I told the vet’s assistant.
Inside, doing the paperwork, they asked me what I was going to name them. I didn’t hesitate telling them the boy dog would be Travis, but I had to think quickly to come up with a name for the girl dog. I looked at her. My partner liked Patsy Cline, and by her coloring and feistiness, she reminded me of a neighbor lady I had while growing up. Her name was Patsy as well. So Patsy she became.
The pups were not easy to love. They were horrible little rat dogs with sharp teeth and mean natures. Patsy never missed an opportunity to be mean to her brother. She wouldn’t let him eat. She wouldn’t let him cuddle. She wanted him dead, it seemed. I kept warning her that she’d better play nice. One day he’d be bigger than she was. Of course, she paid no attention. I had to protect the boy dog from her aggressiveness.
So, from the get-go, Travis grew partial to me. As is often the case, two dogs in one home will bond with separate people in the family. Patsy bonded with my partner and became overbearingly spoiled as a result. As if Travis wasn’t spoiled to the point of utter obnoxiousness also.
At night, they would finally settle down as we read or watched television. Patsy slept on my partner’s chest, her long Dobie nose stretched upward to rest on his neck, under his chin. Travis curled contentedly by my side, like a doggie donut, my hand gently stroking his head or curled protectively along his side. Of course, those were the moments of peace in an otherwise vicious cycle of fighting and looting. My pups were incorrigible, and I was no better than a permissive parent bewildered by a psychotic child. I always said God knew what he was doing making me queer. If my dogs were anything to go by, I’d spend my days in juvenile hall if I had human children.
Patsy became somewhat civilized as she grew, but Travis grew only meaner. He broke into my neighbor’s house by charging through her sliding glass door’s screen. I found it impossible to walk him at the same time as his sister. When they weren’t attacking each other, they were attacking passersby on the narrow sidewalk that surrounded the development where we all lived in West Broward County.
I should have known he was going to be constant trouble when an older lady Travis and I passed each morning took to carrying a substantial umbrella for protection. She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Spanish. Travis spoke only paroxysms of vicious barking and baring of teeth. I would have to pull him bodily off the sidewalk to let her pass.
I tried every training trick I knew to curb his overprotectiveness. While Patsy responded very well, Travis did not respond at all. If anything, his resolve and single-minded responsibility to protect me was only enhanced by aversion training, behavior modification and the hatefulness of a shock collar. Travis literally tried to kill anyone or anything that came near me. He grew to become ninety pounds of muscle, seething anger and menace. He could launch himself airborne at skateboarders, bicyclists, elderly people with canes, cars; motorcycles in particular freaked him out.
As bad as he was, only I could control him. In his absolute frenzy of aggressiveness, somewhere there was the baby boy dog he reverted to each night, curling himself next to me on the sofa and sighing in relaxation and contentment.
Over the years, Travis came to dominate the house. He attacked my partner, whom the vet said Travis considered subordinate in the pack. He began to bite people. He grew so agitated that he would demand to go outside and patrol the front of our house many times every night.
My vet is a good man who owns and trains Dobermans. But even for him, Travis was a mystery. Over the years, Travis was on acepromazine, an animal tranquilizer; then Xanax and Elavil. The drugs would work for a while, then they wouldn’t. Travis was some piece of work.
When he and Patsy were five, my partner and I were asked to adopt a two-year-old female Weimaraner from friends who could no longer keep her. They knew how dog crazy I was, and they also knew that I would give her a home where dogs got every bit of the love and care straight people reserve for their children. So Hailey the Weimaraner came to live with us.
I won’t tell you the first weeks were easy. I had to be on constant surveillance to keep Travis from attacking her. I would not have the sweet-natured Hailey tormented by Travis. For the first time in his life, Travis found himself severely disciplined for his overt acts of terrorism. No dog in my house is allowed to run roughshod over another. I could always rationalize away Travis’s meanness to humans, but never to another defenseless animal.
Travis settled down and grudgingly allowed Hailey a place in our home. Eventually she became his running buddy, his partner in crime. I watched as the Weimaraner developed separate relationships with both Travis and Patsy. Like a youngest child, she found her place, stood her ground, and integrated herself seamlessly into the pack. I made extra time for her, for Travis, and for Patsy, giving each special, separate attentions. I began to understand my mother more, because she had had three small children at the same time. One is always crying, one is always needy, and one is always swinging from a chandelier in glee.
As with many dysfunctional households, my dog children were very well behaved once you made it into the house. Unfortunately, all the peace in the house lasted only as long as Travis’s mind was under control. In fall 2003, my boy dog’s mental state started collapsing. In October, he attacked Patsy, his sister, so badly one Sunday morning that she had to be rushed to the emergency vet for staples on her nose. Both my partner and I were coming to the end of our patience. Travis was disrupting our entire household as it bent to attempt to anticipate his sudden bouts of craziness.
I took him to the vet and asked what we could do, short of putting him down. Nearing a last resort, he said we’d try phenobarbital to try and break the cycle.
Walking him in front of the house one afternoon after work, a little boy about ten years old came out of nowhere on a skateboard. Travis went insane. Travis always wore a heavy-duty training collar called a “pinch collar” due to their teeth that form a tight unpleasant grip around a dog’s throat when they are tugged or if they lunge. The links on Travis’s pinch collar were two inches long, with inch-and-a-half “teeth.” He broke it going after the little boy on the skateboard.
“Kid! Freeze!” I shouted.”Don’t look at him. For God’s sakes, don’t look him in the eye.”
The kid kicked off his skateboard and froze in place.
“Travis!” I shouted.”Sit!” Miraculously, Travis stopped in midstride of a dead run and sat. I managed to get to him and reattach his pinch collar. He looked at the little boy, not twenty feet away and growled, showing his teeth.
“Kid, he’s scared of your skateboard. Please don’t move until I can get him back in my yard. Please.”
The little boy just looked at me. I managed to pull and drag a snarling, whiny Travis back into my yard. He turned on me, then, whipping around and snapping at me. I pulled his collar straight up in an effort to get him to sit on his haunches; instead, he leapt up with the tug.
Frightened now, I stopped and relaxed the pull on his leash.”It’s OK, baby. The bad thing’s gone. Shhhh, it’s OK.” Travis relaxed enough to allow me to drag him into the house.
This was when he was on phenobarbital. At Christmas, Travis attacked my friend Joe and bit me when I put myself between them.
During January, Travis settled down some. He still could be infuriated by passersby to the point that we always had to keep the shutters on the street-facing windows closed. He tried to go after boats on the canal, which particularly infuriated him. But the medicine seemed to calm him.
Then, in early February, Travis lost it on two consecutive nights, attacking the other dogs for no reason.
The second time I pulled him off Hailey, he’d gashed her snout as he had Patsy’s. Something in me snapped. Calmly, I looked at him and he looked back at me. I think now some form of communication passed between us. I hate people who imbue their dogs with cuddly human characteristics. Dogs communicate but they don’t talk. Still, in that looking into each other’s eyes, I feel like Travis and I held a simple two-way communication:
“I can’t take this anymore, Travis.”
“Then, do what you gotta do. I don’t care.”
I got Travis and Patsy both into their kennels. I had wound care solution on hand, and I doctored Hailey’s gash. Though the skin was torn, the muscle below was intact, and I knew it would heal on its own if I kept the wound clean. I allowed her to settle herself on the sofa, stunned and needing some quiet time.
I went into the kitchen and called my partner to tell him the time had come to do the unthinkable. Fortunately, he was out of town on business; I’ve always found it easier to do the impossible on my own. Once, in severe chest pain, I got up out of our bed in the middle of the night and drove myself to the emergency room. Taking Travis to die would be something I had to face on my own.
On the way to work the next morning, I stopped by the vet’s office and told them what happened. I also told them it was time. Sympathetically, they told me to bring Travis in at five o’clock. They told me I didn’t have to stay. They could take care of him for me. I told them no. This was part of the responsibility of having a pet. I had to walk the last little way with him.
All nobility aside, I told them I’d need some tranquilizers for Travis, strong ones, just to be able to get him calm enough to get into the car. I told them I’d stop by on my way home from work in the early afternoon. If they’d have the bill and the pills ready for me, I’d appreciate it.
I could barely concentrate the rest of the morning at work. When I finally could leave, I drove straight to the vet’s, picking up the pills and paying the bill ahead of the appointment. I knew if I didn’t, I’d never make it back.
At home, I took each of the dogs out for a walk separately and then returned them to their kennels, which was unusual but not unheard of. I waited until nearly four to give Travis a staggering dose of acepromazine, and then I spent an agonizing hour waiting for it to take effect.
It never really did. I still had to get a muzzle on him and needed my neighbor’s help to get him in the car. He snapped at us twice before we were on our way.
Travis was pretty quiet on the drive to the vet’s office. I took a roundabout route, knowing I’d never be able to drive the same way again. Travis enjoyed the ride quietly, often looking at me with a happy, panting smile as if he was reassuring me.
When we got to the vet, they ushered us into an examining room, and we sat waiting while all the other appointments wrapped up. The tranquilizers hadn’t even made Travis sleepy or stumbly. He sat stoically by my side, with an eye on either door so no one could slip in on us unawares. He had a solemn guard dog stance. I used to call him Lance Corporal Travis because he had the expressionless menace of a Marine on guard duty when he was sitting next to me. I stroked his head and down his back while we waited.
I didn’t know my vet had the day off, so I was surprised to see a young woman in a white coat come into the room. She introduced herself and told me that in twelve years of practice, she had only had to put down one dog for being vicious. She asked me if I had thought of any other options, and if I was sure I wanted to do this.
I told her that people used to stop me on the street, Spanish guys usually, and admire Travis. I couldn’t make out much more than them asking me if he could fight. They still fight dogs, illicitly, down in Hialeah and the boondocks of Dade County. I was terrified that if I put an ad in the paper or gave him to the animal shelter, someone would adopt him just to fight him.
Travis was ninety pounds of solid muscle, but I knew him as my sweet boy who would lie next to me with deep sighs of contentment on the peaceful evenings. I couldn’t let him get into a ring with pit bulls. They’d throw him in the ring just for sport, just to whet the pit bulls’ appetite for blood. I told her I’d shoot him myself before I’d do that to him.
She nodded and gently asked me if I didn’t know of somewhere, somebody, with a lot of land, maybe a farm, where Travis would be the only dog.
I asked her how I could give him to someone knowing he might harm a child? What would they do to him? Would they beat him? Would they teach him to be meaner than he already was? How could I give him to somebody who wouldn’t care for him the way I had? How could I do that?
She nodded and put his file on the counter, telling me that she had read his entire folder. She didn’t know of any way we could have done better by him, other than keeping him so doped up that he would have no quality of life.
Travis paced nervously, ignoring her, ignoring me. She asked me if I’d given him the acepromazine. I told her that I had, and when I had.
She nodded.”I can see that it hasn’t even relaxed him.” Her voice then took on a direct, comforting tone.”I don’t want this to be any worse than it’s going to be already. I don’t want him to fight. What I’m going to do is to give him a heavy dose of a muscle relaxer. That way, it won’t be ugly.”
I nodded. She gave me the best reassuring smile that she could muster. I felt sorry for her. Animal doctors are just like people doctors. They are trained to make animals well. They hate to help them die unless there is no other possible way.
In a moment, a vet tech returned with her. Together, they held Travis and gave him the shot of the muscle relaxer in his neck.”It won’t be long. I’m going to leave you with him for a few minutes so he feels secure. Then I’ll come back and give him the shot. OK?”
I nodded once more. Having made the decision, there was only mute acknowledgment and acquiescence I slid off the bench by the wall to sit cross-legged on the floor, eye level with my boy.
Travis escorted the vet to the door and then turned to walk around, suddenly disoriented. He came to stand in front of me, and his head swayed as if he was following the room as it started to spin. He spread his front legs broadly to brace himself on the rolling deck the floor under us had become. It was only then that he looked at me as if to plead for help. I whispered to him comfortingly and patted his rump gently to let him know he could sit.
Helplessly, he sank to his haunches, but he did his best to resist the medicine. Finally he began to sink as his front legs moved away from him. I scooted forward so his head would lie on my lap as he gave in.
Once he allowed himself to sink into my lap, he sighed and closed his eyes. I rubbed his big ol’ head and sang a little to him. I always sang a little to him, you know?
When he was sweet and calm and happy, I’d find a chorus of “Sweet Thing” or “Gonna Take a Miracle” or “There Is a Rose in Spanish Harlem” somewhere in the back of my memory. When he’d given up the hard day’s work of looking after me and simply lie safe next to me on the sofa, curled up like a puppy, I’d sing low and growly to let him know everything was all OK. He’d yawn and stretch out those long Dobie legs and look up at me with dark brown eyes as if to say, “Everything is OK, isn’t it?”
The doctor returned with the syringe. She knelt by us and warned me it wouldn’t be quick.”Travis is a big dog. He won’t go fast. I’m just telling you so you’ll be prepared, OK?”With that, she found a vein in his front leg and gave him the shot.
When she had finished, she knelt beside us to wait. I leaned his big head over onto my lap and hummed because I was way past singing. I leaned over him to protect him from all that had bothered him so. And I crooned to him as the last of the fight and life went out of him. It seemed to last forever, but since I had brought him to this place, there was no way I could let him go any further without him knowing I was with him, and everything was going to be OK.
After nearly five minutes, the doctor checked her watch, placed the stethoscope over his heart and listened.”He’s gone, ” she told me.
I don’t cry easy, and I don’t cry often. What gets torn from me when I do is ugly and harsh and private. Lifelong smoker’s’ sobs aren’t pretty. They are hoarse and tearing and hurt to hear as much as they hurt to let go. You could pull concrete from my chest, and it couldn’t sound any worse. Practiced hardness doesn’t let go easy. What it holds back, the gravel of grief and the thick choking flood of self-hatred, sounds like hell breaking over a quiet room. Given permission to escape, every grief over every torn nerve and violated scar follows behind.
The doctor laid her arm across my shoulder.
“Why is it so hard?” I managed to say.”Why is it all so goddamned hard?”
She couldn’t know I meant living. She couldn’t know I meant loving. She couldn’t know at all what I meant.
Finally, I took Travis’s head in my hands and shifted away so I could put it gently down on the floor. I stood, thanked the vet, and made my way on home.
The following Tuesday, I had to pick up Travis’s ashes. I’d paid to have him cremated individually. The box was cardboard with an agreeable wood grain print laminated on the lid. He was heavy, my Travis; he made a lot of ashes. I put the box on the passenger seat and tried very hard not to think about his ride to the vet’s. I only thought, Now I am bringing him home.
In life, when Travis was outside his kennel and I was in the bedroom, he lay right by my side of the bed. Sometimes he would move away only as far as the sliding glass doors, where he kept watch for the evil and threats only he could see. I wrapped my own tattered sleep around me more tightly knowing the dog was keeping guard over me.
When I got home, I took the box holding his ashes and put it in the drawer of the bedside table next to my side of the bed.”You’re home now, baby. You’re back where you can take care of me.”
Laying down on the bed, the two girl dogs jumped up to be with me. Hailey fit herself into the curve of my legs. Patsy turned and snuggled herself onto my partner’s pillow. Travis rested in the drawer next to us.
In the years that have passed since then, Travis has remained part of that tableaux. Still, I have caught glimpses of Travis out of the corner of my eye, panting and smiling, all around the house. My canine Marine sentry, Travis, my crazy boy dog, is never too far from my side, keeping watch to this day.
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Can one man make a difference in this world? It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the world’s problems and feel there is nothing you can do. But that is not Randy Allgaier’s approach. He was dedicated to a life of service to community and country long before he acquired a dog, but his Beagle, Darwin, opened up a new path by which to help others.
Randy helped prevent the spread of HIV by getting the California legislature to decriminalize needle exchange. As Randy says, the cost of one syringe is a penny, but the cost of AIDS is millions of dollars and endless suffering.
Randy tested positive twenty years ago and developed AIDS eight years ago. He took the deep pain into which he was plunged and used it as a sword to protect others. He had harbored a secret desire for a dog for many years during his public life, but he knew that a dog would need an owner who wasn’t forever flying off to Washington or Sacramento. But eventually the time was right for Randy and his partner, Lee, to adopt a puppy. Randy thought that he knew what the simple joy of owning a dog would be like. But he was wrong. It turned out to be much richer and more surprising than anything he had imagined.
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I GUESS MY LOVE OF DOGS began at conception. If you look in the baby book that my mother kept, my first steps were made trying to catch a neighbor’s dog, Tippy, a Cocker Spaniel mix. The entry reads, “Randy loves Peg’s dog Tippy.”
As a kid, I begged my parents to allow me to have a dog and we had a few, but not for long, because my mother, who made Joan Crawford’s obsession with cleanliness seem low-key, couldn’t put up with the mess, so we would end up finding a new home for each one.
Each dog wasn’t just somebody I loved and adored, but somebody who offered me refuge. One of the things that attracted me to having a dog is the experience of having a good friend. I never had a good close friend as a kid. Partly because I was gay and knew it, or at least knew I was different. But partly also because I went to a private school an hour away from where I lived. The bus would take me home, and I was isolated. Later I went to boarding school.
After college, graduate school and a time in New York City, I moved to San Francisco, where I met my partner, Lee, in July 1988. I was involved with the gay community and joined an organization called Shanti, which provides support for people with HIV. Shanti put volunteers through forty hours of very intense training. Lee was one of the facilitators, and we started seeing each other as friends. Then our relationship grew.
Lee’s HIV status is negative. He grew up with dogs on a farm in Tennessee. He had a little Chihuahua named Peanut that he talked about a lot. But maybe because he was allowed to have dogs as a kid, he wasn’t as obsessed as I was. Every dog I saw, I would stop and talk to it.
We live in the Castro district. There is a playground and ball field a few blocks away that at the time was like a dog park. When I came home from work, there were all these people out in this ball field with their dogs. The dog people were acting like they were at a cocktail party while their dogs were playing. What attracted my attention was all these dogs playing together, big dogs hanging with little dogs who didn’t seem to know they were little playing with Great Danes.
As our tenth anniversary approached, Lee and I decided it was time to get a dog, and we started to research breeds. We didn’t want to go the rescue route. I wanted to know the temperament of the dog. We began with these cute Jack Russells we saw everywhere. It took us about twenty seconds to realize that no way could we live with that breed. We also considered the PBGV, Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, but we heard that they tore things up in people’s homes.
I thought back to my childhood, and how I adored my grandmother’s Beagle, Brownie. I couldn’t get enough of playing with that dog. I remember spending a couple of days at my grandparents’ house, sleeping with Brownie, hugging and cuddling. I remember that sweet dog smell. We were the classic
“little boy and his dog.” I said to Lee, “What about a Beagle?”We did some research on Beagles, and as far as we could tell, the temperament seemed perfect for us, more laid-back than playful. We started thinking of a name, but we didn’t want something cutesy. Every other Beagle we met was named Lucy or Snoopy. The name that popped into my head was Darwin. Charles Darwin had done his research in the Galapagos Islands on the HMS Beagle. I thought that would be an interesting play on words.
Since we were taking the month of September off to celebrate our anniversary, we decided it would be the ideal time to acclimate a dog to our household. We looked for breeders in the area and found one who told us about a beautiful red and white boy. I said, “We’ll be there this weekend.”
We traveled with our best friend, Karen, to Napa. We got out of the car, and the breeder came to the door carrying this adorable little red and white Beagle puppy. And the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh my God, you all have red hair!”
At that point the puppy was a little over three months old. He was tearing all over the breeder’s house, peeing on the floor, bouncing off walls. Everything that would be a horror to me normally.
Before we left, the breeder told us, “If at any time in his entire life you need to place him, you can bring him back to me.”That was a wonderful testament to the kind of person she is. She said she bred not only for conformation but for temperament. We were very enamored of her.
Our puppy was renamed on his registry as Shilagae’s Darwin’s Equality, which brought our activism into his name. We brought him home, and he immediately peed in the house.
He was actually housebroken very quickly. When he was young, we wouldn’t allow him out of the kitchen. We had a child gate to keep him in there, but he learned to jump over it very quickly. He was a good jumper, and he found ways to get out, believe me. He was a very curious little guy. He was always trying to get behind our television, and he broke a VCR. But things that would normally make me crazy didn’t matter to me anymore. Once he got into our pantry and got a sack of flour. I came home, stared into the kitchen, and all I could see was white. It took me a second to realize it was covered with flour. He had peed into it, too. Pee in the flour, flour all over the place, his paw prints all over the kitchen in white. But because it was Darwin, I didn’t turn into my mother and say, “You have to leave!”
Lee was really good about cleaning up after Darwin’s flour party. I was pissed. But through living with Lee and Darwin, I’ve learned to let go of a lot of stuff.
When you say “Bad dog!” to Darwin, he immediately goes under the bed. He doesn’t like to be around anger at all. If I’m at the computer writing and say, “Goddamit!” loudly, he’ll get up and look at me, very worried. He’s very sensitive.
At the time, AOL had a “Beagle Board” where people could post online. I started to interact with other Beagle owners. I got a lot of good advice from a few people who would always respond to my posts. I started to call them the Beagle Moms.
In March 1999, my HIV changed to AIDS, with the diagnosis of pneumocystis pneumonia. At the time, I was working like crazy, running back and forth to Washington. I was on the board of the Human Rights Campaign and starting a statewide advocacy group for LGBT people called CAPE. I was stressing myself to the max. And in six months my health went from being good to just about dying.
I was hospitalized for a week. Lee got the nurses to allow Darwin to come and see me. When I saw him, I cried. He, of course, was only interested in sniffing around the hospital. In true Beagle fashion, he said, “This is a new place—I want to explore it.” But when I got home, he didn’t leave my side.
I recuperated at home for a month before I went back to work. Darwin was with me the entire time. Lee was bedraggled. He was taking care of me, and he had his work with developmentally disabled adults, which is stressful. So when he would come home and take Darwin out for a walk, it was his saving grace, his time alone. Darwin took care of both of us in a way.
Darwin has an uncanny knack of knowing when I’m sick. He is a creature of habit, but he alters his habit to lay in bed with me all day long. He has this look in his eyes that feels like he knows. It’s like he says, “I’m here with you.”
The jobs in my career have been very intense. I seem to work best under pressure. If there were deadlines and things were fast paced, doing stuff at federal, state and local levels, flying back and forth to Washington and Sacramento—I loved it. There was a lot on the line because we were trying to make a difference for people. Most of my colleagues were ten years younger than I was. They had a lot more energy. I kept up, but it took a toll on my health. Stress and HIV are not a good mix.
I retired in March 2000. Leading up to retirement, though, was horrible. Like many people, I define myself by my job. I was a wreck about the idea. It was a bigger loss than anything I had experienced. Bigger than any death. And it was a decision that I was making, not a loss that was happening to me.
In a weird way, the support that Lee and Darwin gave me was: They left me alone. That’s what I needed. Nobody in my immediate sphere of close friends had been through anything like that. I was forty years old, and I was retiring because of bad health. I didn’t want any support from anybody. I wanted to find it in myself.
I made an agreement with Lee that for six months I would do nothing but take care of myself. During those six months, we went to a fundraiser for PAWS—Pets Are Wonderful Support— called Petchitecture. Very prominent local architects and designers build an array of habitats for dogs. They are on display and then up for auction. People are very generous because they have such a good time.
I was so impressed by the organization. They keep people with HIV together with their pets because animals are such a good source of companionship, love and support when people are ill. This allowed low-income people with HIV to get food for their animals. Volunteers come in and walk dogs, do cat-litter maintenance. Having had the experience of Darwin when I was very sick, their mission spoke to my heart in ways that were very important.
It was a small organization, but this fundraiser was huge. They put it on themselves, and I was impressed by that, too. So the day after my six-month agreement with Lee was over, I wrote a letter to their board president and their executive director, explaining my background and my resume. A month later I was on their board, and four months later I was the president, which I was for four years. During that time, we got their budget doubled. They were able to expand their mission to cover people with other disabilities and start an elderly program.
I did aggressive fund-raising. It was a grass-roots storefront organization, and my goal was to make it more professional. I recruited board members who had experience in business. Then I left. I feel that organizations need new board members on a regular basis because it helps to keep things innovative.
Darwin is a key reason I was involved with PAWS. It was a passion about their mission that had me so driven and motivated. I got it at the most basic level. PAWS was seen as a warm and fuzzy, expendable thing, but we were trying to tell people, “We are not expendable. This is an important mission.”
PAWS also has a program for the homeless. A group of veterinarians reach out to these folks and make sure their dogs are cared for well and, ideally, spayed and neutered. A lot of homeless people do not want to spay and neuter their dogs. There is so little in their life they have control over. But if you gently work with them, they’ll do it.
When Darwin turned two, we wanted to have a party for him. We’d been to other people’s parties for their dogs, and it seemed that everything at the event was focused on the people. One thing Darwin really would enjoy would be playing together with a bunch of other Beagles.
Darwin recognizes other Beagles, and they have their own way of playing. They love to chase one another, though they don’t do as much wrestling as other breeds do. On the AOL Beagle Board, we’d heard about Beaglefests held around the country. There was nothing like that happening here in Northern California. So we wondered, Why not put a Beaglefest together ourselves?
Before we did it, we checked out places where we could have it. Beagles are notorious escape artists. They just follow their nose, and they’re gone in two seconds. Everything is focused on the scent.
We decided to send out postings that we would have this Beaglefest in Sausalito. We made homemade dog treats for the dogs and a birthday cake for people that read “Happy Birthday, Darwin.” A few people responded, so we knew we would have guests, but we had no idea how many.
When we arrived, on a Saturday morning, there were lots of people playing with their dogs at the park. Then one Beagle came, and then two. Suddenly, lots of other Beagles started coming in, and as the Beagles began to arrive, the other dogs started leaving, until it was a Beagle-only park.
Other than Darwin’s breeder, and one of Darwin’s playmates from the same kennel, Lee and I didn’t know a soul. In all, forty-seven Beagles showed up. And had a great time. Over the years, attendance has grown to around 200.
An amazing group of people come to the Beaglefests. You have African-American, Asian, and white, straight and gay, liberals and people who come from very conservative areas in the state, and none of that matters.
We don’t ask for any money. For us, it’s a labor of love. We have various contests that only Beagle people would understand: “Longest Ears, ”“Best Owner/Dog Look-Alike, ”“Most Obstinate, ” “Does Not Come When Called, ” and “Turns Around and Goes in the Other Direction When Called”—all things that are very particular to Beagles.
Some owners take the contests very seriously. We judge the categories by applause. One year, we were doing a Halloween theme and had a great costume contest. Some people had their kids dressed up with their dogs.
I adore watching the littlest of the kids. They are just gleeful, watching all these dogs play. We put nametags on so we can get to know each other. But we all know the dogs’ names better than the people’s names, so somebody started putting the dogs’ names on, like, “Randy, Darwin’s Dad.” The kids were writing, “Bobby, Bagel’s Brother.”
We wanted to do something charitable with all these Beagle people. That’s in our blood. So we started accepting donations for California Beagle Rescue. PAWS sponsors a 5-K Walkathon, and I sent a mass e-mail out to all the Beagle people, saying, “Let’s form ‘Team Beagle, ’ and walk together.”We ended up raising $7, 000 for PAWS.
It amazes me how people can have this connection with their dogs through their heart, and all this other stuff doesn’t matter. The same was true with the Beagle Moms, those women I met online when we first got Darwin. They were very sweet. They knew I was gay and had AIDS. A group of them had decided to meet in Las Vegas one year, and they invited us to come. They were a lot of fun. We all told stories about our dogs. The first night was cathartic because we were talking about our dogs who had died. Some were talking about Beagles that they rescued and the awful lives these dogs had had beforehand. I talked about how Darwin was such an important part of my life because of my being sick. These women and I connected, and they’re still very good friends of mine.
The first year I was on the PAWS board, the Beagle Moms came out for Petchitecture, from all over the country. They are not used to hanging around with gay men. One is a born-again Christian from Texas. Another is a rock-ribbed Republican from Chicago. We talk politics occasionally. But you know, we agree to disagree. By and large, our connection is through dogs. I never thought that, being a liberal gay guy, I could have people as friends who I really disagree with politically. It taught me this lesson—that I can. Those things, while important to me, are not the essential part of me. I was very touched by that, in ways that I can’t quite explain.
My health varies. I had a really bad downfall in December. My meds basically stopped working. I had been going around teaching about Medicare Part D and how that works for people with HIV. I wanted to get this information out because it was important. I was so impassioned and doing so much that I didn’t listen to my body and was getting sick again. My T cells, which should usually be around 500, went down to twenty-six. My viral load, which usually ranges between 1, 000 and 10, 000, moved to half a million. And I developed a case of pneumonia and was weak. I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on. My doctor said, “Don’t ever do that to me again. You scared the hell out of me.”
Now I’m fine. Just ninety days ago, I thought I was going to die. But we changed my meds, and I stayed in bed.
Another wonderful thing Darwin has brought me: My dad and I have a good relationship. But we’re WASP men. We don’t emote a lot. When I was home recuperating, I got a gift basket from my father. He had cherry-picked what was in it. And one of things was a box of Milkbones.
I broke down and cried like a little kid because it showed me that my dad knew me. He understood what was important to me in a way that I had never quite known. That was a turning point in my relationship with my father.
Darwin is in every part of my life. At the Beaglefest we had last October, my father was here for his seventieth birthday. If I had to sum up what Darwin has done in my life, he has allowed me to look beyond all the other things and to see that what really connects people is what is in their hearts. In a sense he’s been a conduit—he’s like my Buddha. He allows me a very direct connection to somebody’s heart. Despite all those things that differ in us, there is something that connects all of us, regardless of politics, sexual orientation or anything else, and he’s allowed me to find that. That’s an incredible gift.
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David Mizejewski is a man on a mission. As manager of the National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat program, he works to show people how their own outdoor area, whether it’s a yard or a balcony, can harmonize with birds, butterflies, and other wild creatures. David says, “Ecological issues tend to be overwhelming. There’s nothing one person can do about global warming. But one person can make a difference in their own home, by making it a better spot for wildlife.”
The balance between animal and human life is also the theme of his personal life. He made what he calls a life-changing decision while still in college that he would share his time on earth with dogs. From the moment that Niko came into his life, decisions he made were no longer simply personal but oriented to the family of two that they had become. Eventually he came to believe in “pets in pairs”—that no matter how strong an interspecies bond can be, dogs need to be in the company of their own kind.
He created a habitat, and a circle of friends, that nourish and support him, even while he flies from location to location, filming episodes of his Animal Planet television show. He spoke with me just before setting out to film the second season.
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OVER THE COURSE of my life I’ve had about nine or ten dogs—my own dogs, family dogs, or dogs who have lived with me and my roommates. In addition, I was one of those kids who had a zoo in my bedroom and drove my parents crazy. I’ve been a major geek and animal lover ever since I popped out.
Right now I have two dogs, and I believe that once you get a dog, your life changes. I don’t like people who make snap decisions about getting a dog, then one day decide they don’t need it anymore and that’s it, off goes the dog to the pound. If you’re going to take on an animal, it’s got to be for the life of that animal, and with a dog, it can be fifteen years or more.
During my junior year at Emory, three roommates and I were living in a house in Atlanta with a big backyard. Caroline had a Chow mix named Buddha, and the other roommate and her boyfriend each had a puppy, Sadie, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Clyde, a Boxer. Of course, I wanted my own dog. I was thinking about joining the Peace Corps, but I also wanted a dog of my own. I couldn’t do both of those things. I couldn’t get a dog and then a couple months later go tromping off to a foreign country. If you want to get a dog, you have to make that level of commitment. Your life changes. It has an impact on what you can do and can’t do. If I had a dog, I wouldn’t be able to join the Peace Corps.
I decided I should adopt, because it’s a good thing to do. There are a lot of unwanted pets out there. I started looking around at the shelters. I was over at a friend’s place, and his next-door neighbor had a dog that had puppies. These three adorable puppies were peering at me over the fence, and I thought, Oh my God, I’ve got to have one of them.
The puppies’ father was a Husky, and the mom was a little black-and-tan mutt that weighed about forty pounds. One puppy, a boy, looked the most like the mother, kind of like a baby Rottweiler. The other two puppies, a boy and a girl, were black and white. The girl was almost all white, with the blue eyes of her Husky dad. I fell in love at first sight with the third puppy, though, that had big black patches on him, a black mask, and the same brilliant bright blue eyes as his father and sister. And he had his father’s curly Husky tail.
I ended up talking to the owner of the mom. She had already promised a friend of hers the pick of the litter. I had to wait a few days till she came to make her choice, and I was worried the whole time: What if she picked the black-and-white boy? I was already bonded with him.
Finally the day came and we went over, and the woman was there with her kids. She was totally into the black and white puppy. She said, “That’s the one I want.” My heart sank. But her kids said, “No, Mommy, we want this one!”The kids liked the brother, the black and tan one, who was very rambunctious. The sister was a bit shy. The black and white boy was in the middle, a little laid-back, a little interested.
That’s how I knew he was the one that I wanted. When you pick out a dog, you want the animal that isn’t too aggressively playful or super shy, either. The woman had first dibs. She was really pushing for the black-and-white boy, but her three kids wouldn’t go along with it. I was praying, “Please, let the kids win the argument!” and they did. She gave in to her kids. They took the black and tan, and I got the dog I wanted.
I named him Niko, and he integrated with the other dogs at the house pretty well. The other puppies, the Ridgeback and the Boxer, were ten months old. Buddha, the Chow mix, was two.
With my background in wildlife ecology, I’ve always been fascinated by animal behavior. I learned some interesting things from watching the four dogs in our house interact. It’s fascinating to see the dynamics among a pack of dogs and how similar domestic dogs are to wolves. I observed a lot of pack behavior, hierarchies, and the shifts in power with four dogs in the house. In that time period, Buddha, the Chow mix, was definitely the alpha dog. One of the ways that behavior manifested was in stealing toys. If one of the other dogs had something she wanted, she would take it and not let them have it back. She kept them disciplined and in line.
Sadie, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, liked to knock Niko around and drag him around the backyard. Clyde, the Boxer, had not been neutered yet, and Niko was still too young for neutering. At around the time Niko was six months old, the two of them developed this male rivalry. It was interesting to watch—they really got into it a few times. We finally made Eric, my roommate’s boyfriend, get Clyde neutered. Then I got Niko neutered as soon as I could.
Because we four humans were only roommates, there was a kind of separation among us. On certain levels, I think the dogs picked up on the internal roommate dynamic. It wasn’t that we were constantly fighting, but it’s just what happens if you live in a group house. There was a kind of competition. There were always issues of “My dog isn’t the dog that chewed up the sofa.” “My dog didn’t do this or that.” As a result, all the dogs in that house felt that they had to protect what was theirs.
As a result, Niko became every food possessive. Not with people. I could stick my hand in his dish, and he wouldn’t do a thing. But if another dog tries to eat his food, he gets very surly. It’s the same thing with toys.
We all lived another year together before we graduated. Then I moved to Washington, D. C. , because I knew I wanted to work in the environmental field. I landed my dream job at the National Wildlife Foundation. I couldn’t be more happy. NWF has had this national backyard habitat program since before I was born.
My roommate Caroline moved to D. C. at the same time, and we decided to take a place together. Our choice of where to live is another marker of the way dogs change your life and guide your decisions. We decided not to move into D. C. because we couldn’t have room for the dogs. Instead we chose Arlington, an inner suburb with a lot of dog parks. It’s a very dog-friendly bastion of liberalness in conservative Virginia. People are really into their dogs. It’s one of the things I love about living here.
Around that time Niko was getting older, and feeling mature. He didn’t want to be pushed around by Buddha any more. They got into a big fight, and he basically knocked her down from her pedestal. He wanted to let her know it was not an alpha -subordinate relationship any more. It was more a peer relationship.
Around that same time, Niko started another fascinating behavior, which I first noticed at the dog parks. He became very particular about dogs that he likes and doesn’t like. And I think this is clearly a result of being beat up on by Clyde the Boxer as a puppy.
Basically, he has this crazy aggression toward Boxers. We went through a phase where he would just attack them on sight. I had to talk him down when we even saw a Boxer in the next block. People don’t believe me until they see it. They ask how he can know what kind of dog it is. But he knows. His hackles go up. It even spread out to encompass all dogs with pushed-in faces that look even a little bit like a Boxer: Bulldogs, Rottweilers, pit bulls—Niko goes after them.
He’ll be ten next month, and his aggression has calmed down in the last few years. I know him well enough to control him so that he doesn’t get into a fight. Niko is very jealously protective of me. He doesn’t like it when other dogs come up to me. He’s usually fine, but if it’s a dog who’s on his list, definitely not. He’ll warn them off. Then he hovers around me to make sure no other dog can get close to me. It’s endearing in a way. While it’s a pain in the butt, it’s also a sign of how strong the bond is between us.
A few years ago Caroline and I ended up falling out. It was sad because we had lived together seven years, and we would joke and say, “One more year, and we’ve got a common-law marriage!”
I looked into buying a place, and I saw that the real-estate prices in D. C. are insane. I ended up lucking out because my parents owned an investment place in New Jersey, where I’m from, that they were selling. They needed to find a new place to buy so they wouldn’t get hit with capital-gains tax. I convinced my parents to buy down here, and eventually I found a great house with lots of room for dogs.
Niko never had lived without another dog around. He got a little bit of anxiety and began acting out. He started getting into the trash, which he had never done before. He got through the fence, went roaming the neighborhood, and got picked up by the county animal control. I had to get him out of jail a couple times.
That’s when I thought, I think I need to get another dog. It’s another thing I believe in: “pets in pairs.”There’s a social dynamic that happens when you are with your own species. Dogs, like wolves, are social animals. No matter how strong the bond is that you have with your dog, there are ways of communicating and experiencing the world inside the species that can never be replicated with a human. I think having a friend adds a lot of quality to your dog’s life. It gives your dog the opportunity to have social interactions with another dog. That was the problem Niko was having.
One day a coworker sent out an e-mail saying that her sister had a dog that she was trying to find a new home for. When I heard it was a black Lab, I thought, This is perfect. Niko loves Labs. He loves to wrestle with them, especially chocolate or black ones. If he sees a Lab, his tail wags, he immediately goes up to it, does his play-bow and invites it to wrestle, where they both stand on their hind legs and push each other around.
This Lab’s name was Remington. He was about to turn seven. Niko and I drove out to the Shenandoah Valley, about an hour outside of D. C. , and we met Remy. He’s your typical Lab—full of energy, adorable, but not too bright. He just Labs around. They seemed to get along well, so I asked, “Can I take Remington out and see how they do?”
Niko is a great trail dog. He can be off leash. He keeps his pace so he’s just so far ahead. Then he waits for you to catch up. He doesn’t take off and run away. We took Remy out for a hike, and we ended up adopting him.
Remy has a typical Lab tail, which can dent your shin. He uses it like a weapon. I can’t have tchotchkes around the house or put a glass of wine on a coffee table. When Remington comes through, everything goes flying at the end of that tail.
Shortly after I got him home, I realized that Remy is completely obsessed with playing fetch. I got tennis balls and threw them for him constantly. I ended up getting tennis elbow, repetitive motion pain. It was awful. But I didn’t want to stop throwing the ball for Remy because he loved fetching so much.
Then one of my friends bought me a Chuckit!, this plastic gizmo that you use to pick up and throw a tennis ball. It’s the best invention in the world. Number one, you don’t get the repetitive motion pain; number two, you can throw the ball twice as far and exhaust the dog. A dog like Remington will sprint and play fetch until he collapses. And the best part about it is you never have to touch the slimy, dirty tennis ball.
Unfortunately, Remy’s obsession with fetching means that he wants nothing to do with other dogs: They can’t throw balls. So my plan to get a playmate for Niko kind of backfired. But it ended up solving my problem because they had their doggy communication and interaction. Niko stopped getting in the trash and running away. Even though they don’t play with each other, they’re buddies. They’ve lived together about four and half years now.
It’s interesting to see how the relationship between Niko and Remington has developed. Remington is full of bluster. He’s got one of those really deep barks. His initial reaction to Niko for the first couple weeks was to bark in his face. Niko said, “Uh-uh. I’m alpha.”
They had a couple of spats, but you have to let them work things out on their own dog level. If you don’t, you’re going against nature. They have to establish the hierarchies. Eventually they established that Niko was alpha. And after that everything was fine.
Remington knows not to go near Niko when he’s eating. If I’m giving out rawhides, Remington knows that Niko has to have his first. If we do that, they’re fine.
The relationship between Niko and Remy developed over the years. As they grew older, they started sharing a dog bed. If one of them is on the best dog bed, the other one can come up and share it. They obviously have come to a point where the hierarchy isn’t as much of an issue any more. They can just hang out.
When people realize I’m the guy from Animal Planet, many times they say, “Oh, Backyard Habitat, is that like making your yard great for dogs and cats?” I tell them no, it’s about wildlife, not about domestic animals. But obviously a lot of people who like wildlife are pet lovers. A lot of people think, “Oh, I have a big dog, I can’t have a backyard habitat.”That’s not true.
It’s your responsibility to be in control of your pet and not let your pet have a negative impact on nature and wildlife. Cats should be kept indoors, for example. It’s better for them. Cats take an enormous toll on small wildlife. Millions of birds a year are done in by cats.
With dogs, some can be aggressive and predatory. Niko actually killed a bird once. There was nothing I could do; he pounced on it. When you attract wildlife, make sure you are not putting them in a situation where they just get mauled and killed by your pets. For example, you can make sure you have dense shrubs and cover where the birds and animals can run when your dogs are after them.
On the show, we deal a lot with pet issues, particularly in regard to wildlife. There are things people need to know. For instance, the Colorado River Toad is massive, the largest toad in North America. But if you have a dog, don’t make a habitat that will attract it. Toads have glands behind their eyes that produce a toxin. The Colorado River Toads are so big that there have been cases where dogs killed them, ate them, or even just mouthed them, and got the poison, and died.
Then there’s coyotes. Since we eradicated gray wolves, the only predator of coyotes, coyotes have expanded their land. They are one of the few animals that have expanded their wildlife habitat even in the face of urban development. Coyotes eat small mammals, and domestic cats and dogs are definitely on the menu. And right now, coyote country is every state but Hawaii.
A few years ago, I met a guy named Dale, who lived in North Carolina. We had been dating for just a few months, doing the long-distance thing, when I went down to see him. His friends Susan and Lynn had a Saint Bernard named Orson that Dale was just in love with, and they hooked Dale up with the breeder. The four of us went out to the kennel.
There were three in the litter. One little girl puppy had a scratch on her eye. The breeder had taken her to the vet, but the eye was big and bulgy and swollen. We just fell in love with her, because she had this damaged eye, she was adorable, and she was 50 percent off. Dale named her Hella.
We kind of raised her together. When Dale first moved up to D. C. , I wasn’t ready to live together, so we had separate houses. Hella integrated well with Niko and Remington. Remington is friendly with other dogs, but his natural instinct is to go up to them and bark in their face. He acts like, “Don’t mess with me.” But he is completely harmless—all bark and no bite.
Hella figured this out pretty quickly. She was full of piss and vinegar, and she wanted to romp and bite on bigger dogs to get them to play, with those sharp little puppy teeth. She did that once with Niko and he told her, “Uh-uh. You’re not gonna bite me.” He snapped at her and pushed her down, which is discipline doggy-style. There was never another problem.
Remington, on the other hand, would constantly get all riled up and bark at her, which she just thought was the greatest thing ever. She learned immediately that he wouldn’t do anything beyond barking.
So she tortured the hell out of poor Remington, jumping on him, nipping at his paws, constantly going after him. It kind of irritated us, because Remington was constantly barking at her. But Hella integrated, and they ended up being our little pack. We spent all of our time together.
Hella was never alpha to Remington but she could always mess with him because she’s bigger. She weighs about 130 pounds now. Remington weighs seventy-eight; Niko is seventy to seventy-five. Hella is just the most adorable dog ever, with all the things that are endearing about one of these big, goofy dogs. She snorts, she belches. She’ll eat, and she’ll walk away, and go, “Bleh!”And her lips fly out. It’s really cute. Her eye never recovered, but she grew up with it, so she was used to it.
When Hella got big enough, Hella and Remington ended up forging this incredible friendship. Remington, as I said, was never into playing with other dogs, but he ended up loving to play with Hella.
When Dale finally moved in with me, Niko didn’t like him, and he got protective and jealous of me toward Dale on a couple of occasions, which freaked Dale out.
One time Niko was sleeping in bed with me, and Dale came in and leaned over, and Niko kind of growled at him. For me, that’s unacceptable behavior, but I understand why it happened. The solution is to not put the dog in that situation again, because he was doing what comes naturally to him.
Dale wanted to hit Niko. He said, “You have to show that dog who’s boss.”
I said, “No, the dog was protecting me in bed. And you need to understand that Niko is going to be that way, and not lean over me. At the same time, we’ll work on making him understand ‘Never do that again.’”
The solution was to have Dale develop a relationship with Niko so Niko would not feel threatened by him. And eventually that happened. But Dale still resented Niko, and it was an unspoken bone of contention between us.
While I was traveling for Backyard Habitat, I had to spend a lot of time on the road, and when I’d come home, I’d be exhausted. Dale became responsible for all the paperwork, all the cleaning, and these three big dogs. He is not as much of a dog person as I am, and he couldn’t handle all three on a walk. I can go out with all three big dogs, even with them braiding the leashes and getting tangled with each other.
That actually was a big contributor to what ended up breaking us up. We had a different philosophy and attitude in coping with the dogs. Dale didn’t understand that dogs need to be dogs and establish their own hierarchies and things like that. And he resent my bond with Niko.
He and Hella moved out about four months after they moved in. My house is small, and having three big dogs was just too much.
There was an interesting dynamic there. He and I coped with breaking up in different ways. It was a mutual thing. We still love each other, but it wasn’t working out, so breaking up was for the best. We’re going to be friends. And of course, we share the same group of friends, so we see each other all the time whether we want to or not.
Our breakup also impacted the dogs. Dale and Hella are living in a great basement apartment in a house owned by our friends Jeff and Mary. But Hella doesn’t have a fenced yard anymore, so she has to stay inside all day. Dale takes her out when he gets home from work, but it’s not the same as being outside and rolling in the dirt all the time. So I always say, “Bring Hella over.”
Dale needs more space than I do to get over everything. It has impacted Hella because she doesn’t get to do as much of that fun doggy stuff that she enjoys. Whenever Dale goes out of town, she comes to stay with us. I enjoy having her around.
After Dale moved in, Niko had to stop sleeping in bed with me. Yet even when Dale and I broke up, Niko respected that he was not allowed in bed any more. It showed me that you can teach an old dog new tricks. You’ve established for the first six years of his life that he sleeps on the bed. Then suddenly you make him adapt to “Only sleep on the dog bed.”
Right after Dale and I broke up, I was going through that phase where I was sobbing nonstop. Niko was invited into the bed for a while then because I just needed someone to be there and comfort me. Dogs are really good at that. But he knew that we weren’t going back to the way things used to be.
Niko being here, and agreeing to come up and comfort me in bed, lifted my spirits up, along with Remy just being his goofy self. It helped me get over the hump of the breakup. For me, it was my first real long-term relationship. Even though breaking up was a mutual thing, it still sucked. I’m still getting over it.
That’s one of the amazing things about dogs. They are there for you. They pick up on your emotions. There is this total unconditional love. My love for animals led me to become an environmentalist, and I hope I’m able to give back to all animals— wild and domesticated—by building habitats for them, and by giving my own dogs back as much love and devotion as they give to me. When I’m at home, on nice days, I can have the doors open and let the dogs go in and out between the house and the backyard as they please. It’s perfect. It’s the habitat I’ve created for all of us.
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If you trace the history of dogs in society, it’s clear that they have always played a role in developing the social conscience of man. In earlier times, men
gathered around pens to watch their dogs fight bulls or other dogs, and the man who owned a dog that could inflict deadly harm was proud. A hundred years later, man wrote down breed standards and invented dog shows, and the man who owned a prize specimen of his breed was proud. Men continue to gather around events that feature dogs—races, national breed specialties, Flyball games,
Frisbee competitions, herding trials, rescue parades, Dachshund Day in New York City’s Central Park—and the kinds of events expand every year.
Dog lovers who live in southern California are lucky because Justin Rudd has come up with many unique ways for them to celebrate their canines. Justin looked around his neighborhood and saw an unused beach; he changed the rules in his community so that the beach became a gathering place for people and their dogs. Next came the Bulldog Easter Parade, the Howl’oween Parade, the Haute Dog Poetry Contest, the Bulldog Beauty Contest, Operation Santa Paws, Thirty-Minute Beach Cleanups, and on and on.
Justin founded a community-based social organization that finds ways for people and their dogs to get together and enrich their lives. He is a powerful role model, showing us that making this world a better place for dogs makes the world a better place for all of us. When I spoke to him at his office in Long Beach, he said that his inspiration is his Bulldog, Rosie.
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WHEN I WAS GROWING UP in south Alabama, we lived on thirty-six acres out in the country. We would have anywhere from two to ten dogs at a time, whatever would come and eat our scraps. The dogs would sleep in our flowerbeds and chase the horses in the pasture for fun.
I moved to California ten years ago, to a city of half a million people. The population is dense. You can’t have a big yard. There’s things that you can do in south Alabama that you can’t do here in Long Beach.
I wasn’t looking for a dog. If I did get one, I wanted a dog I could go running with, like a Lab. But my ex had always wanted a Bulldog. One day he called me at work and said he was going to look at a litter of Bulldog puppies. He called me again and said he had found a special one—could he bring it home?
Of course I fell in love with Rosie at first sight. She was just four months old. So precious. I knew she was the one for me.
Because Rosie’s a purebred Bulldog, I know people would love to hijack her if I left her in the yard. So she’s an indoor dog. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, and the chair is hers. When I go up to the business district, which is two blocks away, I pull her in a sort of chariot I made behind my bike. It’s a red Flyer wagon that has her name on the license plate. I always take her with me. When we’re out and about, she really puts smiles on faces. If she’s not with me, people stop and ask, “Where’s the dog?”
She’s a big bundle of joy—all forty-five pounds. I don’t want to say she’s lazy, but she does sleep a lot. She has a hearty appetite. I think she smiles. I can see it. Some of us dog people can see dogs smile. She sleeps in my bed. Even though she sprawls out, she never takes up too much room. She snores loud. She’s generous with her love. She’s a kind and gentle dog.
She likes to be around other living creatures. She likes the word “treat” and dislikes the word “bath.” She loves peanut butter. She doesn’t like loud motorcycles And she hates trash trucks. She knows when the trash truck is coming. She can hear it ten blocks away.
She barks when someone knocks at the door or the doorbell rings. I don’t know if it’s her way of welcoming the people. She likes a good booty scratch. She likes her cheeks around her ears to be scratched. I’d like to say she likes to have her picture made, but I think it’s me who likes to make her picture. I have hundreds and hundreds. Thousands, probably. I haven’t counted.
For a few years I lived a block from the beach, and dogs were illegal on the beach. It’s not a heavily used beach. So I thought, Why can’t I take Rosie there?
I found city codes that would allow a dog on the beach during a special event. I filed for twenty special events over a two-year period. That meant that one Sunday a month, dogs could be on the beach, off leash, in a three-acre area.
Rosie and I would go up there, and we’d spend the afternoon with 400 or 500 dogs. Our attitude was, this is our party, and they are all our invited guests. She still thinks those beach events are for her.
She likes the word “beach” because then she knows where we’re going. Even though she’s not a swimmer, she wades in the water. She runs in the ocean up to her head, so that her feet are still touching. Then she’ll run back and forth—running, not just waltzing. And remember, this is a Bulldog. She runs along the wave line, back and forth. I can only have her there for maybe fifteen minutes at a time for fear of hyperventilating. She gets so excited. I think it’s the sound of the waves she loves. Or maybe it’s the foam she’s after.
From running those beach parties, I got the bug to do other fun things that could include Rosie. They have built upon themselves and grown and grown. I keep expanding the variety of activities because of her.
When I was working in an office, I used to take her to work with me. She would sit under my desk. But now I work from home, and we spend a lot of time together. She sleeps on her chair most of the day, while I’m at my computer. My main job is running my nonprofit group, Community Action Team. Haute Dogs is a part of that. We do beach clean-ups and animal-welfare projects and kid projects and events. Most of my work started at the same time that I got Rosie, about eight years ago.
The other thing that I do is coach women for beauty pageants, like Miss America and Miss USA contestants. I’ve been coaching women for beauty contests for fifteen years now. It started back when I lived in Alabama. I volunteered for the local Miss America preliminary. Then I started my own preliminaries for Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. After my local girls won the state level and competed nationally, other women started asking me to help them get ready.
I mainly focus on interview skills, and I do some in-my-home coaching, and some telephone coaching. I like beauty contests; I think that’s why I started the Bulldog Beauty Contest last year. We had 150 entrants—all English Bulldogs. We’re doing it again this year on Mother’s Day. Last year we did it on Father’s Day. We jokingly say about Bulldogs, “It’s a face only a mother could love.” I tell people, “I’m the dad of my dog.”
Rosie is the queen of the beauty contest, and she knows it. It’s kind of a sore point with her that she can’t compete. But she sleeps with the organizer, so we can’t allow it.
But she’s there, sitting on her wagon, which is actually her throne. I tell her, “Rosie, this is your party, and we’ve invited all your buddies.”They parade right in front of her. We have real life beauty queens as the judges. A lot of them are the women I coach.
Rosie gives a lot of licks to women when they come over here. And I tell them, “Don’t pay attention to her, and she’ll leave you alone.” But they always want to pet her. She loves that, and she always comes back for more. Then she’ll get her bone and decide to chew it while we’re working. She likes to wedge her bone against their leg so she can get a better grip on it. It’s humorous. I always tell them it’s good practice. Nothing else can distract you because you’re used to Rosie.
The judges are looking for similar things like you’d look for in a real-life beauty contest: figure and form, face and confidence, style, first impression, poise. Then we have alternate categories, like Most Talented and Best Dressed. The dogs can either be dressed or not. We certainly encourage them to put something on to grab the judges’ attention.
Last year two of our contestants were Bulldogs who ride skateboards, Tyson, from Huntington Beach, and Darla-Bell, from Pasadena. There’s a video of Tyson riding that skateboard going around on the Internet. Darla-Bell was chosen Most talented. We hold an animal-adoption fair in conjunction with the Bulldog Beauty Contest, with dogs and cats and other animals. We try to find homes for the homeless.
The L. A. TV news crews always show up for the Bulldog Beauty Contest, the Easter Parade and the Howl’oween Parade. Our Easter Parade was featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Every Easter Sunday, at two-thirty in the afternoon, we have more than 500 dogs show up dressed in bonnets and Easter outfits. It started because I wanted to do play-dates at the park. I got a bunch of friends together on a Sunday afternoon at the park, and we were having so much fun with our dogs, I thought we should share it. I said, “Let’s go parade down Second Street.” It was a spectacle, with fifty of us.
People loved it. Everyone wanted to wave at us, and pet the dogs, and take pictures.
So I said, “Let’s do it again next month.”So we did. Then I said, “Well, Easter’s coming up, let’s do an Easter parade.”I was hoping to get about 100 dogs. Three-hundred and fifty showed up! Now we’re in our sixth year.
The Tonight Show found out about our parade and wanted to bring on some contestants. The producer came down and interviewed in my apartment, with the dogs in their outfits. There were eight or nine pairs of us who talked to Jay.
While we were backstage, Rosie knew that there were people out in front of the curtain, so she was anxious to get out there. We were the first of the Easter dogs to come out. When they called for us, she ran out there with lots of energy, and the crowd just went wild.
Rosie wears a pink tutu that is her trademark. I made pink pearls for her out of pink Ping-Pong balls. I spray painted them pink and strung them with elastic. She has a white cottontail that I put around her nub of a tail. She wore bunny ears instead of a bonnet that year. Jay Leno was very impressed. He said a lot of things to Rosie, but darn if I can remember what. You put her in front of people, she just perks up. Just like a beauty queen. Right, Rosie?
There’s some common bond that Bulldog owners seem to have. It’s interesting. All of these events get a lot of gay men coming. Long Beach has a large gay population. And they’re not afraid to dress up their dog to help raise money for charity.
We see so much creativity in the bonnets and the outfits. Halloween is easy because every pet store in America now has Halloween outfits for dogs. Half the dogs in the parade will have store-bought outfits. But for Easter, there’s no place to buy one. It’s not easy, making a bonnet for a dog. People really put time and energy into these things.
I do dog photography now, and a dog poetry contest every year. I put together a dog newsletter that goes out every Thursday to 4, 500 local dog lovers. And it’s all because of her.
When I look at all those things that Rosie brings to my life, I realize that not every dog has the same fortune that she does. I want to be able to give that back to dogs that are in shelters or are part of a rescue group.
I started the Interfaith Blessing of the Animals, which I hold every fall, with 300-something animals getting blessed by various faith leaders—Catholic and Jewish and Muslim and Hindu. Every December I lead a drive called Operation Santa Paws to collect toys and treats for about 4, 000 shelter dogs and cats. We deliver to them in the days before Christmas. The idea is to make the dogs happy and healthy and generally more adoptable. We also collect cleaning supplies and beds and collars and leashes and all kinds of stuff for the shelters.
When Rosie and I went home to Alabama, HGTV followed us for a show called Going Home. They filmed the whole thirty-minute episode on us going back to Alabama—a city dog going back to the country.
Then she and I were on a show on Animal Planet called You Lie Like a Dog, helping to raise money for animal-welfare groups. The concept of the show was, there’s one dog and three people who claim to be the owner of the dog. One is the true owner. Three celebrities have to figure out who the real owner is by asking a series of questions. It was fun. Two of them said I was not the real owner. Only one said I was!
Rosie has her own Webpage on my Website. I’ve written poetry to her, which I’ve recited on her behalf at the Haute Dog Poetry Contest. I have videos of her. Each week I feature a different dog from Southern California called “Rosie’s Pick of the Litter.”
Each year on the Web site, we have an event we call the Rosies. It’s like the Oscars. Rosie is the spokeswoman, and we nominate dogs that have appeared in movies. My partner works for Sydney Pollack, the director, who has several Oscars. Rosie and I often go to visit my partner at the office. One day I took an Oscar off the shelf and put it beside Rosie and took some pictures. It looks like she’s kissing the Oscar. It’s great publicity for the Rosies.
Many gay men don’t have children in their life, so they have the time to spend with a dog. They want something or someone stable. Maybe they don’t have a partner, or even a good relationship with their parents or brothers or sisters. But a dog is there. They’re just your constant companion, your confidante, and your best friend. I think that’s what guys are looking for.
I’ve read many online articles that say that the senior years for a Bulldog are seven plus, and that the typical lifespan is eight to ten. But I know some friends who had a Bulldog for twelve and thirteen years. Rosie’s in good health. She had a cancer scare three years ago. They removed a big growth from right under her shoulder. It hasn’t grown back. She still runs around well and eats great.
All these events that I founded have continued because of my love for my dog. It is hard work. But at the end of the day, it is such a pleasure to see the smiles on the faces of the people who are coming with their pets. Or on the faces of the people who come to just be spectators.
Not only that, it’s the smiles on the faces of the dogs. That’s what I see, and that’s what I’ll always see. Their devotion to us, their spirit, their tenacity touch me so much. I want more dogs. One day, the right time and the right dog will come along. For now, it’s just Rosie and me, and we’ve got something special. Right, Rosie?
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