Gatsby
Part One
I wait in the kennel entryway, relieved that my work trip is over and excited that I finally get to see my boy. The attendant gives me a full report of his activities, complete with photos and a list of extras: extra puppy play time, extra walks, his favorite treats and toys, and even a bath. She tells me how wonderful he is and that he sometimes preferred to be with the people than with the other dogs. They allow him to do what he pleases and don’t charge us for the extras.
“He believes he is people,” I say, and then my next sentence is cut off because he has appeared, whining and groaning, his body wriggling with excitement. I crouch down to greet him. He puts my entire forearm in his mouth and gently clamps down, tasting me to make sure I am really there, vocally expressing his excitement despite his mouth being full. I extricate my arm and hug him, petting him calmly and enveloping him in my arms, telling him how much I missed him.
“Let’s go home,” I say, and he follows me out the door and hops into the front passenger seat. It’s a forty-five minute drive from the kennel, the only one within striking distance that we felt was even remotely worthy of Gatsby. It had private rooms with walls painted in cheerful colors, real beds, and televisions that played Animal Planet. It was worth the extra drive time to make sure he was as spoiled as possible when we had to leave him. He took our absence personally, and right now, in the car, he was proving it. Since his initial relief and excitement had passed and he knew we were going home, it was now time for him to demonstrate how pissed he was that we’d left him in the first place. I reach over to pet him and ask him how his time was. He turns his back on me, looks out the window, refusing eye contact except for a disapproving side eye, and farts maliciously. When we arrive home, he gives my husband a cursory glance and retreats to the bedroom where he ignores us until it’s time for his supper. This is our punishment for leaving him behind. Gratefully, by morning, all will be forgiven.
He used to be Tyson. Lab mix. Four months old. That’s what the little card said that was attached to chain link door of his cage at the Humane Society. He was small and black, and shaking. He and his siblings had been abandoned at the shelter. One by one they’d been adopted, and only he remained.
“He’s shaking because he was just neutered,” said the attendant. “It’s the anesthesia.”
I had been scouring the internet for months, searching for the perfect companion to ease my loneliness after moving to Maine when I got engaged. I’d left my job and friends behind, and though I’d recently started working again, I struggled to find people with whom I had anything in common. My fiancé, Jay, tried admirably to fill the void, but I was accustomed to an active social life, particularly one that included a circle of strong, smart women. That, combined with the still-raw scar left from leaving my last dog behind with my last boyfriend (see “Sasha”), had left me simultaneously longing for, and dreading, finding a forever friend. I am not someone who can go to a dog pound and leave without a dog, so I had held off on physically visiting any of the half dozen I’d been searching online. I wanted to make sure I was ready. I wanted to make sure I could afford it, since I had ended my last relationship in financial disaster and only recently recovered. I wanted to make sure I would never have to leave this dog behind.
It was Jay who had stopped at the Humane Society on his way home from work. When he came home, he loosened his tie while casually telling me he’d found our dog, and that I needed to go see him tomorrow.
“When I went in the cage to see him, he sat on his hind legs and wrapped his front paws around my glove like he was hugging my hand. Then he gnawed on it.” he said.
I’d never had a male dog before. I’d only been looking at females, my primary thought being that they didn’t lift their leg to pee on everything; and now, here I was, staring at this shivering little dog who’d just been neutered. He had sleek black fur and soulful brown eyes that stared back at me imploringly. Jay knelt to greet him, and Tyson sat calmly, the tip of his tail wagging curiously; and then, he wrapped his paws around Jay’s wrist and gently mouthed his glove, as if he could determine Jay’s character by tasting him. It felt like he was choosing us as much as we were choosing him. He was so sweet and so calm, and his eyes…his eyes were telling me that we needed to take him home.
Sadly, we could not. He had to recover from his surgery first, and then we could go back to get him. It felt awful leaving him behind in that cage for another night, but we paid the deposit and said we’d be back in three days to get him.
The waiting was agony. We bought food, and bowls, and a leash and collar; and we debated what to rename him. Tyson, I had said, was a brand of chicken. It does not suit this dog at all.
“His name has to be Gatsby, of course,” my friend Kimber declared since she had lovingly nicknamed Jay, “Jay Gatsby”. And that was that.
We did all the normal things with Gatsby after we brought him home on a cold February day. We potty trained him, scolded him when he ate a light bulb, chewed on the living room carpet, nibbled several shoes and a pair of ice skates. We taught him to go downstairs by putting his supper in the basement. He grew.
On our walks, he objected to a decorative, life sized, mail man in someone’s yard. Day after day, he growled at the immobile form as we walked by. When I told him that he should be embarrassed, he had the good sense to look that way. Somehow, Gatsby seemed to understand nearly everything I said to him. He stayed in our small, unfenced yard. He came when I called him. If I pointed at something, he would look where I was pointing. I could say things like, “go around to the other door,” and he would. One day, we were out walking, and a baby bird had fallen out of its nest and into the road. Before I could stop him, Gatsby had enveloped it into his enormous mouth. I think he was surprised it hadn’t flown away. I told him to drop it, and he did, gently spitting out the tiny creature, whom he hadn’t harmed. He was exceptionally smart, responding to numerous voice commands without us ever training him. When I looked into his eyes, I knew he understood. In addition to being a good learner, he was also a good grower. He got taller, and taller, and longer and longer, and we eventually determined that the “mix” part of his “lab mix” was Great Dane, making his name all the more fitting. He was a gentle giant, his head reaching above our dining room table, his 108 pound frame intimidating to those who didn’t know him.
When spring came, we learned that Gatsby was a water dog. He would spend hours launching himself off of the dock at camp, displaying impressive feats of both height and distance. For a break he would hang off of the rope swing, growling and tugging as he failed to bring down the limb it was wrapped around. We could take him anywhere, and he stayed within whatever parameters we showed him. He would remain where I told him to, sometimes for as much thirty minutes while I went for a run and he waited in the yard. He knew specific toys by name and would retrieve the one you asked for. He would walk, run, wait, and play, all with simple verbal commands. These weren’t things we worked on; they were just things he figured out. When he wanted something, he would stare at me intently. If I felt upset, he would look into my eyes with concern, or sit on my feet so that I would be forced to pet him.
He enjoyed watching TV, particularly shows with animals in them. His favorite was the wolf scene from The Polar Express. From wherever he was in the house, he would appear just before the scene began, whimpering, ready for his friends to cross the screen. Gatsby would jump and bark, and whine and groan, desperate to join the wild wolves as the elusive golden ticket fluttered by. He would chase them off the screen and look for them out the window, sad and disappointed that they had disappeared.
He was a verbal dog, groaning if it was too hot, groaning if you interrupted his nap, groaning if you made him move out of the way. In the early months, we were strict about him not getting on furniture, or being given any people food, or any number of other things that we thought would make him a well-behaved dog; but then there was the fateful day that Jay allowed him on the bed, “just this once,” he said, and my quality of sleep was forever changed. Our bed was now Gatsby’s bed. He slept there all day while we were at work, and then, at bedtime, he would creep up between us, making his body small and unobtrusive, and wedge his way in. He would put his head next to mine on my pillow and nestle in as though we were spooning. By morning, Jay and I found ourselves clinging to opposite edges of the bed as our human sized dog had sprawled his massive body in every direction, claiming the middle two thirds of the bed for himself, pushing his paws into Jay’s back and pushing me aside with his torso.
Gatsby made friends with the five Newfoundland’s next door and the lanky shepherd that lived behind. They would appear at our back door and I would call out, “friends!” Then I would hear the thunk of him jumping off of the bed followed by him tearing down the stairs, whining and yelping in his excitement. He also befriended a chipmunk that sat on our deck waiting for Gatsby to chase him. He tried to make friends with a porcupine but wound up having nearly one hundred quills surgically removed at the vet. He never made that mistake again.
Six years after he has become my best friend, my constant companion, my best listener, my source of pride, we introduce him to our daughter. We had worried, wondering how he would adapt to not being the center attention. My husband brings a blanket of the baby’s home from the hospital so Gatsby can get used to her scent before I arrive with her. That first night home, the bassinette is pushed up against the side of our bed, our daughter asleep inside. Gatsby leaps onto the bed, peers into the bassinette, and lies down beside it, hanging a paw over the edge, as though to hold it in place, and his giant head rests inside, his nose nearly touching the soft down of her head. He keeps watch over her and I can’t imagine anything more perfect than this moment.