Today was a sad day for the Sheehan Family. We had to let Boris, our dog of these many years, fly away today.
Boris was an excellent, excellent dog, beloved by all who knew him. I found Boris in a scrubby parking lot in May of 1991 on my way to work, at that time at WAMC Public Radio in Albany, New York. He scrambled out of some weeds and was very cute and playful, just a puppy (the vet later put his age at 3 months). I played with him a bit -- I have vivid memories of this -- and went on my way.
I crossed a busy street to get to the office when I heard a screech of brakes behind me. The puppy had followed me and had nearly been struck by a car. I picked him up and carried him to the office. He was gonna follow me anyway, and I didn't want him to get hit.
I examined him once I got there with Bill, the computer guy from next door. He had a flea collar, but was covered with fleas. He had no other ID. Bill had some flea spray so we held Boris down and tried to kill some of the fleas on him. Well, he didn't care for that and bolted away. He nearly got hit by a car again until I managed to catch up with him.
I brought him up the street to the Central Veterinary Hospital for a flea bath and checkup, and then returned to the office with a small sack of food. I worked mainly with women in that office and each and every one cooed over him and said how nice it would be to have a dog. For various reasons none of them would take him, and at the end of the day it was my boss and me. He looked at me and said, "Well, I'm not taking him," and so it went.
I named him Boris because on that day Boris Yeltsin had famously stood atop a tank and stared down a coup. I was impressed with his guts and also his drinking ability, so Boris it was.
For a time, I felt that Boris must have been a reincarnated upholsterer, such was his zeal for removing the coverings and innards of my various second-hand furnishings. One day my good pal Charlie Voelker, who had taken the apartment downstairs from mine, had gone home for lunch and called me at the office. "You'd better get home. I think your dog is going nuts."
All Charlie could hear through the ceiling was non-stop galloping from one end of the apartment to the other. I returned home to find the side of my couch neatly peeled back along the seams with a surgical precision and the fiber filling piled tidily in a ball beside it. The garbage in the kitchen was literally strewn throughout the house. A comically cheerful dog stood there, tail wagging, delighted to see me (not for long, on that occasion).
My friend AJ had the pumps eaten out of his Reebok Pumps. My friend Brian had half his cowboy boot eaten, then vomited in the day after Thanksgiving. At one point I secured Boris in a doggie cage during the days, only to come home one day and find the cage secure but Boris outside of it, as if by magic, gnawing on my belongings.
But he grew out of puppyhood and calmed down, and went on to have a great life. Boris has literally been from one end of America to another, from northeastern Canada to Southern California.
Boris went as far north as Prince Edward Island. On the day before my friend Brian and I were to depart from PEI, we took one last beach walk. As Brian and I walked out on a long spit of rock, we looked back to see Boris flopping around and jumping about on the sand. We thought he was playing. Only when we returned to the car -- ready for our long 12-hour trip home on a hot summer day -- did we realize with horror that he had found some hideous smelly sea-carcass on the beach and that is what he had been rolling around in. An impromptu dog bath ensued, to mixed results. Suffice it to say we drove the rental car home with the windows open.
On that same trip Boris did the smartest thing I ever saw a dog do. We went to the beach and the sand was really hot. So Boris started digging. He dug and dug until he had dug out a little trench the length and width of his body into the cool sand below, at a 45 degree angle. Then he turned around and backed his little butt down into the nice cool sand. I should be so smart.
On a trip to a friend's island camp in Rhode Island he became convinced I had got on a boat going out for supplies (I hadn't, I was taking a nap). Boris hated swimming -- but he chased that boat all the way to the end of the island, then jumped in the water and swam after it as far as he could before he turned around and swam back. I woke from my nap to find him outside, soaked and bedraggled. I had no clue what had happened until many hours later. Later on that same trip we took him out to a sandbar and we went swimming. Boris was very agitated. He finally, tenuously, got into the water and swam out to me, just until he could touch his nose to mine, and then swam back to wait for us. It was as if he just wanted to make sure he could still get to me.
Boris had many great adventures. Of course he moved with me from Albany to Chicago, driving out with us in Genevieve's old Chevy. Soon after Genevieve and I got together he became Genevieve's dog more than mine, I think. He would always sleep in bed with her, no matter my protestations. Once in Chicago he became a beloved favorite of all our friends (my friend Michael Butz took the above picture, our favorite of Boris, at a party in our backyard).
At another party we were cooking hamburgers -- the kind you buy in a big frozen package. A stack had stuck together and wouldn't come apart so I tossed them on the ground. These were big 8 oz. burgers, and there must have been three of them stuck together. Boris fell upon them like the wolf in the fold sweeping down upon the Assyrians, and it was the work of an instant for him to consume the lot. Having eaten roughly 5% of his body weight in ground beef, he lay down on his side and didn't budge for at least two hours.
Boris' biggest adventure was probably the drive out here to California. He really seemed to enjoy it, seeing all the sights and smelling all the unfamiliar smells. We have some great pictures of that trip which I will share when I can dig them up.
Life in LA only kind of agreed with Boris. We were living in apartments so he didn't have much room to run around, and we didn't get him out to dog parks as often as we would have liked. When Jack came along, Boris of necessity got less of our attention than he used to, my only regret. When we brought Jack home from the hospital Boris would sleep at the bottom of Jack's bassinet as if guarding him.
When we moved here to Monrovia Boris enjoyed the backyard a lot. His age was really getting to him, though, and he was a lot less mobile but he liked sniffing out all the furthest reaches of the yard.
Lately his extreme age -- he was 17 1/2 -- was really taking its toll. He was mostly blind from catacaracts and almost completely deaf. He was having ever-greater difficulty walking. He wasn't eating much. His enlarged heart, a concern for the last half-dozen years, caused a horrible, wracking cough that toward the end was nearly constant. Concerned, I brought him to the vet last week. He tested fine, for a dog of his incredibly advanced years. He was just very old and frail.
The last few days he went into a precipitous decline. He hadn't eaten. He could barely stand or walk. He would mostly have to drag his hind legs behind him. I would bring him outside and he would fall over sideways before struggling to stand. It was horrible to see this once vibrant little dog, who would leap three feet in the air for a little treat, staggering and falling. Yesterday, we reached a hard, but not difficult decision to take him to the vet's to have him euthanized.
Explaining this to Jack was tough and upsetting. At first I tried to BS him with some story about Boris "going away" but I felt like a jerk. So I simply explained that Boris was very very sick and old, and everything had to die some time, the plants, the flowers, the trees, and doggies, and it was Boris' time to die and we had to help him because he was hurting pretty bad.
"But I can give him some of my medicine, and he will get all better," said Jack. No, I explained, little boy medicine won't work for doggies. This prompted some tears (all around). Then Jack was thinking some more and he said, "But, he can go to the doggie doctor, and the doggie doctor can give him some medicine, and he will be all better again." So the discussion went for a while.
This morning, after a night when I had difficulty sleeping, I rose at 7 and took Boris to the vet at 8 am. The doctor, a kindly man, explained what would happen. A strong anaestheic would be administered, which would basically numb Boris' body out. Then a barbiturate overdose would be administered, which would place him in a coma, so his brain function would cease, peacefully and painlessly, before his body functions shut down. I am unashamed to confess I was weeping considerably by this point in the explanation, as I am tearing up now, some hours later.
I had been holding and petting him and I gently held his head and petted his ears and scratched under his chin the way he'd always liked. I had my head close to him (as he was very deaf) and I told him in gentle tones what a good boy he was.
He lay very still. He hadn't moved much in the last few days and had just seemed so tired and ill. I really felt like this was a release for him.
The doctor listened to his heart as he slipped away.
"He's gone," the doctor said. "I'm sorry for your loss. Take as much time as you need." He left me alone in the room.
Boris lay there on a little towel I had brought with me, motionless, his eyes still open. I cried for a little while, then collected my wits and went home.
Today, we will get out of the house. Go to Disneyland, watch the Cubs, whom I hope shall win because we've had rather enough trauma for one day. In a few days I shall collect Boris' ashes and next weekend I shall go on a hike into the San Gabriel Mountains which overlook our home and spread his ashes there. He will always be part of our family and we will always miss him very much.
He was a really, really good dog.
