My Dog Charlie Is Dead (and He Wouldn’t Have Had Me Put It Any Other Way)

At 14, the old springer spaniel ran out of gas the same way people go broke: Gradually, then all at once. We put him down Friday. We’ll miss him of course. And so will close readers of Writing Boots, where Charlie had been a colorful minor character since 2010.

Here’s a Writing Boots retrospective, on Charlie.

2010

The Murrays got a puppy. I’d like to introduce him, and then we’ll talk about him. Cute little fellow.

Yeah, yeah. Within the first week:

I had spent $1,000 on the dog and on Bullshit Sprays, Piss Pads, Special Baggies, Gourmet Food and Other Stuff That Dog Owners Didn’t Need Until PetSmart Told Them They Needed®.

I had felt the warm ooze of Charlie’s shit between my bare toes.

I had mopped up Charlie’s piss maybe a dozen times.

Only a dozen, because I’d taken Charlie down the three flights of stairs probably 60 times.

I had bellowed “no” several hundred times.

I had lain awake for hours waiting for Charlie to stop barking from his cage. I can tell you that he barks at the rate of 62 times per minute.

Sleep deprived, I had gotten into an e-mail argument with Scout’s Aunt Susy, who feels strongly that I should refer to the cage as a “kennel,” because “cage sounds like the zoo.” How does gulag grab you?

I had risen seven mornings before sunup to take Charlie out.

I had had a conversation about “buyer’s remorse” with my wife. Tyranically but sincerely, I told her the thought, however natural, is simply unacceptable.

I had missed five workouts, unable to leave Charlie at the house to go running, unwilling to drag him down the sidewalk as I jogged. (Finally, I got over it, and now drag him down the sidewalk.)

My wife told me I need to be “strategic” about when I wrestle with him, “So he knows when it’s OK to bite.” I told her I didn’t know what “strategic” meant in this context. She said, “Like, maybe just don’t wrestle with him at all.”

I had told Scout she mustn’t run from Charlie when he nips at her. She continues to run from Charlie every time he nips at her. “I’m scared!”

(Oh, and don’t think I don’t know you’re finding fault with my leadership already; I use the word “I” too much, and “we” too little. Well I’m running a three-ring circus here, and I don’t have time to play tiddlywinks with everybody’s ego.)

I have my strategies—for potty training, and less urgent forms of obedience—and I’m sticking to them, and demanding that everyone in the household sticks to them. But do I know they’re going to work? No, and so I furtively check the websites of pet “experts” to see if they’ve got any other strategies that might work better.

I think I know how a CEO feels.

Helpless, put-upon, a little scared … and sorry for himself.

And with absolutely no moral justification.

***

2011

Not feeling his best on Monday, our springer spaniel puppy threw up his breakfast, and then gobbled it up again off the carpet.

Then, a half hour later, threw it up again and ate it.

Then threw it up and walked away.

Riddle: What’s dumber, a springer spaniel, or a man who has owned three of them?

***

2011

As I’ve always said, not all Republicans are dogs, but all dogs are Republicans. Wishing for nothing more than what they already have, dogs are conservative by nature. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s sort of touching.

But our puppy Charlie, I’m afraid, might actually be a Tea Partier.

He believes in very limited government. He acknowledges that of course the government needs to provide free food and water. But he definitely believes the government should not tell him what to chew on and where to poop.

When he thinks of books at all, it’s not about reading them, but destroying them.

When he’s angry, he barks. When he’s scared, he barks. When he’s sad, he barks. When he’s happy he barks. And the only responsible thing to do when he barks, is ignore him in hopes he’ll eventually stop and concern himself with something else.

I’ll be glad when this election season is over, won’t you?

***

2023

That SpaceX rocket blew up last week and the company called it a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

Would that I had that kind of euphemistic imagination one afternoon last week in my backyard, while communicating with my stakeholders, the neighbors. Instead, I reminded myself of my mother who, beleaguered by family criticism of her chain smoking, was asked by her five-year-old niece, “Nana, why do you smoke?”

“Because it tastes good,” she rasped.

I’m a comparative people-pleaser.

Occasionally I have had some famous blurts, such as when I involuntarily told a person in a meeting who had been gassing on inanely for many minutes on end to “shut the fuck up.” Or another time when a golf partner was talking while I was putting and as I walked by him, I made the talking motion with my hand and exclaimed, “Yackety-yak-yak-yak!”

Last week there was another one.

You see, it had been a very long day at work, and tomorrow also promised to be a very long day, of another kind.

It was 5:00 and all I wanted to do was mow my bionically growing springtime lawn before it got so out of control my little push mower wouldn’t handle it.

But on the way through the kitchen I got caught up in a teary conversation with a family member, on FaceTime. Goddamn!

On my way out to the yard, my wife told me the garage door wouldn’t close. So I fixed that.

On my way back through the gangway, I saw a dead rat that I’d been meaning to drop in the dumpster. So I did that.

Finally, forcing the mower over and over the tall, thick stands of grass, I heard my wife trying to talk over the screaming, choking reels. “I think something’s wrong with Charlie’s dick.”

“What?”

“Something’s wrong with Charlie’s dick.”

“How do you know?”

We turned the spaniel over on his back, and sure enough: Lots of leaves and twigs and other detritus stuck to the oddly viscous wiener. My wife went in to get the scissors and came back and started cutting off the hair that held the schmutz.

Just then, three of my neighbors appeared at the fence, two women and one man. Dog lovers, all.

“What’s wrong with Charlie?!” one asked.

For a moment, it did occurr to me that if there was ever a time for a euphemism, this was it. I was once offended by a beer cooler in the grocery store with an invitation to “Drink while you shop.”

But after the day I’d had, and the day I was facing and the work I still had to do, I decided I had neither the imagination nor the energy to muster something soft.

And so I heard myself say, “There’s something wrong with his dick.”

The two women practically bolted off down the gangway. But later my wife said she might have seen a little smile on the man’s face.

POSTSCRIPT: The dick is fine. I trust the neighbors are, too.

***

POST POSTSCRIPT: And now Charlie is dead. (Having been too unpretentious to have “passed” and possibly not bright enough to have located and traversed “the rainbow bridge.”) We miss you, buddy. Especially when we drop something yummy on the floor.