Six years ago I started a blog called It's All About Robin. I wanted to document the life of our first child who was just then a few months old. It was a great way for me to keep track of all of the big - along with the little - changes in life and how much the focus of everything had become about her. A few years later we had Olivia, and a year ago Sydney. Life got busy. REALLY busy. Today it's hard to remember a time without kids.
Ten years ago was a different anniversary. That was when Jen and I first moved in together. We thought we’d add a little chaos to our life in the form of a pet dog. We named him Griffin.
We found our little fluff ball through an ad in the paper. The puppy of a pure bred American Eskimo that had a surprise romance with a Mutt Terrier, he was a handsome dog often mistaken for a fox. Griffin turned out to be an accurate name because he could almost fly through the sky, an agile, fast-running, high-leaping, tree-climbing dog. Quickly we found out that although we succeeded in getting smaller dog that didn't slobber, we also had one of the most high energy dogs imaginable. We had to exercise his brains out just to keep him (and us) sane.
Griffin was walked all the time, trained little tricks, and got all the attention he could want. Having a pet isn't the perfect training for becoming a parent, but it turns out raising a dog is a pretty good start. You have to plan your life around them. You have to be around for them. You have to teach them. Our home was all about Griffin.
After having Robin, things changed. Griffin got to play second fiddle. Not neglected, not forgotten, but he didn't get all of our attention anymore. With Olivia and then Sydney coming along, finding time for Griff could take work. He was still a big part of our lives, with the kids loving to play with him, run with him at the dog park, and argue over who got to hold his leash on walks. Olivia would hold his leash and pretend it was a steering wheel, while Robin would sprint fast as she could with Griff easily trotting along. The kids would help train him by giving treats for tricks, and negotiate who would give him the treat for coming inside.
We'd go on family trips, failing to remember until almost the last minute that we couldn't take Griff and had to find a sitter. A month ago we went to Vancouver and left him with Jen's Aunt and Uncle. They gave him the royal treatment: all the attention he could ask for and walks to his heart’s content. When we came back after ten days, we picked him up and went to the lake. He was one tired dog.
After a few days at the lake, he was still tired. That wasn't like him. He slunk under the couch and wouldn't come out. Jen reached under to give him some pats, see what was wrong. That's when she found the lump on his neck. It wasn't there ten days ago. I went back into town to see the vet right away. Testing showed that it was cancer. It couldn’t be cured. The vet gave him 2-6 months.
Just because it was incurable, didn't mean that there was nothing we could do. We had the lump in his throat removed to help him eat and breath more easily. Griffy perky up a little. The kids played with him and his rope again like old times. He slept on our bed every time he wanted. We were able to remind ourselves of all the ways he was special to us. Not everyone gets this time. I had the chance to reflect and remember all the stories that made Griffin our crazy and lovable dog.
When he was big enough we took him to “puppy kindergarten” for training. He was the only dog there that would rather play than take the treats. Someone told us about a dog treat that no dog could resist that came in a tube. The so called “puppy crack” worked, and he ended up being pretty good for a little scamp who just wanted to play. He even got a diploma.
He had a unique relationship with food. We could leave his food out all the time and he would just eat when he needed. Popcorn fell on the floor before it was salted? No thank you. He would give it a little lick, then leave it and wait for the good stuff to drop. Once a dog sitter didn’t have the right dog food for him and he didn’t eat for two days! He even had the odd - and yes, gross - habit of wanting to lick my fingers after flossing.
His agility was mind boggling. That dog could run as fast as almost any in the park, then turn so quickly he could make his own paws bleed. I liked to amaze kids who would see him on our walks by having him run up a tree - to my eye level! - to grab a stick out of my hand. In order to burn out his energy in the cold winter, I’d run him out with him chasing a laser pointer, which he lost his mind about. At the off leash I’d throw a rubber tennis ball the length of two football fields and he’d sprint full out the whole way to get, then come back exhausted and looking for more.
I would have brought him to agility classes if not for the fact that he was unvaccinated. Not vaccinating would seem like a complete reversal in values for us, because we would have given him a shot for everything under the sun. But when he was a puppy, he had a biphasic anaphylactic reaction from the needle. We had to bring him to the vet twice in one night, the second time with his face swelling up like a pug! From then on he was more likely to be harmed from a vaccine than from the actual disease, so it was an easy choice to stop.
Our dog was certainly a land dog. He hated the rain as much as I do, and a jump in the water was followed by spastically trying to find the shortest route out. Water to him was a substance made to get out of as quickly as possible. For Griff it wasn’t so much swimming as trying to run upwards out of the water. I don’t know if he thought he was running from sharks or piranhas, or just “AHHH! I can’t touch the ground!” but Griffin was having none of that. It was Jen’s relatives the Kays that finally got him swimming. Griffin’s love of chasing sticks overpowered his hydrophobia and he learned to chase them into the lake from the beach. They also taught him to roll over and other things I’d never seen him do. From this I learned being an owner or a parent doesn’t mean you will be their only teacher. I suppose it helped that they would bring him to Echo bay, his own version of Wonderland.
Griffin had a bark that was as painful as a banshee scream; I’m almost surprised it never broke glass. It became even more piercing when he was excited. I lost my marbles almost every time we drove to the dog park as he would excitedly yipped the whole way. He always new. And ALWAYS yelped. For most of her life, he never howled, until one day we started to howl as a joke and he joined in. I even found out he’d howl when I played anything above a high C on the penny whistle. And bark at everything that made the slightest noise he didn’t like outside of the house.
There was a strange mix of courage and cowardice in Griff. He was terrified of the crackling pops from a fire, or the snapping of bubble of gum. On the other hand, he would chase dogs four times his size at the park and even once chased a bear up a tree. I often refered to him as being very stupid for a smart dog. He would bark at animals on the TV, only to run back behind the television not to find them there. This of course only led to him trying to attack them directly through the screen. It got to the point where if an animal was on the screen, we’d scramble for the remote to change the channel before Super Griff would attack. The crazy little fella even once stood there barking at my Dad because he had a dog on his shirt. He covered the shirt, Griff was fine. He showed the shirt and Griff would lose it and bark his head off again.
Sometimes he would test his dominance. His adolescent years were my first experience of the need to teach boundaries to a dependant. I was once explaining to our friend Troy how good of a dog he was, only for us to walk by the bedroom where he stood on our bed. He looked directly at me, lifted his leg, and peed, all to Troy’s delight. There was also a humping issue. I think he only did that for people he liked. During a Hallowe’en party at our house, a friend was sitting down in a dining room chair in her beauty queen costume, which Griff must have liked because he put both paws up on the back of the chair and air humped to his heart’s content before anyone noticed. He was so concerned about other dogs around him that one time on a walk with Jen, he saw a dog across the street. Griff stared that dog down, and did it so intensely that he walked right into a tree.
What I will remember most about Griffin is how much affection he gave. I won’t pretend to know what goes on in a dog’s mind that makes him lick you a thousand times to show he cares. Especially when you’ve told him to stop time and again. We counted it up once, and his total lifetime lick number was likely over a million. He loved to cuddle on your lap until he got too warm; he would come and lick your face after you took him for a walk. There was one particular friend that he decided to show his love to by first pooping in her kitchen, then when she didn’t get the hint, he peed in the back seat of her car. He got the attention all right, but I don’t think his love letter properly crossed the species barrier. She may disagree with me about his intent. On those rare times that we let him sleep on the bed, he’d curl right up next to us like he was meant to be there. He liked to be close to his family.
When he was too sick to do the things he loved, we tried to give him back that same level of affection he gave to us. We took him to the off leash as much as he could take, walked him as a family, and gave him medicine to dull the pain. On his last trips to the off leash, he'd still yip in excitement when we got close, but this time instead of losing my temper I'd just smile. The dog food he normally ate we soaked in water to make soft so it wouldn’t hurt his throat. When he no longer ate that, he got tuna. When he ignored the tuna I got the “puppy crack” he used to love as a puppy. When he wouldn’t eat that on his own, I fed him by hand. Griff’s state reminded me that life is impermanent so I tried to spend as much time with him as I could. Unlike kids, dogs never grow up and go off on their own. They are forever dependants.
We didn’t hide anything from the kids. I’m so proud of how well they handled it. Olivia patted him and said “I hope you don’t die Griffin.” Robin made a heart shaped cut out of paper that said “Goodbye Griffin”. They were very sad but also very strong. When it was time, they were ready. Up to the end, even though Griffin was very tired, he would always get that excited look in his eyes when he was about to go for a walk. With some friends I once joked that he would remain a puppy until the day he died. I think he did.
There’s enough distractions around I could use not to think about all of this and let it pass. But day to day life is filled with the memories of Griffin’s habits. I think about when we can find time to walk him, I hold the door open for him when I get home, I drop food and expect him to take care of it. Then I pick up the food myself and don’t see his expectant eyes looking for what will fall next. I’ll see a shadow in the corner of my eye and look over, thinking that it’s him, and then remember he’s gone. This story of Griffin helps me deal with that. Telling people things like this isn’t easy to do in person. But I wanted others to understand how important he was to us. For me it’s easier to write down.
I tried to finish writing this before Griffin was gone, and for part of it I did. I wanted to type while still being able to look at him, still be able to call him over and think about everything that was Griffin. Maybe having worked on this both before and after his passing is like a bridge between the two times, helping me move on. This is sad, I know that, but avoiding it would do no good. I don’t want to. Hard things, sad things, they're a part of life. Griff was a dog, not a person, and they have short lives. You get a short period of simple and almost unconditional love. That's the bargain. I’ll accept that pain of loss now, because I got to have Griffin in my life. And for a little while again, it was all about Griffin.
