David Jett Explains Doggies
Doggies are better than people which makes them the best. That’s the explanation. Thanks for reading!
Maybe that’s a little short for an article. Ok, here’s more.
The first dog I ever owned, many decades ago, was a Basenji named Salem, although for some reason I ended up mostly calling her Senji. The Basenji is an unusual breed. They started out as hunting dogs in Central Africa and are known as the “barkless dog” although that is a little misleading. They don’t bark in the traditional sense, but are very vocal, with noises ranging from howls and yodels to mutterings that sound like how a cartoon dog would speak. The breed is highly intelligent which can cause both delight and consternation.
When I decided to get my first dog many decades ago, I did a lot of research and settled upon the Basenji, which you can’t just walk into an animal shelter and find. I discovered a husband and wife around two hours away from where I lived, and they owned a pair of Basenjis who had just had a litter of puppies. It was very amusing watching an entire pack of Basenjis roaming around the house as they looked less like a family of dogs and more like a Navy Seal team planning the overthrow of the neighborhood.
The litter was mostly boys with only one girl. She was the smallest of the bunch and the shyest. And, of course, she was the one I picked. On the two hour drive back to my house, she spent the first 5 minutes on the blanket I had brought and the next 1 hour, 55 minutes in my lap. She became a great companion. Because the breed has a lot of cat-like qualities, I didn’t feed her twice a day. In fact, she had no set meal times. I would fill her bowl with food, and unlike most dogs who will eat as much as you give them, Senji would only eat what she wanted. She may eat half of the food and leave the rest for later in the day. I would keep her bowl full of food and she would never overeat. She was highly intelligent so her human word vocabulary was quite large. In addition to food and treat, she also knew the words cheese, fried rice and Taco Bell. I think she got the most excited by fried rice.
If you’ve ever seen the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films, you may recall a running bit where Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Cato would stage sneak attacks to keep the Inspector sharp (and provide us with hilarious slapstick fights.) Senji did this often. She would wait until you weren’t paying attention, run full speed at you and smack you on the butt, and then haul ass into another room where she would wait for you to reciprocate. One time when we were playing this game, I hid behind a couch, waiting for her to come into the room so I could sneak attack. Well, she didn’t show up. I thought maybe she had grown tired of the game. I peaked around the side of the couch and saw nothing. I then slowly raised by head above the back of the couch, kind of like when they looked up into the ceiling tiles in Aliens. As soon as my head came about the couch, Senji, who had been waiting patiently on the couch, took her paw and hit me on the head as hard as she could, and then took off running, and I swear I might have heard laughter.
She was smart, but maybe not as smart as a gang of Dobermans, as they could rob banks, at least according to a series of wacky 70’s movies.
Earlier this past week, I lost my little buddy Olive.
Many months ago, she was diagnosed with cancer. I’m not going into the details except to say that things were done and she was taking medication. Outside of a bad day here and there, she was living a normal, fun, life. Until she wasn’t. Time and cancer caught up to her and she had to be put to sleep so she wouldn’t suffer. She was doing well, until a couple of weeks ago when I could tell it pained her to walk up steps or climb into bed. She slowed down, and had a couple of days where she didn’t want to eat. When I woke up Tuesday morning, she couldn’t walk. At all. She wouldn’t eat. She seemed to be in pain. The medication was no longer working. The vet had warned that this day would come. And it did. It was time for little Olive to go to sleep for the last time.
Olive was a rescue of sorts. She had belonged to a couple who lived down the street from me (my last residence before the house I’m currently in.) I’m pretty sure they were both crack and/or meth heads. They made her stay outside most of the time, and she got out of the backyard quite often. I would see her wandering the streets looking for thrown out boxes of KFC, hoping to find something to eat. One particular night around nine years ago, it was the dead of winter, around 20 degrees outside. I was sitting on my front porch, smoking a cigarette and looking at the snow, when she came walking up to me. She was shivering and hungry and scared but happy to see someone. I petted her and she seemed so happy. As I petted her, I noticed a sore on her back that looked exactly like someone had pushed a lit cigarette onto her. Turns out the idiot couple who owned her were not home and didn’t come home for another day or so. She would have frozen to death by the time they did. That idiot couple (who moved about a month later) never saw her again. She had already found a newer and safer home. A “forever home.”
I’ve always been able to compartmentalize my feelings, especially if there’s something that needs to be done. That’s a trait that makes me good in a crisis or under pressure.
The first job I had out of college was with a small video production/ad agency that employed around 15 people. Gary, the owner, had been a singer/comedian in the last vestiges of vaudeville in the Catskills. He later got into advertising and eventually started his own company. He was quite the character, but drank to excess, so much so that in later life he had giant mood swings and suicidal thoughts. There was once a shoot for a client’s commercial that involved someone dressed in a bear costume. Gary played the bear. The shoot was outside, in the summer, and the heat was, let’s just say, unbearable. Gary was getting annoyed that the shoot was taking longer than anticipated, and he seemed some combination of mad, tired and depressed. He kept saying, “can we get this done so I can go home and take off this bear suit?!” Since that day, whenever I have a hard day or I’m going through difficult times, I always think that I just want to “go home and take off the bear suit.” It just means not knowing how long you can continuing putting up a good front before you just collapse in tears or despair.
Around eight months later, I was going in to our offices on a Saturday to finish a video edit that had to FedEx’ed to a client before the end of day to hit a deadline. (This was before video went digital and you still worked with video tape.) As I walked in, I noticed Gary’s Cadillac parked in the lot. I didn’t see him inside the office but it wasn’t unusual for people to meet there and get in one car to head out to lunch or to meet a client. After I had been working for several hours, another employee showed up. He parked directly next to Gary’s car, so he saw inside. Gary had pulled into the parking lot and killed himself with a shotgun.
There were a few other people working that day, and word got up to me that Gary had committed suicide in the parking lot. The police had been called, one employee started calling the creative director and Gary’s sister who was the office manager. I continued editing. The company had an archivist/gopher/annoying idiot who burst into the edit bay in a panic. “What are you doing? Gary is dead!! Stop working!!” I said, “Gary might be dead, but we still have clients that are depending on this video and I only have an hour to finish it, so get the fuck out of this room.” The idiot’s name was Preston and he was a complete twit. (I challenge you to find anyone named Preston who isn’t a complete twit.)
I finished the edit, got the tape to Fed Ex and held my shit together. I was going out to dinner with my girlfriend that night, and as much as I had held shit together earlier, when I got to her apartment, that’s when I went into shock. I had a blank stare on my face and she could tell something was wrong. I told her what happened and collapsed in her arms.
I managed to get through work this week by staying busy and not talking to anyone about Olive. I listened to podcast after podcast on the way to and from work. When I would get home, I would immediately keep my brain occupied by watching hours and hours of tv until it was time to go to sleep. (thank you AMC for the Mad Men marathon!)
There were times I would start to tear up, but then try to think of something else. And then this happened: even thought I didn’t have much of an appetite, I was heating up something for dinner in the microwave. 1 minute, 30 seconds of cooking time. As soon as I hit “start,” I was left with just my thoughts for 1:30. As I stared at the food spinning, and the clock counting down, I burst into tears. I cried uncontrollably for the entire 1:30. And then the “finish” sound chimed. I took out my food and went to eat, knowing that I wouldn’t be saving the last bite for Olive, who would always sit patiently in the same spot every time. I called it her “waiting spot.” Sometimes she would get in it before I was even through cooking, knowing she was soon to get a little treat.
I don’t know that I’ve ever truly been happy. I don’t think anyone has. Not in the long-term sense of the word. I’ve had moments of happiness, and times in my life that were better than other times, but I don’t think I’ve ever been happy for long, sustained periods of time. I don’t think that’s even possible. I think sometimes people confuse the word “content” with “happy.” You can be content and perfectly fine with your life, and “happy” with your marriage or family or job in general, but real happiness to me implies something else and it’s difficult to feel true happiness except in specific moments. Maybe seeing your favorite band play your favorite song, or witnessing the birth of your child. Moments, not lifetimes. Most of your life is searching for those moments and hoping the feeling lasts until the next one.
That may be why I cry more at things that are happy than things that are sad. One of the dumbest things I ever teared up at was the movie Working Girl. When Melanie Griffith gets her large office at the end of the film after mistakenly thinking she was hired to be a secretary, I tear up. Because it’s a moment of true happiness. When actors have to cry on camera, they often use a technique in which they think about something from their real life. If I ever had to cry on camera, all I would have to do is think of one phrase, “forever home.” Maybe that’s because no matter how many women I’ve loved and lived with, or how many fun adventures I’ve had in my life, I’ve never really felt like I’ve had a forever home. And when a doggie gets one, it makes me cry. Cause doggies deserve to have one.
Olive used to love lying in the sunlight. Any sunlight. She was a master at finding any sliver of sunlight coming in through a window or leaking through blinds. It could be an inch wide, and she would find it and plant herself there. Finding moments of happiness is like finding that sliver of sun. It’s like trying to catch a fleeting ray of light in your hands. It’s hard to do. But you get one of those moments every time you pet a doggie.
I’ve been through this before, so I’m sure I’ll be fine with time. But for now, I just miss my little buddy and I’m untethered.