In the beginning there was Gracie.
I had just met someone and had fallen
in love in a way that I never had before – hook, line, and sinker –
and when I saw Gracie, I fell in love again.
He wasn't Gracie yet, of course. He was
just a scrawny pit bull terrier running around in a busy Los Angeles
intersection, rearing up on his hind legs and putting his paws on the
hoods of cars that were stopped at a traffic light.
This dog is going to get run over, I
thought. Why isn't anybody doing anything? I
saw three old ladies standing on the corner watching him dodge cars,
their hands over their mouths, but none of them made a move to help.
I sighed, pulled over, ran over to the intersection and shouted, “Hey
puppy! Come here!”
The
dog turned around, panting happily, and charged at me full speed as I
crouched down and called him over. I caught a glimpse of enormous
smiling jaws and had just enough time to wonder if I had made a
terrible decision when he leapt on me, wagging his entire body, and
knocked me off my feet. I grabbed him and held him so he wouldn't
run back into traffic. I had left my car door open, and he jumped
into the back seat and sat there.
“Where's
your owner?” I asked him, looking for a collar. There was none. He
was filthy, skinny, not neutered, and looked like he needed a good
meal and a bath before anything else. I sighed, looking at the time.
I was late for work. “Okay, pup. You get to hang out with me for
the day.” After work, I reasoned, I could find his home and get
him back there. Somebody around had to love this dog.
I left
him in my car in a parking structure at my work and got him food and
water. Every half hour I would go out and check on him and walk him
around the parking lot with a belt around his neck as a leash. “Your
owner must be really worried,” I kept telling him. He would just
grin at me.
After
work, I went all over the neighborhood where I had found him. Nobody
had ever seen the dog before, they said, but hinted at dog fighting
rings and stray pits. “Take him to the shelter,” advised the
last person who opened the door for me. “And you probably
shouldn't be knocking on doors around here after dark.” He shut
the door in my face.
I had
already made up my mind that I wanted to keep him by then, so I began
the long drive back to San Diego. On the way there, I got him a leash
and a collar and called my boyfriend to tell him we had a dog, at
least temporarily, hopefully longer.
“No,
Brooke, we are not keeping a dog,” he said. “What kind of dog is
it anyway? What? A pit bull? No. No. No. That's the only type of dog
that scares me. Not that we would be keeping it anyway. I don't even
want it in the house.” I brought the dog in anyway.
“Meet
Jaws!” I said. My boyfriend shook his head. “No. This dog is not
staying here.” Jaws started to growl and then bark at him. “You
see what I mean?” he asked me. “He's going to attack
me.” He got up and left the
room, and Jaws followed him, tail wagging, until he got closer. Then
he stopped barking, because what Jaws really wanted was attention.
After that, Jaws followed him everywhere.
That
was the first day.
Over
time, Jaws became Gracie, so named because he was graceless, ramming
into people's legs with rough affection, knocking over cups and vases
with his constantly wagging tail. He was a street dog, awkward with
other dogs but wonderful with people. We weren't supposed to have a
dog in our place, so we took turns taking him to work so as not to
leave him alone. Gracie became a constant companion during my
frequent drives to Los Angeles and back. He was unfailingly wonderful
company. He was family.
“Man,”
said the Los Angeles Police Commissioner during a press conference,
“I always see you covering stories with that dog. He's a beautiful
dog.” By then Gracie was a fixture when I was out on the field.
He met commissioners and politicians and celebrities and got to sniff
them all. He got to smell every city between Ventura and Tijuana and
loved every moment of it.
One
day, I was covering a triple murder and suicide in Laguna Beach at a
beachside hotel. When I was done, I decided to take Gracie to the
water. It was a secluded beach and no one was around, so I dropped
his leash to let him run.
He
went straight into the water, tail waving happily, getting submerged
and then popping up again like a flag. I gaped after him for thirty
seconds – god, could he swim! I had never known – and realized I
had to go in after him. I jumped in with my clothes on and my phone
in my pocket and went after him, finally catching up to him on a rock
about a quarter of a mile out. I grabbed his leash, screaming and
swearing, and tried to tow him back to shore. He towed me instead,
and we swam back together as I held his leash tighter than I ever
had.
When
we got back to the beach, I looked up to see hotel security lined up
on the cliff watching the whole drama play out. They had followed us
out to the water, thinking that I was going to take paparazzi-style
shots, and watched in awe as I dove in after my quick-moving dog.
They had towels for us and gave us pizza and we laughed about the
whole thing. Gracie had never looked so happy in his life – and he
always looked happy.
He was
family. It was the two of us for a year, and then there was Gracie
too. He was our proxy for conversations, our companion as we slept.
I bitched at him in the mornings when he woke me up early and
groaning with a hangover to feed him. I curled up around him and my
boyfriend curled up around me at night. When we sat on the couch, we
unconsciously started sitting at opposite ends, so that he could jump
up and curl up between us, his favorite spot.
“Honey,
we have to stop letting the dog come between us like this,” I would
say, jokingly. I never meant it. By then, he was us, the third leg
of the stool, the hypoteneuse of our relationship. We were a pack, a
family.
“That's
a damn happy dog,” people would observe, watching us walk together.
In pictures of the two of us, we had identical huge, stupid grins.
We ran together, jogged together, and finally, as he got older, we
walked together.
Gracie
was part of us for ten years, and I valued every moment of our time
together. This week, he got sick and died. His happiness and
liveliness concealed the tumor that was quietly growing in his belly
for months, maybe longer, until two days ago, it no longer could. He
was ten years old and so tired at the end, but still wagging his
tail, still curled up with us, still giving us every bit of love he
had as he always had, with no judgment and no reservations.
Now we
are lost, looking at the empty spot on the couch where he curled up
every day for years. I am lost, listening for his happy snores at my
feet as I write. Sometimes, I would listen to his breathing all day
and panic if I couldn't hear it, thinking he had died in his sleep.
“Gracie!” I would say, and he would open an eye and look at me as
if to say don't be ridiculous, I'm right here, what are you
yelling about? Then he would
sigh and stretch and go back to sleep.
Toward
the end, I think I knew on some subconscious level that he was
getting ill, even though I would take him to the vet and they would
tell me nothing was wrong with him but age. I would have recurring
dreams that I was frantically looking for him, crying and yelling,
running after him, and that he was gone. I would wake up and shower
him with relieved affection, knowing that he was still there, for the
time being, at least – that he hadn't run away, that he was with
us.
Just
before he died, those dreams stopped. When he got sick, I knew it
was final, but I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe
that those dreams were coming true so soon. We have another few good
years, I told myself. At least a couple of good years. But we didn't.
Gracie,
where are you now? We miss you so much.
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