I am an animal lover.
I don’t mean I enjoy animals or find them cute.
What I mean is that animalsespecially mammalsenchant me.
I feel as strong a connection to them as I do to members of my own species.
My husband, on the other hand, believes an animal’s worth is roughly equivalent to its edibility.
If you could carve, slice or boil the beast, then it is generally welcome in our home.
We married on December 21, 1997, on the winter solstice, the trees jeweled with icicles.
Soon after that, I announced that we should get a pet.
“What kind?”
“An iguana,” he said to me.
“Cold-blooded,” I said.
“Who wants cold blood?”
“Monkeys bite,” he said.
“They’re not necessarily nice.”
“We could get a dog,” I said.
“Foul hounds,” he said.
“Dogs have no dignity.”
“And people?”
“A beast must be fit to eat.”
He smiled then and took a bite of his cinnamon toast.
I knew he was half joking, but I could also see something wicked in Benjamin’s smile.
I could suddenly see that he had a second smile, different from his first, gentle one.
“Dogs bite millions of people a year, mostly children.
They kill a few dozen every year, too.
(So he despised domestication.
Where exactly did that leave us?)
“They are,” he said, “a significant biological burden on humankind.”
“What’s up with you?”
I said, and I heard a wrong tone creep into my voice.
“Were you traumatized by a poodle or what?”
“Yes,” he said.
“By a poodle.”
Then he smiled at me, the old Benjamin again but not quite.
Two days later, I picked up Ben at the airport.
“There’s a surprise for you when you get home,” I said.
he wanted to know.
“Guess,” I said.
“You got a dog,” he said, without even pausing to think.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Musashi and Lila.”
“You named it Musashianlila?
Cool,” he said.
“MusashiandLila,” I said.
“Two foul hounds?
I knew you’d do something like that.”
“Are you mad?”
“I am,” he said, “a little.”
Aside from giving them back, what can I do to make this up to you?”
“you’re able to stop at the next store,” he said.
“As soon as I buy two soup pots, everything will fall into place.”
Then he smiled, and I figured we’d be fine.
Benjamin, good sport that he is (sometimes), shook it and doffed an imaginary hat.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” he said.
Lila gave Ben a wet canine kiss that left a glistening trail on his face.
Before the dogs, we’d been a happy couple in a relatively uncomplicated way.
There were visits to the vet, the building of a fence and a miniature dog door.
It was hard not to think he was purposefully self-medicating, or worse, trying to die.
“I don’t understand,” she said at our third visit.
“The bottles are in a drawer, aren’t they?”
“Of course they’re in a drawer,” I said.
“You’re not their mother,” he said.
“I am,” I said.
“They’re part of our family, aren’t they?”
“No,” he said.
“These dogs are our roommates.”
I remember quite clearly the first time I betrayed Benjamin.
Noour vet told me it was time; Lila needed to be spayed.
Musashi, who had testicles so tiny one couldn’t really see them, needed to be neutered.
Still, the reason for the procedures far outweighs the recoiling they naturally give rise to.
He was eating oatmeal and set down his spoon.Clink.
“You’re going toremoveMusashi’s testicles?”
“Yes,” I said.
I could tell by his tone we were in for trouble.
“you could’t remove a man’s testicles,” he said.
“Musashi’s not a man,” I said.
“He’s a dog.”
“you might’t do that,” Ben said, his eyes alarmed.
“I amnotconfused,” Ben said.
“Seems to me you are,” I said.
“you’re able to’t be a responsible pet owner and not neuter your dogs.”
“Remove an animal’s testicles and you cripple it,” he retorted.
“I thought you didn’t care about animals,” I said.
“I don’t,” he said.
“I object on theory.
you’re able to’t take testicles from a male.
I won’t have a neutered male in this house.”
“I see,” I said, my voice icy.
“You won’t have a neutered male, but a neutered female is fine.
And you say you’re a feminist?”
“I object to the procedure in Lila as well,” he said, clearly backpedaling.
More talk followed until at last Benjamin said, “Don’t neuter Musashi.
I am asking you not to do it.”
But I said I would not fix Musashi.
The next day, Lila had surgery, came home in a cage and didn’t move for days.
“Lila, Lila,” Benjamin said.
It is the inconsistencies that make human love so snarled.
We watched as they cantered along, made magic by his hands; these, my husband’s hands.
For better and for worse.
I had Musashi neutered behind Ben’s back, planning my strategy with barely a twinge of guilt.
I’d bring the dog to a different vet, one we would never see again.
It all seemed so simple.
And, in fact, it was.
This time, he didn’t.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey what?”
I said, although I knew what was coming.
“This dog has no balls,” he said.
“No balls?”
“Seriously,” he said.
“Look here.”
“You think those are balls?”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, couldn’t he have, um, high balls?”
I gave a laugh.
“What’s wrong with Musashi?”
“Could they have neutered him before you bought him?”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“I’ll take him to the vet to see.”
Which I didn’t.
Benjamin said to me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Musashi,” Ben said.
He gave one of his magnificent whistles and the dogs came bounding into the kitchen.
“Undescended,” Ben said again, not a question but a statement.
He looked from the dog to me and back.
At last he went, stood by the window.
“Hey,” I said, but he either didn’t hear or wouldn’t listen.
Then he left the room.
If it sounds as if our marriage was bad,it wasn’t.
Benjamin called me “Pie,” short for sweetie pie.
I loved to hear him talk in his sleep, monologues about dolphins and computer code.
In truth, the baby was largely Ben’s idea.
“Look how you care for the dogs,” my friend Elizabeth reassured me.
“If you love them so much, you’re obviously capable of deep attachment.
You won’t have a problem.”
Yet there are places and times when people loved animals as much as their own children.
My own breasts grew large in pregnancy, the nipples swelled and sensitized, huge and indecent.
Around month six I had my amnio.
All was well, except the baby on the screen did not look human, nor animal nor plant.
She came from a category not yet created by Linnaeus, all static and blips.
I had the babyand, my cesarean section still healing, we brought her home.
The books I’d read emphasized the importance of letting the dogs thoroughly sniff the new family member.
I lowered the bundle of baby down.
The summer breeze blew in, and the dogs caught a whiff of the strange smell and froze.
“Stop,” said Ben, who claimed he heard a low growl emanating from Lila’s throat.
Had I heard it, I would have stopped, of course.
I, however, had heard nothing.
“Musashi, Lila,” I sang.
Something was amiss, but what?
Slowly, slowly, she lifted one foot and pawed at the bunting, almost batted itplayful?
“They’ve bitten her.”
“No,” I said.
We peeled back the wrappings.
Our baby was unmarked, unbitten.
In an instant she plunged into slumber again.
It didn’t happen that way.
I wanted to touchanother kind of being,snout and paw, the oblong ears.
“Making love to the pups?”
he’d ask, and I said the only thing I could: Yes.
The expectations quadrupled along with the bills, while time tucked its tail between its legs and went away.
I was spooning mash into our son Lucas’s mouth.
“They’re worth it,” I said.
“To me,” I added.
“But to us?”
“These dogs have taught our children a lot,” I said.
“Yes,” said Benjamin.
“They have taught our children a lot.
He didn’t say anything after that.
It was around that time that Ben developed a mysterious ailment in his arms, one that defied diagnosis.
There were visits to pain clinics, each one hushed and cold, tiled and white.
There were visits to pharmacologists, psychologists, neurologists, chiropractors.
Simple taskstwisting the top off a jarbecame impossible.
The man with the elfin humor went away and someone distant took his place.
I remember the night he stood in the living room holding our son.
I was in the kitchen, fixing dinner.
I heard a crash and came running.
Benjamin was standing, arms held out in front of him as though they were dripping poison.
On the floor, Lucas screamed himself blue.
My husband stopped working, time passed, and we both turned 40.
Benjamin took out a calendar.
“Lila girl,” he said, cupping her bony chin.
She turned her brown eyes up to him.
“Look,” he said.
“She’s got some gray on her muzzle.”
Like us, they live and die.
“Lila, Lila…what is it?”
Hours later, the vet came out and said, “Your dog has glaucoma.
Your dog is completely blind.”
How could Lila be blind when just yesterday she wasn’t?
It can happen, the vet explained.
It can happen, I said to myself as I drove home.
Lila stayed in the hospital for two days.
When I came to get her, I saw that she’d lost more than her eyes.
My fat, feisty dog was now huddled in fear.
Until he saw Lila.
I carried her into the house and set her down on the floor.
We stood silent on the sidelines, watching.
Musashi padded up to her, tentatively sniffing his longtime companion, then slowly backed away.
“Lila, Lila,” Clara called, and clapped her hands.
The dog stumbled toward the sound, crashed into a chair.
Trouper, she forged forward but walked into a wall.
Urine puddled beneath her, a rank, strong smell: panic.
Lucas began to wail.
I carried my dog upstairs.
Her rump was soaked and smelly.
I didn’t care.
I lay with her on the bed.
The house was quiet.
“Poor Lila,” Ben said later, finally wiping up the puddle.
He paused, held his lame hands up in the air.
“Ourdog,” he said (italics mine), “has gone blind as a bat.”
His answer surprised me.
“Give her some time,” he said.
And something strange happened.
Ben began to watch “our” dog differently.
I caught him studying her, his head cocked like a curious canine’s.
I caught him holding her chin in his palm, looking into her dead eyes.
I remember when she took her first blind steps, how we clapped, how he clapped.
After that, the changes came quick.
Lila gained confidence, braving the stairs.
Soon she was chasing birds, hunting by smell and sound.
Sometimes her abilities were so precise we swore she had some vision, but she didn’t.
One evening, Ben threw a ball into the dining room.
Now it’s your turn.”
“Fruit trees,” he said, as though the phrase itself were crisp like an apple.
He stopped most of his pain medication and began to chop wood to strengthen his arms.
But this is what makes me human; I seek my squares of meaning.
I cannot lie and say I came home one night and found my mate transformed.
Recently, I was putting the kids to bed, telling them a story about an archaeologist in Israel.
He was digging when he came upon a grave.
Inside, remarkably intact, he found the skeleton of a person curled in a fetal position.
The skeleton’s hand rested upon the skull of the puppy as Lucas’s hand rested on mine.
Human and canine, living together, buried together.
When I finished, my children were asleep.
Photo Credit: John Dolan
