The Quality of Life

When my youngest son was 10 he wanted a dog. All his older siblings had decamped and he didn't much like being an only child. The cat didn't count.

There were stipulations. He had to take care of the cat for a year before he could have a dog.

He did. He got a dog.

The dog, a great big three year old Golden Retriever, called AJ, had a head like Rushmore and a personality like a saint. He is responsible for the procession of dogs who have come through our lives since.

It is a tribute to AJ, truly a god among dogs, that we have opened our hearts to so many others since he arrived.

When AJ died the week after my son graduated from high school, there was a huge hole in our lives.

No matter that the cat and the two remaining dogs were still here. Lovely as they were, they weren't AJ. No one was.

Enter Gunnar.

Gunnar wasn't AJ, either. Not even close.

He was small and he was black. He was a retriever, yes, but a flatcoat -- at least mostly (even a flatcoat breeder said so).

He walked like a flatcoat; he talked like a flatcoat (I have him on video giving a speech); and like most flatcoats, if you told him what to do, he had a better idea.

The first day he arrived as a four and a half month old puppy, he jumped through the dining room window. It wasn't open at the time.

To say he brought joy and challenge into our lives was not to overstate the case. He was noisy, rambunctious. He grew, but he was always lean and somewhat wiry. He was also tough and opinionated and he had legs like springs. You should've seen him bounce.

He never met a tennis ball he couldn't shred in two minutes flat -- but he'd much rather make you throw it nine hundred times first.

He was something of an intellectual. For example, he was a student of nature. He and Goliath, the cat, spent countless hours lying on the bed in the guest room, staring out the window at the birds. We used to call them The Audubon Society, though I'm sure they were more interested in recipes involving avians than in counting and identifying them.

He was a student of human nature, too. He loved everyone except the mailman and boys with skateboards -- and the man in our neighborhood with the green umbrella.

What precisely annoyed him about the man with the green umbrella, I don't know. But whenever we saw TMWTGU on our walks, we had to cross the street. Otherwise Gunnar acted like he was giving serious consideration to going for the throat.

As Gunnar was a good judge of character, I have always wondered what he saw the rest of us didn't.

Suffice to say, Gunnar made life interesting. To echo my son's words after AJ's advent into our lives: "He really did improve the quality of life around here."

So did they all.

But especially Gunnar.

Gunnar has spent the last twelve years at my feet while I wrote books and blogs. He tucked himself in under the desk and hummed while I worked.

He was there this week while I worked on my revisions -- up until yesterday when it was too much of a struggle to climb the stairs.

Last night he slept downstairs. This morning he climbed up on the sofa to look out the window, then he lay down and watched me do my 35 minutes on Wii Fit (which he found endlessly baffling -- why is she stepping on and off that plastic board? Why is she tipping and tilting and teetering and tottering? Especially when we could be going for walks).

But the past two weeks we haven't been able to go for walks. And this morning, on the sofa, he closed his eyes and breathed his last.

The quality of life dropped fast.

It will improve again, I know. There are ups and there are downs. And there are days like today which really are the pits.

But I would go through today again -- and again -- for the joy of having him in our lives for so many years. And he will be in our hearts forever. We might not have him here anymore, but we will always have that.

He trained Micah and Mitch to do the contests (a forward thinking dog, our Gunnar). He taught them how to sit under the desk or behind my chair to trip me when I get up. He taught them the fascination of watching me twist and turn and step on the Wii balance board.

He taught them to look suspiciously at the mailman, the FedEx lady and the UPS guy (though neither barks with quite the warning he did). And heaven help the man with the green umbrella should we happen to see him out walking.

Mostly, though, he taught us all about love. He gave it unconditionally. I hope in turn we gave him the life and the love he deserved to have.

God speed, Gunnar. You were the best.

GUNNAR
1996-2008

Stranger than Fiction

When I knew I was not going to be home in time to vote, I did my civic duty and requested an absentee ballot.

This entailed faxing a request to my elections office to have one sent to me where I am currently staying, and then following it up with a real signed letter (in case I had faked the fax, I guess).

So I did.

And a week should have been sufficient because this is, after all, less than a thousand miles away and in the same country. Presumably, too, absentee ballots are sent first class mail because, well, you have to send them back that way, don't you?

I wouldn't know, of course, because I'm still waiting for mine to arrive.

When it didn't arrive yesterday -- the last possible day that it could have arrived so that I could have voted and had it postmarked (though the mail here arrives about 4 pm so it would have been cutting things close), I rang the elections office and asked about it.

"We sent it," the lady said. And she read me off the address they'd sent it to in "Templeton, Texas."

And I said, "No, it's Temple, Texas."

And she said, "Yes, Templeton, Texas."

And I said, "No, Temple."

She said, "That's what I said, Templeton."

And I said, "No. Temple. T.E.M.P.L.E."

And she said, "Yes, T.E.M.P.L.E.T.O.N."

Groundhog Day is alive and well and living in, er, some place in Texas.

So we tried again. "Temple. Two syllables, " I said. "No 'ton.'"

"Templeton?" she said with the barest hint of doubt this time.

"Temple," I said. "Tem-ple."

Silence. "Temple, Texas?" she said.

"Yes," I sighed.

Shuffle of paper. "But wehave the paper you sent. it says right here . . . 'Temple . . . Texas. Oh."

Yes.

"Well, we've got the zip code right, haven't we?"

Beats me. I haven't seen it yet. Still didn't arrive this afternoon. Not that it would have mattered if it had.

So, whoever wins, it's not my fault.

For the first time in my life, I didn't do it.