Paws and Reflect

by Neil S. Plakcy

  There is an interesting thing about Samantha: When she was three or four months old, a piece of cartilage got into her spinal column, and her back legs became paralyzed. We took her to the best vets, but they all shook their heads and said she’d never walk again. Some suggested I put her to sleep, but I couldn’t do that because it was clear she enjoyed her life. She was dragging herself around, but she was not in terrible pain.

  She was determined to walk again. She kept going, and taught all her muscles how to take over and compensate for this problem. In about a year she had trained herself to walk. She was a brave dog; her motivation was that she wanted to get out and run again. The property’s fairly large, and she thinks she has to guard it.

  With my friends, the Wolfhounds have always been affectionate and gentle. With friends and also with all other creatures, especially cats. Samantha loves the Siamese cats. I find that most animals can get along together if you start them out right.

  Of course, there are problems with Irish Wolfhounds. They take up a lot of space, and that space is magnified if you take into account the sweep of their great, swathing tails, which can clear a table in a second. You can’t set a buffet table if there are Wolfhounds around; though they may not place their paws on the table to get a closer look, if there is food at their eye level they’ll just naturally assume that food is there for them.

  My Wolfhounds have always been fond of fruit; I had a Wolfhound once who was willing to wait patiently for the wild strawberries to ripen, then reach his big head in and eat them.

  They are most fond of beds and couches, though they are willing enough to lie by your feet on the floor if directed. They are deeply friendly and make the worst watchdogs; since they have such good manners and gentle natures, they will befriend nearly anyone, including a cat burglar intent on robbing you.

  Once I was walking the dogs on the beach in the winter. They ran ahead of me, up to the boulders on the northern side of Montauk Point. I heard them barking, and I thought, “They’ve caught something.” Then I heard a different sound of barking, and I thought, “They’ve trapped a dog behind the rocks.” I said,

  “Come on, guys, be nice. Leave the dog alone.” It was a seal! Some poor seal had gone behind the rocks, and now he was stuck there. The Labrador Current comes down the coast, and sometimes we get seals on Long Island. They’re big, about six feet long, and over 200 pounds.

  The dogs were wagging their tails—they were very curious about this seal. The dogs were enjoying the situation more than the seal was. I don’t know what would have happened. I didn’t let it go to its natural conclusion.

  Irish Wolfhounds are not known for their longevity. Their bodies are so large that their hearts have to work extra hard to keep them going. The females don’t live as long as the males. They get things wrong with their reproductive systems. My females have lived to seven or eight. It’s one of the unfortunate aspects of owning such a big breed—they are not with you as long.

  Men say that they are the only species capable of feeling emotion. But anyone who owns an Irish Wolfhound knows that’s not true. I should have said, “Anyone who is owned by an Irish Wolfhound.” That’s closer to the truth. I find them to be very emotional animals. Very sympathetic and understanding. I know there are scientific articles that claim that dogs don’t have emotions. But I know my dogs. I know they have feelings and emotions, and no scientific study is going to change my mind.

  People ask me if the dogs help me in the creative process, and I’m sure they do. I couldn’t tell you exactly how. But they’re important to me. I work a lot by walking and thinking things through, and the dogs always come with me.

  I like to think I’ll always have Irish Wolfhounds around me. I just worry if it’s fair to the dogs, since I can’t be with them all the time. Samantha is fond of the caretaker in Montauk who looks after her when I’m not there. But I like to think that it’s me she really loves. Our relationship is special.

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  Researching this book was the catalyst that led me to get in touch with Albee again. In the intervening two decades, I had come to an even greater appreciation of his playwrighting talent. I had also thought about the fact that his first play, Zoo Story, contains a long vignette about an angry, calculating canine who has a profound effect on one of the main characters. I wondered, Where in Albee’s imagination did this terrible dog come from? Was it an actual experience? These questions were on my mind as I walked toward the Lesbian and Gay Community Center in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where we were to meet.

  There couldn’t have been more contrast between the shimmering light and tropical foliage of our first visit and the gray skies and narrow, bustling streets of downtown Manhattan. As I walked, I noticed many dogs being walked, sniffing trees and wrought-iron fences. True, they were mostly small breeds, more suited for life in the city, but I was saddened to learn that Albee does not currently have an Irish Wolfhound—or any other breed—to share his life. And I knew that Jonathan, his partner of thirty-five years, had died rather suddenly only a few months before.

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  I DON’T HAVE ANY DOGS now because I’m too peripatetic and alone since Jonathan died. I live in Montauk and TriBeCa, so I’m going back and forth constantly. And I do lots of other traveling. So it just hasn’t been the right time. But I’ve always been around dogs, ever since I was a child.

  My adoptive family had a number of dogs while I was trying to grow up with them: a couple of asthmatic Pekingese, which yapped a lot and either remained in armchairs upstairs or were kept in the crooks of arms, and a St. Bernard who was given no exercise except when I was around. He didn’t get to run much or rescue anyone from deep snowdrifts the way one imagines St. Bernards are bred to do. At the family stables, where they kept saddle horses, there were also a couple of very nice Dalmatians.

  These last I enjoyed most. My family and I didn’t like each other, so we got a divorce. One of the many areas where we really differed was that they treated dogs like objects. I couldn’t do that.

  Early on, when I was living in Greenwich Village, I had a job delivering telegrams for Western Union. They were mostly death notices for poor people who had died in hospitals or been found in the street. The city always sent the telegrams to the families collect, which was awful because these families didn’t have a dollar and fifty cents to pay for it.

  One thing I discovered is that all the relatives of poor people who die in city hospitals live on the sixth floor. I always had to walk up six flights. There would be a whole lot of family members living in the same apartment, and they’d all come to the door. The family dog would come too, to see what all the fuss was about. It was a big event to get a telegram.

  They were really poor. I felt sorry for them. So I’d tell them, “The city wants you to pay a dollar and fifty cents for this telegram. But if you take it out and write down the information, then hand it back to me and say, ‘I don’t accept this telegram, ’ then, you don’t have to pay. I have to take it back and not charge you.” I usually got a fifty-cent tip out of it.

  One of the big problems with that job was dealing with the dogs. I was delivering these telegrams on the Upper West Side. In that area, only Central Park West and Riverside Drive were not slums. All the rest was rooming houses—very tough, working-class neighborhoods.

  Many of the landladies in these places had vicious dogs. They would see me coming, wearing my uniform and riding my bike, and they wanted to tear me apart. I couldn’t understand it because I had always liked dogs. But eventually I came to see that it was nothing personal—it was their job. These dogs had reputations to live up to: They had to go after a Western Union messenger.

  I got a lot of good exercise in that job. But it didn’t lead me to hate dogs. I would find it difficult to hate any dog, even a landlady’s vicious dog. That’s where I got the dog that Jerry talks about in Zoo Story.

  I do believe that there are th
ose of us who feel incomplete without the company of a dog or two. So who knows? There may be more dogs in my future.

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  Somewhere, perhaps yet unborn, there may be an Irish wolfhound that will own Edward Albee once again. I sent him a photo of my Irish Wolfhound,

  Justin. He wrote back, “Your Irish Wolfhound looks super. Don’t you think you should give him to me?”

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  Alistair McCartney: ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EXISTING WITHOUT DOGS

  Throughout history, dogs have been the companions to ordinary men and women no less than the famous and infamous. George Washington, who crossed Staghounds with Virginia Hounds, is credited with developing the Foxhound. Who can imagine Queen Elizabeth II without her Pembroke Welsh Corgis; F. D. R. without Fala,

  his Scottish Terrier; L. B. J. without his Beagles, Him and Her? Or, for that matter, Paris Hilton without her Chihuahua, Tinkerbell; Dorothy without “Toto, too”?

  Dogs have a profound effect on us—and not just on our conscious lives, but on our dreams as well. Dream interpretation suggests that a friendly dog is a symbol of a trustworthy relationship, while a wild dog represents a great struggle or unresolved conflict. A barking dog foretells bad news, and a biting dog signifies a quarrelsome companion. A swimming dog, a dog that kills a snake in front of you, a fancy pet dog and a white dog are all good omens.

  When we asked budding literary light Alistair McCartney if he had anything to say about the unique bond between man and dog, he replied that the subject was so important to him that he’d written about it extensively in The End of the World Book. We thought it might add a literary dimension to our human canine understanding if he shared some excerpts from the work. The Australian-born McCartney has a unique talent for pithy comments and unusual insights. His mind wanders from his own family history to the Enlightenment philosopher Descartes, and then on to the German Shepherd mix he shares with his partner, performance artist Tim Miller.

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  ON CHILDHOOD, DOGS, AND DOG BITES We had a chair in our living room that was brown; this was my father’s chair. No one else was allowed to sit on it, except for the family dogs: our first Beagle named Bandit and the second named Cossack.

  Both dogs’ bellies were so fat they dragged along the threadbare carpet in our hall until their fur had become similarly threadbare.

  I was one of seven children, and my father would occasionally get our names confused, and refer to me by one of my brothers’ names. At times he would become so confused, he would refer to me by one of the dog’s names.

  Once my father gave Bandit a bone, and I snatched the bone out from under Bandit’s wet snout; he chased me and he sank his teeth into my hand. I could not help it; I was filled with envy.

  Unfortunately it seemed I had not learned my lesson. One afternoon, coveting Cossack’s nice bone shaped like a bow on a Christmas gift, I once again attempted to steal the family dog’s bone. The dog had to chase me a little ways before rescuing his rightful property and biting me, this time on the inside of my left thigh.

  ON THE SINISTER NATURE OF CLOWN DOGS When I was eight, a circus came to our neighborhood, pitching the so-called big top in the park at the end of our street. Beside myself, I put on my pair of cherry-red corduroy pants and walked down to take a look. The clowns and roustabouts eyed me.

  There was a little white clown dog tied to one of the stakes. He had a ruffle round his neck and was wearing a gold pointy hat. One of the roustabouts stopped whatever it was he was doing, came over, and taking the hat off the dog’s tiny head, placed it carefully on my own.

  “It looks much better on you, ” he said. I bent down to pat the dog, and it immediately sank its two sharp rows of tiny teeth into the inside of my left thigh, tearing the corduroy of my pants, drawing blood, and leaving what was soon to become a lovely green and blue hoop-shaped bruise.

  ON PHILOSOPHY AND DOGS It is said that Descartes had a great fear of dogs. He turned toward philosophy to dispel this fear and to master it, but it only served to distract him: In his dreams, the presence of dogs was constant; their snarls haunted every corner of his philosophical system.

  When Queen Christina invited Descartes to her court to teach philosophy, he accepted, unaware that she was deeply fond of dogs, and did in fact own 173 of them. All over the palace he kept on slipping in pools of the beasts’ saliva.

  On his third day at court, the queen’s favorite, a tiny red Schnauzer named Heartfelt, somehow got a hold of the only copy of Principles of Philosophy. Descartes took to bed. Terribly weak, he did not have the strength to shoo away dear little Heartfelt who slept at his feet. The philosopher never recovered from the shock of this incident. He died three weeks later.

  Today, if you visit the museum in Stockholm, you can view this copy of Principles, which was retrieved from the dog. It is turned to page 172. If you look closely, beyond the words, you can make out tiny teeth marks.

  ON MY MOTHER AND WILD DOGS My mother has come to wish me goodnight. She has long red hair with bits of gray. She whispers into my forearms. I’ve had a good life, she tells me, with plenty of sleep. Though I could have had more sleep. She laughs, and pads off to her own bed.

  In the morning, I leave our pink asbestos house and go off to the factory. There is a rumor going around the factory that my mother has died. I can hear people gossiping about her death over the steady whir of the machines. I take off my hair net and rush home.

  My three sisters are there, sitting around the kitchen table. They tell me that yes, it’s true: our mother has died. What time did she die? I ask. They believe it was at 8: 00am. She knew she was going to die, I tell them. My three sisters nod their heads. I decide to make us all some hard-boiled eggs. I put the eggs in the pot, get the water boiling and set the egg timer for ten minutes.

  Sometime later, my sisters raise the issue of who is going to feed the dogs. They have been coming down from the hills to visit my mother every Thursday. I will, I tell them. Are you sure? The dogs are still pretty wild, my sisters say.

  ON FRANZ KAFKA AND DOG COLLARS Kafka is no longer interested in writing such long stories, or on paper. He wants to write only small, small things that can fit on the inside of a dog collar.

  ON SAPPHO AND DOG KENNELS Sappho feels something hot and red lapping at her from within, warm like a dog’s tongue, like she is nothing but a dog kennel, which explains the feeling of a studded dog collar constricting her heart.

  ON THE LONELINESS OF DOG FOOD Back in the 1970s, when I was a child, there were always stories in the newspaper about old men who were so poor they could only afford to eat dog food. These stories terrified me; I felt convinced that this was to be my fate. It seemed a natural transition to go from being a lonely little boy to a lonely old man, living on dog food, with nothing but a can opener to keep me company.

  ON GOD’S DOGS Dogs that we are, we lap up the sunset, which is, if you think about it, merely the scraps of the day. We delude ourselves that we are free agents, upright creatures, but from where God is, all humans like to live doggy-style; God simply walks us on incredibly long leashes.

  ON GOYA, THE ABYSS AND LITTLE DOGS Goya looks down at the first splotch of paint on his brand new palette. It is red-black, coagulated like a soul. The problem, he thinks, is how to keep one’s visions from turning into a system?

  To clear his head, he decides to take his little dog Stain out for a walk. Normally Stain likes to stay close to his master, but today, for some unknown reason, as soon as Goya lets the dog off the leash, it promptly heads for the abyss. Stricken, Goya calls out: “Come back, Stain!” He drops the leash, and runs off after the dog.

  As the painter creeps up to the abyss’s crinkled edge, his pumps squeak. He takes them off and tucks them into his coat pocket. The curious little dog has fallen in and is rapidly sinking, accompanied by barking. Goya peers in, and notices that the abyss is sewn out of something sumptuous, like a sm
oking jacket, but one that is becoming slightly threadbare in places. This close, he can feel the abyss’s hot breath on his face. He takes in its odor, like the water in a vase of week-old roses.

  For a second Goya considers letting the abyss swallow the little dog: could be good for the painting. But something inside him yelps; he leans over and scoops the frightened dog up, gathering its quaking body into his arms, kissing its wet nose, all the while muttering “Stain, dear Stain!” Breaking one of his rules, he takes from his back trouser pocket a paintbrush, and gives it to the dog to chew on, so as to distract the miniature beast from the vastness of its fear.

  ON DISCOURSES ON THE METHOD OF REASONING AND SMALL DOGS A god-fearing man, Descartes was certain that as soon as he wrote the last sentence of Discourses on the Method of Reasoning, God would send down a terrible small dog named Doubt and Doubt would pant, Doubt would salivate all over the philosopher’s lace collar, Doubt would understand the book like no human ever could, Doubt would then devour the book, cover to cover.

  To prevent such an alarming event from happening, Descartes— a superstitious man—declined to place a period at the end of the book’s last sentence in an attempt to fool God, who Descartes believed to be a stickler when it came to grammar.