It was "Puppy Day" on the internet that got me remembering how we got him. We'd moved into a house in the burbs that had a big back yard ... a dog-worthy yard ... and Sam was about three which meant he was old enough to help scoop out food and carry a water dish. Then one day Melanie called and asked, "are you still looking for a dog for Sam?" He'd followed her home from Double M Feed on Oak Street around the corner to the house on Dublin, and she'd taken him back only to have him follow her home again; which was clearly fate's way of saying that he had to be one of us and that he was obviously's Sam's.
He had a bigish head on a squinky little lab mix looking body, and he was all black except for a dirty white bib down his chest. Mel called him "Little Guy" and "Wiggles" in the special Dog Lady voice that made his whole body wag in clear knowledge of having won the lottery.
Mom took one look at him and said, "I'm not sure he's a puppy." Mel said, "Are you crazy?" Mom said, "but he looks so, so OLD."
It was his eyes that did it. He had the steady, world-weary gaze of a seasoned jazzman. One that had a monkey or two on his back, at that. I thought about calling him Parker, but that was my best friend's ex's name, which didn't seem fair; and calling a dog Bird just didn't feel like the natural order of things. It was a decidedly complicated look that said there was a lot going on in that outsized head ... difficult to take in on the first listen in the way of a good Monk composition; so Thelonious, he began and that's who he became. T-lone, Thelonious, T ... he answered happily to them all.
The vet said he was about four months old, six tops. His tail was awkwardly docked like it might have been an accident or maybe one of those bad little kids in the rough part of uptown trying to make a fancy-looking fighter out of him with tight rubber bands and spite. He further had every parasite known to man and dog and few that might not have been cataloged yet. He was an unholy veterinary mess inside and out. But he endured every dip, cream, pill and shot that it took to eventually turn him into a fine-looking dog for a boy who dearly wanted one.
That boy and that dog. They dove together into the beautiful piles of leaves that Mom raked in the yard. They shared summers in inflatable kiddie pools. They made endless circles around that yard, Sam on his battery-powered Harley ride-on and Thelonious running alongside. When Sam went to the neighborhood preschool, Thelonious watched faithfully through the fence at recess time as his boy played two yards away. Sam blew bubbles and Thelonious chased and ate them until we were pretty sure he'd poop soap. There was a pecan tree in the big yard, and when they started to fall each year, Dad would go out in the yard with his walking stick and five gallon bucket and tap them into a pile like a weird game of golf, putting a few over to T who couldn't get enough of the things. He wouldn't always wait for one of us to shell a few for him, chomping into them whole. We worried that the shells would shred his digestive tract until the vet said he seemed pretty capable of digesting the things. It was his superpower or something.
He did this thing with his ears. They tend to hang a little sideways, somewhere between floppy and pointed. But when something got his particular attention, he'd curl them up on top of his head. Percy Dovetonsils, Mom would call him, after an Ernie Kovacs character with crazy spit curls on his forehead. I caught him doing it again a couple of weeks ago when somebody had the gall to walk other dogs in his yard. The nerve.
He patiently abided the kitten that came home with us a couple of years later, masterfully working out his territory and hers. He kept on being a very good dog as his boy grew from short, little-kid school days to fuller big-boy ones and after school activities that didn't include him, welcoming him home and appreciating the neighborhood walks and occasional car rides to the park. He even patiently abided the new, noisy, twitchy-looking Chihuahua-Pug mix that came home unexpectedly years later, after he'd already been an Only Dog for forever. He didn't have to love him, he made very clear; but he'd tolerate him because he was the bigger, older, BETTER dog. As long as we all understood and regularly professed that, we'd all be fine.
His boy grew into a man before any of us realized it, long school days turning into late nights out with friends; but then the pack of friends would occasionally crowd into our kitchen which meant more people to pay attention to him like an official mascot. He has become an officially old dog, the bib of white spreading out a little in all directions, down his front legs and up his sides and around his face to give him eyebrows. And if his face was expressive before, those eyebrows added a whole new dimension to that. We'd make up blues songs about what he was thinking and sing them at the kitchen table in the voice we imagined for him ... part Son House part Howlin' Wolf ... songs about buttered toast magically dropping from the kitchen table to the floor, or what if it rained grilled cheese sandwich crusts, or the ultimate dream of having a whole rotisserie chicken unto himself.
He may be an old dog, but he doesn't always know it, especially when he's tearing around the house after coming inside from a walk with his squeaky toy in his mouth, making an ungodly racket and glorying in the noise and ruckus until he wears himself out. All the ruckus notwithstanding, he's a Velveteen Rabbit of a dog ... Thelonious has become ... he's a little patchy and worn, and his ears are velvety soft from years of pats.
He has been and is an amazing dog, and we're going to dearly miss him when he's gone. That's something I started to realize for real when Mom called up the stairs that she couldn't get T to wake up. By the time I got downstairs, he was awake, but it wasn't easy for him to stand up. He was wobbly on his feet, even though his tail was wagging; and he really just wanted to lie back down, which he did for the rest of the day. His food went untouched and he slept the day away, lifting his head now and then to let us know he was as okay as he could be. We all sat by him in turns and found ourselves saying quiet little prayers that he really was as comfortable as he seemed ... that if this was the end, it would be a peaceful one.
Then this morning, and Mom said in must be in honor of Easter Sunday, he offered up his own little resurrection, getting up for Sam and wandering around the yard some then eating a warm scrambled egg for breakfast. And now he's making his usual rounds from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen to the den, stopping now and then to get a pat on the head or see what that cat or the other dog are up to, lying down when he feels like, and generally back to his old dog self. I know it sometimes happens that people and creatures get a last wind or two or three before the end; and maybe that's not what this is at all, but then he's an almost seventeen-year-old dog and that's a lot in dog years to still be up on all fours. And while most days I find the clickety-clack of his toenails on the linoleum and hardwood floors a little maddening; today it's a reassuring sound keeping time with music from the kitchen speaker tuned to a Pandora channel heavy with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and the kind of music we love around here. The music that makes us name our pets after jazz musicians.
And like the most brilliant jazzman would, he's making sure his act ends with just the right timing.
Leaving the audience hoping for just a little bit more.
