Gumbo earned the alpha dog title after one solid year of jockeying for position.
At four months old, he came to live with us–four humans and two older dogs, one a three-year-old male, the other an eight-year-old female. When adolescence hit, he began to challenge Jack, the male, who outweighed him by twenty pounds but was basically a gentle dog—something of an English gentleman, if you’re going to anthropormorphosize, and I am. Gumbo goaded Jack into fights by ambushing him just outside the front door. If he had to, Jack would pummel Gumbo almost senseless, but you could almost hear him wandering away from the brawl thinking “terribly unpleasant, simply not done, awful little Australian type, hope he’s not planning to stay long.”
But stay he did. The Gumbo-Jack fights turned, literally, into pissing matches. For one infuriating week, this drama unfolded in our living room, against my prized leather sofa. And then, on the seventh day, Jack gave up, settling permanently for the role of Male Dog Number Two.
With Gumbo officially in charge, things quieted down. Jack chased chipmunks in the yard, Molly, who was nearing the end of her life, dozed under the grand piano, and Gumbo dedicated himself to selecting Gus’s stuffed animals and relocating them to his basket of Gumbo toys, which, in his heeler worldview, meant they were now legally chewable. During walks, I made him practice lying down, staying, and heeling off the leash, all skills he pursued as if he were trying to make partner at a law firm. He probably could have been one of those speed-and-agility dogs, but I never worked him that hard, not being much of an alpha myself.
He didn’t obey me out of love, but intelligence. He was impeccably well-behaved, but only until he saw a chance to bust out. He liked to lie on the perimeter of the invisible fence, letting his collar beep until its battery wore out. Then he’d run off to the nearest construction site, where he knew a guy who didn’t mind sharing his steak sandwich. Gumbo wasn’t aggressive with other dogs, but whenever a fight broke out at the dog park, I’d see him running around the perimeter, enjoying the spectacle.
He liked to supervise children. He was a prodigious shedder of long, white hair, and he had a charming smile that usually couldn’t be trusted. In short, he was a difficult child. Never having had one, I fell hard into unconditional love. If there had been conditions, in other words, I wouldn’t have loved him. Admired him, maybe. Been entertained. But no, in my case, it was love.
Did he love me back? I’ll go this far: Gumbo knew he was my dog. He didn’t mind being my superintendent. He responded to my special high-pitched edge-of-hysteria Gumbo-training voice. If you were looking for him, you would most often find him sitting by me.
Last fall, although we didn’t know it at the time, a tumor began growing in his brain. Suddenly, he was growling at Jack again. By this time, Molly had died and been replaced by Myrtle, a two-year-old boxer/pitbull mutt. Gumbo had raised her from a puppy, and doing so had brought out the best in him. Finally, he had something to herd, boss and protect. She grew up submissive, but also a brick house—seventy pounds of solid muscle. And Gumbo made the weird decision to growl at her, too, backing her into the laundry closet, not letting her walk out the back door, herding her away from her food.
Finally, one awful night, he attacked her outright. She defended herself. I brought Gumbo home from overnight surgery half-shaved, plugged with drains, hobbling, his head immobilized in a Shakespeare collar. He stumbled in the front door and growled at Myrtle; snapped at Jack and fell over on his side.
The vet and I pretended to have a conversation about trying to find a person willing to rescue a borderline dangerously bad dog. But we both knew it was time.
In the exam room with me, Gumbo snapped at the vet techs, then turned and walked calmly into the blanket in my lap. He eased himself down, arranged my legs to hold his beat-up body, looked at me once, and shut his eyes. I rubbed his nose and thought about how he could bite my hand, that fed him. I knew he wouldn’t.
He didn’t move when the vet came with the shot. He knew what was going on. He knew what was going on until he didn’t, and then his legs began to run as if in a dream about running, the way dogs do. He ran into the Next World. After some time, I stood up with his dead body in my arms, only vaguely aware that people kept telling me to be careful of my back. Eventually, I had to hand him over.
Three months later, I still catch myself talking to the dog I think is lying under my desk.
In fact, things are very quiet. There’s no high-pitched fingernail scratch of a blue-heeler yelp when the mailman comes. The piece of cold pizza on the counter is still there at lunch time. Yesterday I left the back gate open by mistake, but no one called to ask if I knew Gumbo Chotzinoff, or to see if he could stay at the Greek festival another hour because he really seemed to be enjoying other peoples’ gyros.
I won’t get another dog of my own any time soon. Having your own dog is a big, big deal. I could have done it better.
In the meantime, I keep company with the remaining two dogs, both good ones. At nine, the dog Jack is a reserved old bachelor who keeps to himself. At three, the dog Myrtle is a barrel-chested, limpid-eyed, not-too-smart half-pitbull with velvety brown skin and affection to spare. She rests her cannonball-sized head on my lap, her forehead wrinkling with what I think is concern but is probably something like, I’m Myrtle! Remember me???? And then, overcome by an hour of squirrel-barking, she slides a blanket from the bed to the floor, wriggles it into the correct shape to fit her big-boned self, and drops off to sleep.