Max: The Best Boy

His little white legs are twitching in his sleep, like he’s running across the marsh. And this movement comforts me. I’ve been sitting here, on the couch near the armchair he’s stationed himself against, watching to make sure his fur is still moving with his breaths. That his legs twitch in dream pursuits.
That Max is still alive.
He’s an old, old boy. Max turned 12 in early May, so he’s among the oldest of his kind. Lumbering, white, fluffy beasts who would blend in seamlessly in the world of polar bears. But his long white hairs have long marked the sage carpet in my parents’ New Jersey living room as his domain. For years, it was unwise to wear your best clothes to New Jersey. They’d be covered in wayward Max hair. The best hair. But very tenacious.
Tonight, I am alone in my family’s home. My friends decided to come in the morning, so I’m alone with Max. I had gone to Tom’s earlier for dinner, ate seafood skewers on the deck, listened to stories, tasted pecan bourbon. It was a lovely night. But underneath my enjoyment was the lingering anxiety — I had left Max alone. My parents left, I left him at about 6:30… How long was it okay?
I stayed too long.
When I got home, he was in my father’s small office, a carpeted room near the house’s downstairs bedroom where he had gotten stuck, his place of hiding during thunderstorms. Unfortunate googling this evening led me to learn that dogs, when they’re dying, look for a safe, enclosed space. That I found Max in that room kills me. I helped him stand, grabbing the middle of his body and lifting its heft. We walked into the living room and he drank water. I got a drink and sat on the couch, pulled out a blanket and pillow. Tonight, I’d sleep here to make sure he didn’t have to move any more than he needed to.
Max had come to us from an ad in the newspaper. Julie had found it. Great Pyrenees puppies for sale, it read. They were just going to look, but as my father had said, “nobody just goes to look at puppies…” And so then there was a puppy.
Jackie got Max, a rolly-polly white ball of fluff who perhaps didn’t seem like the kind of dog who would grow to be tall enough to rest his face on the kitchen table without even stretching. Who would weight as much as a grown woman. Who would turn his big, brown dog eyes up at any one of us and get anything he ever wanted…
Max, like his kind, is a morning barker. The Great Pyrenees spend the morning patrolling their turf, they’re herding dogs. Max, when he lived in Jackie’s wee studio apartment, would bark all morning. Keeping her awake after her night shift. But he was just doing the thing his kind had been bred to do over the years. Doing his morning patrols. Scaring off the enemies. Making sure his mama was safe.
It was an untenable situation.
So here he came, down to the salty shore of New Jersey. Here, he had a house on a dark dirt hill, the remnants of a Native American burial mount. He circled it every morning, barking into the distance, warding off intruders who would disturb us. For years, we wondered why that damn dog barked all morning. But when I finally, after way too many years, learned why he did what he did, I felt incredibly loved.
Max did his patrols around his home, around his people. And once I learned that, the mornings when I woke earlier than my night-owl self wished, because he was doing his rounds, I would listen for a few minutes, feel so very loved, and fall back asleep amid the barks, knowing our boy was looking out for us.
When he was a puppy, he would eat shoes. When he was in his prime, he would steal butter wrappers from the counter and lick them clean. Tonight, I put his aspirin inside a piece of cheese, and sprinkled a few old French fries and a bit of deli turkey on his dog food. He ate all of the snacks, none of the kibble. When your meals are numbered, you get to be picky.
When he was strong, Max and I would wrestle. He was way stronger than I ever was, and his claws and teeth had the force of a dog his size, but he knew I would wrestle with him, if I put on a heavy sweatshirt. When he wanted to play, he would crouch down, do a little dance with his feet, and then leap at me. I was in my early 30s when he was big enough, and feisty enough for this. I was working out. I was strong enough to play with Max like he really wanted to play.
But he knew I needed the sweatshirt, so that he could fake-grip my arm with his teeth and not hurt me. So that he could put his paws up on my shoulders, which he could reach with ease, and not scratch my skin. I am 5'8'’. Max could put his paws on my shoulders and his face in my face. But that loving, sweet dog always knew, even when he was at his strongest, that we were playing a game. That he could not press his teeth down on my skin. That he could never scratch me with his claws. He was heavy, so I would sometimes sink a bit. But I was young and strong. We could play together.
Over the years, our bouts grew more infrequent. We both got older.
When I was home for Memorial Day weekend, I was walking up the back stairs to the bed I was sleeping in that weekend. It was days before I turned 40. Behind me, I heard the scratch-scratch-scratch of Max’s paws on the wood floor. His “pay attention to me” dance. My sister and her boyfriend had been staying downstairs but had gone, and Max knew that room was available for me, for him, to stay. I came back down and we went in. He flopped his heavy head onto the floor, no longer able to support its weight with his ailing shoulder muscles. I turned the TV on to Forensic Files. We fell asleep together.
Tonight, I have the TV on in the living room, but I worry that crossing the expanse of wooden floor from the living room’s safe carpet to the bedroom’s carpet is a bit more than he can do. After he went out earlier, it took him ages to catch his breath. So, here we sit. I have a pillow and blanket on the couch in a house with five empty queen-size beds. The best boy is sleeping a few feet from me. When I get up to do anything, he raises his head, alarmed that something is changing, but I tell him to stay.
And I come back.
I looked up the signs that an animal is dying. I suppose it’s the same for one of us dying. We eat less. We move less. We lose control of ourselves. And he has done all of these things. But it’s so hard to imagine a world without him, and to imagine depriving him of any moments of love and happiness, that I have no idea what anyone is ever supposed to do. I know, I know deep down when he looks at me, and gives me his best “doggy fight” stance, that he remembers our years of play, of all the wrestling and hugs and long walks we took. He knows me. I am one of his tribe. And I am here with him, at the end of his days. I am absolutely overwhelmed with love and sorrow in equal measure. His love has been a gift beyond measure. We have been so, so very lucky.
It is not an insignificant thing, for human animals to take other animals into their homes, to make them family. We share our time on earth with them as much as we do with our humans. Max has seen the births of my nieces and nephews. He has held down the fort through breakups, marriages and divorces. He has watched out for all the marsh beasts that would have threatened his people. He has spent every morning, for most of his life, barking away the things that would trouble us.
None of us could ask for anything better.
