Something About Zorro
I was eighteen when my first dog died. We’d had border collies growing up on the farm my entire life — there was Pat, the grouchy matriarch of the family. There was Mike, who despite being blind as a bat from cataracts somehow maintained an impeccable memory bank of the topography of the farm. And there was Happy, who was…exuberant. But my dog was Mist. She wasn’t the largest, but she loved to ride in the tractor under my feet when we bailed hay, and she would run around our front circle while I rode my bike, nipping at the tires as she herded me along. To be fair, all our border collies belonged to all the family, but Mist was my dog. When you grow up with hand-me-downs the whole way, you tend to cling to possessions that you can fully carve out as your own.
When I was almost eighteen years old, cancer came for her, sweeping in and robbing her of her former joy du vive. She took to crawling into a crate on the porch, where she would whimper in pain and agony so badly that it kept me awake at night. We took her to the vet, where they attempted a surgery that might alleviate some of the pain and help her live out her days a little longer. It did not take, and my first dog passed away on Valentine’s Day.
This isn’t a story about Mist, — she is cherished in memory, and will always be my first dog. Rather, this is a story about loss of a different sort, and of what happened on the Day After Valentine’s Day.
While still in mourning for Mist, my mom received a phone call from one of her students at the local college. They had a two month old Akita puppy, and their landlord had discovered it. They needed to get rid of it quick. Knowing my Mom loved animals, they wondered if she knew anyone who would take it. So it was that three hours later, a car came driving up the lane with our new dog.
Several things immediately became apparent. The first was that this was no two month old pup. If anything, this was a six month old rampaging monster of a dog, nearly full grown and ready for playtime. The second was that this dog was used to being inside — he did not pause for an instant as we stood out front, seizing the moment to bolt inside. This was unusual — all of our border collies had been barn dogs, and would not set foot inside the house even if you tried to drag them in with a leash. The third was that the new dog was hungry, as he set about eating an entire bowl of catfood for out indoor cat, half a pizza that was left out on the table, and the good portion of a homemade loaf of sourdough bread. The fourth was that the dog was not fully housetrained, as after twenty minutes of exploring his surroundings, he retreated to the most inaccesable corner of our living room (beneath an antique grand piano) and proceeded to drop a duce onto our shag carpet roughly the size, shape, and color, of a Thanksgiving turkey.
The Akita became quickly acquainted with the dog house we set up a stone’s throw from our back porch while we set to house training our new dog, dubbed Zorro because of the black mask his double coat presented on his face.
Though my brother and dad took some time to warm to the new dog, my mom and I fell in love with him at an instant’s notice, and the feeling was mutual. He would follow us everywhere, and would always seek to play at a moment’s notice. He became adept at fetch, and grew to love running about the yard in figure eights, burning off energy that he didn’t know what to do with. At night, when he was done accosting the strange Akita twin he found in mirrors and windows with fierce barks, he would set up in the living room while we read on the couch, resting comfortably on our feet. He was too large to be a lap dog, but he wanted to be close to his people. God help you if you needed to get up for any reason, though.
He has never lost a taste for pizza, and we soon figured out a compromise. We would eat the majority of the pizza, leaving the crust behind — he would then get what we dubbed Pizza Bones, provided he did not beg at the table. (He always did, but you can’t hold that against you when food is on the line for my dog) He also developed a joy for riding in cars in the front seat, happily gazing out at the countryside as you sped along. I soon came to discover that my dog preferred to listen to Van Halen, but did not care for the White Stripes. He also liked CCR and Alanis Morrisette, but did not like the Eagles or Led Zeppelin. Zorro is a creature of tastes — they are specific, and they are his own.
He has his dislikes. He hates going to the vet — as any dog of reasonable intellect should — and he hates the hot air balloons that provide county tours from the next door regional airport. (This is a more frequent problem than one might expect) He hates having burrs removed from his fur — a problem when you have free reign of 150 acres, much of it wild pasture. He won’t let anyone but me brush him, and even that is a 50/50 measure depending upon his mood. He also hates thunderstorms, which will drive him to find the most interior portions of our home to nest in until the thunder has passed. Oftentimes, he needs to have someone sit with him in order to make it through.
All of that might make for extra care and a very pampered dog, but the truth is that being away at college for most of his early years, followed by moving to Chicago for the past six, I am always more than happy to indulge him, as these are limited experiences. When I first moved to Chicago, the only time I broke down on the train in my first two weeks was when my mother called to tell me that Zorro had taken to sitting by the window at night, waiting for my headlights to drive back up the lane to signal that I was home. Cherish the moments you can with the ones you love, for they are fleeting.
Zorro has been with us for the past thirteen years, and he is old. Average lifespans for Akitas are ten to fifteen, and Zorro is in reasonable health, with the exception of his hips, which suffer from arthritis. He’s on a strict regimen of hip supplements and doggie aspirin, fed to him between two slices of American cheese. These help him, though they do make him somewhat gassy. (This is…reasonably tolerable). Sometimes he needs a boost off the floor, though he’s figured out how to lift himself without assistance. He’s very independent, and doesn’t care for extra attention — though mostly, his hips hurt at the touch, and he would rather not suffer the pain.
It grieves me to think of my dog in pain. He shouldn’t have to suffer — the soul of a dog is more pure and innocent than that of anyone I’ve ever met. He’s gotten me through the worst of times, through breakups and deaths in the family, and I can’t fully conceive of a world without my dog. I know that time is short, and when the time comes, we’ll need to do right by him. Anyone who’s ever owned a pet knows that there will come a time to say goodbye. It’s part and parcel of looking after another creature.
But it hurts. It hurts me to see him like this, and it will hurt when we’ll need to take him to the vet for the final day. It will hurt because I can’t bear to put him down, but I have to be the one to take him to the vet because he won’t go inside with anyone else because he’s so scared of what might happen in there and he trusts me to see him through safely. It hurts because he’s another piece to when my family was whole, to when things were simple, and it hurts because I can’t listen to Panama by Van Halen without hearing him howling along.
Another thing — his howl. Zorro can’t howl. He tries, bless his heart. At night, coyotes run in the hills near our farm, yipping and howling in their own way. As a guard dog, Zorro tries to meet them with a howl that sounds more like a dying fire truck engine. I don’t know that it has any effect, but he thinks it does, and he wants to look after his people. Though it kept me up for five years when we first got him, I miss it now here in the city. And I miss it all the more every day I don’t hear it.