Ode to ‘Scoop’: A modest canine presence

Mike Taibbi Correspondent • Profile • E-mail

NEW YORK - More and more often, it seems there’s not much left to him. Lifting his body you want to use two hands, to be careful; but it’s like holding a water balloon the size of a big sub sandwich. Gravity bends him. You can feel his ribs. You know that if he leapt off the big bed in the master bedroom, the way he used to at the slightest hint of breakfast in the kitchen, he’d surely break a foreleg. Now we have “DoggySteps” beside the beds and couches.  

Used to be he’d lock his gaze on you for an hour, not even blinking, while you were driving or eating supper or working at your desk. Now he looks at you for just a few seconds before his lids get heavy and his head settles on his paws, sleeping. 

For the first time in our years with him, sometimes he doesn’t even pad into the bedroom to join us when we’re ready to call it a night. He just stays where he is. For days on end he’s listless, in a swoon. He’s not eating much.

‘Scoop’
I got him 13 years ago, long before the “Men In Black” movies featured “Frank the Pug,” and well before the odd-looking breed seemed to have invaded Manhattan. I called mine “Scoop” since that seemed like a good name for a reporter’s dog and was easy to remember.

My previous dog, an English Springer Spaniel, had died a few months before at 16 years of age and, as a lifetime dog guy recently divorced and suddenly without a weekend home, I looked for a quiet undemanding breed that would be happy in an apartment or on a boat. From the beginning Scoop was just that.

Never an athlete, never an explorer, except to find a few hiding places on the boat…in a footwell...behind a toolbox…and make them his. He ate what I fed him. Almost never barked.

Three walks a day were just fine and sometimes when it was unavoidable, just two. The only dog I’ve ever known or known about who, on a daily basis, preferred to stay in bed rather than go for a morning walk. He was not a dog who scratched at the door.

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Early on, I trained him the way I’d trained all my dogs. The five basic things:  Sit. Speak. Heel. Stay. Come here.  One morning, after a couple months of training, he did all five things. He’s never done any of them since.  People explained, it’s the breed. Stubborn...and not that bright. Didn’t bother me. I liked the dog.

A few years into his life with me, it was life with Siobhan, too. My wife is Irish and the way the two of them hit it off suggested there was something in her lilting Limerick accent the dog actually understood. Or wanted to.

In the meat of his lifetime he was a strange dog to have — for a dog guy. He didn’t enjoy walking the beaches, and didn’t enjoy walking at all if it was colder than 30 degrees or warmer than 60, or more than an hour, or longer than a half mile. Or if it was raining, or if there was slush or snow on the ground.

‘A modest canine presence’
I took to calling Scoop a “modest canine presence” when I was looking for colleagues or friends to mind him when both Siobhan and I were traveling. She’s executive director of the relief organization “Concern Worldwide” and spends much time in Africa and elsewhere overseas. I spend a lot of time in war zones and other out-of-town assignments.

Whoever met Scoop liked him. A lot. In fact, no human, or other dog, had ever done anything to hurt him and, as a result, he projected neither fear nor animus toward any other living thing. The ultimate in a trusting and trustworthy animal. In the city, a junkyard Rottweiler would snarl at him and he’d wag his curlicue tail while silently communicating the message that he posed no threat, and the big dog would all but smile. 

He’s never had to spend a night in a kennel. When we bought a house in North Haven on Long Island, he found the place he liked best of all, grass and trees — his grass and trees — and birds and deer. There was so much to look at.

Because, it turns out, looking at the world around him has always been his shining talent and purest joy.

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