Ode to ‘Scoop’: A modest canine presence

A watcher
When sitting in his usual spot on the boat (outboard of the coamings by the helm), if he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at other boats and the people on them. At the cormorants on the water. At the clouds in the sky. Who knows? I concluded at one point that he was the canine equivalent of a mentally challenged child who couldn’t survive without constant supervision and caring, whose enjoyments were primitive, whose prognosis was always going to be more of the same. But the truth is, of all the dogs I’ve had, he’s the one who’s won my deepest affection. And who, in his odd ways, has returned that affection.

When I got back from Iraq after the start of the war — I had been gone 13 weeks — he lifted his head in the rocker where he’d been snoozing and put it right back down to resume his nap, only to awake a moment later in a frenzy of delayed recognition, the happiest dog imaginable, unable for hours to be more than a few inches from where I was.

Friends of ours from North Haven — who long ago fell in love with the old boy and say he was romping up and down the stairs the last time he stayed with them a couple of months ago —insist he’s not done yet, that as far as they can see, he still thoroughly enjoys his dog’s life. They say he needs more time in the country, less in the city. That despite his swoons and occasional seizures these days, his heart is strong and he could hang on for years.

Of course, I hope they’re right. But I think they’re not. He’s fading away. Siobhan and I sense it. And fear the inevitable. 

Boy and his dog stuff
This past Memorial Day weekend Scoop and I went “up the river” again, as we always do when the boat’s finally at the mooring. 

Scoop assumed his usual position standing on the bow of our inflatable dinghy, like a hood ornament watching everything, his flat crusty nose angled to the breeze.

Alert with his tail coiled tight, clearly plugged in to what must have seemed in his slim memory box like the most familiar and wondrous ritual, another “Wind in the Willows” day of messing about in boats. One of Scoop’s human friends once theorized that his brain was like a bowl of milk with four Cheerios in it, and that every now and then when two Cheerios touched he’d have a thought… but just for a second!  

In the dinghy they kept touching, he kept thinking, "hoo boy!" His most contented and alive moments of the long weekend, 45 minutes of the way it used to be.

It doesn’t seem possible that he and I will take the post-Labor Day cruise we often took in the past. We’d sail down east, to the Vineyard and Nantucket, or Buzzards Bay and Newport, or Block Island, and then back via Stonington or Essex, then home. 

The crowds would all be gone then, we’d pick up a mooring or drop anchor easy as pie, and I’d grill steaks or chops and he’d sit beside me on the settee berth, getting a bite for every two of mine, beneath the oil lamps when the sun went down. Later he’d grab a favorite stuffed toy and jump into the stateroom berth with it and with me. 

And then, sometime around Thanksgiving and with a fleece blanket around him for warmth, we’d take a dinghy ride down the river to the boatyard, another season ending.

Boy and his dog stuff. 

Still here           
Siobhan worries most of all about his eating. His not eating, actually. Over the long weekend she tried all of his favorites and nothing really worked. “He’s not right,” she kept saying. “He’s just not right.” Girl and her dog stuff, too.

On the dawn car ride back to the city, the two of them slept the entire way in, sharing the front seat and the light jacket she’d used for a blanket. Once one of them shifted in the seat and the jacket slipped away. I glanced over, the dog’s face was at rest against her hip. 

The morning sun slanted in and I saw his eyelids shudder, his sleep not yet so deep he was unaware we were all on the move.

I could see him breathing.

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