Underbelly Archives

I am sitting at me desk in my studio apartment in Brooklyn on a warm, quiet Fall day. A cool breeze is coming through the open windows and the sun is still on the other side of the building. The light in the room is soft and soothing.

Curled up sleeping over on the bed, in a nest of cool white sheets, is a little creature. This is my beloved. A small, fawn colored Chihuahua named Sophie.

I have chosen to write about Sophie now because she is older, and I don’t know how much longer she will be with me. She has become like a tiny senior citizen who is in my care. We have now spent her lifetime together, and the past sixteen years have also represented a significant and important portion of my own lifetime. I have come to love her more than words could ever express, and yet still I want to try to express my love for her in words, and so I write about her now, while she is still here existing in the same world as I do.

Sophie came into my life quite by accident. I had always loved dogs and imagined myself sharing my life with one, but I had always seen myself with some sort of larger, more athletic beast. A dog that would ride in the back of my jeep to the beach, and who would spectacularly leap through the air and catch a Frisbee, stick, or rubber ball, and who would then magnificently charge back to me with it in his mouth wanting me to throw it even further the next time.

For her diminutive size, Sophie has had some extraordinary athletic moments in her life, but none quite like the one I just described.

Sixteen years ago, I inherited Sophie from a girlfriend who had gotten Sophie when we were a couple. Though it was her choice to get a dog while she was living alone, once we moved in together I became the one who ended up taking care of Sophie. After we broke up, she realized that she couldn’t care properly for Sophie without my help, and asked if I wanted to take her.

That girlfriend went on to get married and have a human child of her own. I went on to care for Sophie, who became my baby, and my best friend, and has ultimately become like an elderly spouse to me. I have found that loving and caring for an animal over it’s whole lifetime is like no human relationship ever could be, because it is the only relationship where you take care for another being when they are a helpless baby, and then again when they are a helpless senior citizen.

Sophie has not only become a part of my life, but a part of me. A part of my identity. She has been a constant companion and friend, and given me so much and asked so little in return. In fact, of the two of us, I am the needy one in the relationship.

We have a strong bond to be sure, and like an old couple have learned to read the meaning of each other’s gestures and the posture and tempo of our movements. She, for example, knows when I am going away on a business trip even before I begin packing, and starts demonstrating the accompanying behavior of her mild separation anxiety.

For her, the simple act of my reaching for my hat off of the coat hook alerts Sophie that a walk is imminent and she will come bounding over to me. For me, her standing next to me on the bed with one paw on my thigh as I rest means for me to create a figure four with my legs to give her a nesting area between my thighs.

There are times, at night, when I put my ear against Sophie’s side, and listen to her heartbeat. I can feel what can only be described as a warm energy flowing back and forth between us. Sometimes it feels as if she and I are all there is on a lonely planet– the only two beings here who won’t ultimately end up disappointing each other.

Many people don’t understand the bond that some people have with animals.

For people who do understand, loving an animal is as powerful and life-changing an experience as loving a human–it’s just different.

I believe that for spiritual people, loving an animal, brings us closer to God. When we love an animal we open ourselves to connect deeply with a creature different from ourselves, who came from the same creator, allowing us to feel and understand love, God, and the universe more completely.

I feel this way about Sophie. When I am with her, though she may seem to be just a silly little Chihuahua, I feel connected to something greater than myself.  I often marvel at the amazing power contained in that amusing little dog to simply make me FEEL something, even when I had been certain that the world’s harshness has abused my trust, and stolen my ability to feel much of anything.

It is truly an unconditional love animals can have for us, and It is also an unconditional love some people have for animals, that states, “I love you, not because you are a human being like me, I love you even though you are different from me”.

Beyond the spiritual aspect of  my relationship with Sophie, beyond the unconditional love between us, there also is, of course, simply, our friendship.

Webster’s defines friendship simply as “one attached to another by affection or esteem”, I would go further in defining my friendship with Sophie and indeed for anyone who has a close relationship with an animal. Beyond the spiritual connectedness, beyond the companionship, there is a mutual agreement, a tender contract between us:  From me, I make a promise to her: I will feed you and bathe you and keep the bugs from bothering you. I will walk with you so you can get fresh air and exercise. I will touch you so you don’t feel lonely. I will keep you warm, and safe from any person or other animal that would mean to hurt you. I will take care of you when you are sick. I will listen to you even though we speak different languages and I will learn your language as best I can. I will understand what you want and need, even though you are different than I am and that those things may not be things I imagine wanting or needing myself.  I will care about you even when I am away, and I will miss you when we are not together. I will be with you until the end, and I will never ever forget you.

And she makes a promise to me. Though she cannot write or speak human words, she shows me with every fiber of her being what she promises to me in our contract: She promises to always  show me her love with a nuzzle of her nose or a lick from her tiny tongue. She will never let me feel alone. She will sit vigil for me when I don’t feel well. She will make me laugh so many times I would never be able to keep count. She will walk with me to make sure I get exercise, and she will introduce me to people I otherwise would never have the opportunity to meet. She will miss me when I am gone. She will be elated upon my return. She will keep me warm on cold nights like a little heated fur ball. She will ground me, by making me want to come home to her and to be responsible for a being other than myself. She will be an essential element of what I consider to be home, and indeed having her with me makes anywhere home. She will be with me until the end. She will never forget me.

Sophie has been a constant companion who has traveled with me on planes, trains and cars, all over the country, she has seen me through several difficult relationships, financial hardships, depressions and fears. When I am sick she cuddles next to me, asks for nothing and just keeps vigil, offering her velvety little head for me to stroke for comfort.

She is my little cartoon dog. My inspiration and muse for many drawings and little stories about her.

I had often wondered whether animals actually have a sense of humor, and Sophie has convinced me they do. Sophie has always been a master of physical comedy and does seem to do things than for no other reason than their comedic and theatrical aspect. When she was younger, it was her amazing and humorous displays of athleticism that were very startling coming from a tiny Chihuahua. Running off leash on the great lawn of Central Park and spectacularly leaping over strangers sunning themselves on blankets ….and now that her athletic days are behind her, I swear there are times when I am certain Sophie is playfully teasing me, whether it’s playing peek-a-boo under the blankets, or “pretending” she is sleeping when it is cold outside and there is snow on the ground and it is time for her walk. Or when she runs down the hallway of  my apartment building, well ahead of me, and then  stops  at the bend in the hall, waiting, absolutely frozen, looking back at me, and then I too freeze in my tracks. She waits for me to unfreeze and take a single step toward her, and when I do, she then darts around the corner, out of sight. I can almost hear her giggling when she does this.

Our days are filled with these little dances and playful routines, and Sophie is a master, even in her old age, of creating new and funnier little comedy acts that absolutely delight me.

Her latest little joke is something she does when we come back from our walk. Instead of darting down the hallway as I described, which she always does after the first walk of the day, she will do just the opposite. After our second walk, in the afternoon, she steps off the elevator and when I take her off her leash, instead of darting down the hallway, she walks VERY slowly. EXTRA slowly. Taking tiny, slow steps. Looking around as she walks. Looking at each door to each apartment she passes. Intentionally taking her sweet time just to tease me. I walk past her tortoise like display, to our apartment well ahead and around the corner. Now standing in the door to our apartment, I wait. And wait. As Grandma Moses pitter pats slowly down the hallway carpet, I cool my heels. She walks as slowly as she can without actually coming to a stop. I continue to wait. I wait for her to come around the bend. I call to her. I wait some more. Call her again. Finally, I see her little nose break the vertical horizon of the corner of the hall. I see her pitter pattering up to our door. Slowly. Regally. Until she gets to the apartment. Then, just as she breaks the threshold of the apartment door as she enters… she suddenly darts into the apartment at top speed, laughing at me (in her little brain), as she leaps up onto the bed, plants herself on top of a pile of blankets, like the cherry on top of a sundae, and laughs again. I just close the apartment door. Shake my head. And chuckle.

Sophie’s first sign of entering old age was almost six years ago, when her and I were driving together cross country from California to New York. I stopped at a truckstop in Utah and bought a breakfast sandwich. I gave Sophie a little bit of bacon from the sandwich and she started chewing it furiously. But she kept chewing and chewing that same piece of bacon for about five minutes. Eventually I took it out of her mouth because something just didn’t seem right. When I looked at the masticated little hunk of bacon I noticed that she had lost a tooth that was now mushed up with the wad of meat. I guess I should have been very happy she didn’t swallow it, or choke on it, but instead I became very sad as I looked at the tiny tooth I now held between my fingers. Sophie, that day, had become an old dog. Sure enough, six months later, Sophie had to have most of her teeth removed because they had become rotted. She now has about five teeth left in the back of her mouth that, at this point, are not themselves in the best shape. Needless to say, Sophie gets soft food now, and no more raw hide chew toys.

About a year ago, Sophie began acting weird. She had been having trouble holding her pee for a while and I had taken her to a variety of expensive vets who did a variety of expensive tests to see why she had become incontinent. She also seemed to be fearful and nervous, and less affectionate.

No one seemed to be able to find anything wrong with her and attributed the problem to age and prescribed her pills that were supposed to “stem the tide” of the incontinence…so to speak.

The pills didn’t work all that well, and my apartment had become a virtual monument to my love for Sophie by way of all the pee-proofing I had done to make it a place where she could still have free run. After all. It was Sophie’s home too, and I was not going to crate her for the first time in her life at the relative human age at that time, of 75.

I covered the hardwood floors with pee pads and put a mattress cover on the bed. I took her to another vet who thought Sophie’s problem wasn’t a weak bladder, but might be a cognitive problem. She was simply forgetting her housetraining. The vet thought that Sophie might have what basically amounts to doggie alzheimers.

She prescribed a brain medication that I gave to Sophie every morning for several months. It didn’t seem to help at all. I was worried less about the incontinence than I was her fearfulness, a sort of constant nervousness, which was not like her at all.

I eventually realized something the vet had missed. Sophie had become deaf. At first I thought it was odd when I would come home at the end of the day and would walk into the apartment, and, if Sophie wasn’t facing the front door, she would not realize I was home. I would come up behind her calling her name, and she would not turn around. When I would get close enough, she would apparently pick up on my scent, because she would usually turn around once I was in the apartment and close enough to her for her to smell me. Sometimes, though she would not realize I was home until I stepped in front of her field of vision. Sometimes, if she was sleeping, I could come home and throw down my backpack, and then go rattle dishes in the kitchen as I made dinner and she would sleep through it. One time I decided to test her hearing, and while she was sound asleep, I clapped my hands as hard as I could right next to her noggin.—and not even a twitch came from her.

So now, I am careful not to startle her by suddenly picking her up from behind, or waking her up too abruptly with my touch. I now know she has been nervous and fearful because she has lost her important sense of hearing and so I try to always do whatever I can to maintain a routine for her, without too many unexpected scary surprises.

I am sorry she can no longer hear my voice. I still talk to her, and sing to her ridiculous songs I make up about her. Sometimes I pick her up and put my lips right up against her ear and tell her how much I love her.  I hope she can feel the vibration of my voice, and feels comforted.

I looked up Sophie’s age in human years on a Chihuahua age chart the other day and found that at 16 ½ years old she is the equivalent to 83 years old in human years. She is at the mid-range in the total life expectancy for a Chihuahua, as Chihuahuas’ life expectancy is approximately 14-18 years.

I understand physics and biology, and zoology as well as anyone and realize that Sophie will not be with me much longer. Some Chihuahuas have been known to live as long as twenty years, but that would be unusual. Sophie already has enough little health issues to make me think that will be unlikely. For me, I take great satisfaction in knowing Sophie has led a long and happy life and that we have had so many wonderful times together, and that we have taken very good care of each other. As good care of each other as we possibly could.

These days I spend almost all my free time with Sophie. Cherishing every moment with her. We take a daily walk in the park and I let her convince me to give her a treat of a piece of roast beef a couple times a day. She does sleep a lot, but I still like being with her even when she is over on the bed sleeping, especially when she occasionally looks up from her slumber to see if I am there–and I am. She looks so comforted when she sees that I am in the room with her as she sleeps and then she puts her little walnut-like head back down into her blanket nest, let’s out a contented sigh, and then starts to snore.

When Sophie does leave me, when she passes into whatever awaits her next, it will be a day that will have been impossible to be prepared for. It will be harder than I can now imagine, and I know my sadness will be overwhelming. When that day comes, I will feel like a part of me is missing. There will be nothing for me to do, nothing I will want to do….so I will just toast Sophie with a glass of wine, reread the “Rainbow Bridge Poem”, and then I will, for the first time since being a teenager, cry.

When that day does come, I will not call friends, or post a message online about her passing. I will mourn her quietly, and carry on with my life knowing I am a better man, and a better human being for having the honor of being able to share my life with her.