Losing Lucy

I had to say goodbye to my dog Lucy last Sunday. I spent Monday morning writing a Facebook post that expanded as I worked on it until it started to feel like an essay. It has almost nothing to do with any subject I’d normally write about here, but it’s also the only thing I had it in me to write for several days before or after. If this is nothing you feel like reading about, that’s fine. We’ll be back to normally scheduled programming next Sunday. If you do read it, though, note that I haven’t changed a word from the version I posted on Facebook. So, references to “yesterday,” for example, are about things that happened a week ago.

My ex-wife (and current good friend) Jennifer and I adopted Lucy when we were living in South Korea in 2014, when she was a tiny puppy who fit in my hands. She slept on the doggie bed we set up on the floor for, I think, the first couple of nights, until she could figure out how to maneuver her way onto the bed, and then that was that. We adopted a cat (Shabazz, who stayed with Jenn three years ago when we split up) around the same time. We always called them “the Koreans”--like, “who’s going to look after the Koreans this weekend while we’re away?”

Jenn was the one who insisted on adopting Lucy when I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to get a puppy we’d have to potty-train while we lived in a fifth-floor apartment. But Lucy, in whatever way animals do this, very quickly decided that I was her primary person. I used to leave for like 45 seconds every night to take the bag of scooped cat litter down to the trash chute at the end of the hall, and Lucy would start whining unhappily about me being gone. So, eventually, I just started taking her with me. She’d happily bound down the hall toward the trash chute--then nervously look behind her to make sure I was still coming. With exactly one exception I can think of, her whole life, that’s how she was when she was off her leash. And “taking out the cat feces with Lucy” became a nightly tradition, continued (when we had to actually go outside to a dumpster) through all the moves to Michigan, New Jersey,