This book was a gift two Christmases ago from a former colleague — an owner of Dalmatians and Labradors — who likes going through the stacks at second-hand bookstores to find that one gem of a book that you won’t find in other bookstores.
Over the years, he has given me books about dogs, about Labradors mostly because I had one, and one of them was Red Dog by Louis de Bernières, a sheepdog that was as legendary in the Australian outbacks as Hachiko was to Japan’s Shibuya commuters. Eventually, Tally the Red Dog dies but the tall tales continue. He also gave me Marley and Me by John Grogan, and we all know that, eventually, Marley dies, as well.
So when he gave me the book Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs, I said, well, at least this one’s not going to make me cry. How wrong I was! Old Dogs is written by Gene Weingarten and photographed by Michael S. Williamson, staffers of the Washington Post and both Pulitzer Prize winners.
The book is a portrait of 64 dogs in their twilight years (all dogs were at least 10 years old when they were photographed). Weingarten writes short, compelling anecdotes about the dogs accompanied on the opposite page by Williamson’s moving portraits.
“I have lived with eight dogs, watched six of them grow old and infirm with grace and dignity and die with what seemed to be acceptance,” writes Weingarten. “I have seen old dogs grieve at the loss of their friends. I have come to believe that as they age, dogs comprehend the passage of time, and if not the inevitability of death, certainly the relentlessness of the onset of their frailties. They understand that what’s gone is gone.”
You can tell immediately from the photos that the dogs are old — some eyes are glassy, their muzzles are white but all of them looking mellow, the way people — even the most vociferous and active ones — mellow with age.
Any dog owner who has lived with a dog knows that time when his dog has crossed the line between adult and old. Reading about these dogs made me remember one day at home when I was working on my laptop and looking at my dog. Freeway’s tail began thumping the floor; she had that alertness in her eyes like she always did when she was on a walk. I looked at her for a long time and all she did was wag her tail, and then, very slowly, she got up, slogged toward me, and rested her chin on my lap. When she was younger, the moment I met her gaze she would come barreling toward me, her tail wagging, her ears flying — without exception. A dog who, when I called out her name, no matter how faint or how far she was, would be at my side in a split second that at one point I suspected she was a superdog.
In her last years, as she would lie a few feet from me while I was writing, I actually found myself avoiding her eyes. I didn’t want her to get up because it had become an ordeal for her.
For Weingarten, this realization came on the day his family was moving houses. They had left their eccentric dog Harry S. Truman in the old empty house with only his bed for eight hours. When he came to pick up Harry, the dog “met me at the door and embraced me around the waist in a way that is simply not reconcilable with the musculature and skeleton of a dog’s front legs. I could not extricate myself from his grasp. We walked out of the house like a slow-dancing couple, and Harry did not let go until I opened the car door.”
Weingarten also writes poignantly about a walk in a park when Harry suddenly stops to observe another dog. “A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog. The dog, about Harry’s size, was tracking the flight expertly, as Harry had once done, anticipating hooks and slices by watching the pitch and roll and yaw of the disc, as Harry had once done, then catching it with a joyful, punctuating leap, as Harry had once done, too.”
For 10 minutes man and dog sat watching. “Our walk home was almost… jaunty.”
Smurfy, 17, the oldest dog featured in the book, reached his old age at the same time his family had baby Wren. Both baby and dog are pictured wearing diapers.
Blaze, 11, was a dog who couldn’t be held by a leash, a chain, a fence or a door, and she attacked moving cars on the streets. For the dog’s safety, her owner decided to get an electric fence. “Blaze got herself seriously shocked several times before she learned. But Blaze is part Border Collie, and when she learned, she really learned.” But now the dog doesn’t like going for a walk even when her owner Lynda tries. “Blaze dutifully waits to be saddled up and allows Lynda to take her outside. But then she takes the leash in her mouth and leads Lynda back into the house. At first, Lynda feared the dog’s spirit was broken. But then she understood: Blaze is still in control, still living on her terms.”
In other stories, it is a dog’s compassion for another animal that is highlighted. Honey Pie, 15, never liked the family cat. When the cat was ill, it crawled into her bed. “That one time, dog let cat sleep through the night and stood guard protectively. And yes, the cat died the next day. And no, no one has any idea how Honey Pie knew.”
Page after page, the dogs and their stories will make you tear up, laugh, and remember your own dogs — the ones that still sleep at your feet and or the ones that remain only in your heart.
“This is a tribute to old dogs, a celebration of their special virtues,” Weingarten writes. “If you ask us which of them are still alive, our answer is: They all are. May old dogs live forever.”