The Raging Elitist

Our 8-year-old yellow lab Sammy had her first “senior visit” at the vet the other day. I’ve enjoyed teasing her about it by calling her Senior Dog for the last week. She doesn’t mind. She looks at me with sad girl eyes and thumps her tail against the couch, hoping that I’ll rub the inside of her ears. That’s the type of girl she is. Not one to easily take offense or sweat the small stuff, she’ll gladly tolerate being referred to as “stupid girl” or “dumb bitch” so long as I say it nice. She knows that there are way worse things in life than name calling, like getting anally probed and stuck with needles at your first senior visit, or being a passenger in an automobile enroute to your first senior visit. If someone says vet or forces you to ride in the back seat of their car, you tuck your tail between your legs and you cry, because your life is in obvious danger, but if someone calls you a geriatric bitch in a sweet voice, you smile at them and wait for pets. Unless it’s within an hour of mealtime. In that case you perk your ears up and stare at them and try to look like a doll until they say the words “hungry” and “food.” Then you spring off all four paws and twirl in circles like a crack-smoking mountain goat until the kibble hits the bowl, because you know that nothing in this life exceeds the pure ecstasy of caloric consumption . . . if you’re an 8-year-old labrador retriever like Sammy that is. If you’re a 39-year-old human like me, you speak in infantilizing tones and say mean things to the dog while you pet her.

Sammy probably thinks that phrases like “fuck you” and “slut dog” are universal terms of affection. I’ve trained her to think that, because she is a dumb animal, and, like her, I have a bit of a potty mouth, the difference being that whereas the potty comes out of my mouth, it goes into hers. This is ultimately what separates us, more than bipedalism or opposable thumbs; it’s that the great joy in my life is fashioning my thoughts into foul things that come out of my mouth while the apex of existence for Sammy is putting foul things into her mouth and consuming them. A bag of cat food in the neighbor’s garage? A package of herbal cough drops left on an end table? A sackful of trick-or-treating candy left on the counter? All not-to-be-missed thrill rides of orgasmic bliss. Bloating ala the blueberry gobstopper girl in Willy Wonka and life-threatening diarrhea full of plastic wrappers are no matter. The only regret would be to have passed on the free calories. Just like Sammy knows that “fuck you” and “slut dog” undoubtedly mean “I love you,” she knows that if there are unguarded calories within reach of her snout, she is meant to devour them.

Sammy’s drive to eat toxic pseudo food is just one justification for calling her dumb. To name a couple others, she thinks that she can dig a hole in the tile floor of our bathroom, and she’s afraid of the vacuum. I don’t really think she’s dumb, though. I just like to tease her. I think she’s passionate. Besides her dedication to eating, she’s way more devoted to my wife than I could ever be. It’s not that I don’t love Danyelle. It’s just that I don’t feel the need to follow her every time she gets up and goes into the next room, thus earning myself the moniker “White Shadow,” (Sammy’s great at collecting nicknames – Sammy Wammy, Baby Dog, Little Princess, Fur Baby, Honey Girl, Miss, Marsh Dog, etc.).

She’s also way more committed to behaving around the kids than I am. In all the years that they’ve been tearing around the house screaming and with no regard for Sammy’s personal space, she’s never once snapped at either of them. With the boys, she’s the epitome of gentleness. Her restraint is such that when the kids were toddlers and she believed the proper way to say hello was to jump up and slam her paws into your crotch, she never once knocked them over. I don’t know how she does it. I lose it with the kids all the time, at which point Sammy gives me the look, the one that says, “Have you lost your mind?” Then she wags her whole body as she comes over to tell me, “You need to calm the fuck down.”

Sammy’s not just passionate about our family either. She cares a lot about social causes too. She’s a big proponent of DEI, Dog Equity and Inclusion. She believes that the best spot on the couch is a dog’s right, and she becomes horribly indignant about dogs not being included in walks or family outings. In her younger years she staged raucous howling protests in the event of such atrocities. Now that she’s a senior, she’s more of a pacifist and opts for quiet sit-ins at the window looking out on the driveway.

I wish I could be as passionate about living every moment as Sammy is. She’s been trying to teach me ever since the first day we met, when Danyelle called me from the parking lot of my miserable job in Delray Beach, and I saw her, a little ball of fluff with teeth and claws running around on the asphalt as if she were oblivious to the thin, red line that attached her to Danyelle. I was immediately smitten, despite the fact that I hadn’t wanted her.

A few days earlier I didn’t so much agree to getting a dog as I did refuse less forcefully than usual. I was lying in a hotel bed in midtown Manhattan at the end of a 12-hour workday. I was still wearing my suit and tie, and there was a half-eaten piece of pizza next to me. Danyelle was on the other end of the phone, crying. She’d gone home to visit her family for the week while I was away in New York; we were newlyweds and had started trying for a baby; and she had just started her period. At one point her sister took the phone from her and scolded me that if Danyelle wanted a dog, she should have one. I was too exhausted to say much. The one defense I remember mustering was, “It’s going to be ok.”

I think I was trying to reassure myself more than anyone else. I had foolishly taken a job in equity research with a Wall Street bank and moved with Danyelle to Delray Beach right after the wedding (It was cheaper for the bank to have some of its employees in the old people capital of the world instead of in New York). It didn’t take many 80-hour work weeks, bizarre episodes of chastisement, or emails with the subject line “WTF is this” in reference to small typos to realize that I hated my boss, the small team that I worked with, and the meaningless work that we all did. I was in a moment of crisis – I’d gone from swim coaching to business school to Wall Street in two years; I was surrounded by aggressive finance nerds and octogenarians, not sleeping, and I’d dragged my new wife along with me. Enter fluff ball.

The fluff ball didn’t care about my identity crisis. It didn’t care about my social status or my work stress, and it didn’t care about my lack of sleep. It cared about DEI. It took mud baths in our back yard and proudly tracked filth all through the house; it teethed on toys, random belongings, and human body parts; and it whined incessantly through the night when it was put in its crate. Within about a week of our meeting in the parking lot, Danyelle was spending her nights on the couch with the fluff ball to keep it quiet for me.

Despite its lack of regard for the difficulty I was going through, I liked the fluff ball. I named it Sammy Watkins after Clemson football’s all-time leader in receiving yards and touchdowns. Like the former Clemson great, this furry Sammy was an athlete of immense talent and fearless determination. She parkoured all over our furniture, swam in the neighborhood’s gator-infested retention pond, and played rough and tumble with the hundred-pound pit mix down the street. In addition to her athleticism, she also proved musically gifted, howling along while I played Vince Guaraldi’s Linus and Lucy on the keyboard.

It didn’t take long before I was thinking about her all the time at work, which made those long hours in a windowless room all the more insufferable. Finally, a couple months after meeting the fluff ball, I called up Danyelle from the office and told her I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I quit in disgrace, and the rest is history. Danyelle got pregnant immediately; we moved back to our hometown in South Carolina; I started coaching again; and then our son Cartter showed up. He and Sammy have the same birthday one year apart. Ever the altruist, Miss Watkins donated her couch to us so that Danyelle and I could take turns staying up all night with Baby Cartter the first 8 months of his life. I continue to fail constantly when it comes to heeding Sammy’s call to take advantage of the life I’ve been given, wallowing in obsessive reflection and self-loathing far too often, but when it came to starting a family, I’m glad I listened.

I’m sure I would have left the bank without the fluff ball’s help, and I’m sure Danyelle and I would have had kids pretty quickly, but they wouldn’t have been Cartter and Scotty, not the Cartter and Scotty that we know. They’d have come later, and they’d have been different people, unsniffed by the furry matriarch who once towered above them on the floor and now nuzzles at their waists. Sammy’s watched them from the time they grew inside their mother’s womb. She’s shown them love and kindness and helped them become who they are. They’re off at school all day now, and she spends a lot of her time waiting for them next to the door in the den, their senior dog who has senior visits at the vet.

The vet says he wishes Danyelle took care of all his patients’ dogs. Sammy goes on long walks and either swims at the boat landing or runs in the park every day. She’s a fit little senior. My dad warns that I’m going to cry when my senior dog is gone. I know he’s right. The lack of the fur princess greeting me at the door and constantly underfoot in the kitchen, her absence on our walks around the neighborhood, the pictures of her and the boys still hung all over the house, it will be devastating, but like suffering excruciating abdominal cramps and diarrhea after a gluttonous romp through a school of dead fish, it will have been worth it. There’s no joy without suffering. I know the pain is coming, but, like Sammy, I don’t intend to miss out on any of that stinky fish along the way, right down to the last second when she endures that final needle stick and I whisper into her ear, “Fuck you, sweet girl.”