The Brunch Beggars

Our fancy little neighborhood thrives by that dubious sign of wealth and comfort in the 21st century: outdoor brunch.

We participate in this, often on Sundays when it's warm. I had some more classic begging poses snapped earlier, but this stood out as a favorite. Oates is always wild-eyed and open-mouthed during his begging, like someone insanely happy or at least insane. Instead, here he is trying a sad and serious look.

Willie, of course, isn't begging at all, for a moment, but soulfully looking at his brother. Or maybe just sniffing his ear, that is the one most infected now, and for the next 14 days I will twice daily put drops in them and rub the velvet flaps while he tries to escape me.

There is a plastic bowl of water they both drank from on this hot and humid day.  The waitress volunteered to bring one without being asked, which was very thoughtful.

The Fine Line Between Fight And Play

Here is Willie with Oates lounging behind him this Saturday evening, the day he got great kidney test results.

Seven-week-old Willie was not only emotionally fragile when I brought him home. I was told that his bones were so soft at that age that leaving him unattended with a rowdy Pug puppy would leave him vulnerable to permanent injury. So while I didn't want to leave them in their crates all day while I was at work, I had to put up a fence in the small kitchen to keep him away from Oates. I wonder what went on as they stared at each other through the wooden fence all day.

When I shared with the breeder that I was worried that Oates would always be the bully, she chuckled and said, no one pushes around a Shiba.

While Willie seemed so meek and small and shy, he would occasionally show some fire when Oates went too far by baring hist teeth and snapping at him. This still happens today.

I was aware what a bizarre experiment it was, pairing two disparate breeds. Pugs were social and goofy and not terribly bright but instinctual and earthy.  Shibas by contrast are often shy, serious, very cerebral and sensitive.  I guess I hoped they would complement each other and maybe some of their attributes might rub off on the other.

In those early days they would chase each other around and I'd hear constant bloodcurdling screams, only to look up or head to another room and find one pinning the other, sometimes with their jaws on the limb or even head of the other.

I was worried that they hated each other, and that this was a disastrous idea.  It took me a while to distinguish fighting from playing, and then to understand that for dogs the former is often really just the latter.

And then it took me years to see how much they are actually very attached to each other. Especially having spent over a dozen years together since they were babies.

The Origin Story, Part 2

Here they are today standing at the crosswalk. They both have different ways of averting their eyes from the blazing sun.

For the first eight weeks of our relationship, it was just Oates and I. But there was never a moment where Willie wasn't in the plans.

What changed was the breed.

I was actively looking for a Siberian Husky but one day I was walking down the street and saw my first Shiba Inu. It looked so much like a miniature Husky. I asked the owner what kind of dog it was and immediately began my research.

While the Shiba I met was the most common color: a kind of bright copper, I wanted a cream-colored one. Those are the most rare and considered "off-breed".  I finally found the only Shiba breeder in the tri-state area.

She was polite but gruff as I recall.  I wanted a boy, and a cream-colored one. There was a litter coming for which I could put my claim.  When I asked about the color, I was told I'd be "lucky to get any boy puppy at all".  So, while I sat with four-month-old Oates, even more new to my home than I was, I waited for Willie to be born.

A few weeks into Oates' time with me, Willie was born.  The breeder, having forgotten my request, asked if I'd still take a boy if he turned out white. I agreed. She said I could pick him up in seven weeks.

His parents were red, so it was unusual for him to be white...did I miss something in 6th grade science class? I liked the idea that he was nothing like his parents.  It wasn't the first thing I bonded with him over though.

In that time, as planned, Oates was potty-trained. What were those days like? Full of excitement, friends stopping by.  Having a floor through apartment right off the Hudson, I counted on a summer breeze blowing through and not needing air conditioners. Instead, 2002 was one of the hottest New York summers on record. Having Oates and eventually Willie poop and pee through my sweltering house created an eye-watering fever I won't ever forget. It was a strange backdrop to the joy and wonder and crazy energy of two puppies running through the house at blinding speed.

When it came time to pick Willie up, chaos reigned. My college friend new to the city had a car and instead on driving me. Then, at the last minute she took a weekend vacation and stranded me, as no rental cars were available in Manhattan on the Saturday of an August weekend.

I ended taking some sort of limousine driver through rural New Jersey over two hours away to pick up Willie.  It was a ludicrous but somehow appropriate entry for picking up my little prince.

At seven weeks, he was probably way too young to be given to me, but it was almost like the breeder was eager to give him away.  I do remember her telling me, with the implication of breeder instinct, to be careful with him, because he was especially sensitive.

We drove back together and he was balled up in my hands, only a fraction of the size of my four-month-old pug. He, like now, kept a gaze with me for an unusually long time.

It's fuzzy to me exactly what happened when I brought him home to Oates on 11th St.  I was pretty much alone, I'm sure, but with them.

Willie already had his crate next to Oates. Those first few nights he cried so much.  I think the breeder truthfully explained that he cried because he missed his mother. That maybe he left too soon.  That cut my heart in half, how tiny and vulnerable he was and how he was trying to communicate that.

It was only years later that I realized that my sympathy was really sublimated empathy. Because I was once young and small and vulnerable I was also taken from my mom and then never to see her again until I was long past being a boy.  I never cried about that specifically as a kid but it was not the first time that Willie's precious heart brought tears to my eyes.

The Origin Story, Part 1

Now's a good time to explain how Oates became Oates and Willie became Willie. This picture is from this morning as they waited for breakfast.

About thirteen years ago, not long after 9/11, I decided to move back downtown. It's easy to forget but there was a vague unease about living down there and housing prices in the West Village dipped for perhaps the first and last time. I had decided I wanted to live by the water. And I was getting two dogs.

The plan all along was to get a Siberian Husky, a breed I once raised as a puppy when I was a high school freshman.  And I wanted a companion for him, so he wouldn't be lonely when I was not around.

That previous fall I had been back home in Chicago, visiting the family of my childhood best friend, Alex.  They had a few dozen people over for their annual Thanksgiving Friday party. There were a few dogs there, mostly big labrador-types. Chasing all of them around and generally acting like a lunatic was one feisty Pug.

I had somehow lived in New York a few years by then without ever seeing a Pug, but I was instantly charmed by this one. So I when I moved downtown, I was getting a Pug.

In the spring, not long after I unpacked, I set about finding my Pug. It was not easy. For reasons that are hard to fully understand let alone explain so many years later, I didn't want a rescue dog.  My friend Allison had a rescue German Shepherd she adored but who would growl when men came over, even platonic old college pals like me.  He sometimes stood and put his jaw around my forearm, looking up menacingly as if daring me to provoke a full bite.

I didn't want a rescue dog. I felt that my siblings and I, who shuffled between unfit parents and orphanages, were already rescue dogs who did bite and did not often trust others.  No thanks. I wanted a dog from the very beginning, dogs I could fill up with love from the moment they hit their wee wee pads.

I tried to find a Pug breeder but kept striking out. I even joined a monthly meeting of Pug breeders, about nine elderly women in an airless apartment in the Village that smelled like stale potato chips. After the meeting, I asked if any of them had a Pug puppy. No, I would have to wait, I was told, until maybe later in the year. But I did not want to wait.

On the street I saw a woman with a puppy Pug. I asked her where she got her puppy. When she replied  that it was the pet store, I thoughtlessly asked her if she'd heard that was a bad idea. She thought for a second and said, "well, we love him!"

That was good enough for me. The next Saturday I marched right into my local pet store and asked if they had a fawn male puppy Pug.  They did and dropped Oates into a pen with me. He ran straight to my shoes and untied my laces.  In that instant his personality was immediately tangible to me, his clownish demeanor, his charming nonchalance and utter lack of need to impress me or make me love him.  I was smitten.

That night, however, I was hosting a party in my new apartment to watch the Tyson-Lewis fight. It was a charged evening, there were more women than men and they all seemed eager to see the convicted rapist get his beating. I thought of bringing Oates home right then, but a brand new puppy at my house with all of those people seemed to be just too much.  So, I decided to wait until Monday. It was a lot to contemplate as well.

Looking back, I have always felt guilty that I made Oates wait. That I ever hesitated at all. Knowing him now, he would have loved the party.  But I made him wait. His birth certificate, which looked like a diploma from a correspondence school, stated that he was born on Valentine's Day.  Like much of his paperwork, I assumed this was made up. That dogs from pet stores were of course of dubious provenance. But I've come to learn that he could have only been born on Valentine's Day. I did not know this then.

I did my best to distract myself from the decision.  The fight was a bust but the party was fun. It was a mix of old college friends, friends from work and others. Even Dorothy, the woman I'd moved to New York with and split from a few years before.  She brought a girlfriend who my friend Josh expressed interest in. When I mentioned it to Dorothy, she said he'd have to "lose the earring".  Knowing Josh still all these years later, it's astounding to me he ever wore an earring.

The party moved downstairs to the corner bar right across the Hudson River. A woman I had just met who was the roommate of my friend's girlfriend lingered expectantly and when I had a brief opening in my chat with Dot, this woman said "I have this feeling you have a history with her". Dorothy heard this, nodded and before leaving the bar whispered to me with a smile,"you should take that girl home". And so I did.

And two nights later I took the Pug home. And started our own history.

The Two Mammal Rule

This morning, before they were fed and walked, Willie and Oates had this quiet moment together.

Oates often sleeps on the couch and Willie often sleeps in my bed. I can't remember exactly how or when that started. When they were puppies, they lived in crates as that seemed to be the best way to train them and keep them out of trouble. A few years later, the crates were tossed out. Oates usually takes the couch or sometimes a pillow on the floor. His snoring usually precludes him joining me.

Willie has long had the habit of following me and, even at nearly 13, has the cat-like ability to leap into my bed which stands a few feet from the ground. He often curls himself into what I call the "comma" position, tightly snuggled into my side.

I somewhat jokingly made up the "two mammal" rule for my bed years ago; when I've had a woman sharing my bed, it's generally understood that both dogs stay out in the living room. When I'm sleeping alone, as I have been much of this year, Willie leaps into my bed, often right before or after I have fallen asleep.

This morning, I was late for an appointment but stayed in bed a few minutes longer just to hold Willie. He was curled up in my arms, his head in my chest, like a baby.  I'm anxiously waiting for his test results that will confirm that his recent hospital stay was either a temporary illness or something more grave and permanent.

When I finally get up and shower, he usually leaps from the bed and takes a place next to his brother on the couch, as in this picture.

The Monkey And The Fox

Meet Willie (on the left, the "fox") and Oates (the "monkey" on the right)

This was taken today as the sun set by the Hudson River. The chains lead to me, which makes sense because for nearly thirteen years they have been just as tied to my heart.

They have both had some troubling health scares in recent months and it has occurred to me that our time together is ever more finite.

I tried to do the math and even the most optimistic calculation of a few more years with these guys would be a thousand days. I want them all.

Today, the day after Memorial Day, I've decided to document my next thousand days with them.