Will's Red Coat

by Tom Ryan

  I let him have my thumb. I took my free hand and placed it on his head, speaking softly to ears that couldn’t hear me.

  “I know you are afraid and feeling betrayed, and you are in pain. I guess I’d be just as angry and probably act the same way. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”

  When he felt my hand stroking the feathery white hair on top of his head, he bit down harder. I winced, swallowed hard, and swore.

  “I’ll help you any way I can. I’ll help you get to where you need to be, no matter where that is. I don’t want you to be in any more pain. I promise, William.”

  He held tight to my thumb until it seemed more his than mine. Blood flowed and my palm was streaked with red. When he finally relaxed, I pulled free.

  Shaken, I got back into the car, sitting next to this dog who had bitten me. Sadness and regret filled me, and I understood that I’d have to live with this horrible mistake.

  I washed out the wound with water and hand sanitizer. I wrapped a Band-Aid around it; then, because it was still bleeding, I put a larger one over the first.

  When we arrived home, I had to carry William up to our second-floor apartment. He twisted in my arms and yelped again and again, with his teeth snapping as I held him away from my body and tried not to drop him. When I placed him on the living room floor, he reared up on his hind legs, high-pitched barks coming out in rapid fire like a machine gun, his teeth coming at me as he twisted violently and out of control, finally falling over on his side.

  Atticus quickly hopped to safety in his usual spot on the couch, which was too high for William. William fought but failed to get back on his feet. He writhed helplessly on the floor. I sat on the other end of the couch with my legs folded and my feet beneath me, also out of reach. Atticus watched and listened to William, and then looked to me. I dropped my head into my hands and wished I could turn the clock back five days.

  None of the three of us had any reason to be happy on our first day together.

  For a decade, Atticus and I had spoiled each other. There were the regular growing pains a puppy goes through while figuring out his place in the world, but nothing significant. Most of those troubles had to do with housetraining. Otherwise it was a seamless relationship, no matter what life threw at us. We moved in sync with each other, and we regularly communicated through our expressions and the smallest of gestures. Me giving a nod to let him know something was okay, or tossing my head to one side as if to say let’s go. He, lifting his floppy ears to say yes and lowering them to say no, or shaking his head to express his displeasure. Certain looks say just enough between fast friends. The understanding is complete.

  It didn’t take long for ours to become a leashless and mostly wordless life where two were becoming one. Whenever anyone asked how I did it, how I got Atticus to be that way, I’d tell them, “We just hang out together.”

  Still, they were amazed at how well we went about our lives together, but what we were doing was nothing new. It’s the way our two species have learned from each other for thousands of years. It wasn’t until dogs became pets and accessories that a sacrosanct bond was diluted, and changed for a busier and more distracted way of life.

  There was only one time when Atticus went to the bathroom in our home after the initial puppy stage. We were still living in Newburyport and Atticus had eaten something that didn’t agree with him. I woke up the next morning to the stench of diarrhea. I wasn’t mad. However, I had him sit with me while I cleaned it up. It’s something I did with him as a puppy too, and even though I spoke to him calmly, his ears sagged while he ducked his head. His diarrhea continued throughout the day, but we were outside so often that it wasn’t a problem. When we hopped into bed that night, I called him over and said, “If you have to go to the bathroom tonight, please wake me up and I’ll take you outside.”

  I was awakened by a nudge of his nose against my chin at two in the morning. Strange and curious Atticus was letting me know he had to go out.

  There have been other nights when Atticus has awakened me for similar reasons, but there was never another accident in our home in those ten years.

  Atticus never barked, although about a half-dozen times a year he’d see a friend of ours approaching and let out a howl of happiness. He also did this occasionally when we walked into a bank or a store that offered him treats. Now and then this silent fellow let out a great exclamation announcing his arrival. Mostly, though, there wasn’t a peep from him.

  He would never misbehave. I could leave my food within his reach and he wouldn’t touch it even if I was out of the room. And he wouldn’t go into the trash.

  Our friends often refer to Atticus as either dignified or thoughtful. I think both work.

  The first time she met him, Laura Bachofner tried to hug Atticus, and he gave her a look she describes as “not in a thousand years.” She stopped trying and referred to him as a snob. But once she got to know him better, she agreed with the “dignified” description.

  The first morning we woke up to life with William in it, there was a puddle in the hallway. Atticus reached it first and stopped in midstride, holding a foot above it. He looked back at me, his eyes wide, his ears low, and he retreated. I cleaned it up, and only then would he pass. But as he did, he crouched and seemed to hurry, as if the floor were contaminated.

  When I took him out, William continued to thrash about while I carried him down the stairs. He grew calm when I put him on the grass in the backyard and stayed calm when I picked him back up. But he flew into his fit of anger when I put him on the floor again. It would become a routine for him; carrying him down the stairs was fine, but not up them.

  Whenever he was angry after being carried up the stairs, he reminded me of a drunken leprechaun who wanted to fight. Almost always he’d lose his balance and topple over. His fury would continue for a little while he thrashed on the floor, and then his old age would take over and he’d fall asleep right where he was.

  William’s need to sleep was my ally, for I could count on him to nap most of the day away. But unlike Atticus and Maxwell before him, when I looked at him sleeping, I didn’t see peace. Even as he slumbered, he looked troubled. Maybe it was just his body, the way it was so broken looking, or maybe it was because I knew he was depressed and lonely and wanted little to do with us.

  There were days I’d walk Atticus while William was sleeping, and when we returned home I’d see his eyes open, but he wouldn’t acknowledge us. Within a week of being in Jackson, he’d start sleeping in the bedroom during the day, and he’d hide away from us when we were home.

  I don’t doubt that Atticus was relieved that William rarely approached him; I could tell by the rise and fall of his ears. And Atticus wouldn’t approach William. Then again, Atticus has never seemed to understand anger in others. He was befuddled whenever we encountered aggressive dogs. Watching William’s temper tantrums upset him and made it seem unlikely there would be a friendship between the two of them. And if it weren’t for that reason, it would have been because of William’s bathroom habits.

  William didn’t care where he urinated or defecated. I think it was more than just old age and his inability to hold it. He was unfazed by the daily messes he left around the house, and there was nothing I could do about it, since William was deaf and had diminished vision and hated being redirected.

  On one of his first few days, I brought him outside. Twenty minutes later we were back inside and he stood looking at me, then squatted, leaving a pile of excrement in the middle of the floor. There was no shame or embarrassment. Atticus left the room in a hurry, but William simply sauntered around with his little up-and-down broken gait, until he came upon me cleaning it up. When he drew close, he watched me. He was very nonchalant about piss and shit.

  Atticus was also bothered by how William walked into the water bowl and spilled the contents, leaving the ceramic dish clattering on the floor. Or how he’d knock things over that were in the way, such as a broom that would slap loudly when i
t fell. Or how he’d walk into the narrow space between the toilet and the wall, or the bathroom sink and the wall, or under the kitchen table and chairs, and get stuck, unable to back up. I’d hear a whimper, but it would soon turn into shrieks of frustration and then panic. Atticus would come and get me if I wasn’t in the room, and I would carefully set William free, as if I were defusing a bomb, for his frustration was always directed at me.

  Because William slept so much during the day, he often wandered at night. I’d wake up to his cries if he went to the bathroom on the wooden floor and fell in it. He was unable to get a grip to get up, and the more he struggled, the more he smeared feces and urine on his white coat.

  This is when I felt the worst for him—to see him helpless like that, an obviously proud fellow, stuck on the floor in his mess. He’d whimper. He’d cry. If I managed to sleep through all of that, eventually I would hear almost human shrieks coming from him. And even when I helped him up, he’d lunge at me, teeth bared.

  One night, I awakened to William’s wails. I found him in a pile of feces, helpless and stinking. I ran warm water for the tub, and when I picked him up, I wasn’t careful enough. He grabbed hold of my long sleeve and the forearm below it, and he bit down. I cursed and tried to pull him off, but he wouldn’t budge, and the more I pulled at him with my free arm, the harder he bit me. Finally, I shook my arm, and he fell with a thud. He lay crying and whimpering, and I feared that he’d broken something. His ancient body was only bruised, but something else had broken when I heard him wail. It was my heart.

  I hated William’s attacks. I was disgusted by the way he made our home stink. And I often regretted taking him in because of how it was affecting Atticus. And yet there was something about him that made my heart ache.

  What had this world done to him?

  Was it only neglect? Or was it also abuse? I’ll never know, and I’m not sure it matters. Both are sins against the living. My job was to pick up the pieces of his broken life and try to figure out what to do next.

  I tried to be compassionate, but there were many days William and I were evenly matched, because he didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. And that was only in the first week or two. Publicly, I painted a happy scene, but my friends and our vet, Christine O’Connell, would hear my exasperation. I constantly thought about giving up, but always remembered how I’d given William my word that first day.

  As I sit here tonight typing away, Copland’s Appalachian Spring is playing, and in the soft glow of the desk lamp I see the scars on my hands. I call them “William scars.” How many times he drew blood. How many times he made me curse him, and whatever made him that way; and how I wondered what I’d done by bringing him here. How many times I had to contain my temper as his teeth broke my skin and left my flesh burning like it was on fire.

  Cheryl called to check in one day when things were at their worst and to say “I told you so.”

  “Are you seeing anything positive out of bringing William home, Tom? Anything at all?”

  “You know how much I swear. More than most, right?”

  “Definitely!”

  “If there is a positive, I think William is helping me become more creative with my swearing.”

  I thought continually about Cheryl’s words in those first weeks: “There’ll be nothing but stress and heartache.”

  William wouldn’t bite me every day, but he tried. Sometimes it was because he’d tip over the trash in the kitchen and I’d pull him away. He’d lunge again and again at me until I had to put the bin between us as a shield. The second time it happened I reached for the broom and took advantage of his weak back legs, sweeping a snarling, maniacal William away, much to his frustration and my relief. It felt like a victory as I exclaimed, “Ha! Take that, you son of . . .”

  Fifteen minutes later, when I sat on the couch, he stood on the other side of the coffee table glaring at me. Like a broken old man, he struggled to pull himself up to a standing position, slowly stretching the kinks out of his body. When he was at his full height, his front paws on the table, he worked his way around the edge toward me, shrill barks filling the air. He was like a demon in some horror movie.

  I laughed when I left the couch and stood behind the broom in the kitchen again while Atticus sat watching the scene, his ears drooping. I wasn’t thinking of Cheryl’s words then, but of what the volunteers from New Jersey Schnauzer Rescue had reported.

  He’s very sweet, my ass.

  In defense of the folks from the rescue, they barely knew him. He was quickly passed from one to another in the few days they had him. Even in their politically correct way, when they wrote about the day we met in a Huffington Post piece, they referred to William as “cantankerous.”

  I wouldn’t have minded a cantankerous William, I don’t think. What I had an issue with was his aggressiveness toward me.

  During William’s first days there were errands to run, and out in public he lost his edge toward me. He’d allow me to place him in his nest of blankets on the floor of the backseat of the car without incident. When we went to Four Your Paws Only to have him fitted for a harness, he wasn’t leaping for joy about hanging out with his best friend, but he was patient, and he seemed to at least accept that I was on his side.

  On the second day, Atticus and I dropped him off with Tracy at the Ultimutt Cut Pet Salon. If I hadn’t know better, I would have thought he hated my leaving him there. He hadn’t used the crate I had bought for him in the two nights he’d stayed with us, and when Tracy placed him in one, he became enraged, so she let him roam around the salon while she worked on other dogs.

  When Atticus and I returned to pick him up, William was relieved to see us again. I could tell by the way he accepted me pulling him close and yielded into my chest. Tracy hadn’t been so lucky; he’d tried to bite her several times when she groomed him.

  On the third day, he met our veterinarian, Christine O’Connell, when she examined him. I told her how he was disrupting the tranquility of our home, and I admitted I was ambivalent about him. William definitely wasn’t the sweet old fellow I’d heard about, and with each day I was increasingly regretting my decision.

  Christine looked at his eyes and talked about his cataracts. They weren’t complete, and she believed he could make out shapes and sizes and some detail, but not a lot. He obviously already recognized me, and he looked at her when she was talking about him and asking me questions.

  He was completely deaf. His teeth were rotting. She wondered if William had ever had a cleaning done, and some of his teeth needed to come out. His gums were a mess, both green and black in places. They were receding to the point where the roots of some of his teeth were showing.

  When Christine put William through range-of-motion exercises, she discovered something telling about him. I had assumed his faulty hips were due to arthritis, but she didn’t detect any signs of it. One of the vet techs suggested that William’s stiffness was due to lack of exercise. She talked about how in a former job she had encountered others that had similar issues with their hips. It was suggested that William had been confined to a small space, such as a crate, for far too long. This made sense when considering how he reacted to being placed in an enclosure at the groomers. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing for sure. Truthfully, it didn’t matter that much to me, although I was curious about what had befallen William and wanted to have a better understanding of him. What was important was what we did moving forward to solve the problems.

  His poor aching hips were so bad it was painful watching him slowly slump down on all fours. It took a great effort on his part. He’d get about two-thirds of the way down and give up and let himself flop the rest of the way. He never bothered trying to sit. It was too painful for him.

  Christine’s priority was getting William’s teeth taken care of. I was concerned, however, about having William go through anesthesia at his age. I wasn’t sure he’d survive.

  Christine countered, “If we don’t take care of hi
s teeth, they’re only going to get worse. If they get worse, he may stop eating. That will lead to a long-drawn-out death for him.”

  She could tell I was struggling. “Tom, old age is not a disease.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re worried about his age, but old age isn’t the problem. Let’s start by taking care of his problems. That will make him more comfortable, and the first one is his mouth.”

  From the first time I met her I was a fan of Christine’s shoot-from-the-hip manner. She wasn’t always gentle; sometimes she was just plain abrupt, but I appreciated her candor. It was refreshing. It was also reason enough for me to rely on her when it came to difficult decisions. So I scheduled William for dental surgery with her a couple of days later.

  When the day came, I crossed my fingers and put my faith in Christine. I believed she was right. His mouth would only get worse if we did nothing. I tried to convince myself that if William didn’t make it through, it was probably for the best. At least he wouldn’t be in pain any longer.

  But William came through even better than I’d hoped, and once again Christine proved the importance of having a good veterinarian on your side. She was essential to any success we’d have with William. I took comfort in knowing she’d always be there for William, for Atticus, who was aging as well, and for me.

  William’s dental work made a marked difference. Before, he’d wince when eating some food, but since the work was done, he was in less pain. On a clear Saturday morning after we all had breakfast, Atticus was leading us on a slow walk in a green field along the Saco River.

  William couldn’t go very far, nor could he go fast, but he was following Atticus and seemed happy with the warm sunshine on his body. About ten minutes along William stopped and without warning flopped over on his side. He tried to keep his head up, but he couldn’t even do that. He lay flat in the high grass beside the trail and stopped moving.

  I carried him as rapidly as I could across the field while Atticus trotted beside us. William appeared paralyzed.