Paws and Reflect_Exploring the Bond Between Gay Men and Their Dogs

by Neil S. Plakcy

  On the forty-five minute drive I thought about the mix of Doberman Pinscher and Labrador Retriever. I had friends with red Dobies, and they were wonderful animals—very protective, very loyal. I knew yellow Labs to be mellow and playful. I had myself convinced the two breeds would cancel out any negative qualities of the other and make for wonderful pets. Lab and Dobie: What would I tell people they were? Labermans? Dobadors sounder better. Dobadors it would be.

  I already had names picked out. At the time, I was working for a land-surveying company. On the days I spent in the office drafting or marking up site plans to show utility locations, I listened to the local country station, KISS-FM. That total immersion in country music had leaked into my choice of radio stations in the truck and at home. My partner liked Randy Travis and I liked Travis Tritt, so “Randy” and “Travis” were ready to be claimed by the pups.

  When I got to the pet-rescue place, a vet assistant took me to the outdoor kennels, explaining that all the male dogs but the runt had been adopted already and urged me to pick one of the females, agreeing that the two dogs would keep each other company while my partner and I were at work.

  My heart broke when I saw them. They were living on the concrete floor of a kennel that wasn’t exactly clean. They were skinny as all hell. You aren’t supposed to be able to count a puppy’s ribs. I could count every one. The vet assistant told me the owners of the pups’ mama had dumped them there when they were only five weeks old.

  he dam was a purebred red Dobie, and they had planned to breed her and sell the pups. However, a neighbor’s yellow Lab had gotten to her first, and disgusted, they’d wanted nothing to do with the bastardized offspring. She assured me that all they needed was a good home and they’d fatten right up. More fool, me.

  I picked up the scrawny runt and held him against my chest. He was auburn colored and bony, with the broad brow and square head of a Lab. He nuzzled me and whined pitifully. I rubbed the back of his head gently with one finger and he sighed, laid his head on my forearm, and closed his eyes contentedly. The runty boy dog was going home with me.

  I looked down to the shrill yips of a female who went defiantly for my sneaker lace. She gripped it in her teeth and tugged mightily as if to tell me to put her brother down, right now. I squatted with her brother resting on my arm and picked her up gently under her belly. Standing, I shifted her awkwardly to rest on my other arm, where she promptly bit me.

  “Well, you little hussy, ” I fumed. She was much more of a Dobie than her brother. She had the long nose and slender head. Similarly colored, the little girl pup had fantastic tawny eyes, more gold than brown, more yellow than green, not unlike my own. She resisted being held and instead struggled to my other arm to lay on top of her brother, who did little to object.”I’ll take them both home, ” I told the vet’s assistant.

  Inside, doing the paperwork, they asked me what I was going to name them. I didn’t hesitate telling them the boy dog would be Travis, but I had to think quickly to come up with a name for the girl dog. I looked at her. My partner liked Patsy Cline, and by her coloring and feistiness, she reminded me of a neighbor lady I had while growing up. Her name was Patsy as well. So Patsy she became.

  The pups were not easy to love. They were horrible little rat dogs with sharp teeth and mean natures. Patsy never missed an opportunity to be mean to her brother. She wouldn’t let him eat. She wouldn’t let him cuddle. She wanted him dead, it seemed. I kept warning her that she’d better play nice. One day he’d be bigger than she was. Of course, she paid no attention. I had to protect the boy dog from her aggressiveness.

  So, from the get-go, Travis grew partial to me. As is often the case, two dogs in one home will bond with separate people in the family. Patsy bonded with my partner and became overbearingly spoiled as a result. As if Travis wasn’t spoiled to the point of utter obnoxiousness also.

  At night, they would finally settle down as we read or watched television. Patsy slept on my partner’s chest, her long Dobie nose stretched upward to rest on his neck, under his chin. Travis curled contentedly by my side, like a doggie donut, my hand gently stroking his head or curled protectively along his side. Of course, those were the moments of peace in an otherwise vicious cycle of fighting and looting. My pups were incorrigible, and I was no better than a permissive parent bewildered by a psychotic child. I always said God knew what he was doing making me queer. If my dogs were anything to go by, I’d spend my days in juvenile hall if I had human children.

  Patsy became somewhat civilized as she grew, but Travis grew only meaner. He broke into my neighbor’s house by charging through her sliding glass door’s screen. I found it impossible to walk him at the same time as his sister. When they weren’t attacking each other, they were attacking passersby on the narrow sidewalk that surrounded the development where we all lived in West Broward County.

  I should have known he was going to be constant trouble when an older lady Travis and I passed each morning took to carrying a substantial umbrella for protection. She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Spanish. Travis spoke only paroxysms of vicious barking and baring of teeth. I would have to pull him bodily off the sidewalk to let her pass.

  I tried every training trick I knew to curb his overprotectiveness. While Patsy responded very well, Travis did not respond at all. If anything, his resolve and single-minded responsibility to protect me was only enhanced by aversion training, behavior modification and the hatefulness of a shock collar. Travis literally tried to kill anyone or anything that came near me. He grew to become ninety pounds of muscle, seething anger and menace. He could launch himself airborne at skateboarders, bicyclists, elderly people with canes, cars; motorcycles in particular freaked him out.

  As bad as he was, only I could control him. In his absolute frenzy of aggressiveness, somewhere there was the baby boy dog he reverted to each night, curling himself next to me on the sofa and sighing in relaxation and contentment.

  Over the years, Travis came to dominate the house. He attacked my partner, whom the vet said Travis considered subordinate in the pack. He began to bite people. He grew so agitated that he would demand to go outside and patrol the front of our house many times every night.

  My vet is a good man who owns and trains Dobermans. But even for him, Travis was a mystery. Over the years, Travis was on acepromazine, an animal tranquilizer; then Xanax and Elavil. The drugs would work for a while, then they wouldn’t. Travis was some piece of work.

  When he and Patsy were five, my partner and I were asked to adopt a two-year-old female Weimaraner from friends who could no longer keep her. They knew how dog crazy I was, and they also knew that I would give her a home where dogs got every bit of the love and care straight people reserve for their children. So Hailey the Weimaraner came to live with us.

  I won’t tell you the first weeks were easy. I had to be on constant surveillance to keep Travis from attacking her. I would not have the sweet-natured Hailey tormented by Travis. For the first time in his life, Travis found himself severely disciplined for his overt acts of terrorism. No dog in my house is allowed to run roughshod over another. I could always rationalize away Travis’s meanness to humans, but never to another defenseless animal.

  Travis settled down and grudgingly allowed Hailey a place in our home. Eventually she became his running buddy, his partner in crime. I watched as the Weimaraner developed separate relationships with both Travis and Patsy. Like a youngest child, she found her place, stood her ground, and integrated herself seamlessly into the pack. I made extra time for her, for Travis, and for Patsy, giving each special, separate attentions. I began to understand my mother more, because she had had three small children at the same time. One is always crying, one is always needy, and one is always swinging from a chandelier in glee.

  As with many dysfunctional households, my dog children were very well behaved once you made it into the house. Unfortunately, all the peace in the house lasted only as long as Travis’s mind was under control.
In fall 2003, my boy dog’s mental state started collapsing. In October, he attacked Patsy, his sister, so badly one Sunday morning that she had to be rushed to the emergency vet for staples on her nose. Both my partner and I were coming to the end of our patience. Travis was disrupting our entire household as it bent to attempt to anticipate his sudden bouts of craziness.

  I took him to the vet and asked what we could do, short of putting him down. Nearing a last resort, he said we’d try phenobarbital to try and break the cycle.

  Walking him in front of the house one afternoon after work, a little boy about ten years old came out of nowhere on a skateboard. Travis went insane. Travis always wore a heavy-duty training collar called a “pinch collar” due to their teeth that form a tight unpleasant grip around a dog’s throat when they are tugged or if they lunge. The links on Travis’s pinch collar were two inches long, with inch-and-a-half “teeth.” He broke it going after the little boy on the skateboard.

  “Kid! Freeze!” I shouted.”Don’t look at him. For God’s sakes, don’t look him in the eye.”

  The kid kicked off his skateboard and froze in place.

  “Travis!” I shouted.”Sit!” Miraculously, Travis stopped in midstride of a dead run and sat. I managed to get to him and reattach his pinch collar. He looked at the little boy, not twenty feet away and growled, showing his teeth.

  “Kid, he’s scared of your skateboard. Please don’t move until I can get him back in my yard. Please.”

  The little boy just looked at me. I managed to pull and drag a snarling, whiny Travis back into my yard. He turned on me, then, whipping around and snapping at me. I pulled his collar straight up in an effort to get him to sit on his haunches; instead, he leapt up with the tug.

  Frightened now, I stopped and relaxed the pull on his leash.”It’s OK, baby. The bad thing’s gone. Shhhh, it’s OK.” Travis relaxed enough to allow me to drag him into the house.

  This was when he was on phenobarbital. At Christmas, Travis attacked my friend Joe and bit me when I put myself between them.

  During January, Travis settled down some. He still could be infuriated by passersby to the point that we always had to keep the shutters on the street-facing windows closed. He tried to go after boats on the canal, which particularly infuriated him. But the medicine seemed to calm him.

  Then, in early February, Travis lost it on two consecutive nights, attacking the other dogs for no reason.

  The second time I pulled him off Hailey, he’d gashed her snout as he had Patsy’s. Something in me snapped. Calmly, I looked at him and he looked back at me. I think now some form of communication passed between us. I hate people who imbue their dogs with cuddly human characteristics. Dogs communicate but they don’t talk. Still, in that looking into each other’s eyes, I feel like Travis and I held a simple two-way communication:

  “I can’t take this anymore, Travis.”

  “Then, do what you gotta do. I don’t care.”

  I got Travis and Patsy both into their kennels. I had wound care solution on hand, and I doctored Hailey’s gash. Though the skin was torn, the muscle below was intact, and I knew it would heal on its own if I kept the wound clean. I allowed her to settle herself on the sofa, stunned and needing some quiet time.

  I went into the kitchen and called my partner to tell him the time had come to do the unthinkable. Fortunately, he was out of town on business; I’ve always found it easier to do the impossible on my own. Once, in severe chest pain, I got up out of our bed in the middle of the night and drove myself to the emergency room. Taking Travis to die would be something I had to face on my own.

  On the way to work the next morning, I stopped by the vet’s office and told them what happened. I also told them it was time. Sympathetically, they told me to bring Travis in at five o’clock. They told me I didn’t have to stay. They could take care of him for me. I told them no. This was part of the responsibility of having a pet. I had to walk the last little way with him.

  All nobility aside, I told them I’d need some tranquilizers for Travis, strong ones, just to be able to get him calm enough to get into the car. I told them I’d stop by on my way home from work in the early afternoon. If they’d have the bill and the pills ready for me, I’d appreciate it.

  I could barely concentrate the rest of the morning at work. When I finally could leave, I drove straight to the vet’s, picking up the pills and paying the bill ahead of the appointment. I knew if I didn’t, I’d never make it back.

  At home, I took each of the dogs out for a walk separately and then returned them to their kennels, which was unusual but not unheard of. I waited until nearly four to give Travis a staggering dose of acepromazine, and then I spent an agonizing hour waiting for it to take effect.

  It never really did. I still had to get a muzzle on him and needed my neighbor’s help to get him in the car. He snapped at us twice before we were on our way.

  Travis was pretty quiet on the drive to the vet’s office. I took a roundabout route, knowing I’d never be able to drive the same way again. Travis enjoyed the ride quietly, often looking at me with a happy, panting smile as if he was reassuring me.

  When we got to the vet, they ushered us into an examining room, and we sat waiting while all the other appointments wrapped up. The tranquilizers hadn’t even made Travis sleepy or stumbly. He sat stoically by my side, with an eye on either door so no one could slip in on us unawares. He had a solemn guard dog stance. I used to call him Lance Corporal Travis because he had the expressionless menace of a Marine on guard duty when he was sitting next to me. I stroked his head and down his back while we waited.

  I didn’t know my vet had the day off, so I was surprised to see a young woman in a white coat come into the room. She introduced herself and told me that in twelve years of practice, she had only had to put down one dog for being vicious. She asked me if I had thought of any other options, and if I was sure I wanted to do this.

  I told her that people used to stop me on the street, Spanish guys usually, and admire Travis. I couldn’t make out much more than them asking me if he could fight. They still fight dogs, illicitly, down in Hialeah and the boondocks of Dade County. I was terrified that if I put an ad in the paper or gave him to the animal shelter, someone would adopt him just to fight him.

  Travis was ninety pounds of solid muscle, but I knew him as my sweet boy who would lie next to me with deep sighs of contentment on the peaceful evenings. I couldn’t let him get into a ring with pit bulls. They’d throw him in the ring just for sport, just to whet the pit bulls’ appetite for blood. I told her I’d shoot him myself before I’d do that to him.

  She nodded and gently asked me if I didn’t know of somewhere, somebody, with a lot of land, maybe a farm, where Travis would be the only dog.

  I asked her how I could give him to someone knowing he might harm a child? What would they do to him? Would they beat him? Would they teach him to be meaner than he already was? How could I give him to somebody who wouldn’t care for him the way I had? How could I do that?

  She nodded and put his file on the counter, telling me that she had read his entire folder. She didn’t know of any way we could have done better by him, other than keeping him so doped up that he would have no quality of life.

  Travis paced nervously, ignoring her, ignoring me. She asked me if I’d given him the acepromazine. I told her that I had, and when I had.

  She nodded.”I can see that it hasn’t even relaxed him.” Her voice then took on a direct, comforting tone.”I don’t want this to be any worse than it’s going to be already. I don’t want him to fight. What I’m going to do is to give him a heavy dose of a muscle relaxer. That way, it won’t be ugly.”

  I nodded. She gave me the best reassuring smile that she could muster. I felt sorry for her. Animal doctors are just like people doctors. They are trained to make animals well. They hate to help them die unless there is no other possible way.

  In a moment, a vet tech returned with her. Together, they held
Travis and gave him the shot of the muscle relaxer in his neck.”It won’t be long. I’m going to leave you with him for a few minutes so he feels secure. Then I’ll come back and give him the shot. OK?”

  I nodded once more. Having made the decision, there was only mute acknowledgment and acquiescence I slid off the bench by the wall to sit cross-legged on the floor, eye level with my boy.

  Travis escorted the vet to the door and then turned to walk around, suddenly disoriented. He came to stand in front of me, and his head swayed as if he was following the room as it started to spin. He spread his front legs broadly to brace himself on the rolling deck the floor under us had become. It was only then that he looked at me as if to plead for help. I whispered to him comfortingly and patted his rump gently to let him know he could sit.