About Portland: Saying Goodbye to a Furry Friend

It was April 2005 and for reasons best told another time, I was limited to how much walking I could do.

When I got out out of my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan one of my goals was usually to stop by the local Petco on Thursdays - pet adoption day staged by the North Shore Animal League

Wasn’t necessarily looking to adopt a pet. It was just kind of therapeutic.

On this day, though.

There were about a half-dozen dogs in a cage.

Five of them were pretty much zonked out.

One put her paws up in the air, reaching for some love.

I obliged.

She fell asleep in my arms.

One of the workers snapped a picture for me, which I sent to my better 83 percent.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Bring her home,” I was told.

We named her Lucy. She was Beagle and Border Collie.

We said goodbye to her tonight. She'd been with me 11 years.

I’m not going to get into some equivalency about her being a “fur-baby” or something like that.

If you ever had any doubts that she was, in fact, a dog, she would quickly remind you by eating some crap off the street that would make your stomach turn.

But she was my dog and she was part of the family.

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From the moment she arrived, she was filled with NY attitude. It didn’t matter how big other dogs were; she gave them the what-for.

In one of her first weeks with us, we took her to some event where she tried to take a treat from a dog several times larger than herself. It didn't go well but the only lesson that she seemed to take away from the experience was that, like all New Yorkers, you just have to keep trying harder.

We had good friends who had a Bassett Hound a few years older than her.

For a long time, Gabby would be able to take refuge by jumping up on the couch.

One day Lucy leaped, found herself up on the couch. Gabby’s life was never the same.

Neither was Lucy’s.

The couch became her home.

When we moved to Oregon, we first moved in with my mother-in-law. She had an older Black Lab, Dakota.

Lucy taught her to appreciate the couch. Dakota taught her the joy of rolling on your back in a field of grass.

It was a pretty good trade.

There was another influence he had on her - teaching her to appreciate the rain.

When we lived in New York, and it was raining, she would get to the edge of the doorway, take a look, and turn around. Maybe later, she was saying.

Once we moved to Oregon where we we have more words for rain than Eskimos allegedly have for snow, our puppy developed webbed paws.

I got home tonight from saying goodbye to Lucy to discover 11 police officers had been shot in Dallas, four killed. Then five.

Dallas. Orlando. The list never seems to stop does it, the march to see how cruel we can all be to each other? I would love to say that there's some great lesson, some great parallel.

I don't think there really is. All I can think of tonight, as the world spins on an axis of hatred and despair, is the simple love that came from a dog who was with me for 11 years.

Lucy has had many fans among our family and friends.

There’s Kristin who made our wedding cake and who used a weekend looking after Lucy to realize how much she loved the man who is now her husband (and who also is a huge fan of Lucy).

There is my friend Tom whose restaurant she loved. I think he was amazed that she loved bacon as much - if not more - than he does.

There is my mother-in-law who Lucy loved and abused at the same time, knowing that a walk with her meant she could pretty much go wherever she wanted. She would drag her all over New York and then all over Portland.

When my mother-in-law got sick, walking Lucy was one of those things that helped her build up her strength and recover.

They helped each other.

Then there was my friend Art.

He was a cat person who loved Lucy as much as anyone.

If I couldn’t get home in time to walk her, Art would be on his way before I even finished asking the question.

There were many times he arrived with a bit of whipped cream for her.

Art died last year.

I’m not a particularly religious person - I tell people that I am a practicing Jew; I can’t get it right so I have to keep practicing.

I am, though, spiritual.

I really believe that wherever Lucy is now, Art met her. A cup of whipped cream in his hand.