What We Learned from a Good Dog
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“Do you think we get the dogs we need?” was the question writer Jon Katz asked on his Facebook page. In our case, regarding Lady the Running Labrador, we got exactly who we needed. She lived with us 12-1/2 years, ran thousands of miles with us, and in her own fashion wriggled her way into the hearts of two non-dog-people in the most subtle ways. She taught us how to live with love and grace during her final years, and how to grow old with dignity and value.
Lady is gone now. She died Saturday afternoon, August 28, 2010, on the table at the vet’s office. But her influence on Cyndi and me still lingers ten years later. I expect it will last the rest of our lives.
When Lady joined our family in 1998, she immediately fit in, partly because she was so un-demanding. She lived very lightly among us. She entertained herself and didn’t want much attention.
That was perfect, since we have never been overly accommodating people. We expect everyone in the house to make their own way, pick up their own stuff, take care of their own clothes, eat what everyone else eats, carry their own stuff in from the car, and heal themselves when sick. We have been accused of being the no-mercy family, and it is true that when Cyndi and I have taken those spiritual gifts surveys mercy ends up at the bottom of both our lists, but we try not to be mean or judgmental. We just expect each person to pull up their pants and take care of their own stuff. Lady fit right in with us.
When we got her I was looking for a dog to run with Cyndi and Katie to keep them safe. I was looking for a black Lab because they appear mean, even when they aren’t. A running dog doesn’t have to be attack-trained to protect a runner – any dog will keep almost all attackers away.
I spent time on the internet searching for the best breed for running, finally settling on either a Greyhound or a Labrador. They both seemed to be good with people. I preferred a Greyhound because I thought the idea of rescuing a racing dog as a cool idea and because all Greyhounds love to run. From what I read; Labradors were iffier. Some loved to run, some didn’t, and you couldn’t tell by looking at them. And some Labs suffered from hip dysplasia that made running impossible. I found someone who lived south of town who owned Greyhounds and I drove Katie down to see them. Katie was a bit shocked to see these two dogs who were as tall as she was (Katie was a freshman in high school at the time). She thought they were funny looking, long and lean and skinny and strong. I thought that was a good description of Katie as well.
So, since the Greyhound idea went nowhere, I called the City Animal Control office and told him I was looking for a gentle Black Lab who could run with us. He called back a few days later and said he had a Black Lab for us to look at, but he also knew of a Yellow Lab (mix) being kept temporarily by a friend. The dog had been lost or abandoned, no collar or tags, and she didn’t want to send the dog to Animal Control knowing the fate if no one adopted her.
Cyndi and Katie and I drove over to the house and went into the backyard to play with the big Yellow Lab. She wasn’t pure Lab, had some other breeds mixed in her bloodlines. I remember at one point I was asking the home owner if she thought this dog would adopt to a new family and the woman pointed across the porch to where Cyndi and Katie were sitting down on the concrete and the Lab was laying across their laps. I knew we were taking this dog home today.
I thought we should call this big beautiful dog Goldie since it described her so well. Cyndi said, “Katie and I want to call her Lady.” I said this dog would be a great outside dog and Cyndi said, “Except for nighttime – she should spend nights inside with us.” I realized that even though this project to find a running dog was my idea and my initiative and all my work, I had been cleanly excised from the process and from now on I would be a bystander.
We learned some things about Lady right away. She didn’t like being in water deeper than her belly, and she showed no interest in fetching anything (two core behaviors for most Labrador Retrievers). She didn’t seem to care much about playing or wrestling. She seldom barked, and never barked inside the house. She never made a mess in the house. She only dug in the backyard to find a cool place to lie down, and even then, she was discrete about her digging locations. She never chewed anything she wasn’t supposed to chew. She mostly laid around on the floor and licked the carpet.
And, she loved to run.
I realize that all dogs like to run around the backyard, but that isn’t what I mean. Lady loved to go for 2 miles, or 5 miles, or sometimes 10 or 12 miles. She simply loved it. She could tell when anyone in the house was getting dressed to go running, and she would dance in the hallway.
Lady knew the difference between us getting ready to run and us getting ready to work in the yard – both involving shorts and T-shirts. Cyndi thought it was the shoes; that Lady was keying off our shoes. I wasn’t so sure since I had a closet full of old running shoes retired from the road but active in the garage and yard. How could she tell dirty running shoes from dirty yard shoes when they were both the same model of new Balances? I don’t know. But she knew. And when she detected a run coming up, she started jumping and hopping. She would stay very close so she wouldn’t be left behind. If the bedroom door was closed and she was in the hallway and she knew one of us was getting ready to run, she would bump her head into the door over and over to make sure we knew she wanted to go.
It was the only time in her life that she showed excitement, and she was completely over-the-top. It was often hard to lace up our running shoes because Lady was right in our face jumping and smiling and … well, being overjoyed. I wished I had Lady’s enthusiasm for, anything, in my life.
Lady ran daily with one or more members of our family for ten years; literally, thousands of miles. She never complained if we asked her to run twice in a day, or if it was raining, or cold, or if the spring wind was howling. She was always ready to go.
Our regular five-mile route took us around the pathways of C. J. Kelly Park. Cyndi, and her friend Meta, ran with Lady very early in the morning before the sun came up, usually off leash since no one else was out.
I ran with her between 5:30 and 6:00 PM, always on the leash since the park was filled with kids practicing sports. Sometimes soccer, sometimes baseball, and sometimes football.
Lady didn’t care about kids in the park or balls bouncing by or rolling past. She was in her own running world and all those were nonexistent to her. If she was off-leash she would run huge arcs paying attention to everything; but when running on the leash she was focused and tunnel-visioned. I don’t know how many times a soccer ball or baseball would come rolling across in front of us. Sometimes right into our path. Lady didn’t care and didn’t respond except to quickly hop over the rolling ball if necessary. She never even turned her head.
She was the same with other dogs in the park. They could run around, or bark, or growl – Lady never gave them the courtesy of acknowledgment. She was on her mission. She had five miles to run. She was a dog at work and would not be distracted or delayed.
My earliest documented run with her was a five-miler through Grasslands on May 13, 1998. I don’t know if Cyndi or Katie ran with her before I did (they didn’t keep detailed running logs of their own). For years I ran with her two or three times a week during the evenings. For even more years and more miles, Cyndi ran with Lady in the early mornings and on weekend long runs. In her prime it was nothing for Lady to go 10 or 12 miles with Cyndi every Saturday morning.
Eventually Lady was too old to run more than a few blocks. However, she still wanted to go, and she would get so excited when she knew either of us was getting dressed to run. We felt guilty leaving her behind because she wanted to go so badly, but she was no longer capable. There were times when we carried our running gear out into the garage to change where she couldn’t see us, then sneaked out the garage door to go run without her.
As Lady got older, losing much of her vision and hearing, she also got more and more “in the way.” She laid on the floor at our feet all the time. She slept on the floor of our bedroom right next to one of us, right where we put our feet if we got up at night, making a big target for tripping in the middle of the night. We adjusted to her being underfoot, and in fact, we liked it. She still didn’t care much to be petted or rubbed, but she wanted to be close to us. It was sweet and tender to watch her follow us around the house.
She was always independent and self-contained, and content with minimal attention from us. To pet her you had to be the one to cross the room, and you had to get your rubbing in before she got tired of the whole thing and wandered off to be by herself. It felt like she was giving us a turn instead of wanting one for herself. There were many occasions when I know she saw me drop my hands and encourage her to come over so I could rub her ears; yet I could tell she was weighing in her mind whether it was worth the walk across the room, only to decide it wasn’t worth it and she would lay down on the floor looking off in the other direction. My brother Carroll once described her during a late-night telephone conversation about our dogs, “Lady is a working dog, not a lap dog.”
She wouldn’t push herself on anyone. She wouldn’t beg for attention (although she might beg for an occasional pizza crust) or jump in your lap or expect you to play with her. Sometimes I wished she were more aggressive in seeking my affection, so I wouldn’t feel guilty about ignoring her or taking her for granted.
She wanted to be in the same room, but she typically laid down facing away. Her eyes might be open, but she showed no interest in watching the people in the room. One day I said to Cyndi, “It’s as if she wants to be with us but she’s too cool to act like she needs us. So she lays down close and then stares the other direction. It’s like having a teenager in the house again.”
Cyndi disagreed. “No, she’s being part of our family without placing demands on us. She’s doing what she’s always done.”
And then Cyndi said, “But she’s taught us to be more accommodating and gentler around her.”
Cyndi was correct. We were more careful when we opened doors, or scooted back in our chairs, or lowered the footrest to the recliner. Instead of getting mad that she was always in the way, we were happy for her gentleness and happy to step around her.
I can’t count how many times she laid down against the back legs of my chair so I couldn’t scoot back to go refill my drink but had to crawl out of the chair sideways, or against the shower door so Cyndi couldn’t open it to get her towel, or against the door to the garage so we bumped into her when we got home and came inside. She would lay down under the library table so there was not enough room for our feet. Maybe this was her way of interacting with us. She wouldn’t play, so she got in the way.
Lady used to lie down directly under the elevated footrest when I was sitting in my recliner, so close that I couldn’t lower the chair without mashing her. I would have to crawl over the arms of the chair to keep from disturbing her. To be honest I was surprised at my own tolerance of Lady. I guess I loved the whole package of her, good and bad, easy or inconvenient. In fact, not only did I tolerate her under my chair, I missed her if she was in the other room.
I remember one night when I woke up about 1:30 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I grabbed my book and glasses and moved to the living room couch. Lady came along with me (she had been sleeping at the foot of our bed). She curled up on the floor beside the couch near my head and went back to sleep. About every 20 minutes she sat up and laid her chin on the couch and on my book to see what was going on. Maybe she was getting a closer look at me, or maybe she was checking in, or maybe she knew I had been restless and not sleeping and she was offering the best comfort she had without intruding.
By the time we moved to our current house in Woodland Park, Lady had lived and run with us for ten years. She was too frail to run at all, and she knew it. She didn’t press to go along. But she loved her twice-daily walks through the park. Toward the end her back legs were so weak and frail she would hobble along, often sitting to rest a couple of time before finishing the walk.
I once spent a weekend at home by myself putting books on the shelves, carrying boxes from the garage, and putting stuff in my closet. Every time I changed rooms Lady followed me and curled up on the floor. But I was moving from room to room a lot and she had to get up to follow and then curl up again, and then get up to follow again, over and over. None of it looked comfortable. I started feeling guilty that she was moving so often, and I tried to bunch my trips more. I even tried to sneak out of the room one time. I realized what a strange situation, that I was worried about inconveniencing her and all she wanted to do was hang out with me. There was a measure of grace in that.
There has been some dispute regarding Lady’s actual age, as if she were a Chinese gymnast in the 2008 summer Olympics. She was a full-sized dog when we first got her in the spring of 1998. At her first visit the vet guessed her birthday to be 1993 based on her teeth; however, that means she was 17 years old when she died, or 50% older than her expected life span. A month before her death, we were at our annual vet visit, and Dr. Sheele said she was the oldest dog in his practice. He also said she had great heart and lungs.
The last time I took her on a walk was Friday morning the day before she died, and she was barely mobile. She looked like a loose bag of bones. I remember sitting on one of the park benches and staring into her eyes; she seemed to be telling me she was tired and ready to be done. Enough was enough.
Through the years my relationship with Lady often reminded me of my relationship with God. Like God, Lady wasn’t pushy and wasn’t aggressive even when I wanted her to be. She waited for me to make the first move, but even then, she was always nearby. All she wanted to do was hang out with us and love on us in her fashion. And the longer our time together the more I valued our walks outside. I guess I just wanted to take care of her in my own fashion, as she had taken care of me all these years.
Cyndi and I have never been true dog lovers, but Lady ran her way into our lives. It is impossible to imagine those twelve years without her, and impossible to share so many miles with anyone – dog or person – without growing affection. In her final years she taught us about grace and how important it was to make room in our hearts for each other. The inconveniences weren’t meant to be inconvenient; they were questions – do you still have room for me?
Lady was on my mind one morning when I read from my Daily Bible. Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” The Message says, “I’ll study at his feet.” Isn’t that sweet?
When I read this piece to Cyndi it reminded her of a song by Cody Carnes. He wrote:
I'm caught up in Your presence
I just want to sit here at Your feet
I'm caught up in this holy moment
I never want to leave
Oh, I'm not here for blessings
Jesus, You don't owe me anything
More than anything that You can do
I just want You
What did we learn from a good dog? We learned how to grow old in grace, love, and affection. How to find new ways of engaging with those we love even as our physical abilities deteriorate. We learned the value of simply being close to someone. I want to live with God that same way. I want to live my life all the way to the end, just like Lady.
“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
