When I graduated from college I had 3 goals: get a job, get an apartment, and get a dog.
After securing the first two, my friend and I drove way out into the Tucson desert in response to an ad for Lhasa Apso puppies for sale. There were 3 puppies, only one of which was female. I asked the woman which was the female and, when I laid eyes on the little brown and black Ewok lookalike, I fell instantly in love. When the woman corrected herself and told me the one I held was male, I didn’t change my mind. He was mine.
My friend held the wriggly, furry mass in her lap as we pulled away from the house and retraced our path down the unpaved road. I’d only gone a few hundred yards when I suddenly slammed on the brakes, looked at my friend in panic, and said, “What am I doing? This is a HUGE responsibility! I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
My friend held up the puppy so I could see his cute little button nose and big, eager, friendly brown eyes and said, “You want to say no to this? Turn around; we’ll take him back.” Of course, I couldn’t.
I named him after Theodoric of York, for the perfectly logical reason that when I was a kid we had a Lhasa Apso who was named Roseanne Roseannadanna.
Theo and I lived in Tucson for about 6 months before I was transferred to Flagstaff, Arizona for my job. That was the first of many life hurdles Theo got me over. I didn’t know anybody there; it was just me, and Theo. I didn’t like it there much, but Theo had a fantastic time bounding through the snow which, I was pretty sure, reminded her of her native homeland of Tibet.
Did you know Tibetan monks used to give Lhasa Apsos as gifts to visiting foreign dignitaries? They believed when you died, your spirit went into the Lhasa Apso. Theo has a very strong heritage of nonsensical traditions, but it has never seemed to bother her much.
When Theo was a couple months old I took “him” to get neutered, which is when the vet informed me, with wide-eyed skepticism that anybody could be this blatantly stupid, that Theo was a girl. I thought she was a boy who peed funny. I never bothered to part all that hair between her legs and confirm when the woman told me she was a boy. I will never, ever, EVER live this down with my family. Ever.
When Theo was almost a year old I took her to the groomer for the first time who held up Theo’s entire pelt, so matted that it stayed together in one piece after it was shaved off, and said sternly, “NEVER do this to your dog again.” I never did. Man, was Theo pissed at me, though, for losing all her hair. She stayed under the bed for 3 days, embarrassed by her nakedness.
I didn’t make any friends in Flagstaff for the year I was there. I did date a guy for a while who was absolutely no good for me. Theo knew it. Once while the guy was over Theo shat on the bed – first and last time she ever did that. Theo has always had very strong opinions. She’s my kid, after all.
Theo loved chasing toys that squeaked, and she had a lot of them. The first one was a stuffed toy in the shape of a man. I named it Alfred, and Theo erroneously equated “Alfred” with “toy.” So Theo did not have toys, she had Alfreds.
After a year of misery in Flagstaff I decided it was time to take a leap. Make a huge change. Start really living my life and exploring the world. I decided to move from Arizona, where I’d spent the first 24 years of my life, to New York City – but I never would have had the courage to go through with it if I didn’t have Theo with me. She was my furry, walking, barking security blanket.
I set a world record for how fast I found an apartment in New York. It is seriously one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced. But I was driven by two things: one, I didn’t want to impose on my uncle’s family for any longer than necessary but, more importantly, I missed Theo, who had had to stay behind with my parents until I found a dog-friendly building. Not easy to do in NYC.
It took a while for Theo to become accustomed to the city. She never did like avenues. She was okay with streets, but as soon as we turned onto an avenue her tail would go down and she would skulk as fast as she could to the next street.
However, overall, Theo was the newest member of New York’s A List – or at least, the Upper East Side’s A List. While I remained fairly unknown on the block, everybody knew Theo, and would want to talk to her on her evening walk. I was forced to stop, hold her leash and try to look engaged and pleasant while the neighbors cooed over my dog. There was one guy, Mitch, who lived in the building next door and whose job was, apparently, to sit on his stoop 24 hours a day. Mitch was Theo’s favorite. Theo would bound up the steps to the top of the stoop, plop down next to Mitch, and the two of them would hold court with the rest of the neighborhood, laughing and joking and having a good time, while I stood at the base of the steps, ignored until Theo decided it was time to move on.
Theo and I toured the city together. She was my best and, for a long time, only friend. Theo turned her nose up with disdain at the dog park, but highly enjoyed all the places people went. She was offered a job at our local Barnes & Noble on 86th but felt working was beneath her. She could balance on the subway like a pro. (She wasn’t technically allowed on the subway, but we felt this was a stupid rule. After all, Theo was better behaved and had more bladder control than most of the human passengers.)
Theo’s vacation destination was Uncle Clem’s in the Village. Uncle Clem had two young kids who dropped a lot of food on the floor. Whenever I asked Theo if she wanted to go to Uncle Clem’s her face – her entire BODY – would light up, and she’d start jumping in the air with glee. She didn’t even care that I had to stuff her in her travel bag in order to sneak her past the subway monitors or into a taxi.
When I started making a bit more money, Theo acquired staff in the form of a dog walker who was extremely reminiscent of the character who walked Murray on Mad About You. He was polite towards me, but he and Theo really got each other.
I had two long-term relationships in New York. The first was just awful. I mean, a true waste of time. You know how well-adjusted people say they never regret any of their relationships, because each of them taught them something? Well, I regret this guy. Theo wasn’t too keen on him either, I could tell, but she knew I was lonely so she put up with him. She was really good about it, but I could tell she really didn’t care when I finally wised up and kicked the guy out of our lives.
The other relationship was much more positive although, ultimately, not meant to be. Theo LOVED him because he was a really, really good cook. She loved him even though he had a Cat from Hell who hissed and attacked both Theo and me whenever we came over. Theo never lost her optimistic assumption that EVERYone wanted to be her friend. Every time we visited she’d try again to win the cat over, and get a scratch on the nose for her efforts. She and I both mourned when that relationship ended.
Then I went and fell in love with some guy who wound up in Alabama. So Theo and I packed up our apartment and flew South. It was one of those tiny planes with two seats on one side and one seat on the other and because it was so small, Theo’s regulation travel bag didn’t really fit under the seat. So I just shoved her in there, and she had to lie curled up in a tight ball, and panted with anxiety the entire flight. By the time we landed we were both a bundle of raw nerves.
Theo loved Alabama. She had grass and trees and now two people to take care of. She had a whole house to chase Alfreds in. We bought a little carriage meant for kids that I could pull with my bike so Theo could come with us on long bike rides. She’d sit in that thing and just watch the country go by and sometimes, when we ran into other people on the trail, she’d emit a sudden volley of piercing barks that would scare the SHIT out of the other bikers, who assumed there was a human child in there, and send me into convulsions of laughter.
Then we all got married and decided to move to Seattle. This would be the fourth state both Theo and I had lived in. We drove across the country with Theo wedged in the back among all the possessions we didn’t trust the movers to haul for us. Theo loved road trips. When it was just the two of us, I had her trained not to jump into my lap until the car was in park and I’d pulled the brake. As soon as I did that, she’d leap into my lap.
In Seattle, at the age of 12, Theo finally got her own yard. She didn’t know what to do at first. It felt unnatural to her that someone wasn’t standing over her with a plastic bag when she was ready to take a dump. But she caught on really fast.
Then, the dark days arrived, in the form of a very tiny, very loud, very smelly creature that seemed kind of human, but mostly not, and gave Theo tremendous anxiety because she didn’t know how to interact with it. She eventually settled on indifference laced with irritation. Things weren’t the same after that.
Theo started to develop a lot of health problems. One that was particularly notable was the ruptured anal gland – what I affectionately called her second asshole – that required our head-coning and diapering her for a couple days. This resulted in the world’s greatest picture ever taken of a dog.
Theo was my best friend for almost 16 years. Her health and interest in life have deteriorated significantly in the last couple of years, and sometimes it’s hard to remember the younger, vibrant Theo who had the agility of a mountain goat on our hikes, and, as an 8 week old puppy, licked my face when I cried in the car after running into my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend at a coffee shop. I was an aimless 22-year-old when I met Theo, and for all intents and purposes, really still a child. Theo raised me in my adulthood. With her by my side I tackled New York, I got married, I had a child and I found a career. And now I’m all grown up. Maybe it was time for Theo’s soul to depart; maybe, if I can indulge my own fantasy, she’s gone on to help another lonely, struggling young woman.
Goodbye, Chickabee. And thank you.
