“Done much dirt work?” Such was once posed to me on a job site in my former life, when I briefly got by on temp work out in northwest Washington.
I must’ve laughed it off, but the answer was obviously in the negative.
My inadequacy with a shovel came up again Sunday, as I struggled to dig a three-foot hole for the family dog through frosty layers of dirt and sand, a tangle of roots, and a New England-style density of rocks in the woods just off our Noyac backyard.
There’s workout fitness, and then there’s hard work fitness. I was winded as soon as I’d begun.
Things happen fast in the animal world. The previous Sunday, Duster walked with us down to the water, where he was happy to be let off the leash. The next day, he was moaning in discomfort from the living room sectional. That discomfort grew until he was circling the kitchen and ducking under furniture in search of a place to hide from it, as animals will, before, with several nose-prompts, he was clearly asking me for help in relieving it. By last Thursday his hind legs had stopped working. That night, we had to end the pain.
If ever a dog’s life was entwined with a household, it was Duster’s with this one. We moved in here in October of 2014, and he was with us, a family of five and a newly adopted rescue pup. We were still taking his measure, and he ours, and he came with crazy by the ladleful — escaping whenever he could to race through the neighborhood and chase cars, “barking his fool head off,” as my better half liked to say, doubly so at any porch-drop delivery, once staking his claim with all fours atop the dining room table, piercingly sounding off at dinnertime until a bit of human food was tossed his way — and yet all with an undeniable cuteness, a certain panache suiting his dapper white body speckled with brown and black, surely part pit bull, maybe some English pointer or Jack Russell terrier in the mix, no one really knows.
But his advancing age and our love wore him down until he was sweet, waggy, even affectionate. They say the number of names you give something is commensurate with its significance, and so let me count the ways: Dust, Dusty, Foxface, Boy, Little Boy, Littlest, Lightbulb Head, Uncle Destructo, Whitey, Spots, Snoopy, Brindle Face, Fool Dog, Pasta Fazool Dog, Dogger, Dustalinn, Duster Doolittle, Scraps, and Pushkin, from the children’s book “Pushkin Meets the Bundle,” in which a family pet with a striking resemblance to ours feels supplanted by a newborn.
What was that line from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when asked when life begins? “When the kids are off to college and the dog dies.” There is new freedom, it’s true, for travel, visitors, what have you. It’s just that we’d gladly trade it in for a little more time with him.
It’s like our eldest daughter said: “I used to get annoyed that his dog hair was everywhere, even up here” at college, “but now I’m looking for it.”