About a Dog

 

My daughter chose him. Of all the puppies at the shelter, he seemed the sweetest and kindest — big floppy ears, gangly legs, and big paws, covered in beautiful brindle fur. His shelter name was Garth, perhaps because he’d come from the South and someone who worked at the Humane Society was a country-music lover. He was a stray by the side of the road, picked up and put in the pipeline that takes dogs from areas that don’t have shelters to states where rescue dogs are in demand.

She named him Scout.

He was an exceptionally even-tempered little hound, and only ruined two pieces of furniture when he teethed. One of them was the sofa, and this gave my wife an excuse to get that new piece she’d been eyeing. The other was a sofa in the gazebo, where he would gnaw on the wood between springing up to chase rabbits. I worked at home a lot; he sat on the steps or the sofa or his bed, as if waiting for me to pick up the shootin’ iron and head into the woods to ping away at squirrels.

He ran away the first summer. He smelled something that needed chasing, and burrowed under the fence. We found him a few blocks away, and I filled in the hole. He made another, and ran off to harass rabbits on the waterpower hill. I pounded 120 galvanized iron spikes under the fence,  spaced six inches apart all around the property — no weak spots except for one in the back under bushes. He found it.

If he got out, it was because SOMEONE, not me, left the gate ajar. I was always telling everyone to make sure the gate clicks. I could hear that click from my studio, even if the window was closed. If I didn’t hear it I’d run downstairs in a panic, only to find Scout on the sofa outside: what?

One night we couldn’t find him, and feared for the worst. After five hours he came home exhausted and dropped in the corner, having run his paw-pads ragged. Another night he didn’t come back at all. I slept family-room with the back door open. In the morning my wife found me balled up on the tiny sofa, door open, food dish outside, and Scout on the gazebo sofa, snoozing.

Eventually I made everyone in the house as paranoid about the gate as me. I’d hear daughter say “it has to click!” and know we were good. But I still always feared he’d gone off. In the evening he liked to sit in the cool recesses of the bushes at the back of the yard, and being a black dog, could not be seen. I’d rustle the Milk Bone box and exhale with relief when he trotted out from the shadows.

He had a conscience, inasmuch a dogs can. When he ate something off the table, and knew very well he shouldn’t, he would come up to my studio, sit, and put a paw on my leg. He would stand very still and his tail would move a little, and I would know he’d done something. So I’d go downstairs and see the pizza box tipped to the floor, and all I had to do was look at the box and look at him without changing my expression or posture, and he slunk away — only to come back and put out a paw. Sorry, boss. We good?

He loved to fight; he boxed well. For a while he was afraid of your hands if they moved under the bedsheets, but then he figured it out and pounced. Most of all he loved to run, and my wife took him to the woody off-leash park by the Mississippi where dozens of people and dogs every day and night cavort in the woods. A few times she told about some worrisome moments — he ran into the woods, and didn’t come back, right away.

But he always came back.

Until he didn’t. It was a warm night, early August. Twilight on the banks of the Mississippi. Across the shallows the woods thicken, and there are often deer in there. He ran. He didn’t come back.

When my wife called me to come to the park with flashlights I had the horrible feeling he was gone for good, lost in a place on the other side of town. But you have to look. So we headed into the woods, down to the water in the dark, and I can’t tell you how empty it felt: I couldn’t sense him. Sometimes you can; sometimes you know. There was this horrible vacancy.

What followed was three weeks of searching, aided by a volunteer organization that whips you into shape and sends you out with a mission. We gathered up stray dog sightings, set up Facebook pages, pinpointed where we thought he might be, and posted big neon-paper signs on streetcorners. These gathered leads, and we honed in on the neighborhood where it seemed he’d fled. A rather bad part of town. My wife and I had our anniversary dinner in a scruffy park — two pastrami sandwiches — waiting for the park to empty out so Scout might go to the food bowls.

We had positive sightings that turned out to be nothing. Pet psychics called. Two men tried to lure me to the area for a robbery under the guise of a reunion. Phone call: yeah, a homeless woman has him at Franklin and Cedar, on a chain. Phone call: yeah, I saw in by the train station this morning. Phone call: the homeless people who live in the apartment behind me ate him last night, I heard it. Sixty five signs spread across six neighborhoods in Minneapolis; daily trips to check their condition, swap out the pictures for the rain-ruined images, note which ones had been removed by vandals or city officials.

We had it covered.

My phone rang constantly. Sometimes it was someone who was sure they’d seen Scout, and that sent me racing to the spot, and while nothing ever came of it, he was alive in my mind again. We’d just missed him. More signs for that area, then. Fliers. Walk around, hand out pictures, see a crooked sign, run back to the car for the hammer.

Every sighting of every lost dog went to my phone, it seemed. Dog in the road on 55: go. Dog in the street in Uptown: GO! Someone saw a dog running down their street four days ago: they call me. The good leads seemed to shift back towards the place where he fled, and then one night a lady said she’d seen him in the dog park.

Our case worker said they do that. They circle back.

So the case worker drove over and we walked in the black woods for a few hours, tracing the area where he’d last been seen, leaving old clothing to remind him of the family scent, smearing Alpo on tree trunks, giving him a reason to hang around. Our case worker said two to five weeks was normal for them; the signs would get the sightings, the sightings would nail down the location, and then we’d put up the feeding stations and trail cams and remote-controlled cages.

And then, nothing.

And then, the call. The Department of Transportation had been cutting the grass by the highway, and they found him. Scant remains. A collar. In all likelihood he’d been hit the night he fled. We’d been chasing a ghost for three weeks. He’d never been anywhere. He’d always been there.

You reach for consolations. We had an end; we knew. As much as we’d said oh he’s having a fine time chasing squirrels, we knew the truth was otherwise if he was alive — cold, wet, alone. He didn’t go through that. He died on a night when our scent was still fresh on him, so in a way we were with him when he passed.

Scout could stand up and put his paws on your shoulder and give you lick hello, and I’ll miss that. He mostly did it to my wife:. I remember his paws around my shoulders when he was small and I took him upstairs the first month he was home, cradling him like a baby, wet nose on my neck. I thought that he would be around when Natalie came back from college, wagging his tail, a reminder of the home she’d left for the big world. But there are no guarantees. Ask any dog who’s run after a squirrel.

Can you blame them? You have to do what you’re born to do — to sniff, to stop, to brace yourself for a second, and then run.

He ran. He didn’t mean to leave us all behind when he caught the scent of the deer across the dark water. There was just so much joy in the moment he had to go.

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  1. Susan in Seattle Member
    Susan in Seattle
    @SusaninSeattle

    I, too, followed this on The Bleat.  I kept hoping for you and your family that Scout would come home.   Your posts took me back to my teenage years when our black lab followed something that then kept him captive for two weeks.  He did come home but those were agonizing days and I can only imagine what you all must have experienced.   I am sad for you and think that Scout won the lottery when your family adopted him.

    • #31
  2. billy Inactive
    billy
    @billy

    Once you learn to love one dog, you love all dogs.

    My condolences to you and your family on your loss.

    • #32
  3. daveinaz Inactive
    daveinaz
    @daveinaz

    I’m so sorry to hear this, James. I even had dreams about searching with you in hope of finding him, and I feel very grateful to have met him. You were lucky to have know each other.

    • #33
  4. Nerina Bellinger Inactive
    Nerina Bellinger
    @NerinaBellinger

    James – this is the post I prayed you wouldn’t have to write and one I wouldn’t have to read.  I am so very sorry for your loss.

    • #34
  5. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    What a great tribute to a special pet.  I am so sorry for your loss.

    • #35
  6. Mathias Member
    Mathias
    @Mathias

    So sorry to hear this outcome, James.  I’ve been following the search on the Bleat and Twitter, and since I live in the area I’d been keeping an eye out for him every time I went through or near the search areas.  So many of us feel like we knew Scout through following his exploits, and we’d been praying for the desired happy ending.

    It’s difficult to lose a 4-legged family member no matter the circumstances. May you and your family be comforted by your happy memories of Scout.

    • #36
  7. JustmeinAZ Member
    JustmeinAZ
    @JustmeinAZ

    Michael Stopa (View Comment):
    From someone who never grasped what on earth people see in dogs – and still doesn’t – my heart nevertheless aches for you James. Condolences.

    This. Not an animal lover but I’m weeping.

    • #37
  8. She Member
    She
    @She

    What a beautiful tribute to a man’s best friend.  I am so sorry.  I know exactly how you feel.  Exactly.  I am so sorry.

    • #38
  9. Quinn the Eskimo Member
    Quinn the Eskimo
    @

    There is nothing quite like the love of a dog.  My mom says that my father cried more for our dog than for his own mother.  Condolences to you and your family.

     

    • #39
  10. FightinInPhilly Coolidge
    FightinInPhilly
    @FightinInPhilly

    So sorry to hear. May your happy memories be of some comfort in the days ahead.

    • #40
  11. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    He is waiting on the Rainbow Bridge. So sorry.

    • #41
  12. Robert McReynolds Member
    Robert McReynolds
    @

    James I’m so so sorry for your loss. You let us know if you and your family need anything.

    • #42
  13. Susie Inactive
    Susie
    @Susie

    I am so sorry about Scout.

    • #43
  14. spaceman_spiff Member
    spaceman_spiff
    @spacemanspiff

    I didn’t want to read this. I didn’t.

    I look at our two rescues (Otto and Lila) and I know they’re going to do to me what the two who came before did to me. I just don’t want it to be too soon. It’s always too soon.

    I’m so very sorry, James.

    • #44
  15. Paul Dougherty Member
    Paul Dougherty
    @PaulDougherty

    Damnable late season allergies!

     

    My condolences for you loss.

    • #45
  16. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    I’m sorry for your loss James. By the way, how old was Scout?

    • #46
  17. Allan Rutter Member
    Allan Rutter
    @AllanRutter

    What a beautiful piece, but any Bleat reader would know to expect that. I am grateful that you have shared the story through your pain, even though your Fargo roots tell you not to make a fuss about it. Bless you, your wife who misses her dance partner, and your daughter who gets a lesson in how grownups face loss and grief.

    • #47
  18. Preserved Killick Member
    Preserved Killick
    @PreservedKillick

    So sorry James – I checked the Bleat everyday, looking for the “He’s Back!” banner … When I was a kid we had an old battling tomcat incongruously named “Mimi” – he got trapped in somewhere and was gone for an entire month one summer – but he came back – so i never gave up hope for Scout. I had a business trip to MPLS two weeks ago and I found myself scanning the roadsides near the airport and looking under overpasses for the sight of black fur. So sorry it turned out this way.

    • #48
  19. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart

    I said this on the Bleat earlier but I’ll repeat it here, James and family, I’m so sorry for your loss.

    • #49
  20. TheRightNurse Member
    TheRightNurse
    @TheRightNurse

    My heart hurts for you and your family.  I am so sorry.

    • #50
  21. MichaelBeckman Inactive
    MichaelBeckman
    @MichaelBeckman

    Oh, James I have tears in my eyes from your beautiful words about Scout.  I have no words to comfort, just to say I’m so sorry.

    • #51
  22. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Condolences to you and your family.

    • #52
  23. Cow Girl Thatcher
    Cow Girl
    @CowGirl

    Oh, what a crummy outcome. It’s so hard to lose a dear pet. My heart goes out to you and your family. We’ve been in your shoes and it wounds the heart for a long time.

    • #53
  24. Chris Campion Coolidge
    Chris Campion
    @ChrisCampion

    Condolences, James.  Scout was a great dog.

    • #54
  25. Tim H. Inactive
    Tim H.
    @TimH

    I don’t have anything profound to say, but I am really sorry to hear this.  I know it might be better to know the outcome than to keep up the exhausting wondering, but I wish it were a better outcome.

    I’m astounded by the people who tried to lure you into a robbery!  I’d never heard of this approach before, and if you mentioned it on Twitter or the Bleat, then I must have missed that day.  Did you know they were traps?  Did you get warned off by someone before you went?  What happened?!

    • #55
  26. Michael Brehm Lincoln
    Michael Brehm
    @MichaelBrehm

    I’m sorry that it ended up the way it did, James. I’ll be sure to say some prayers for consolation for you and yours.

    • #56
  27. Kimberly Engle Inactive
    Kimberly Engle
    @KimberlyEngle

    I’m so sorry.  I wish love and joy and comfort for your family.

    • #57
  28. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    kelsurprise (View Comment):

    James Lileks: He died on a night when our scent was still fresh on him, so in a way we were with him when he passed.

    I managed to keep it together . . . right up until then.

    I’m so very sorry, James.

    He was a lucky dog who lived a lucky dog’s life – you and your family gave him the best dog life. Some dogs have this need to chase and run – they seem to just need it – my neighbor has a big adopted dog just like that, in fact they look similar.  You and your family can rest assured you gave your best.

    • #58
  29. cdor Member
    cdor
    @cdor

    Boy can I relate. Hey I’ll bet most of us can relate. It’s kind of weird how much we love our pets. Dennis Prager often speaks of a moral dilemma. If your pet or an unknown human stranger were both in a lake drowning and only one could be saved, which would you save, your loving pet or an unknown human? It’s not easy. I am so sorry for your loss.

    • #59
  30. ltpwfdcm Coolidge
    ltpwfdcm
    @ltpwfdcm

    Wonderful tribute there James, very touching. If I weren’t so allergic to dogs, I’d have a Scout of my own. It’s amazing the fondness, love and bonding that takes place between Man and Pet. My condolences to you and your family.

    • #60
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