Louie was small and springy. His fur was more like hair, soft tawny and rust colored with hints of gold, dark brown beneath the long strands that sometimes obscured his face or paws. He was a Yorkie but with solemn ears, not the triangular upbeat ones you’d see on other dogs like him. He reminded me of my mother. He reminded my mother of my mother: Chipper and brave but anxious, tawny hair and endless energy.
Louie liked to relax in the front seat of my stepdad’s too-big car which made him look all the more diminutive. They liked to ride together, the two of them, co-conspirators; by turns quiet and chatty, giant man and small dog, always hungry for affection or snacks. Louie was small and spunky and nestled up everywhere. Louie from Detroit, my husband called him. He had soft brown eyes, the kind you’d call “gentle” on a person. He could eat a whole rotisserie chicken in four minutes flat. He ran outside to call at deer or squirrels or dogs too big, unabashed at his size, silly in his courage.
When he was old he would pee and shit and puke all over the house – especially if he felt slighted. Like my elderly grandfather who blamed his tactless comments on age. “I don’t have any filter anymore, it’s not my fault,” he would say. Louie was the same. When he felt abandoned by anyone but especially my stepfather - he left rank surprises on the couch, on the cold kitchen tiles, on the hastily made bed. But he also liked to curl up snugly against my sleeping children, his belly pressed against their dreaming faces. In the morning you could hear the music of his nails on the floor, the jaunty trot of his little body, his hunger for the day.
When Louie was dying he died like every other dog I had known and loved – all terriers with warm eyes, but with coarse hair and none so lucky to live as long. How all consuming grief is for a dog, this man’s best friend that is better than most men, most humans, all of us stumbling in the dark, angry. No one suffered quite like my stepfather, that big terrible warm beast of a man, his body wracked with sobs as he cradled the dog, Louie’s pink leather tongue lolling out of his mouth like a cruel joke, the light already fading from his tired eyes. “Why am I like this over a fucking dog, a fucking dog,” my stepfather would choke weeks later, alone with empty hands. His anguish a howl, something animal that still wakes my mother in the night.
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