Farewell, Duke

I didn’t want a dog. I thought having one would be too much trouble. That’s probably why the Husband waited until I broke my ankle: when I heard him start the car I could only hobble to the door in time to see him and Kate pull out.

“Where are you going?” I said.

Kate leaned out the window. As Paul drove off as if piloting a rocket sled, she called: “To get a puppy!”

They came home with Duke, an enthusiastic, clumsy ball of energy. That was just before Halloween 1997. I think Duke went as a pirate that year — we still have the bandanna. But at the time, I thought he might be a little demon. He was certainly possessed.

As a puppy he chased his own tail. He loved to swim in the pond in the woods, where he would try to retrieve logs bigger than himself. He chased squirrels but never figured out where they disappeared to once they reached the trees. Up never occurred to him.

Paul often said: That dog has two brain cells. Once in a while they even connect.

He once put the cat’s head in his mouth as if it were a tennis ball. The cat taught him not to try twice. Another time, he tried to exit the house through the cat door. Instead he got stuck, and we found him the next morning in his bed, with the cat door ripped off its mount and stuck around his neck. When he was a few months old he jumped up on the kitchen table and ate a cake Paul and Nate had baked for a Cub scout pack meeting — a cake shaped and decorated, honest-to-God, like a yellow Lab, and labeled “Duke.” He loved to jump; once, a neighbor looked out her kitchen window to see him bouncing on her trampoline.

Of course, he mellowed. El Perro Loco quieted down, to the point where he would maniacally greet us — like we’d just been rescued from a mine — maybe four or five times a day, instead of twenty. However, the boys never tired of dressing him in boxer shorts and crazy hats. Just last weekend, Mark tried his new glasses on him. He looked like Buddy Holly.

Duke put up with just about everything. And he never complained or got tired of it. He just wagged his tail and laid his head on your lap.

He turned 13 two weeks ago. That was wonderful, and more time than we ever expected to get with him. But at 13 every week, and every day, takes its toll. Yesterday our lovely Aussie vet, Belinda, had to tell us she couldn’t do any more for him.

Nate stayed with him all day, until it was time to say goodbye. Duke would never leave the kids’ sides, and Nate didn’t want to leave his.

Last night Paul said: “Best dog I ever had.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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