The Family Dog (excerpt)

L to R: Human #1, MAXIMILLION, Human #2, GRANDMA, Human #3, HAMLET, Human #4

It was a good life for a dog. We had returned to our mesa, so it was hikes on the weekends and a walk at night. Because our cul-de-sac was strictly residential, there was never much traffic, and the dogs went out themselves when nobody was available for their nightly outing. A nearby canyon led to the mountains. We left the gate open, and in the morning my mother would find them sleeping on the furniture of the mis-named living room where nobody lived. At first she made an effort to protect the “good” furniture, but that only insured that the burnt-orange upholstered couch and matching wing chairs became their nests of choice. And yet … it is impossible to get angry at a basset, much less a sleeping basset. A sleeping basset is the confirmation of a natural and benign order. Those vouchsafed the vision of a sleeping basset have received an intimation that, as Browning writes, “God’s in his Heaven/All’s right with the world.” A basset sleeping is as innocent as birdsong or a baby’s laughter. Hamlet was a particularly accomplished sleeper, moving fluidly from Position Three (side curl) to Position One (supine with limbs spread-eagled). And when she sometimes indulged in a gentle, mellifluent snore, it could only ease the aching heart.

When Max slept it was the only time his ears left him in peace. They were monstrous—a mark of beauty in a basset—and they would have been a problem for a dog with a less devil-may-care attitude. My father would take Max’s ears in both hands, tie them over his head and sing:

Do your ears hang low?

Do they wobble to and fro?

Can you tie them in a knot?

Can you tie them in a bow?

Can you throw them over your shoulder

Like a Continental soldier?

Do your ears hang low?

Max would sit on the floor looking perplexed. The answer to these existential questions was a lamentable yes. Neither dog could drink water without the ears drooping into the liquid along with their snouts, but mealtime was the real debacle. The French say that one should not eat to live but live to eat, yet this ancestral wisdom (“basset” derives from the French basse) had not survived the Darwinian imperative. The two dogs attacked their dinners with alarming gusto; large mounds of dog food would disappear in seconds. Considering that mealtime was the summum bonum of their lives (and although we knew they loved us, we held no illusions about the basset’s scale of values), one would have thought they'd savor a bit this supreme moment. But the basset appetite should not be taxed with gluttony. They ate; they drank; they were merry – and they lived in the hope for more. It sometimes happened.

So we had our two bassets, and they were happy and loving and sweet. And then one night, Alice and her boyfriend took the dogs on a walk in the canyon. They returned sans bassets, but this was not unusual. The following morning only Hamlet had returned to her spot on the living room couch. We scoured the neighborhood, fixed signs to telephone poles, put an ad in the newspaper. Silence. Every walk, each ring of the telephone was sharpened by an anxiety that only dulled slowly with time. We couldn’t believe had had been stolen, hoped irrationally that his disappearance was temporary. And I remember poking about the unbuilt fields of the mesa, calling out Max’s name with only the stars and dim noise of traffic for answer. The lights of the long, fairy-flecked city stretched out in the basin before me. Someone had seen him and taken him away. And this was the end of our beauty. They had seen and admired his pelt and form, recognized perhaps that he was a purebred, and they had taken him away. And it was bitter, although not in a way I could then understand, that the thieves had taken him for his “beauty” without knowing his real beauty: his sweet disposition, his calming affect, the unconditional love he had for us all. And now he was gone. For months afterwards we couldn’t hear the rustle of bushes without straining our ears, holding our breath, helplessly hoping for the jingle of his collar and the sight of his tongue hanging from his smiling mouth.

-- Robert Philipson

Read about the professorial foray that prompted this autobiographical essay, How Jews Birthed the Dog That Elvis Stole From Big Mama Thornton

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