Paws and Reflect Read online

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  “Even in today’s crowded market of dog-related stories, these stories stand out . . . [and] deserve to find a wide readership.” —BO BENGTSON, editor of Dogs in Review and Sighthound Review, and author of The Whippet.

  “I love this. It’s like Chicken Soup for the Soul, with stories that are salty, spicy and sweet. Rich and filling, this book warms your heart just like Mom’s comfort food. It should be read with gusto and enjoyed with relish.”—CHRIS WALKOWICZ, author of The Perfect Match and President Emeritus of the Dog Writers Association of America.

  “The relationship between and a man and his dog is a truly special connection. This book illustrates the profound strength of that bond. An eloquent mingling of humor and reflection. I’ve never read anything like it.”—MONICA MORALES, NBC News.

  “In this rare instance, it’s fair to judge a book by its cover. Paws and Reflect is a sweet and deeply moving paean to a love we happily dare to name: the stirring, surprising relationships between men and their dogs.”—ALEX MACLENNAN, author of The Zookeeper.

  “Not what I expected! It’s always appealing to read stories about the friendship between man and dog, but these stories go way beyond to a land of deep devotion, uncensored humor, and fierce compassion. I cried; I laughed; I wanted more. This is a must read, even for cat owners.”—SALLY HUXLEY, author of The Cat Who Had Two Lives.

  “Paws and Reflect does more than explore the bond between gay men and their dogs, it highlights the human-animal bond that so many of us are privileged to experience. I can’t imagine any dog lover who couldn’t relate to these stories. Sit! Stay! Read! —DARLENE ARDEN, author of Small Dogs, Big Hearts.

  “That special bond between man and his dogs shines through and makes it abundantly clear that the mutual canine-human love and affection developed over the ages has no preferences. A truly moving and provoking collection of canine-man devotion.”—STEVEN D. GLADSTONE, ESQ. , American Kennel Club, Board of Directors, class of 2009.

  “I really loved these stories. The mountain rescue is so dramatic. The pee-training is hysterical, and taking care of sick dogs reminded me of our Airedale, McGill, who had a similar immune disease and was similarly brave to the end. These wonderfully written stories convinced me that our precious dogs, like Mathew Phillips’s ‘Brandy, ’ are indeed touched by angels.”—REBECCA CHASE, ABC News.

  “Unusual, engrossing, and vivid. A marvelous collection of stories of dogs who are guides, partners, helpers and healers. It’s interesting that these are not just stories about dogs, but stories about how dogs were able to help men connect with the world beyond themselves. —JOHN CONSTANTINE, breeder, Adamis Kennel Brussels Griffons and Miniature Schnauzers, Vice-President of the American Miniature Schnauzer Club.

  “A wonderful collection of stories about the coupling of man and canine. These are loveable dogs and loveable men. Men who are puppy whipped, pull lame dogs in wagons, carry incontinent dogs, are outed by dogs and are saved by dogs. I am totally enthusiastic about this book.”—GINI SIKES, author of 8 Ball Chicks.

  “The happy devotion of a dog is the closest thing we have to ideal love. The stories in Paws and Reflect remind us of that, and as long as we have dogs, anyone’s life can be warmly enhanced. These tales of connection are universal, and along with the provocative facts about dogs that introduce each one, this book offers a warm and satisfying read for dog-lovers everywhere.”—KATHERINE RAMSLAND, author of Bliss: Writing to Find Your True Self.

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  PAWS and REFLECT

  a special bond between man and dog

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  NEIL PLAKCY & SHARON SAKSON

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  © 2006 by NEIL PLAKCY and SHARON SAKSON. All rights reserved.

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  NEIL: To my parents, who bought me my first dog, and to Marc, with whom I hope to share all the rest of my dogs.

  SHARON: To the men and the dogs in these pages and in our lives.

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  INTRODUCTION

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  Many thousands of years ago, small wolves pulled up beside the campfires of a newly emerged species, man, and forged a friendship. Instead of disappearing back into the forest, these canines offered themselves as shepherds, guardians, hunters, and haulers. As time went on, they took on an even broader range of duties, as comforters, rescuers, and friends. Dogs have migrated from the primal fireside right into the hearts of our homes.

  The truth is that for many of us, our dogs are our children. We don’t have to straighten their teeth or send them to college, but we love them, feed them, groom them, sometimes even dress them up, just as if they were little boys and girls. For most dog owners, our dogs are not possessions but family. Dog-owning couples are notoriously devoted to spoiling their surrogate kids with love and attention. Single men are increasingly living the lives of single parents, struggling to combine work, social life, and dog care. Many men, single or coupled, seem to have a gift for the special details of dog parenting.

  In return, their dogs love them unconditionally, without judgment or regard to sexual orientation; comfort them when they are in pain; and because most men outlive them, teach them extraordinary lessons in how to cope with loss. One thing that every story we’ve heard has in common is that the dogs involved eventually found a way of enriching their owners’ lives.

  Because they’re always younger than their owners, dogs are like an eternal fountain of youth. Dogs charm us with their puppyish enthusiasm, and gracefully accept the inconveniences of their elder years. Some men tolerate wild excesses of their dogs’ craziness and bad behavior. Maybe it reminds them of their own.

  For Paws and Reflect we sought to craft a sample of the stories shared with us by men that illuminate this special and powerful bond. Touching, powerful and often humorous, this collection is representative of a shared, deeply felt devotion. Some stories were built from in-depth interviews.

  Some were contributed by writers, whom we invited to participate in this project. Three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Edward Albee shares a poignant story that is the continuation of a conversation of twenty years, since Sharon Sakson first interviewed him about his Irish Wolfhounds for Sighthound Review. Actor-playwright Charles Busch reveals in an interview his story of the guardian shepherd who saw him through the bleak aftermath of his mother’s death.

  Environmentalist David Mizejewski, of the National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat program and Animal Planet fame, shares the adjustments he has made to his own emotional and physical habitat to accommodate the well-being of his beloved dogs. Celebrity hairstylist Jack Morton speaks eloquently of lessons he has learned from his dogs about love and humanly elusive compatibility.

  Several men with AIDS write with admiration of the dogs who have been an important part of their therapy. In all, twenty-five men from many walks of life and a wide variety of situations illuminate life-altering insights they have gained from the special dogs in their lives.

  In addition to being their sweet, cranky, funny, sleepy, unique selves, dogs also represent a way for men to connect to other people. A common interest in dogs brought some couples together. It has been a factor in why some break apart. If a man cares about his dog, it is a mark that he may also possess certain behaviors essential to a relationship: the ability to give and receive love, the capacity to tend to the needs of another, the openness to accept the presence of someone else.

  Some of the dogs recounted in these pages are already far down memory lane. Some are very much in the present. Paws and Reflect is a celebration of the
unique bond between any one of us and our canine friends, a celebration of all the dogs we have loved in the past, the dogs we love now, and the dogs of our future, who are only waiting for the right moment for us to invite them to join in our lives.

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  DOGS OF OUR CHILDHOOD

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  Charles Busch: THE GUARDIAN SHEPHERD

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  It would be wonderful if every child on earth could experience a happy childhood, free from trouble and pain. But in reality that’s not possible. Charles Busch’s childhood was interrupted at age seven by the death of his mother. While his sisters and aunts formed a loving, wacky matriarchal society around him, he found a deep well of comfort and strength from a canine source—a giant white German Shepherd named Wolfie.

  Wolfie, of course, couldn’t have known that his small charge would one day become an acclaimed Broadway playwright and actor. He only knew that Charles Busch needed him, and his job was to provide steadfast company for a damaged child. He did that job so well that forty years later, Charles’s voice catches in his throat as he tells me about the giant dog that made his seven-year-old life possible.

  Although Charles deeply regrets that he is too busy to have a dog right now, I discovered that in his Manhattan apartment sit two massive, antique, porcelain Chinese Foo dogs that he bought years ago in Hong Kong. They are highly stylized works of art. But it’s hard not to notice that once again he has a huge, monster-dog presence in his home, looking over him.

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  WHEN MY MOTHER was alive, we had a black Miniature Poodle named Nicky. He was always driving my mother crazy, jumping up on furniture and on us, but she forgave him because he adored her.

  My mother died of a heart attack when I was seven. She was forty-one. No warning. One minute, I had this wonderful, loving mother. The next, she was gone. It was devastating. It was the defining event of my childhood.

  The day my mother died, Nicky went right outdoors and ran for miles. He took off. We looked everywhere for him, but we could never find him. It was hard because here we had lost my mother, and losing her dog was like losing another little part of her.

  We had no thought of getting another dog. But one night my father came home from work with this little, white, fluffy ball of fur, a German Shepherd puppy. It was a big surprise for the family.

  My father didn’t have any particular feelings for dogs. He was a perpetual sixteen-year-old. The death of my mother meant that he had to maintain some semblance of family life for us, and he wasn’t very good at it. He was a fun and adorable guy. All the ladies he ran around with thought so. He owned a record store in Yonkers, and probably one of his customers brought in this puppy.

  But it was a good thing, because we were all sad about losing Nicky and thrilled with this new puppy. Here was this happy bundle of energy, kissing and licking us and romping around. We named him Wolfie.

  I took to him immediately. He became my best friend who never moped around, was always glad to see me, never hassled me about homework. We really bonded.

  They grow so quickly! In a year this tiny, fluffy puppy was an enormous, long-haired white shepherd. He knew each person in the family—my two older sisters, my mother’s two older sisters, my dad—and he had us all figured out. He loved all of us, but he made me feel special.

  As a child, I felt alone, and different, at least partly because I didn’t have a mother. Wolfie was my friend. He was the one who was with me the most, and all that other stuff didn’t matter to him. He just loved me. He was there for me for whatever I needed.

  Walking down the street with Wolfie was an experience. He looked like an animal from a fantasy. With his big white body and his enormous head, you could imagine he was a unicorn. When I walked him, cars would stop and people would roll down their windows and stare at us. Here was this thin, sad little boy with this longhaired, white creature. Wolfie knew they were watching, and he was proud. He carried his head high. He had great elegance.

  He was so attached to me that he wouldn’t let anybody get near me. He’d bark and even bite people. It was a real problem. I didn’t have too many friends anyway, but one day, somebody from the neighborhood came a little too close to me as I was walking home from school, so Wolfie bit him. It was a horrible scene. Wolfie and I ran home, and later, after my father got home, the police came.

  My father brought the policeman into the living room, where Wolfie and I were lying on the floor in front of the television. I had my arms around him, and he was just lying there, looking peaceful.

  “Look at that dog, ” my father said.”He can’t possibly be the dog you got the complaint about. He’s not at all aggressive.”

  “We should still take him in, ” the policeman said.”He could be a danger in the neighborhood.”

  I was lying there, just holding on to Wolfie. I didn’t know what I’d do if the police took him away. My father talked to the policeman and showed him how gentle Wolfie was, and eventually convinced him not to take Wolfie.

  It was interesting that he had these aggressive qualities toward strangers but he was absolutely gentle with me. I could play lion tamer and put my head in his mouth, and he would just wait. He would never think of harming me.

  We had a black housekeeper named Beulah Baker who had come from down South, where she had been a pickle picker on a pickle farm. She never did do much housework, but she was wonderful. She sounded a little like Butterfly McQueen. She was very darling and so affectionate to me.

  We spent so much time in the house together, just Beulah Baker, Wolfie, and me. Beulah used to teach me how to set her wigs, and I was pretty good at it. On a typical afternoon, Wolfie would be lying there on the floor, and Beulah Baker and I would be busy with combs and pins, working on one of her wigs.

  Later we would watch television. I loved old movies—I still do—and I just absorbed the tragic heroines. I tend to watch the same ones that I loved as a child over and over: Marie Antoinette with Norma Shearer, Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh, I Could Go On Singing with Judy Garland, The Hard Way with Ida Lupino, Random Harvest with Greer Garson, I’m No Angel with Mae West, and a zillion others.

  Then, my favorite part of the day, my turn to perform. I would mimic back for Beulah and Wolfie these larger-than-life romantic actresses in their classic roles. The afternoon would end with Beulah sitting on the sofa with this huge white German Shepherd at her feet. And I’d be singing Judy Garland songs to her.

  Wolfie would sit there staring at me, very alert. He made it seem like watching this skinny little boy singing The Man That Got Away was something a dog was really meant to do. That was a typical afternoon in our house. You can see why not much housework got done.

  When I was seven, as a special treat, my father took me to the old Metropolitan Opera House to see Joan Sutherland in La Sonnambula. I was amazed—it’s the story of a young girl who goes walking in her sleep, and sitting there in the audience, I was watching this magnificent redheaded lady drifting through a glorious nineteenth-century painted landscape. When I got up in front of Wolfie and Beulah, I was trying to recreate that for them, the beauty and the dreamy quality. In a way, you could say that my entire career has been an attempt to recreate that first impression.

  People ask me when I write a play today, do I do any research? Well, I’ve been researching all my life.

  My father remarried. His new wife had children, and the idea of moving in with a bunch of children I didn’t know was horrific to me. My father knew that. He made the offer, in the spirit of being caring and fatherly, but he knew I wasn’t going to take it. He knew I couldn’t live with him in that family, and he didn’t blame me.

  So I continued living with Aunt Belle, my sister Meg, Beulah Baker, and Wolfie. My older sister was in college. They were my audience.

  I couldn’t be in a school play because I couldn’t remember a line of dialogue. I sta
rted hyperventilating the moment I hit the stage. It was because I loved it too much. Being “up there” onstage was my most magical dream. I was desperate to be a child star, only no one in my family was willing to exploit me.

  Then, when I was around twelve, Wolfie got sick. He started to have epileptic fits, where his whole body would shake, and he’d fall down and jerk and twist on the floor. It was awful to see. I felt horribly guilty. We were so close, I thought something I had done had made him sick.

  At first there were long stretches in between seizures, but then he started to get them more often. He was really suffering. I could see that we had to put him to sleep. It was so painful for me, but I didn’t want Wolfie to suffer. With Wolfie gone, I was inconsolable. I was so alone.

  We got a new dog. This one was a normal German Shepherd, normal size, normal black-and-tan color, not a huge, white giant like Wolfie. We called him Hans. He liked everybody in the family, but he was really Aunt Belle’s dog. He liked me, but he didn’t think I was the most special child on earth, the way Wolfie had.

  By this time I had really gotten lost in a fantasy world. For years I had been just watching old movies and performing for Beulah Baker and Wolfie in the living room. I was flunking out of school. And I was about to go into ninth grade. That’s when my Aunt Lillian, who lived in New York City, swooped in and decided I should come live with her.