A Dog’s Life
The main reason we drove 2,900 miles cross-country last week was to get our dog, Cecil to our new home in San Diego. Cecil is a Bichon Frise (pure breed as it turns out) who came to us as a rescue in August 2009. He was estimated to be two-years-old when we got him. That means he is about twelve years old now. He has a replacement leg ligament, from which he still occasionally limps, one big old cataract on his right eye (but he can still catch a ball in mid-air), a heart murmur for which he is medicated, and some sort of Bichon skin condition that makes him itchy brother on most days. All things considered, if we apply the standard 7X lifespan ratio, Cecil is 84-years-old and is expected to live perhaps another three years. He’s in fine health for an octogenarian.
I last drove Cecil cross-country perhaps four years ago. That time it was summer time and we took 3 days. Cecil was a much younger dog then, so sitting in a car bed all day was a tougher gig and Kim had to play it out of him every night after we stopped. This time, Cecil was much more subdued and sitting or sleeping in his car bed all day was no big deal most ofthe time. Now understand, Bichons are not generally known to be a digging breed, but Cecil must have some digging roots because he much prefers being burrowed into his furniture version of a small cave, sometimes under a bed, often in a mobile doghouse or crate. This means that small, confined spaces work just fine for him. Thus, the back seat in his car bed was an ok place for him for much of the day. This is an old dog that does not need to run around a field all day. I would estimate that Cecil got something like eighteen to twenty hours of sleeping in per day, which is not so different from his normal days now. Despite his tendency to like food begging, he is a product of nature and generally wants less food when he is less active. He needs water regularly, but that’s no problem. So, in general, he was a pretty non-demanding passenger.
After twenty hours in the car for the last push to the finish line, I sense I pushed his anxiety limits. Remember, what he knows so far is that we are not at home in NYC. He has Kim, which is the most critical issue (he is largely indifferent about me), and we have not gone to the vet, which is good. I doubt he remembers the drive out in 2018, so his world is in flux and certainly not settled, which is what he and most dogs prefer, I imagine. He seems to sense when we are approaching our destination. To be more realistic, he probably senses our increased excitement and retransmits that back to us. In any case, when we arrive he is the first to want to jump out into the sunny morning air. Kim lets him out on the driveway on the assumption that coyotes, bobcats and rattlesnakes are not in the immediate vicinity. If Cecil has natural defense warning mechanisms, he sure doesn’t show it. He’s running around sniffing everything as we unload the car. When we go inside, he’s right with us, running around exploring as though he’s never been here, which he has a half-dozen times. Maybe he picks up on Teddy’s scent. Teddy is the young dog of Jeff and Lisa, who have watched the place for us for eight years as we’ve prepared for this move.
Cecil explores the whole house and decides he will sit in his travel crate with a view out a lower window to watch the front gate. He doesn’t realize it yet, but along with Jeff and Lisa are my son Thomas and…..Teddy. Cecil and Teddy used to get along last year. They are both a year older and wiser or a year older and less tolerant. Luckily, they seem prepared to tolerate one another and they follow each other around the house taking turns as to whose nose is in whose butt at the moment. Cecil is not food possessive and Teddy is. But Teddy is not territorial (even though he thinks this house belongs to him) but Cecil is decidedly so and if it’s Kim’s house it’s his house.
Not that Cecil can comprehend any of this, but he has just crossed the country for what is likely to be his last time. From now on he lives in California and this is the house he will live out his days in. That may be the same for Kim and me as well, but we have a bit more ability to determine our own fate than does Cecil. We are hoping that Cecil is not such a City Dog that he cannot be just as happy on this lovely hilltop. It’s hard to say for sure that in the past he has liked it as much as NYC. He’s simply not communicative enough to be certain. My logic on the subject goes like this. Kim will be spending more, not less, time with Cecil going forward. The paucity of dog sitters on this hilltop versus in the City is half the story. The other half is that it is simply less convenient to venture away from home, so we both expect to spend more time here. That all translates into Cecil having more of Kim’s schedule than in the City. That implies that he’ll be a happy dog.
Several years ago we built an AstroTurf dog run in the middle of our award-winning cactus garden (we inherited it from the prior owner, but we try to maintain its beauty and integrity). I’m not sure whether Kim and Cecil will use it for their ball-toss games the way they used to. Time will tell for Cecil how he will pass his days here in California. If he does what he did most recently in New York, it will barely matter at all if he’s doing it here or there.
In that way, Cecil will not be so different than me and Kim. This is a big change for us all. Granted, Cecil didn’t really get a vote except by Kim’s proxy that he seemed to enjoy his prior time in California. She did not, for instance, feel he had enjoyed his time on Staten Island and that he was much happier moving back to Manhattan two years ago. I can’t swear it, but I suspect a wee bit of projection on Kim’s part and maybe even some on my part. But Kim and I actively chose to move ourselves out here. We have traded back and forth the roles of protagonist and antagonist in the tug-of-war of such a decision process. But we have both mostly been in favor of the move and have moved ourselves closer to it as the last two years have gone by. When I reflect that it was five years ago that we sold our Seaport Condo, or eight years since we bought out here, or twelve years since my Bear Stearns debacle might have caused me to run away out here or a full nineteen years since I exited Bankers Trust with my golden parachute, wondering if I still wanted or needed to work any more. I am, for once, inclined to observe that time does fly when you’re having fun…or even when you’re not. Tempus Fugit and Carpe Diem. All I can say is I’m glad it doesn’t go seven times faster like a dog’s life.