September 30, 2023 • 28 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 46: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:40) IT'S STEVIE DAY! If you heard Friday's regular episode of the podcast, you've heard all of this before but I wanted to emphasize this story because, well, because it IS Stevie Day. 11 years ago today, totally by happenstance, with no plan, no rhyme, and no reason, I instantaneously became a dog person. All because of a little Maltese who liked to give kisses (and still does)
B-Block (16:37) IT'S STEVIE DAY - PART TWO: She has fought through everything: cancer, immune disease, mobility issues, and never stopped smiling, and never believing that any human meant her anything but good (and still does). And now I have four dogs and I truly was, eleven years ago today, born again in dogs :-)
C-Block (31:12) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I've
mentioned my dogs before. July first was Ted's Gotcha Day,
five years since he came in to me as a foster,
and then I failed profoundly and he's not a foster anymore.
(00:25):
He's my little boy. A week later is Stevie's birthday.
It was the big one one this year. Rose doesn't
have anything to do with July. She'll be almost ten,
I guess in a couple of days. And then a
week after Stevie's birthday, mine turned sixteen. I've told you
about men. He's the rescue who had outlived his human
(00:46):
and they thought he had dementia, and it turned out
we had to take out all of his teeth because
they were rotten, and goodness, he really didn't have dementia.
He just had bad teeth. Once we took them out,
ninety percent of his fogging is cleared up, and he's
gained three pounds, and he takes the hard treats and
he puts them in the water bowl and comes back
for them later and then pulls them out and sucks
(01:07):
on them like cough drops. And I don't know if
I know any people smart enough to do that, and
he is the best walker in the world. And he
leaps over the white stripes on the crosswalks, and I
thought he was confused, and then he did it like
sixteen times in one half hour walk, and I realized
he's doing it out of the sheer joy of still
being able to do it at the age of sixteen.
And he's now talking to me, and he understands much
(01:29):
of what I try to say to him, even though
he really only understands French. It's a long story, and
it all starts with Stevie eleven years ago, because on
September thirtieth, twenty twelve, eleven years ago, not one word
of what I just said would have made any sense
(01:51):
to me. I had never had a dog, I'd had allergies,
I'd had travel, I'd had work. And then Olivia looked
at me and she said, I need a puppy fix.
On September thirtieth, twenty twelve, my girlfriend's family dog was dying.
My girlfriend later my ex girlfriend, would not say that
(02:15):
the little dog was dying. Her folks would not say it.
A dog, a Jack Russell Terrier, was named Casey. Did
her best to be the only truthful one in the
whole family. She was moving purposely and unsteadily with every step,
and she was looking out at her world with the
seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness and regret that the
(02:36):
one time she really needed the bipeds to speak and
act for her, they would not. I just need for dogs,
not to mean sadness, Olivia said, just for a while,
Can we go to that pet shop on lex I
mumbled that we could go, but that I had resisted
the dog entreaties of eleven girlfriends before her, and I
(02:59):
would successfully resist hers. I had always loved dogs, but
I was really allergic to them, and my doctors had
all said that even hypoallergenic dogs were a crap shoot.
She said, I do not want a dog. I am
not trying to convince you to get us a dog.
I just want to hold a puppy for a little while.
(03:22):
She paused, as she always did when she felt both
hopeless and angry at being at the mercy of feelings,
and she lapsed into the shrug emoji. As sappy as
that sounds, Olivia the girlfriend, the former girlfriend, let me
make this easier on both of us. We'll call her TFGF,
the former girlfriend TFGF and I left for the pet
(03:42):
shop in midafternoon, and I told her my true fear
here that my native but dormant shared affinity with dogs
would all of a moment spring fully grown from my soul,
and I would blurt, just give me all of them.
I mean, what kind of life could I offer a dog?
I was on television, and thus always in a television studio,
(04:03):
and thus never home for play or walks or just
the prevention of canine loneliness. I had a girlfriend who
lived out of town. Half the time, I was clueless
as to every practical aspect of the dog thing. I
had littered the continent with dead house plants, and I
no longer thought myself capable of pulling my ego out
of my backside sufficiently to take care of fish. I
(04:27):
had literally not had a pet of any kind since
nineteen sixty seven. I had come to terms with living
in a wistful, hazy world in which I might inadvertently
have a dog pal for a few moments, but almost
never indoors, and never without the pang of knowing that
the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye. And
(04:48):
I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious big, furry,
friendly dogs, and I might be allergic to the ones
that were built as non allergic. And if I disobeyed
this immutable cannon, the buried tears of permanent exclusion might
be replaced by far worse ones of separation and loss.
Me I would get over it, probably, but without overvaluing
(05:12):
myself too much to betray the love of a dog
to send a dog back because of allergies. As TFGF
and I approached the shop, there was, as there almost
always is, there a small crowd undulating around it. Lexington
Avenue's narrow sidewalks make these human clots easier to form,
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even late on the first Sunday of autumn. There is
also an obstacle course of grates and cellar doors and bikes,
chained poles and parking meters and canopies for diners and
restaurants and mattress showrooms and other places that are not
quite seedy but also aren't quite your first choice. The
uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the
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maze of fifty ninth Street Bridge approaches lend the place
a congested feel even when it's otherwise quiet. We are
three blocks up from the trying just a little too
hard merchandising of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double
parked three hundred and sixty five days a year, and
then totally out of place amid the prosaic trappings of
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a big city at its most meh. There they are
bouncing off each other, tearing infinitely at other, tiny heads
and tails and paws doing a seeming pantomime of dismemberment.
Their yips and the crunch of the shredded cavorting paper
are just audible through the glass and over the din
of the street, they create an oasis of cute. And
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just in case you can't tell what they are, there's
this big Neon sign above their street front window that reads, puppies.
Don't make me go in? I pleaded. She reassured me.
We'd go in. She'd hold the dog. All I had
to do was take a picture. You don't understand. I
(07:01):
reached for her hand. What I'm trying to say is
always wanted a dog, but I could never have a dog.
Just as the door to the shop opened, she grabbed
my arm. She yanked hard. She swore, and she muttered,
you'll survive. Man up. Don't make eye contact. Don't make
eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact.
We were going towards puppies and past puppies, and the
(07:24):
appearance of a small staircase to a training loft confirmed
we are now going under puppies. And in the deepest
recesses of the shop there was a wall of puppies
two hour right, three cages high, six across, all a
yellowish beige behind a reddish brown for Micah countertop, then
a structural beam, and then three cages high, two across,
then a corner with a small visiting pen built into
(07:46):
the countertop. Then right in front of me the Hollywood
squares of puppies three high, three across, and all of
their inmates, all nine of them, staring at me and
screaming at me and making eye contact and saying, by
esp take me home. Helsman now introduced himself as Jeffrey,
(08:06):
and Jeffrey asked if TFGF had any particular dog she
wanted him to bring to her. Let me see the
Maltese the girl. In that moment, two things struck me Firstly,
this was my cue to get the phone out and
prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly,
the dog whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from
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the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside
that pet shop besides me, who was not making any
damn noise. Every other puppy was perfecting its adolescent bark.
The cats were making a bewildering variety of noises. And
was that a Norwegian blue parrot? Squawk? Remarkable bird, the
Norwegian blue? Isn't it beautiful plumage? This Maltese said nothing.
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She looked like her torso would easily fit in one
of my hands if she was three pounds. A quarter
of it was hair, and half of that was curled,
and presumably somebody came by every day to turn what
sat atop her head into a mohawk up top and
a mullet in the back. Her cage mate brother seemed
a little bigger, but his eyes were clearly smaller, and
their ocular contrast was immediately visible, even if you still
(09:15):
had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact. His shown hers
were illuminated. He tried to get past her into the
salesman's arms. She simply lifted up her head towards him,
and it actually crossed my mind that she looked like
she was about to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today?
He put her gently down in the playpen at the
(09:36):
right corner of the counter. TFGF asked if she could
pick the puppy up, and nodded to me to get
the camera ready. Honestly, Jeffrey said, this is the sweetest
dog we've had in here for months. I say that
every day to almost everybody, but this time I'm actually
not lying. TFGFF cradled the Maltese in her arms, with
the dog's head facing to my right. I tapped the
(09:59):
camera on the phone. My hand was already shaking as
I sent it up TFGF and the up in the frame.
The Maltese suddenly wiggled upright, placed her front paws on
my girlfriend's chest, and just as I snapped the image,
the dog reached up and kissed my girlfriend on the lips.
(10:19):
I am, on occasion, completely incapable of remembering anything that
happened in my entire life before that moment. TFGF made
the appropriate sounds of approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little
grooming the Maltese breed needs and the great price he
could give us, And even as my head spun, it
(10:40):
seemed silly to me that he was calculating the tax
on something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. TFGF
said something about how we needed a minute outside to
discuss it, and she handed the puppy back to Jeffrey,
and the dog looked at each each of us and
as if she was about to say, nice to meet you.
As the pup went back up into the cage with
(11:01):
her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl was reaching
her head up towards the spout of the cage's water
bottle with the same graceful movement she had made to
bestow that kiss on TFGF, when her brother puppy abruptly
body slammed her out of the way, and her tiny
frame bounced off the side of the cage. And then,
(11:24):
to my shock and confusion, a deep and threatening growl,
a vengeful ah reverberated throughout the pet shop. The growl
was coming from me. The next sounds were from TFGF.
My God, what's wrong with you? I didn't know it
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at the time, but as we turned to fight our
way back out through the shop to the street, I
evidently half skidded into a display full of chew toys.
They nearly toppled to the floor. I nearly toppled to
the floor. I couldn't see, but I didn't recognize my
own tears until they hit the edges of my lips.
Somehow I managed to say it again, this time in despair.
I always wanted a dog, but I could never have one.
(12:10):
She suddenly realized what had happened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm an asshole. TFGF was now holding me upright and
steering me towards the door to the street. I didn't
listen to you. I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole. You
told me. I didn't believe you. I'm so sorry. Well
now the stories came pouring out, all jumbled, one on
top of the other. Tiny the Saint Bernard at the
(12:31):
Katz and Steins. He only wanted to embrace me, he
wasn't trying to eat me. And the mcconnon's mutt next
door Boots used to come sit on my lap and
tiny didn't make me sneeze, He only scared me. And
the mcconnons had three boys and a mother who baked
cookies by the car load lot, and Boots never left
their side, and I was always at their house. And
if I was allergic, how was it that I never
once had a problem with Boots? How in the hell
(12:51):
did that work? Huh? And what about Vladimir or the
stray cat my sister found He used to live in
the garage and behaved like a dog and like to
be carried around like a baby. And how allergic was
I had beautiful, beautiful little maltese reach up and kissed
you on the mouth. And the one time I took
my dad's movie camera to the mcconnon's house, half of
the film was of Boots. And what if I went
back and got the allergy shots again? And it was
my mother who said she was really allergic, so I
(13:13):
must be too, And what's the use? The little maltese
was perfect and the next person who sees her will
snap her up in an instant. And I asked them
just to let me try a little dog who wouldn't
shed The only thing my mother would let me have
were lizards and I could take a zertech every day.
I'm so sorry, Tiny, I didn't realize I never said
goodbye to Boots. Maltese is gone. She's gone. She's gone,
and she's my dog. I know what. I could feel it.
She's my dog and she's gone. What happened next Beggar's fiction.
(13:42):
It involves Rudy Giuliani back to the number one story
on the Countdown and the day I fell in love
with a dog for the first time and my girlfriend,
the former girlfriend TFGF, and I left the puppy in
the pet shop. TFGF and I were walking me mid meltdown,
(14:08):
somehow now nearing the Park Avenue Armory, one block west
and four blocks north of the pet shop that I
thought we were still in. To her credit, TFGF had
kept me from throwing myself into traffic or dissolving into
a puddle on sixty second Street. The overwhelming sensation I
had was not one of having left the tiny puppy
(14:29):
in the shop, but of having left a part of
myself there that was my dog. And what was worse
was she was obviously going to be taken by somebody else.
Even before I got back there, even if we turned
around right away. Who could resist her? I certainly hadn't.
My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused only when I
had no choice but to shut up and gasp for breath,
(14:52):
and the comments with which TFGF tried to soothe me
in these moments were self abnegating and solemn. She had
talked me off the limb of my certainty that the
dog had already been sold, and was now steering me
back towards sanity. I had to, she would say, later,
you were having a breakdown. She said, we should go home,
and if I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities
(15:13):
of owning a dog, we could do that and still
get the puppy the next morning, even if it meant
delaying her departure for DC. Don't worry. I'm sure she's
still there. They were getting ready to close. She'll be
there in the morning. I exhaled, and then I repanicked.
She's she's I sniffed anew, and the tears resumed. She's
(15:35):
in that cage with that brother of hers in the
basement somewhere. Before TFGF could answer, and I swear this
is true, Rudy Giuliani spilled down the stairs from the
armory we were passing. A cop suddenly appeared from a
different nowhere and put out an arm and firmly asked
(15:55):
us to stop walking, and Juliani scuttled rodent like into
a waiting car. A wife was with him. I did
not and do not know which number. The driver was
already closing the door behind them when I shouted it,
how come my dog has to spend the night in
a cage while that ass hat is allowed to roam
around this city without a leash on him. Later that evening,
(16:19):
TFGF said that was the first moment she thought we
might just get home safe and sound. After all, it
was not ten more minutes back to my apartment, and
we walked it in silence. Now I had long since
saturated my handkerchief and some tissues TFGF had in her pockets.
I was breathing deeply and restoratively. Now the sniffle frequency
(16:41):
reduced to once or twice per block, and my mind
was crowded with the dogs I had known, Boots, Tiny, Vladimir,
the Cat, even tfgf's little Casey dying out in Jersey
and unaware of the seismic events which she had set
in motion. I was thinking of other dogs. To all
of the dogs in all of the stories of James
(17:02):
Thurber that I read on TV every Friday night, I
had smiled along with his poetic descriptions of them, but
never confessed I loved them as he must have. There
was Samantha, who my late friend Bruce Hagen used to
bring everywhere, including our college radio station newsroom, the first
really big dog who did not frighten me. My great
(17:23):
aunt's Yorky, whose gas was so potent that the Christmas
just before I turned nine, my great uncle said he
was convinced she had been a German terror weapon at
Chateau Terry in the First World War, and he and
I had bonded because I knew what Chateau Terry was.
There was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of
my sontimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put
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on the phone with me. In my mind, they all
stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, smiling, all
with the kindest type of I told you so, dummy
on their wonderful faces, and dozens more behind them, vague
shapes and sizes who belonged to neighbors or co workers
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passed who were just chance encounters on the streets of
any of a dozen cities decades before. No, I'm sorry,
she said, I shouldn't have been that selfish. But now
I disagreed with her, and as I unlocked the apartment door,
I began to tell her of the dogs I had
just been communing with in my mind, and what had
suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable, and perfect, but about which
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I needed as much detail as I could in as
short a period as possible. TFGF tried, well, you just
take the dog wherever you can. My parents have been
saying this a lot lately. Now they regret not doing
more things with Casey, not adventures, not kayaking, just taking
her with them, or going out in the yard, or
(18:46):
just holding her while they'd watched TV. You just let
the dog in. We went through topic after topic, cleaning, training, handling,
poop walks, food, puppy sitters, moving books off ground level shelves, discipline,
and most importantly of all, a backup plan in this
epiphany was false, and or I was still allergic or terrified,
(19:10):
or incompetent or all three. I don't think it'll take
much to convince my parents to take her. I mean,
even after Casey recovers and I can take her with
me to DC tomorrow, I'll bring her back next weekend.
So you can get the apartment ready, and you can
get you ready, and you don't have to go in
at the deep end. Right away, I interrupted her with
(19:33):
a kiss. Let's go back there before they close. I
don't want to wait till morning. I'm still terrified somebody
else will realize how extraordinary she is. Unexpectedly, I had
a moment of doubt at this point. This isn't just
me having a breakdown, right, I mean, she is extraordinary.
I'm having a breakdown, and she is extraordinary, isn't she.
(19:55):
TFGF stopped being nice, and now, for the first time,
looked at me like I'd just gone crazy, even though
I just had gone crazy. Obviously. She said that was
a real kiss. The pet shop had stayed open, partly
because TFGF phoned them as we hit the street outside
of the apartment building, and partly because they knew you
were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see it sometimes. Also,
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you seemed kind of emotional. TFGFF helpfully mentioned that i'd
had a breakdown. They had all the paraphernalia ready, a
little aquabed, a series of attached gates that could be
used as a pen or a barrier, a small pink blanket,
a bag of training pads and the plastic pad holder,
enough dry food to last twelve to fourteen months, some
(20:41):
horrific wet food that looked like a discarded early design
for liverwurst, a few chew toys, a bright pink harness
and a leash as light as a ribbon, a black
carrying bag, and paperwork with the puppies family tree, which,
to my astonishment, stretched back beyond her birth one week
shive three months before, through the six preceding generations, all
the way back to six entire years earlier. In addition
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to all this, they could have included a moped, a
stock portfolio to guarantee your college education, and i'm all
tease sized typewriter with a twenty year supply of replacement ribbons.
And I would have also bought them. Very nice lady
named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog
owner in about ninety four seconds and handed me a
voucher for a vet and a checklist of stuff to do.
(21:27):
I signed a credit card bill. I think I used
my own name. I absolved myself of the guilt of
not getting a sheltered dog because I was allergic and
kind of had to go the shop route. Plus I
was not looking for a dog. I had actually fallen
in love at first sight with this dog. And lastly,
because no matter had the obvious and often tragic flaws
in this system, there was no arguing with the fact
(21:48):
that those dogs who came from a pet shop had
as much of a right to a happy life as
any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from
the back room behind the block of cages where we
had first seen her. Her curls had been fluffed up
and her hair freshly brushed. It would be lovely to
say she made eye contact them across the shop floor,
(22:10):
or was aware of our presence, or yipped happily at
the sight of me, and it would be completely untrue.
The little Maltese calmly scanned the room, only occasionally glancing
up at the manager who carried her, and not once
at us, until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed
to me, whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands,
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stuck her front paws on my chest and reached up
to give me a kiss on the lips, and then
another and a third, and my sunglasses hid the tears
that welled up again. I managed to ask if they
all did that. No, came the answer from that salesman, Jeffrey, honestly,
like I told you, sweetest puff we've had here in months.
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Loves people, loves people. I'm sad to see her go.
I marveled and how light she was, and yet how
articulated on strong her body was. Her eyes were far
more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy,
almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown
irises almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul who
(23:17):
was about two hundred and twelfth my age, at about
one eighty seventh my weight, and who had a great
great great great grandmother born in two thousand and six,
when my great great great great grandmother was born in
like eighteen hundred, she was meeting and holding my gaze
with her own. Whatever I was seeing in her eyes,
(23:40):
whatever the inner being I was actually processing, She seemed
to be doing her equivalent vetting I gave her a
little kiss, and was by now not surprised when she
kissed me again. The little tongue poked out a fraction
of an inch, just enough so any one of us
dumb unseubtled bipeds could tell she meant it. And then
she relaxed from her upright pose and settled back into
(24:00):
my arms, her head in the crook of my right elbow,
in an attitude I would soon discover she would repeat
every time I ever picked her up. A couple hours later,
the name came to me her haircut. It was Stevie
Nix's haircut. I named her Stevie. I've done all the
(24:36):
damage I can do here. Wait a minute, hold on,
let's just stop the music just for a second. Stevie,
you want to treat? You been a good girl lately.
I mean we didn't mention your birthday on the air.
I'm very sorry about that. Do you want to treat?
We'll say something, Stevie. You want to treat? Come on,
(24:59):
say that again. Okay? Do you want to tell them
about physical therapy? Stevie couldn't walk. Three months ago. She
had had a problem with both of her back knees.
She tore an acl and she had an immune disease,
and these things combined and made it impossible for her
to walk. And she has been going to physical therapy
at the Animal Medical Center ever since she's learned how
(25:20):
to swim. She gets massages and she gets laser treatments
every week and she has a great time. And this
is the hospital that she has always treated as if
it were a spa. She has a very high threshold
for pain, so through cancer treatments and surgery and half
a dozen other things that have gone wrong, she's always
kept a smile on her face because they've treated her
(25:42):
so well there and she's had such a good time.
She's always acted like it was a spa. Well here
it is after ten years of going there. They give
her spa treatments, They put her in the water, they
blow dry her hair. They often trim her nails to
make sure that they get the whole imprint of her
feet right, to make sure her gait is okay and
she's regained the ability to walk. She goes for a swim,
(26:04):
she goes in an underwater treadmill to work out. As
I said, they use lasers on her knees and then
They end the whole thing with doing her hair and
giving her a massage. It's a spa. She was right,
my girl, Stevie eleven years old and the anniversary coming
up too. All right, you were good enough to sit
through this. You want that treat? Now say it again?
(26:26):
One more time. You want this treet say it. You
don't have to sit, you don't have to be quiet.
She's sitting the one time she's sitting at being quiet.
Say something. Do you want this treat? Yes? Or no? Yes? Yes, yes,
Well you're twirling, but say yes. Do you want this treat?
All right? Thank you very much? All right, you've indulged
(26:49):
me long enough. Okay, remember celebrate Stevie Day responsibly. Please
(27:10):
adopt no more than two dogs, all right, three, but
no more than three? All right, four. I've done all
the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios
at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York, in the
Stevie Building. The music you heard was, for the most part, arranged,
(27:33):
produced and performed by Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and
John Phillip Schanel. Brian Ray handled the guitars, bass, and drums,
and John Phillip Schanel did the orchestration and keyboards, and
it was all produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
other Beethoven tunes, arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is courtesy of ESPN Incorporated.
(27:53):
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call it
the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. I wur announce heer today was my friend
Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else was pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this, the nine hundred
and ninety seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
(28:15):
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convict
him now while we still can. The next schedule countdown
is Tuesday Bulletin's as the news warrants, or if I
feel like we really have to celebrate the one thousandth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup in any event
till then, I'm Keith ol Rimman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(28:53):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I've
mentioned my dogs before. July first was Ted's Gotcha Day,
five years since he came in to me as a foster,
and then I failed profoundly and he's not a foster anymore.
(00:25):
He's my little boy. A week later is Stevie's birthday.
It was the big one one this year. Rose doesn't
have anything to do with July. She'll be almost ten,
I guess in a couple of days. And then a
week after Stevie's birthday, mine turned sixteen. I've told you
about men. He's the rescue who had outlived his human
(00:46):
and they thought he had dementia, and it turned out
we had to take out all of his teeth because
they were rotten, and goodness, he really didn't have dementia.
He just had bad teeth. Once we took them out,
ninety percent of his fogging is cleared up, and he's
gained three pounds, and he takes the hard treats and
he puts them in the water bowl and comes back
for them later and then pulls them out and sucks
(01:07):
on them like cough drops. And I don't know if
I know any people smart enough to do that, and
he is the best walker in the world. And he
leaps over the white stripes on the crosswalks, and I
thought he was confused, and then he did it like
sixteen times in one half hour walk, and I realized
he's doing it out of the sheer joy of still
being able to do it at the age of sixteen.
And he's now talking to me, and he understands much
(01:29):
of what I try to say to him, even though
he really only understands French. It's a long story, and
it all starts with Stevie eleven years ago, because on
September thirtieth, twenty twelve, eleven years ago, not one word
of what I just said would have made any sense
(01:51):
to me. I had never had a dog, I'd had allergies,
I'd had travel, I'd had work. And then Olivia looked
at me and she said, I need a puppy fix.
On September thirtieth, twenty twelve, my girlfriend's family dog was dying.
My girlfriend later my ex girlfriend, would not say that
(02:15):
the little dog was dying. Her folks would not say it.
A dog, a Jack Russell Terrier, was named Casey. Did
her best to be the only truthful one in the
whole family. She was moving purposely and unsteadily with every step,
and she was looking out at her world with the
seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness and regret that the
(02:36):
one time she really needed the bipeds to speak and
act for her, they would not. I just need for dogs,
not to mean sadness, Olivia said, just for a while,
Can we go to that pet shop on lex I
mumbled that we could go, but that I had resisted
the dog entreaties of eleven girlfriends before her, and I
(02:59):
would successfully resist hers. I had always loved dogs, but
I was really allergic to them, and my doctors had
all said that even hypoallergenic dogs were a crap shoot.
She said, I do not want a dog. I am
not trying to convince you to get us a dog.
I just want to hold a puppy for a little while.
(03:22):
She paused, as she always did when she felt both
hopeless and angry at being at the mercy of feelings,
and she lapsed into the shrug emoji. As sappy as
that sounds, Olivia the girlfriend, the former girlfriend, let me
make this easier on both of us. We'll call her TFGF,
the former girlfriend TFGF and I left for the pet
(03:42):
shop in midafternoon, and I told her my true fear
here that my native but dormant shared affinity with dogs
would all of a moment spring fully grown from my soul,
and I would blurt, just give me all of them.
I mean, what kind of life could I offer a dog?
I was on television, and thus always in a television studio,
(04:03):
and thus never home for play or walks or just
the prevention of canine loneliness. I had a girlfriend who
lived out of town. Half the time, I was clueless
as to every practical aspect of the dog thing. I
had littered the continent with dead house plants, and I
no longer thought myself capable of pulling my ego out
of my backside sufficiently to take care of fish. I
(04:27):
had literally not had a pet of any kind since
nineteen sixty seven. I had come to terms with living
in a wistful, hazy world in which I might inadvertently
have a dog pal for a few moments, but almost
never indoors, and never without the pang of knowing that
the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye. And
(04:48):
I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious big, furry,
friendly dogs, and I might be allergic to the ones
that were built as non allergic. And if I disobeyed
this immutable cannon, the buried tears of permanent exclusion might
be replaced by far worse ones of separation and loss.
Me I would get over it, probably, but without overvaluing
(05:12):
myself too much to betray the love of a dog
to send a dog back because of allergies. As TFGF
and I approached the shop, there was, as there almost
always is, there a small crowd undulating around it. Lexington
Avenue's narrow sidewalks make these human clots easier to form,
(05:34):
even late on the first Sunday of autumn. There is
also an obstacle course of grates and cellar doors and bikes,
chained poles and parking meters and canopies for diners and
restaurants and mattress showrooms and other places that are not
quite seedy but also aren't quite your first choice. The
uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the
(05:57):
maze of fifty ninth Street Bridge approaches lend the place
a congested feel even when it's otherwise quiet. We are
three blocks up from the trying just a little too
hard merchandising of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double
parked three hundred and sixty five days a year, and
then totally out of place amid the prosaic trappings of
(06:18):
a big city at its most meh. There they are
bouncing off each other, tearing infinitely at other, tiny heads
and tails and paws doing a seeming pantomime of dismemberment.
Their yips and the crunch of the shredded cavorting paper
are just audible through the glass and over the din
of the street, they create an oasis of cute. And
(06:41):
just in case you can't tell what they are, there's
this big Neon sign above their street front window that reads, puppies.
Don't make me go in? I pleaded. She reassured me.
We'd go in. She'd hold the dog. All I had
to do was take a picture. You don't understand. I
(07:01):
reached for her hand. What I'm trying to say is
always wanted a dog, but I could never have a dog.
Just as the door to the shop opened, she grabbed
my arm. She yanked hard. She swore, and she muttered,
you'll survive. Man up. Don't make eye contact. Don't make
eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact.
We were going towards puppies and past puppies, and the
(07:24):
appearance of a small staircase to a training loft confirmed
we are now going under puppies. And in the deepest
recesses of the shop there was a wall of puppies
two hour right, three cages high, six across, all a
yellowish beige behind a reddish brown for Micah countertop, then
a structural beam, and then three cages high, two across,
then a corner with a small visiting pen built into
(07:46):
the countertop. Then right in front of me the Hollywood
squares of puppies three high, three across, and all of
their inmates, all nine of them, staring at me and
screaming at me and making eye contact and saying, by
esp take me home. Helsman now introduced himself as Jeffrey,
(08:06):
and Jeffrey asked if TFGF had any particular dog she
wanted him to bring to her. Let me see the
Maltese the girl. In that moment, two things struck me Firstly,
this was my cue to get the phone out and
prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly,
the dog whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from
(08:27):
the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside
that pet shop besides me, who was not making any
damn noise. Every other puppy was perfecting its adolescent bark.
The cats were making a bewildering variety of noises. And
was that a Norwegian blue parrot? Squawk? Remarkable bird, the
Norwegian blue? Isn't it beautiful plumage? This Maltese said nothing.
(08:52):
She looked like her torso would easily fit in one
of my hands if she was three pounds. A quarter
of it was hair, and half of that was curled,
and presumably somebody came by every day to turn what
sat atop her head into a mohawk up top and
a mullet in the back. Her cage mate brother seemed
a little bigger, but his eyes were clearly smaller, and
their ocular contrast was immediately visible, even if you still
(09:15):
had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact. His shown hers
were illuminated. He tried to get past her into the
salesman's arms. She simply lifted up her head towards him,
and it actually crossed my mind that she looked like
she was about to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today?
He put her gently down in the playpen at the
(09:36):
right corner of the counter. TFGF asked if she could
pick the puppy up, and nodded to me to get
the camera ready. Honestly, Jeffrey said, this is the sweetest
dog we've had in here for months. I say that
every day to almost everybody, but this time I'm actually
not lying. TFGFF cradled the Maltese in her arms, with
the dog's head facing to my right. I tapped the
(09:59):
camera on the phone. My hand was already shaking as
I sent it up TFGF and the up in the frame.
The Maltese suddenly wiggled upright, placed her front paws on
my girlfriend's chest, and just as I snapped the image,
the dog reached up and kissed my girlfriend on the lips.
(10:19):
I am, on occasion, completely incapable of remembering anything that
happened in my entire life before that moment. TFGF made
the appropriate sounds of approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little
grooming the Maltese breed needs and the great price he
could give us, And even as my head spun, it
(10:40):
seemed silly to me that he was calculating the tax
on something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. TFGF
said something about how we needed a minute outside to
discuss it, and she handed the puppy back to Jeffrey,
and the dog looked at each each of us and
as if she was about to say, nice to meet you.
As the pup went back up into the cage with
(11:01):
her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl was reaching
her head up towards the spout of the cage's water
bottle with the same graceful movement she had made to
bestow that kiss on TFGF, when her brother puppy abruptly
body slammed her out of the way, and her tiny
frame bounced off the side of the cage. And then,
(11:24):
to my shock and confusion, a deep and threatening growl,
a vengeful ah reverberated throughout the pet shop. The growl
was coming from me. The next sounds were from TFGF.
My God, what's wrong with you? I didn't know it
(11:46):
at the time, but as we turned to fight our
way back out through the shop to the street, I
evidently half skidded into a display full of chew toys.
They nearly toppled to the floor. I nearly toppled to
the floor. I couldn't see, but I didn't recognize my
own tears until they hit the edges of my lips.
Somehow I managed to say it again, this time in despair.
I always wanted a dog, but I could never have one.
(12:10):
She suddenly realized what had happened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm an asshole. TFGF was now holding me upright and
steering me towards the door to the street. I didn't
listen to you. I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole. You
told me. I didn't believe you. I'm so sorry. Well
now the stories came pouring out, all jumbled, one on
top of the other. Tiny the Saint Bernard at the
(12:31):
Katz and Steins. He only wanted to embrace me, he
wasn't trying to eat me. And the mcconnon's mutt next
door Boots used to come sit on my lap and
tiny didn't make me sneeze, He only scared me. And
the mcconnons had three boys and a mother who baked
cookies by the car load lot, and Boots never left
their side, and I was always at their house. And
if I was allergic, how was it that I never
once had a problem with Boots? How in the hell
(12:51):
did that work? Huh? And what about Vladimir or the
stray cat my sister found He used to live in
the garage and behaved like a dog and like to
be carried around like a baby. And how allergic was
I had beautiful, beautiful little maltese reach up and kissed
you on the mouth. And the one time I took
my dad's movie camera to the mcconnon's house, half of
the film was of Boots. And what if I went
back and got the allergy shots again? And it was
my mother who said she was really allergic, so I
(13:13):
must be too, And what's the use? The little maltese
was perfect and the next person who sees her will
snap her up in an instant. And I asked them
just to let me try a little dog who wouldn't
shed The only thing my mother would let me have
were lizards and I could take a zertech every day.
I'm so sorry, Tiny, I didn't realize I never said
goodbye to Boots. Maltese is gone. She's gone. She's gone,
and she's my dog. I know what. I could feel it.
She's my dog and she's gone. What happened next Beggar's fiction.
(13:42):
It involves Rudy Giuliani back to the number one story
on the Countdown and the day I fell in love
with a dog for the first time and my girlfriend,
the former girlfriend TFGF, and I left the puppy in
the pet shop. TFGF and I were walking me mid meltdown,
(14:08):
somehow now nearing the Park Avenue Armory, one block west
and four blocks north of the pet shop that I
thought we were still in. To her credit, TFGF had
kept me from throwing myself into traffic or dissolving into
a puddle on sixty second Street. The overwhelming sensation I
had was not one of having left the tiny puppy
(14:29):
in the shop, but of having left a part of
myself there that was my dog. And what was worse
was she was obviously going to be taken by somebody else.
Even before I got back there, even if we turned
around right away. Who could resist her? I certainly hadn't.
My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused only when I
had no choice but to shut up and gasp for breath,
(14:52):
and the comments with which TFGF tried to soothe me
in these moments were self abnegating and solemn. She had
talked me off the limb of my certainty that the
dog had already been sold, and was now steering me
back towards sanity. I had to, she would say, later,
you were having a breakdown. She said, we should go home,
and if I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities
(15:13):
of owning a dog, we could do that and still
get the puppy the next morning, even if it meant
delaying her departure for DC. Don't worry. I'm sure she's
still there. They were getting ready to close. She'll be
there in the morning. I exhaled, and then I repanicked.
She's she's I sniffed anew, and the tears resumed. She's
(15:35):
in that cage with that brother of hers in the
basement somewhere. Before TFGF could answer, and I swear this
is true, Rudy Giuliani spilled down the stairs from the
armory we were passing. A cop suddenly appeared from a
different nowhere and put out an arm and firmly asked
(15:55):
us to stop walking, and Juliani scuttled rodent like into
a waiting car. A wife was with him. I did
not and do not know which number. The driver was
already closing the door behind them when I shouted it,
how come my dog has to spend the night in
a cage while that ass hat is allowed to roam
around this city without a leash on him. Later that evening,
(16:19):
TFGF said that was the first moment she thought we
might just get home safe and sound. After all, it
was not ten more minutes back to my apartment, and
we walked it in silence. Now I had long since
saturated my handkerchief and some tissues TFGF had in her pockets.
I was breathing deeply and restoratively. Now the sniffle frequency
(16:41):
reduced to once or twice per block, and my mind
was crowded with the dogs I had known, Boots, Tiny, Vladimir,
the Cat, even tfgf's little Casey dying out in Jersey
and unaware of the seismic events which she had set
in motion. I was thinking of other dogs. To all
of the dogs in all of the stories of James
(17:02):
Thurber that I read on TV every Friday night, I
had smiled along with his poetic descriptions of them, but
never confessed I loved them as he must have. There
was Samantha, who my late friend Bruce Hagen used to
bring everywhere, including our college radio station newsroom, the first
really big dog who did not frighten me. My great
(17:23):
aunt's Yorky, whose gas was so potent that the Christmas
just before I turned nine, my great uncle said he
was convinced she had been a German terror weapon at
Chateau Terry in the First World War, and he and
I had bonded because I knew what Chateau Terry was.
There was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of
my sontimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put
(17:44):
on the phone with me. In my mind, they all
stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, smiling, all
with the kindest type of I told you so, dummy
on their wonderful faces, and dozens more behind them, vague
shapes and sizes who belonged to neighbors or co workers
(18:05):
passed who were just chance encounters on the streets of
any of a dozen cities decades before. No, I'm sorry,
she said, I shouldn't have been that selfish. But now
I disagreed with her, and as I unlocked the apartment door,
I began to tell her of the dogs I had
just been communing with in my mind, and what had
suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable, and perfect, but about which
(18:26):
I needed as much detail as I could in as
short a period as possible. TFGF tried, well, you just
take the dog wherever you can. My parents have been
saying this a lot lately. Now they regret not doing
more things with Casey, not adventures, not kayaking, just taking
her with them, or going out in the yard, or
(18:46):
just holding her while they'd watched TV. You just let
the dog in. We went through topic after topic, cleaning, training, handling,
poop walks, food, puppy sitters, moving books off ground level shelves, discipline,
and most importantly of all, a backup plan in this
epiphany was false, and or I was still allergic or terrified,
(19:10):
or incompetent or all three. I don't think it'll take
much to convince my parents to take her. I mean,
even after Casey recovers and I can take her with
me to DC tomorrow, I'll bring her back next weekend.
So you can get the apartment ready, and you can
get you ready, and you don't have to go in
at the deep end. Right away, I interrupted her with
(19:33):
a kiss. Let's go back there before they close. I
don't want to wait till morning. I'm still terrified somebody
else will realize how extraordinary she is. Unexpectedly, I had
a moment of doubt at this point. This isn't just
me having a breakdown, right, I mean, she is extraordinary.
I'm having a breakdown, and she is extraordinary, isn't she.
(19:55):
TFGF stopped being nice, and now, for the first time,
looked at me like I'd just gone crazy, even though
I just had gone crazy. Obviously. She said that was
a real kiss. The pet shop had stayed open, partly
because TFGF phoned them as we hit the street outside
of the apartment building, and partly because they knew you
were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see it sometimes. Also,
(20:18):
you seemed kind of emotional. TFGFF helpfully mentioned that i'd
had a breakdown. They had all the paraphernalia ready, a
little aquabed, a series of attached gates that could be
used as a pen or a barrier, a small pink blanket,
a bag of training pads and the plastic pad holder,
enough dry food to last twelve to fourteen months, some
(20:41):
horrific wet food that looked like a discarded early design
for liverwurst, a few chew toys, a bright pink harness
and a leash as light as a ribbon, a black
carrying bag, and paperwork with the puppies family tree, which,
to my astonishment, stretched back beyond her birth one week
shive three months before, through the six preceding generations, all
the way back to six entire years earlier. In addition
(21:06):
to all this, they could have included a moped, a
stock portfolio to guarantee your college education, and i'm all
tease sized typewriter with a twenty year supply of replacement ribbons.
And I would have also bought them. Very nice lady
named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog
owner in about ninety four seconds and handed me a
voucher for a vet and a checklist of stuff to do.
(21:27):
I signed a credit card bill. I think I used
my own name. I absolved myself of the guilt of
not getting a sheltered dog because I was allergic and
kind of had to go the shop route. Plus I
was not looking for a dog. I had actually fallen
in love at first sight with this dog. And lastly,
because no matter had the obvious and often tragic flaws
in this system, there was no arguing with the fact
(21:48):
that those dogs who came from a pet shop had
as much of a right to a happy life as
any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from
the back room behind the block of cages where we
had first seen her. Her curls had been fluffed up
and her hair freshly brushed. It would be lovely to
say she made eye contact them across the shop floor,
(22:10):
or was aware of our presence, or yipped happily at
the sight of me, and it would be completely untrue.
The little Maltese calmly scanned the room, only occasionally glancing
up at the manager who carried her, and not once
at us, until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed
to me, whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands,
(22:32):
stuck her front paws on my chest and reached up
to give me a kiss on the lips, and then
another and a third, and my sunglasses hid the tears
that welled up again. I managed to ask if they
all did that. No, came the answer from that salesman, Jeffrey, honestly,
like I told you, sweetest puff we've had here in months.
(22:54):
Loves people, loves people. I'm sad to see her go.
I marveled and how light she was, and yet how
articulated on strong her body was. Her eyes were far
more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy,
almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown
irises almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul who
(23:17):
was about two hundred and twelfth my age, at about
one eighty seventh my weight, and who had a great
great great great grandmother born in two thousand and six,
when my great great great great grandmother was born in
like eighteen hundred, she was meeting and holding my gaze
with her own. Whatever I was seeing in her eyes,
(23:40):
whatever the inner being I was actually processing, She seemed
to be doing her equivalent vetting I gave her a
little kiss, and was by now not surprised when she
kissed me again. The little tongue poked out a fraction
of an inch, just enough so any one of us
dumb unseubtled bipeds could tell she meant it. And then
she relaxed from her upright pose and settled back into
(24:00):
my arms, her head in the crook of my right elbow,
in an attitude I would soon discover she would repeat
every time I ever picked her up. A couple hours later,
the name came to me her haircut. It was Stevie
Nix's haircut. I named her Stevie. I've done all the
(24:36):
damage I can do here. Wait a minute, hold on,
let's just stop the music just for a second. Stevie,
you want to treat? You been a good girl lately.
I mean we didn't mention your birthday on the air.
I'm very sorry about that. Do you want to treat?
We'll say something, Stevie. You want to treat? Come on,
(24:59):
say that again. Okay? Do you want to tell them
about physical therapy? Stevie couldn't walk. Three months ago. She
had had a problem with both of her back knees.
She tore an acl and she had an immune disease,
and these things combined and made it impossible for her
to walk. And she has been going to physical therapy
at the Animal Medical Center ever since she's learned how
(25:20):
to swim. She gets massages and she gets laser treatments
every week and she has a great time. And this
is the hospital that she has always treated as if
it were a spa. She has a very high threshold
for pain, so through cancer treatments and surgery and half
a dozen other things that have gone wrong, she's always
kept a smile on her face because they've treated her
(25:42):
so well there and she's had such a good time.
She's always acted like it was a spa. Well here
it is after ten years of going there. They give
her spa treatments, They put her in the water, they
blow dry her hair. They often trim her nails to
make sure that they get the whole imprint of her
feet right, to make sure her gait is okay and
she's regained the ability to walk. She goes for a swim,
(26:04):
she goes in an underwater treadmill to work out. As
I said, they use lasers on her knees and then
They end the whole thing with doing her hair and
giving her a massage. It's a spa. She was right,
my girl, Stevie eleven years old and the anniversary coming
up too. All right, you were good enough to sit
through this. You want that treat? Now say it again?
(26:26):
One more time. You want this treet say it. You
don't have to sit, you don't have to be quiet.
She's sitting the one time she's sitting at being quiet.
Say something. Do you want this treat? Yes? Or no? Yes? Yes, yes,
Well you're twirling, but say yes. Do you want this treat?
All right? Thank you very much? All right, you've indulged
(26:49):
me long enough. Okay, remember celebrate Stevie Day responsibly. Please
(27:10):
adopt no more than two dogs, all right, three, but
no more than three? All right, four. I've done all
the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios
at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York, in the
Stevie Building. The music you heard was, for the most part, arranged,
(27:33):
produced and performed by Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and
John Phillip Schanel. Brian Ray handled the guitars, bass, and drums,
and John Phillip Schanel did the orchestration and keyboards, and
it was all produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
other Beethoven tunes, arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is courtesy of ESPN Incorporated.
(27:53):
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call it
the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. I wur announce heer today was my friend
Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else was pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this, the nine hundred
and ninety seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
(28:15):
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convict
him now while we still can. The next schedule countdown
is Tuesday Bulletin's as the news warrants, or if I
feel like we really have to celebrate the one thousandth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup in any event
till then, I'm Keith ol Rimman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(28:53):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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