December 15, 2022 • 53 mins
EPISODE 96: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) Do you have a dog? Seems like a simple question. Until you're reminded that Donald Trump never had a dog in his life and only refers to dogs as insults, while Joe Biden got a shelter shepherd who apparently had the insight to bite somebody from the corrupted Secret Service. I'm a late-life dog guy and there's no zealot like a convert, so let me tell you about two of my five pups. The first - was my first. The story of how I was adopted by my gal Stevie is the stuff of improbability, including the role played in it by... Rudy Giuliani?
B-Block (14:03) Stevie's story led me to the American Maltese Association's rescue arm and soon she and her sister were joined by a little guy with a bad heart, who recovered after delicate surgery. (28:42) And then last year I was asked to take in another pup named Mishu whose heart was even worse and for whom there was no surgery to have.
C-Block (37:00) Mishu's story ended in the only way it could. And every moment was worth it. And every moment, he remains with me.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Do you have a dog? It seems like a simple question,
(00:28):
and then you are reminded that Donald Trump has never
had a dog in his life and only refers to
dogs when he is making an insult, while Joe Biden
in the White House got a shelter shepherd who apparently
bit somebody from the Secret Service, long before any of
us humans fully understood just how corrupted the Secret Service
had become. I mentioned a dog in need in every
(00:51):
episode of this podcast, and twice I have gone on
at length about two of my own dogs. You will
have to indulge my unapologetic love for them. I got
my first dog at the age of fifty three, which means,
among other things, that the first nineteen thousand and sixty
five days of my life were a complete waste of time.
(01:14):
I literally called all the dog people I knew and said,
why didn't you tell me? Since then, I've had five
dogs in my family, three others who were supposed to
be but while they were great dogs, they clearly did
not fit in with my incumbents, and clearly they wanted
to be elsewhere, and so they went elsewhere. And two
more I got for an old girlfriend's parents. That's ten dogs.
(01:37):
I am clearly trying to make up for lost time.
And I like to paraphrase al Smith about democracy. The
cure for the ills of dogs is more dogs. As
they say, there is no zealot like a convert. In
this episode, I'd like to tell you about two of
those ten dogs. One was a puppy with a fatally
(01:57):
bad heart who was here just under three months, but
who loved every minute of it, as I loved every
minute of being with him, missh you. But first, the other,
my first, my number one girl. This is the story
of Stevie. Olivia looked at me and said, I need
(02:30):
a puppy fix. Ten years ago today, my girlfriend's family
dog was dying. My girlfriend would not say it, her
folks would not say it. The dog, a Jack Russell
Terrier named Casey, did her best to be the only
truthful one in the bunch, moving purposefully and unsteadily with
every step and looking out at her world with a
seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness and especially regret that
(02:54):
the one time she really needed her bipeds to speak
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
would successfully resist hers. I had always loved dogs, but
(03:18):
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.
She paused, as she always did when she felt both
(03:38):
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. Will call her
t f g F. The former girlfriend. T f GF
and I left for the pet shop in mid afternoon,
and I told her my true fear here that my
(04:00):
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,
and thus never home for play or walks, or just
(04:21):
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
(04:41):
had literally not had a pet of any kind since
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 I was allergic.
(05:05):
I was allergic to the obvious big, furry, friendly dogs,
and I might be allergic to the ones that were
billed 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 myself too much
(05:27):
to betray the love of a dog to send a
dog back because of allergies. As t F, GF and
I approached the shop, there was, as they're almost always is,
there a small crowd undulating around it. Lexington avenues narrow
sidewalks make these human clots easier to form, even late
(05:50):
on the first Sunday of autumn. There's also an obstacle
course of greats and cellar doors and bikes, chained poles
and parking meters and canopies for diners and restaurants and
mattress show rooms and other places. They're not quite seedy,
but also aren't quite your first choice. The uptown edges
of the grime and noise that constitute the maze of
(06:12):
fifty nine 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 merchandizing
of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double parked five
days a year and then totally out of place. Amid
the prosaic trappings of a big city at its most
(06:34):
men there they are bouncing off each other, tearing impotitely
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 just in case you can't tell
(06:57):
what they are, there's this big neon sign above their
street front window that reads poppies. 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 reached for her hand. What I'm
(07:17):
trying to say is I 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 appearance of a small staircase to
(07:40):
a training laft confirmed We're now going under puppies and
in the deepest recesses of the shop. There was a
wall of puppies two our right, three cages high, six across,
all a yellowish beige behind a reddish brown for mica countertop,
then a structural beam, and then three cages high two across,
then a corner with a small visiting pen built into
(08:00):
the countertop. Then right in front of me, the Hollywood
Square is 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 eesp, take me home. A salesman now introduced himself
as Jeffrey, and Jeffrey asked if t F GF had
(08:23):
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 the surprisingly spare cage,
(08:44):
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 and was that a Norwegian
blue parrots squawk? Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue? Isn't it beautiful? Plumage?
This multi he said nothing. She looked like her torso
(09:07):
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 brothers seemed a little bigger, but his
eyes were clearly smaller, and their ocular contrast was immediately visible,
(09:28):
even if you still had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact.
His shown hers. We're 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
(09:50):
the playpen at the right corner of the counter. T
F GF 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. T F GF
cradled the Maltese in her arms, with the dog's head
(10:11):
facing to my right. I tapped the camera on the phone.
My hand was already shaking as I centered up t
F g F and the puppy 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.
(10:34):
I am, on occasion, completely incapable of remembering anything that
happened in my entire life before that moment. T F
GF 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,
(10:55):
it seemed silly to me that he was calculating the
tax on something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless.
T F g F 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
of 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 her brother, something extraordinary happened.
(11:19):
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 t
F GF 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, to my shock
(11:39):
and confusion, a deep and threatening growl, a vengeful reverberated
throughout the pet shop. The growl was coming from me.
The next sounds were from t F GF. My God,
what's wrong with you? I didn't know it at the time,
(12:01):
but as we turned to fight our way back out
through the shop to the street, evidently half skidded into
a displayful 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
(12:22):
I could never have one. She suddenly realized what had happened.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an asshole. T F GF
was now holding me upright and steering me towards the
door to the street. I didn't listen to 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
(12:43):
st Bernard at the Katzenstein's, he only wanted to embrace me.
He wasn't trying to eat me. And the mcconnons mutt
next door. Boots used to come sit on my lap,
and Tiny didn't make me sneezing 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
(13:04):
once had a problem with Boots. How in the hell
did that work? Huh? And what about Vladimir or the
straight 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 reached up and kissed
you on the mouth. And the one time I took
my dad's movie camera to the mcconnor's house, half of
the film was of Boots. And what if I went
back and got the allergy shots again? And it was
(13:25):
my mother who said she was really allergic, so I
must be too, And what's the use? The little Maltese
was perfect? And the next person, who was Caesar, 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 zyr tech 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
(13:46):
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.
It involves Rudy Giuliani and his part of this story
of ten years ago today and what happened to the
(14:06):
dog and to me continues after this, 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 t f GF, and
I left the puppy in the pet shop. T F
(14:31):
g F and I were walking me mid meltdown, 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, t F GF
had kept me from throwing myself into traffic or dissolving
into a puddle on sixty Street. The overwhelming sensation I
(14:52):
had was not one of having left the tiny puppy
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
(15:14):
had no choice but to shut up and gasp for breath,
and the comments with which t F GF 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,
(15:37):
and if I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities
of owning the dog, we could do that and still
get the puppy the next morning, even if it meant
delaying her departure for d C. 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
(16:01):
in that cage with that brother of hers in the basement.
So where Before t F g F 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 us to stop walking, and Giuliana scuttled
(16:24):
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.
(16:45):
Later that evening, t f GF 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 t f GF had in her pockets. I was
breathing deeply and restoreatively. Now the sniffle frequency reduced to
(17:07):
once or twice per block, and my mind was crowded
with the dogs I had known, Boots, Tiny, Vladimir, the cat,
even t fgf's little Casey dying out in Jersey. And
unaware of the seismic events which she had sent in motion,
I was thinking of other dogs, to all of the dogs,
and all of the stories of James Thurber that I
(17:29):
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 aunts Yorkie, whose
(17:50):
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 sometimes out of
town girlfriends ever had actually put on the phone with me.
(18:12):
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, passed, or who are just chance
(18:32):
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 within
my mind and what had suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable,
and perfect, but about which I needed as much detail
(18:54):
as I could in as short a period as possible.
T F g F 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 just holding her
while they watched TV. You just let the dog in.
(19:18):
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 case this
epiphany was false and or I was still allergic or terrified,
or incompetent or all three. I don't think it will
(19:41):
take much to convince my parents to take her. I mean,
even after Casey recovers and I can take her with
me to d C 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
a kiss. Let's go back there before they close. I
(20:03):
don't want to wait until 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.
T FGF stopped being nice, and now for the first time,
(20:23):
looked at me like I had just gone crazy, even
though I just tad gone crazy. Obviously. She said that
was a real kiss. The pet shop had stayed open,
partly because t F GF phoned them as we hit
the street outside the apartment building, and partly because they
knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see
it sometimes. Also, you seemed kind of emotional. T F
(20:49):
GF helpfully mentioned that I'd had a breakdown. They had
all the paraphernal. You're 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 fourteen months, some horrific wet food that
looked like a discarded early design for liverwurst, a few
(21:12):
chew toys, bright pink harness and a leash as light
as a ribbon, a black carrying bag, and paperwork with
the Pempy Puppies family tree, which, to my astonishment, stretched
back beyond her birth one week shy and three months before,
through the six preceding generations, all the way back to
six entire years earlier. In addition to all this, they
(21:33):
could have included a moped, a stock portfolio to guarantee
your college education, and I'm all t size typewriter with
a twenty years 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 at a checklist of stuff to do, I signed
(21:54):
a credit card bill. I think I used my own name.
I absolved myself of the guilt of not getting a
shelter 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
how the obvious and often tragic flaws in this system,
there was no arguing with the fact that those dogs
(22:16):
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
him across the shop floor, or was aware of our presence,
(22:37):
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, stuck her front paws on my chest,
(23:01):
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 pup
we've had here in months, loves people, loves people. I'm
(23:22):
sad to see her go. I marveled and how light
she was, and yet how articulated and 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 iris is almost iridescent. And
more astonishingly, this little soul who was about one two
(23:44):
and twelve my age and about one seven my weight,
and who had a great great great great grandmother born
in two thousand six, when my great great great great
grandmother was born in like eight hundred, she was meeting
and holding my gaze with her own. Whatever I was
(24:05):
seeing in her eyes, 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, unsettled bipeds could tell she
meant it. And then she relaxed from her upright pose
(24:25):
and settled back into my arms, her head and 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 hair cut. It was Stevie Nicks's haircut. I
(24:47):
named her Stevie. We went and got Rose a year later.
T F g F and I split a year after that,
so it was a win win win. Ted My rescue
with the bad heart arrived in two thousand eighteen and
had surgery, and he doesn't have a bad heart anymore.
He's fine. Mishu, my other rescue with a bad heart,
was here last year and had a very happy life,
(25:09):
just not a very long one. Mena, who is fifteen,
who we thought had dementia, but it was like just
rotten teeth. Get your dogs teeth checked. He showed up
this June. It is a crowd. There are four Maltese
is here. But then again, I wasted the first fifty
three years of my life living without a dog, so
(25:30):
I have to make up for lost time ten years
ago today when it became official when I was adopted.
Stevie is also known in the family as Keith's Gateway drug.
(25:52):
My gratitude to Stevie and my gratitude for her led
me into the world of rescue dogs, and that led
me to Mishu. His story may seem less heartwarming and
more heartbreaking, I would disagree. I hope you'll listen. I
(26:17):
had often looked into getting a third dog, and I
had gotten heavily involved in rescue work, and then in
two thousand eighteen, the paths crossed. I got a call
from a woman I met at a pet food store
and she became my friend, Sue Levitt, who runs the
rescue part of the American Maltese Association for much of
the Northeast. And Sue said, we have something special and challenging,
(26:41):
and if you don't want to do it, understood. He's
a three month old Maltese pup with a terrible, terrible
heart condition and they are not sure that he will
make it past ten months. And I thought about it
for about five seconds and I said yes, And soon
Spaghetti was in my apartment trying to boss Stevie and
(27:04):
rose a round, and I knew he needed to stay.
And I knew one other thing. He needed a new name. Spaghetti,
Spaghetti Getty, Teddy, Ted my dad's name perfect. I was
so prepared for the worst though, with Ted that it
was July and I did not buy him any stuff
(27:25):
for winter until I took him to the Animal Medical
Center here in New York and the cardiologist Dennis Traffe.
He said, he's got a heavy valve in his heart.
If we don't do anything, he's got five to seven years.
My ears perked up. Then he said, with medication, seven
to ten years. But I can operate, he added, I
(27:48):
and probably give him a normal lifespan, at least close
to it. I thread this filament that I'm holding in
through his jugular vein and into his heart, and then
I stopped his heart electrically for three seconds. See this
push button here. I pushed this button on the filament,
and the other end of the filament is a tiny balloon,
and it pushes the valve open in the heart. And
you keep doing this as long as he can stand it.
And it's like knocking the rust off a hinge on
(28:09):
a door by just opening the door again and again,
and I said, I don't see any filament, and he
said sorry, and he moved it in front of a
black background, and there it was about half the width
of a hair. And I said great. And then I said,
but but why did they think he wouldn't make it
past ten months? And he said, well, if you're a vet,
(28:33):
you might see this condition once in your entire career.
I operate on it three times a month. Ted is
now four and a half years old. He is a
four and a half year old boy in a dog's body.
On our walks, Ted flirts with all the human girls.
(28:53):
He barks at all the other dogs and then goes
up and says hi to most of them. He has
a series of enemies, the printer, the plunger, the thunder,
and at least a dozen television commercials. The operation went
so well that they were an hour late giving him
back to me because, as the surgical resident said, he
(29:15):
had to do all the tests a second time because
he was worried he had screwed up the first set
of tests because the results were too good. If I
could have gotten luckier given the prognosis with which Ted arrived,
I don't know how I could have gotten luck here.
(29:35):
So when my friends Sue from Maltese Rescue called last
summer August of two one and said, I have a really,
really tough case now, and I don't think there's a
chance that there's some sort of unexpectedly positive outcome like
there was with Ted. This was another puppy, barely three months.
The family loved him, but there were two young kids,
(29:59):
and frankly the mother thought the kids were too young
to watch this little dog die. His name was Mishu
m i s h you Polish for little bear, and
the condition he had was well known and feared. Tetrology
of fallow. If that sounds familiar, it happens to human children.
(30:24):
And to correct it in a human child, now take
surgery that can last twelve hours. Jimmy Kimmel's son had
tetrology of Fallow. It's four major problems all in one heart.
In dogs, there have been early experiments in surgery, but
almost exclusively for bigger dogs and to try to explain
(30:47):
what's wrong. If you've ever seen the drawings of mc Escher,
where the same staircase can go up and down at
the same time as you look at it, that's more
or less what a heart afflicted with. Tetrology of fallow
looks like there are arteries going over the heart, and
there are others that take the oxygenated blood and pump
(31:08):
it backwards in the wrong direction. In the middle of
last August, Mishu arrived here. It is so easy to
romanticize things like this, but there was from the first
something magical about this little puppy. He was very, very sick.
His tongue and his gums, we're not that healthy pink
(31:29):
that you are familiar with if you've ever seen a
dog once in your life. His tongue and gums were purple.
He was tiny, he was dwarfed by my other three dogs,
but he was surprisingly healthy. And he would start trouble
with the other dogs. He would silently charge into Ted,
or he'd go up and yap at Stevie, and soon
(31:49):
he get all three of the other dogs of them
playing and fighting, and then all the strength that he
had would drain away a minute tops and he would
have to sit down and watch the chaos he created.
And he clearly loved watching the chaos he created. And
he also clearly loved the dogs. If two of them
were lying near each other, but not right next together.
(32:13):
Mishu would lie in the empty space so that his
head would rest on one and his back paws would
rest on the other. Soon they would respond to his
presence by arranging themselves cuddling together with a space for him.
Once I was stretched out legs up on my couch,
(32:34):
and the four of them climbed in too, by my
feet and two by my knees. I called Mishu's name,
and he turned and looked up at me, and then
the four of them almost simultaneously fell asleep. Such a
simple thing that easily one of the most extraordinary and
(32:56):
wonderful moments of my entire life. And I prayed that
night and not for the last time, that if there
was no miracle meant for Mishu, that at least when
he left us, could he be in my arms. This
dog was an athlete, bad heart or not, he just
(33:18):
was one with no stamina. In the pen that I
would keep him in for his own safety, especially when
I had to go out. Misha would get up on
his hind legs and stand or try to get out,
and once he did get out, he moved the walls
of the pen he got out of the cage, he
broke free, and he trotted confidently around the place, and
he loved to move and to run into play, and
(33:42):
he just had to stop early. Mishu also enjoyed food
as much as any dog I had ever seen. He
gained nearly a pound a month while he was with me.
If you approached him with a treat, he would see
it from across the room, and he would literally punch
the air with one of his front paws and legs
(34:05):
like an athlete celebrating a success, and often with one paw,
and then punch with the other paw, and the sheer
joy of that never failed to make me smile and laugh.
A one to punch, put him on his back next
to you, and jab a finger at his paws, and
you'd be in a boxing match with a four pound
(34:26):
puppy who exulted in duking it out with you. You
always knew, though, when the fight was over, miche would
simply stop throwing hands, pause, and he would simply take
his front paws and grab your finger and hold onto it.
He once did this for a solid minute. I have
never felt more as if I were truly communicating with
(34:49):
a dog. Than when he would hold my finger. He
was an extraordinarily happy puppy, even when he felt bad physically.
When he felt bad physically, those were the harrowing times.
Mishiu would be sitting on my lap, or walking on
the floor, or just chilling with the other dogs when
(35:11):
he would suddenly tense up and often let out a cry.
And twice that cry was like that of a young
human child, and it was so startling that the other
dogs stopped and stared with what could genuinely be described
as looks of alarm. Most times, the tensing was my
cue to grab him and hold him tight as he writhed,
(35:35):
because that inability to get oxygen to all the parts
of his body would cause his body to contract, and
if he was on any surface other than the ground,
it could literally propel him to the floor. The first
time he did that, my veterinarian was here and she said,
you may have to take him to the emergency room
right now. She said. It was essentially what a dog
does just before he faints. But then within seconds, as
(35:59):
it did that first time with the vet here, it
would stop and his body would relax, and he would
be close to find it had taken something out of him,
and then more or less by accident, I discovered that
after one of these seizures, he seemed to be soothed
if I would carry him and walk him around, gently
(36:22):
rocking him in my arms and talking to him as
I did so, Mishu and I solved a lot of
the world's problems in those little walks out in the
fresh air, on the balcony or just around the house.
He would often doze off, but just as often would
within minutes be ready to start playing again. And so
(36:43):
I had in my little flock of lovely dogs, a sweet, wise, serene,
playful puppy who liked to grasp my finger with his paws,
and loved everything about life. And he was dying well,
and I could not not try to find out if
(37:04):
there was something to be done to make his life
longer or happier. What we tried to do when I
resumed the story of Mishu. Next resuming now the story
of my Maltese puppy, Mishu. His heart so bad that
it pumped oxygenated blood the wrong way and limited him
(37:25):
to brief bursts of energy, And how he never really
knew how sick he was or that he had been
dealt such a bad, tragic hand, and how he just
took the life he was given and loved and was loved.
Of course, I knew what sadness this was, this special
soul trapped in a body that would betray him at
(37:47):
any time and fatally so I had to at least
try to see if something could keep him here longer,
or at least make him feel better. We went to
see the city's top cardiologist for dogs, and there wasn't
anything to do. Although he thought keeping the cans of
(38:07):
a minute's worth of oxygen that you sometimes see football
players breathing from on the sidelines, He thought those might
help a little when he would have these little pre feints.
Soon I had dozens of those cans in the hall closet,
and I was discussing building him an oxygen tent. But
ultimately the problem wasn't his breathing. He was breathing fine,
(38:29):
He got all the oxygen he would normally need. It
was finding some way to get the oxygen pumped by
his fatally flawed heart to carry the oxygen in the
blood around his body, and there was no way to
do that. The median age of survival for dogs suffering
(38:49):
from tetrology. Of fellow was just about two years. The
cardiologist brought up Mischu's case on a board of international
experts in canine cardiac care, and they agreed that unfortunately,
there was no chance he could survive any operation, let
alone experimental surgery for this devastating malformation. He could not
(39:13):
survive the anesthesia, let alone six, eight, ten twelve hours
of surgery. Thus, the visits to the hospital turned out
to be more about letting people there who I knew,
meet him and hold him. And I can tell you
there was an extraordinary soothing quality to holding him. I
(39:34):
heard it from these people again and again, what a
special little soul. And he loved to be held. I
took him everywhere they would let me take him. He
was a regular at my weekly physical therapy for my
arthritic joints. My therapist adored him. She would just hold
him and tell him stories. Took him to the apple
(39:55):
store once that he did not like. He went for
walks with me and the other dogs, but always in
a bag draped over my shoulder. He did not have
the stamina to walk for very long, but he enjoyed
the outdoors. He enjoyed the park, He enjoyed the other dogs,
He enjoyed the people who would come up and say
hello to him. The inevitable finally came this time last year.
(40:20):
Throughout the last week, the little prefaints increased, but Mischo's
happiness did not decrease. Two days before the end, I
approached him with a treat and my camera phone rolling,
and sure enough he punched with the left, and he
punched with the right, and he ate the treat, and
he licked his purple lips, and when I surprised him
(40:42):
with a second treat, he did it all again. Sometime
a year ago, I was sound asleep. The dogs sleep
with me, and in my dreams somebody or something was
breathing in my ear. Well, of course it was me.
(41:05):
He had figured out how to wake me. He had
to go to the bathroom. He knew enough to tell
me that he knew enough to wake me, to get
me to get him down, and he had to get
some water. On the afternoon of the twelfth of November
(41:27):
a year ago, Saturday, I was holding Mishoe in my
lap as I sat and looked at the peak foliage
in the park out the window. With no warning. He
suddenly let out that near human cry. The other dog's
frozey in place. I stood up and walked him around
the balcony again. I had to sit him down in
his pen for a second, and I was just picking
(41:49):
him back up when he tensed up, just like all
the other times. His body got rigid and twisted, and
he died. He died as I picked him back up.
The special little soul was gone. His body was getting
(42:09):
cold with stunning rapidity, and something inside me said, no,
not yet. I'm not ready. And I don't know why,
but I don't think he's ready. And with no training
and no earthly clue what I was doing, I tried
CPR on him. You have to try, You have to try.
(42:33):
I had so little idea what I was doing that
after breathing air in and out of his lifeless body,
I moved my face away as if I was going
to spit out water before I had to remind myself, no, moron,
that would be if he was drowning. I must have
done five or six breaths. When I heard him exhale.
I waited for it to stop or to be a
(42:55):
false alarm. It wasn't, damned if this little dog didn't
somehow teach me how to resuscitate him, he was dead
and now he was back. I didn't delude myself that
this was going to last very long, and the circumstances
(43:16):
could not have been worse. It was a rush hour
on a Friday afternoon, and there was a bottleneck and
the bridge approach between Mishu and I and the hospital.
And I had visions of being stuck in traffic for
half an hour or longer and almost nothing they could
do for him if we somehow got there in time.
But you have to try. You have to try. I
(43:41):
loaded a bag full of those cans of oxygen. I
grabbed him, I got in the car. The driver realized
my distress and asked me what he could do to help,
and I said, don't run any lights, but do not
stop unless you have to, and when you do stop,
help me unwrap some of these plastic wrapped oxygen cans.
The oxygen cans are what are keeping him alive. Normal
(44:06):
trip twenty minutes. We made it in eleven minutes. The
streets parted for Mishu at the Animal medical center, somehow
I ran up the stairs. I handed him off to
the emergency room doctor, saying with an evenness, I could
not believe I was mustering. My dog is dying. He
(44:26):
has tetrology of fellow. She ran off with him to
an examining room, and a second doctor came out, and
I briefed her on everything, including Mishu's human like cry
and his unexpected resuscitation, and I told her he had
been seen by the chief cardiologist there, and she said
(44:47):
Dr Fox. Dr Fox is here, and now Mishu was
being worked on by the expert in the field. And
despite all of this good fortune, I knew, I knew
there was no hope. I had managed to texts too
from the Maltese rescue who adored him, and she came
(45:08):
to the hospital, and three of the people from other
departments in the hospital who had met Mishu came down
to see him, not for my sake, for his. It
was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. And when
(45:28):
his doctor came to me and said, he is alive,
but if you take him out of the hospital, you
get about as far as the parking garage and then
you'd have to bring him back because what you heard
when he cried out was a stroke. The oxygen deprivation
was finally too much for him. He had a stroke,
and he began to gently prepare me for the question
about letting him go, and I stopped him and I said,
(45:53):
I know we've all done everything we can, miss you,
especially I'm ready when you are. M So, they brought
him back to me, a little drip attached to his arm,
and when the toggle on the drip was thrown, the
(46:15):
medication would end his life. He was as warm and
as soft as ever in my arms, and yet I
knew he was no longer there. Sue held him for
a while too, and then everybody left me alone with him.
(46:40):
I said what you would expect somebody to say in
such a circumstance, about love and happiness, and then I
heard myself saying things about gratitude, gratitude to him for
(47:02):
teaching me that in the face of death, the point
is to know when to try and when to say enough,
and that he had taught me how to confront death
and crisis and urgency with evenness and practicality that I
never knew I had in any quantity whatsoever, And to
(47:23):
be able to say, I know you had a happy life, MISSU,
And it seems like that, and not the fact that
you had a happy life but not a long one.
The happy life is all that mattered to you. The cardiologist,
(47:45):
Dr Fox and the tech came back into the room
at this point, and I said I was ready, and
they turned the toggle and left very quietly. And I
said to miss you, I know if there is a
place for you to go now, I am certain you
will be the first one they let in. I just
(48:07):
hope they will let me visit you there someday, and
I hope you will remember us. I said, good night,
sweet prints and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,
and he was gone again, as I had prayed when
(48:33):
he died. Misu died in my arms, and he managed
somehow to do it twice. There are some postscripts. Missus.
Cardiologist very solemnly returned and respectfully said that of those
international experts who had reviewed his case and were deeply
(48:55):
saddened that they could not help him, only two out
of a couple of dozen had actually seen and been
able to study any small dog suffering from tetralogy of
fallow and Mishu might have one final blessing for them
and the rest of us if they could keep and
study his poor little malformed heart without hesitation. I said yes,
(49:20):
because in that instance I saw him positioning his head
on Stevie's head, and his back paws on roses back paws,
So the three of them were cuddling together, and I knew,
as I had always known, this was a dog who
cared about and actually loved other dogs. So the hospital
(49:40):
wound up recalibrating some of the cameras they had that
they used to photograph the smallest teeth in the smallest dogs,
so they could get every imaginable image of Mishu's tiny
heart and maybe someday learn methods with which to fix
this nightmare in another dog and Mishu is in the
(50:05):
veterinary textbooks now. As a second PostScript, Mishu's parents had
another litter late last year after he died, and they're
human was kind enough to offer me either of the brothers.
Mischu would never know. Each was eerily reminiscent of him,
but healthy, completely healthy, so healthy that they were threats
(50:31):
to my other three dogs. I had each of them
live a week with us, and I would have been
fine with each other. They liked me fine, but each
of them first bit ted in the genitals, and then
Stevie in the genitals, and rose in the genitals, and
in one case me and the genitals. They were crazy,
fun but crazy. And the second one was not only
(50:54):
twice as large as other Maltese his age, he was
able to vault out of his pen like an Olympic gymnast.
So they went back and now have their own homes
where there they are the only dogs in their own homes.
So the third PostScript when Sue from Maltese Rescue reached
(51:18):
out again this past June and said, um, I've got
another special case. Fifteen year old perfect health but but
rotting teeth, and he has dementia. His human got sick
and and didn't really take care of him, and then
she died, and I don't know what to do. Who's
going to adopt a fifteen year old. I was able
(51:40):
to raise my hand. I had an open roster spot.
The fifteen year old's name is Mena. It's French for kitty.
I can't imagine what confusion that's caused him all these years.
His human had been a French teacher. He actually didn't
have dementia, or at least not very much dementia. It
was those teeth. His teeth was so bad, so rotten
(52:04):
of them came out by just pulling on them with
your fingers. So we had them all taken out, and
the next day he woke up like he was seven
years old, looked around like how long have these other
dogs been here? Every day since then he's gotten a
little younger. He's Benjamin Button, and he's a living instruction.
(52:25):
Look out for your dog's teeth. Even if you think
you know to do that, do it more. The last PostScript,
I got the tattoo a month after me. She she died.
His pensive, half smiling little face looks up at me
(52:46):
from near the crook of my elbow where he used
to sit when I would carry him around after one
of those pre feints. It is a remarkable likeness to me.
It means exactly what you would think it means. It
comforts me greatly. It means Mishu is always with me
(53:12):
and always will be with me, And now as this
unwanted but not tragic anniversary approaches, Mischu will also, I hope,
always be with you. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
(53:39):
production of I Heart Radio For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Do you have a dog? It seems like a simple question,
(00:28):
and then you are reminded that Donald Trump has never
had a dog in his life and only refers to
dogs when he is making an insult, while Joe Biden
in the White House got a shelter shepherd who apparently
bit somebody from the Secret Service, long before any of
us humans fully understood just how corrupted the Secret Service
had become. I mentioned a dog in need in every
(00:51):
episode of this podcast, and twice I have gone on
at length about two of my own dogs. You will
have to indulge my unapologetic love for them. I got
my first dog at the age of fifty three, which means,
among other things, that the first nineteen thousand and sixty
five days of my life were a complete waste of time.
(01:14):
I literally called all the dog people I knew and said,
why didn't you tell me? Since then, I've had five
dogs in my family, three others who were supposed to
be but while they were great dogs, they clearly did
not fit in with my incumbents, and clearly they wanted
to be elsewhere, and so they went elsewhere. And two
more I got for an old girlfriend's parents. That's ten dogs.
(01:37):
I am clearly trying to make up for lost time.
And I like to paraphrase al Smith about democracy. The
cure for the ills of dogs is more dogs. As
they say, there is no zealot like a convert. In
this episode, I'd like to tell you about two of
those ten dogs. One was a puppy with a fatally
(01:57):
bad heart who was here just under three months, but
who loved every minute of it, as I loved every
minute of being with him, missh you. But first, the other,
my first, my number one girl. This is the story
of Stevie. Olivia looked at me and said, I need
(02:30):
a puppy fix. Ten years ago today, my girlfriend's family
dog was dying. My girlfriend would not say it, her
folks would not say it. The dog, a Jack Russell
Terrier named Casey, did her best to be the only
truthful one in the bunch, moving purposefully and unsteadily with
every step and looking out at her world with a
seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness and especially regret that
(02:54):
the one time she really needed her bipeds to speak
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
would successfully resist hers. I had always loved dogs, but
(03:18):
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.
She paused, as she always did when she felt both
(03:38):
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. Will call her
t f g F. The former girlfriend. T f GF
and I left for the pet shop in mid afternoon,
and I told her my true fear here that my
(04:00):
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,
and thus never home for play or walks, or just
(04:21):
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
(04:41):
had literally not had a pet of any kind since
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 I was allergic.
(05:05):
I was allergic to the obvious big, furry, friendly dogs,
and I might be allergic to the ones that were
billed 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 myself too much
(05:27):
to betray the love of a dog to send a
dog back because of allergies. As t F, GF and
I approached the shop, there was, as they're almost always is,
there a small crowd undulating around it. Lexington avenues narrow
sidewalks make these human clots easier to form, even late
(05:50):
on the first Sunday of autumn. There's also an obstacle
course of greats and cellar doors and bikes, chained poles
and parking meters and canopies for diners and restaurants and
mattress show rooms and other places. They're not quite seedy,
but also aren't quite your first choice. The uptown edges
of the grime and noise that constitute the maze of
(06:12):
fifty nine 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 merchandizing
of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double parked five
days a year and then totally out of place. Amid
the prosaic trappings of a big city at its most
(06:34):
men there they are bouncing off each other, tearing impotitely
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 just in case you can't tell
(06:57):
what they are, there's this big neon sign above their
street front window that reads poppies. 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 reached for her hand. What I'm
(07:17):
trying to say is I 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 appearance of a small staircase to
(07:40):
a training laft confirmed We're now going under puppies and
in the deepest recesses of the shop. There was a
wall of puppies two our right, three cages high, six across,
all a yellowish beige behind a reddish brown for mica countertop,
then a structural beam, and then three cages high two across,
then a corner with a small visiting pen built into
(08:00):
the countertop. Then right in front of me, the Hollywood
Square is 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 eesp, take me home. A salesman now introduced himself
as Jeffrey, and Jeffrey asked if t F GF had
(08:23):
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 the surprisingly spare cage,
(08:44):
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 and was that a Norwegian
blue parrots squawk? Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue? Isn't it beautiful? Plumage?
This multi he said nothing. She looked like her torso
(09:07):
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 brothers seemed a little bigger, but his
eyes were clearly smaller, and their ocular contrast was immediately visible,
(09:28):
even if you still had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact.
His shown hers. We're 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
(09:50):
the playpen at the right corner of the counter. T
F GF 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. T F GF
cradled the Maltese in her arms, with the dog's head
(10:11):
facing to my right. I tapped the camera on the phone.
My hand was already shaking as I centered up t
F g F and the puppy 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.
(10:34):
I am, on occasion, completely incapable of remembering anything that
happened in my entire life before that moment. T F
GF 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,
(10:55):
it seemed silly to me that he was calculating the
tax on something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless.
T F g F 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
of 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 her brother, something extraordinary happened.
(11:19):
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 t
F GF 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, to my shock
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and confusion, a deep and threatening growl, a vengeful reverberated
throughout the pet shop. The growl was coming from me.
The next sounds were from t F GF. My God,
what's wrong with you? I didn't know it at the time,
(12:01):
but as we turned to fight our way back out
through the shop to the street, evidently half skidded into
a displayful 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
(12:22):
I could never have one. She suddenly realized what had happened.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an asshole. T F GF
was now holding me upright and steering me towards the
door to the street. I didn't listen to 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
(12:43):
st Bernard at the Katzenstein's, he only wanted to embrace me.
He wasn't trying to eat me. And the mcconnons mutt
next door. Boots used to come sit on my lap,
and Tiny didn't make me sneezing 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
(13:04):
once had a problem with Boots. How in the hell
did that work? Huh? And what about Vladimir or the
straight 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 reached up and kissed
you on the mouth. And the one time I took
my dad's movie camera to the mcconnor's house, half of
the film was of Boots. And what if I went
back and got the allergy shots again? And it was
(13:25):
my mother who said she was really allergic, so I
must be too, And what's the use? The little Maltese
was perfect? And the next person, who was Caesar, 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 zyr tech 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
(13:46):
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.
It involves Rudy Giuliani and his part of this story
of ten years ago today and what happened to the
(14:06):
dog and to me continues after this, 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 t f GF, and
I left the puppy in the pet shop. T F
(14:31):
g F and I were walking me mid meltdown, 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, t F GF
had kept me from throwing myself into traffic or dissolving
into a puddle on sixty Street. The overwhelming sensation I
(14:52):
had was not one of having left the tiny puppy
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
(15:14):
had no choice but to shut up and gasp for breath,
and the comments with which t F GF 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,
(15:37):
and if I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities
of owning the dog, we could do that and still
get the puppy the next morning, even if it meant
delaying her departure for d C. 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
(16:01):
in that cage with that brother of hers in the basement.
So where Before t F g F 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 us to stop walking, and Giuliana scuttled
(16:24):
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.
(16:45):
Later that evening, t f GF 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 t f GF had in her pockets. I was
breathing deeply and restoreatively. Now the sniffle frequency reduced to
(17:07):
once or twice per block, and my mind was crowded
with the dogs I had known, Boots, Tiny, Vladimir, the cat,
even t fgf's little Casey dying out in Jersey. And
unaware of the seismic events which she had sent in motion,
I was thinking of other dogs, to all of the dogs,
and all of the stories of James Thurber that I
(17:29):
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 aunts Yorkie, whose
(17:50):
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 sometimes out of
town girlfriends ever had actually put on the phone with me.
(18:12):
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, passed, or who are just chance
(18:32):
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 within
my mind and what had suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable,
and perfect, but about which I needed as much detail
(18:54):
as I could in as short a period as possible.
T F g F 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 just holding her
while they watched TV. You just let the dog in.
(19:18):
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 case this
epiphany was false and or I was still allergic or terrified,
or incompetent or all three. I don't think it will
(19:41):
take much to convince my parents to take her. I mean,
even after Casey recovers and I can take her with
me to d C 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
a kiss. Let's go back there before they close. I
(20:03):
don't want to wait until 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.
T FGF stopped being nice, and now for the first time,
(20:23):
looked at me like I had just gone crazy, even
though I just tad gone crazy. Obviously. She said that
was a real kiss. The pet shop had stayed open,
partly because t F GF phoned them as we hit
the street outside the apartment building, and partly because they
knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see
it sometimes. Also, you seemed kind of emotional. T F
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GF helpfully mentioned that I'd had a breakdown. They had
all the paraphernal. You're 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 fourteen months, some horrific wet food that
looked like a discarded early design for liverwurst, a few
(21:12):
chew toys, bright pink harness and a leash as light
as a ribbon, a black carrying bag, and paperwork with
the Pempy Puppies family tree, which, to my astonishment, stretched
back beyond her birth one week shy and three months before,
through the six preceding generations, all the way back to
six entire years earlier. In addition to all this, they
(21:33):
could have included a moped, a stock portfolio to guarantee
your college education, and I'm all t size typewriter with
a twenty years 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 at a checklist of stuff to do, I signed
(21:54):
a credit card bill. I think I used my own name.
I absolved myself of the guilt of not getting a
shelter 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
how the obvious and often tragic flaws in this system,
there was no arguing with the fact that those dogs
(22:16):
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
him across the shop floor, or was aware of our presence,
(22:37):
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, stuck her front paws on my chest,
(23:01):
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 pup
we've had here in months, loves people, loves people. I'm
(23:22):
sad to see her go. I marveled and how light
she was, and yet how articulated and 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 iris is almost iridescent. And
more astonishingly, this little soul who was about one two
(23:44):
and twelve my age and about one seven my weight,
and who had a great great great great grandmother born
in two thousand six, when my great great great great
grandmother was born in like eight hundred, she was meeting
and holding my gaze with her own. Whatever I was
(24:05):
seeing in her eyes, 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, unsettled bipeds could tell she
meant it. And then she relaxed from her upright pose
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and settled back into my arms, her head and 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 hair cut. It was Stevie Nicks's haircut. I
(24:47):
named her Stevie. We went and got Rose a year later.
T F g F and I split a year after that,
so it was a win win win. Ted My rescue
with the bad heart arrived in two thousand eighteen and
had surgery, and he doesn't have a bad heart anymore.
He's fine. Mishu, my other rescue with a bad heart,
was here last year and had a very happy life,
(25:09):
just not a very long one. Mena, who is fifteen,
who we thought had dementia, but it was like just
rotten teeth. Get your dogs teeth checked. He showed up
this June. It is a crowd. There are four Maltese
is here. But then again, I wasted the first fifty
three years of my life living without a dog, so
(25:30):
I have to make up for lost time ten years
ago today when it became official when I was adopted.
Stevie is also known in the family as Keith's Gateway drug.
(25:52):
My gratitude to Stevie and my gratitude for her led
me into the world of rescue dogs, and that led
me to Mishu. His story may seem less heartwarming and
more heartbreaking, I would disagree. I hope you'll listen. I
(26:17):
had often looked into getting a third dog, and I
had gotten heavily involved in rescue work, and then in
two thousand eighteen, the paths crossed. I got a call
from a woman I met at a pet food store
and she became my friend, Sue Levitt, who runs the
rescue part of the American Maltese Association for much of
the Northeast. And Sue said, we have something special and challenging,
(26:41):
and if you don't want to do it, understood. He's
a three month old Maltese pup with a terrible, terrible
heart condition and they are not sure that he will
make it past ten months. And I thought about it
for about five seconds and I said yes, And soon
Spaghetti was in my apartment trying to boss Stevie and
(27:04):
rose a round, and I knew he needed to stay.
And I knew one other thing. He needed a new name. Spaghetti,
Spaghetti Getty, Teddy, Ted my dad's name perfect. I was
so prepared for the worst though, with Ted that it
was July and I did not buy him any stuff
(27:25):
for winter until I took him to the Animal Medical
Center here in New York and the cardiologist Dennis Traffe.
He said, he's got a heavy valve in his heart.
If we don't do anything, he's got five to seven years.
My ears perked up. Then he said, with medication, seven
to ten years. But I can operate, he added, I
(27:48):
and probably give him a normal lifespan, at least close
to it. I thread this filament that I'm holding in
through his jugular vein and into his heart, and then
I stopped his heart electrically for three seconds. See this
push button here. I pushed this button on the filament,
and the other end of the filament is a tiny balloon,
and it pushes the valve open in the heart. And
you keep doing this as long as he can stand it.
And it's like knocking the rust off a hinge on
(28:09):
a door by just opening the door again and again,
and I said, I don't see any filament, and he
said sorry, and he moved it in front of a
black background, and there it was about half the width
of a hair. And I said great. And then I said,
but but why did they think he wouldn't make it
past ten months? And he said, well, if you're a vet,
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you might see this condition once in your entire career.
I operate on it three times a month. Ted is
now four and a half years old. He is a
four and a half year old boy in a dog's body.
On our walks, Ted flirts with all the human girls.
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He barks at all the other dogs and then goes
up and says hi to most of them. He has
a series of enemies, the printer, the plunger, the thunder,
and at least a dozen television commercials. The operation went
so well that they were an hour late giving him
back to me because, as the surgical resident said, he
(29:15):
had to do all the tests a second time because
he was worried he had screwed up the first set
of tests because the results were too good. If I
could have gotten luckier given the prognosis with which Ted arrived,
I don't know how I could have gotten luck here.
(29:35):
So when my friends Sue from Maltese Rescue called last
summer August of two one and said, I have a really,
really tough case now, and I don't think there's a
chance that there's some sort of unexpectedly positive outcome like
there was with Ted. This was another puppy, barely three months.
The family loved him, but there were two young kids,
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and frankly the mother thought the kids were too young
to watch this little dog die. His name was Mishu
m i s h you Polish for little bear, and
the condition he had was well known and feared. Tetrology
of fallow. If that sounds familiar, it happens to human children.
(30:24):
And to correct it in a human child, now take
surgery that can last twelve hours. Jimmy Kimmel's son had
tetrology of Fallow. It's four major problems all in one heart.
In dogs, there have been early experiments in surgery, but
almost exclusively for bigger dogs and to try to explain
(30:47):
what's wrong. If you've ever seen the drawings of mc Escher,
where the same staircase can go up and down at
the same time as you look at it, that's more
or less what a heart afflicted with. Tetrology of fallow
looks like there are arteries going over the heart, and
there are others that take the oxygenated blood and pump
(31:08):
it backwards in the wrong direction. In the middle of
last August, Mishu arrived here. It is so easy to
romanticize things like this, but there was from the first
something magical about this little puppy. He was very, very sick.
His tongue and his gums, we're not that healthy pink
(31:29):
that you are familiar with if you've ever seen a
dog once in your life. His tongue and gums were purple.
He was tiny, he was dwarfed by my other three dogs,
but he was surprisingly healthy. And he would start trouble
with the other dogs. He would silently charge into Ted,
or he'd go up and yap at Stevie, and soon
(31:49):
he get all three of the other dogs of them
playing and fighting, and then all the strength that he
had would drain away a minute tops and he would
have to sit down and watch the chaos he created.
And he clearly loved watching the chaos he created. And
he also clearly loved the dogs. If two of them
were lying near each other, but not right next together.
(32:13):
Mishu would lie in the empty space so that his
head would rest on one and his back paws would
rest on the other. Soon they would respond to his
presence by arranging themselves cuddling together with a space for him.
Once I was stretched out legs up on my couch,
(32:34):
and the four of them climbed in too, by my
feet and two by my knees. I called Mishu's name,
and he turned and looked up at me, and then
the four of them almost simultaneously fell asleep. Such a
simple thing that easily one of the most extraordinary and
(32:56):
wonderful moments of my entire life. And I prayed that
night and not for the last time, that if there
was no miracle meant for Mishu, that at least when
he left us, could he be in my arms. This
dog was an athlete, bad heart or not, he just
(33:18):
was one with no stamina. In the pen that I
would keep him in for his own safety, especially when
I had to go out. Misha would get up on
his hind legs and stand or try to get out,
and once he did get out, he moved the walls
of the pen he got out of the cage, he
broke free, and he trotted confidently around the place, and
he loved to move and to run into play, and
(33:42):
he just had to stop early. Mishu also enjoyed food
as much as any dog I had ever seen. He
gained nearly a pound a month while he was with me.
If you approached him with a treat, he would see
it from across the room, and he would literally punch
the air with one of his front paws and legs
(34:05):
like an athlete celebrating a success, and often with one paw,
and then punch with the other paw, and the sheer
joy of that never failed to make me smile and laugh.
A one to punch, put him on his back next
to you, and jab a finger at his paws, and
you'd be in a boxing match with a four pound
(34:26):
puppy who exulted in duking it out with you. You
always knew, though, when the fight was over, miche would
simply stop throwing hands, pause, and he would simply take
his front paws and grab your finger and hold onto it.
He once did this for a solid minute. I have
never felt more as if I were truly communicating with
(34:49):
a dog. Than when he would hold my finger. He
was an extraordinarily happy puppy, even when he felt bad physically.
When he felt bad physically, those were the harrowing times.
Mishiu would be sitting on my lap, or walking on
the floor, or just chilling with the other dogs when
(35:11):
he would suddenly tense up and often let out a cry.
And twice that cry was like that of a young
human child, and it was so startling that the other
dogs stopped and stared with what could genuinely be described
as looks of alarm. Most times, the tensing was my
cue to grab him and hold him tight as he writhed,
(35:35):
because that inability to get oxygen to all the parts
of his body would cause his body to contract, and
if he was on any surface other than the ground,
it could literally propel him to the floor. The first
time he did that, my veterinarian was here and she said,
you may have to take him to the emergency room
right now. She said. It was essentially what a dog
does just before he faints. But then within seconds, as
(35:59):
it did that first time with the vet here, it
would stop and his body would relax, and he would
be close to find it had taken something out of him,
and then more or less by accident, I discovered that
after one of these seizures, he seemed to be soothed
if I would carry him and walk him around, gently
(36:22):
rocking him in my arms and talking to him as
I did so, Mishu and I solved a lot of
the world's problems in those little walks out in the
fresh air, on the balcony or just around the house.
He would often doze off, but just as often would
within minutes be ready to start playing again. And so
(36:43):
I had in my little flock of lovely dogs, a sweet, wise, serene,
playful puppy who liked to grasp my finger with his paws,
and loved everything about life. And he was dying well,
and I could not not try to find out if
(37:04):
there was something to be done to make his life
longer or happier. What we tried to do when I
resumed the story of Mishu. Next resuming now the story
of my Maltese puppy, Mishu. His heart so bad that
it pumped oxygenated blood the wrong way and limited him
(37:25):
to brief bursts of energy, And how he never really
knew how sick he was or that he had been
dealt such a bad, tragic hand, and how he just
took the life he was given and loved and was loved.
Of course, I knew what sadness this was, this special
soul trapped in a body that would betray him at
(37:47):
any time and fatally so I had to at least
try to see if something could keep him here longer,
or at least make him feel better. We went to
see the city's top cardiologist for dogs, and there wasn't
anything to do. Although he thought keeping the cans of
(38:07):
a minute's worth of oxygen that you sometimes see football
players breathing from on the sidelines, He thought those might
help a little when he would have these little pre feints.
Soon I had dozens of those cans in the hall closet,
and I was discussing building him an oxygen tent. But
ultimately the problem wasn't his breathing. He was breathing fine,
(38:29):
He got all the oxygen he would normally need. It
was finding some way to get the oxygen pumped by
his fatally flawed heart to carry the oxygen in the
blood around his body, and there was no way to
do that. The median age of survival for dogs suffering
(38:49):
from tetrology. Of fellow was just about two years. The
cardiologist brought up Mischu's case on a board of international
experts in canine cardiac care, and they agreed that unfortunately,
there was no chance he could survive any operation, let
alone experimental surgery for this devastating malformation. He could not
(39:13):
survive the anesthesia, let alone six, eight, ten twelve hours
of surgery. Thus, the visits to the hospital turned out
to be more about letting people there who I knew,
meet him and hold him. And I can tell you
there was an extraordinary soothing quality to holding him. I
(39:34):
heard it from these people again and again, what a
special little soul. And he loved to be held. I
took him everywhere they would let me take him. He
was a regular at my weekly physical therapy for my
arthritic joints. My therapist adored him. She would just hold
him and tell him stories. Took him to the apple
(39:55):
store once that he did not like. He went for
walks with me and the other dogs, but always in
a bag draped over my shoulder. He did not have
the stamina to walk for very long, but he enjoyed
the outdoors. He enjoyed the park, He enjoyed the other dogs,
He enjoyed the people who would come up and say
hello to him. The inevitable finally came this time last year.
(40:20):
Throughout the last week, the little prefaints increased, but Mischo's
happiness did not decrease. Two days before the end, I
approached him with a treat and my camera phone rolling,
and sure enough he punched with the left, and he
punched with the right, and he ate the treat, and
he licked his purple lips, and when I surprised him
(40:42):
with a second treat, he did it all again. Sometime
a year ago, I was sound asleep. The dogs sleep
with me, and in my dreams somebody or something was
breathing in my ear. Well, of course it was me.
(41:05):
He had figured out how to wake me. He had
to go to the bathroom. He knew enough to tell
me that he knew enough to wake me, to get
me to get him down, and he had to get
some water. On the afternoon of the twelfth of November
(41:27):
a year ago, Saturday, I was holding Mishoe in my
lap as I sat and looked at the peak foliage
in the park out the window. With no warning. He
suddenly let out that near human cry. The other dog's
frozey in place. I stood up and walked him around
the balcony again. I had to sit him down in
his pen for a second, and I was just picking
(41:49):
him back up when he tensed up, just like all
the other times. His body got rigid and twisted, and
he died. He died as I picked him back up.
The special little soul was gone. His body was getting
(42:09):
cold with stunning rapidity, and something inside me said, no,
not yet. I'm not ready. And I don't know why,
but I don't think he's ready. And with no training
and no earthly clue what I was doing, I tried
CPR on him. You have to try, You have to try.
(42:33):
I had so little idea what I was doing that
after breathing air in and out of his lifeless body,
I moved my face away as if I was going
to spit out water before I had to remind myself, no, moron,
that would be if he was drowning. I must have
done five or six breaths. When I heard him exhale.
I waited for it to stop or to be a
(42:55):
false alarm. It wasn't, damned if this little dog didn't
somehow teach me how to resuscitate him, he was dead
and now he was back. I didn't delude myself that
this was going to last very long, and the circumstances
(43:16):
could not have been worse. It was a rush hour
on a Friday afternoon, and there was a bottleneck and
the bridge approach between Mishu and I and the hospital.
And I had visions of being stuck in traffic for
half an hour or longer and almost nothing they could
do for him if we somehow got there in time.
But you have to try. You have to try. I
(43:41):
loaded a bag full of those cans of oxygen. I
grabbed him, I got in the car. The driver realized
my distress and asked me what he could do to help,
and I said, don't run any lights, but do not
stop unless you have to, and when you do stop,
help me unwrap some of these plastic wrapped oxygen cans.
The oxygen cans are what are keeping him alive. Normal
(44:06):
trip twenty minutes. We made it in eleven minutes. The
streets parted for Mishu at the Animal medical center, somehow
I ran up the stairs. I handed him off to
the emergency room doctor, saying with an evenness, I could
not believe I was mustering. My dog is dying. He
(44:26):
has tetrology of fellow. She ran off with him to
an examining room, and a second doctor came out, and
I briefed her on everything, including Mishu's human like cry
and his unexpected resuscitation, and I told her he had
been seen by the chief cardiologist there, and she said
(44:47):
Dr Fox. Dr Fox is here, and now Mishu was
being worked on by the expert in the field. And
despite all of this good fortune, I knew, I knew
there was no hope. I had managed to texts too
from the Maltese rescue who adored him, and she came
(45:08):
to the hospital, and three of the people from other
departments in the hospital who had met Mishu came down
to see him, not for my sake, for his. It
was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. And when
(45:28):
his doctor came to me and said, he is alive,
but if you take him out of the hospital, you
get about as far as the parking garage and then
you'd have to bring him back because what you heard
when he cried out was a stroke. The oxygen deprivation
was finally too much for him. He had a stroke,
and he began to gently prepare me for the question
about letting him go, and I stopped him and I said,
(45:53):
I know we've all done everything we can, miss you,
especially I'm ready when you are. M So, they brought
him back to me, a little drip attached to his arm,
and when the toggle on the drip was thrown, the
(46:15):
medication would end his life. He was as warm and
as soft as ever in my arms, and yet I
knew he was no longer there. Sue held him for
a while too, and then everybody left me alone with him.
(46:40):
I said what you would expect somebody to say in
such a circumstance, about love and happiness, and then I
heard myself saying things about gratitude, gratitude to him for
(47:02):
teaching me that in the face of death, the point
is to know when to try and when to say enough,
and that he had taught me how to confront death
and crisis and urgency with evenness and practicality that I
never knew I had in any quantity whatsoever, And to
(47:23):
be able to say, I know you had a happy life, MISSU,
And it seems like that, and not the fact that
you had a happy life but not a long one.
The happy life is all that mattered to you. The cardiologist,
(47:45):
Dr Fox and the tech came back into the room
at this point, and I said I was ready, and
they turned the toggle and left very quietly. And I
said to miss you, I know if there is a
place for you to go now, I am certain you
will be the first one they let in. I just
(48:07):
hope they will let me visit you there someday, and
I hope you will remember us. I said, good night,
sweet prints and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,
and he was gone again, as I had prayed when
(48:33):
he died. Misu died in my arms, and he managed
somehow to do it twice. There are some postscripts. Missus.
Cardiologist very solemnly returned and respectfully said that of those
international experts who had reviewed his case and were deeply
(48:55):
saddened that they could not help him, only two out
of a couple of dozen had actually seen and been
able to study any small dog suffering from tetralogy of
fallow and Mishu might have one final blessing for them
and the rest of us if they could keep and
study his poor little malformed heart without hesitation. I said yes,
(49:20):
because in that instance I saw him positioning his head
on Stevie's head, and his back paws on roses back paws,
So the three of them were cuddling together, and I knew,
as I had always known, this was a dog who
cared about and actually loved other dogs. So the hospital
(49:40):
wound up recalibrating some of the cameras they had that
they used to photograph the smallest teeth in the smallest dogs,
so they could get every imaginable image of Mishu's tiny
heart and maybe someday learn methods with which to fix
this nightmare in another dog and Mishu is in the
(50:05):
veterinary textbooks now. As a second PostScript, Mishu's parents had
another litter late last year after he died, and they're
human was kind enough to offer me either of the brothers.
Mischu would never know. Each was eerily reminiscent of him,
but healthy, completely healthy, so healthy that they were threats
(50:31):
to my other three dogs. I had each of them
live a week with us, and I would have been
fine with each other. They liked me fine, but each
of them first bit ted in the genitals, and then
Stevie in the genitals, and rose in the genitals, and
in one case me and the genitals. They were crazy,
fun but crazy. And the second one was not only
(50:54):
twice as large as other Maltese his age, he was
able to vault out of his pen like an Olympic gymnast.
So they went back and now have their own homes
where there they are the only dogs in their own homes.
So the third PostScript when Sue from Maltese Rescue reached
(51:18):
out again this past June and said, um, I've got
another special case. Fifteen year old perfect health but but
rotting teeth, and he has dementia. His human got sick
and and didn't really take care of him, and then
she died, and I don't know what to do. Who's
going to adopt a fifteen year old. I was able
(51:40):
to raise my hand. I had an open roster spot.
The fifteen year old's name is Mena. It's French for kitty.
I can't imagine what confusion that's caused him all these years.
His human had been a French teacher. He actually didn't
have dementia, or at least not very much dementia. It
was those teeth. His teeth was so bad, so rotten
(52:04):
of them came out by just pulling on them with
your fingers. So we had them all taken out, and
the next day he woke up like he was seven
years old, looked around like how long have these other
dogs been here? Every day since then he's gotten a
little younger. He's Benjamin Button, and he's a living instruction.
(52:25):
Look out for your dog's teeth. Even if you think
you know to do that, do it more. The last PostScript,
I got the tattoo a month after me. She she died.
His pensive, half smiling little face looks up at me
(52:46):
from near the crook of my elbow where he used
to sit when I would carry him around after one
of those pre feints. It is a remarkable likeness to me.
It means exactly what you would think it means. It
comforts me greatly. It means Mishu is always with me
(53:12):
and always will be with me, And now as this
unwanted but not tragic anniversary approaches, Mischu will also, I hope,
always be with you. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
(53:39):
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