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alisonagosti · 9 months ago

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Found at Skatepark

I adopted my dog Harvey from the Burbank Animal Shelter on February 12, 2012. At the time, he was nameless, and the card on his cage only had three words written on it: "Found at skatepark." He was filthy and scared, but he walked right up to me and put his two paws up on the bars so that I could scratch his belly, and that was it. I bought him for $70 and took him home the next day. Your life can change that quickly.

Things I want to remember: barking at me every time I'd come through the front door, His deep desire to roll on dead bugs, napping with him in the crook of my arm.

At the time, I was working two minimum-wage jobs, was obsessed with my sketch team, and had a roommate who would later be charged with money laundering. I had no business taking care of myself, let alone a dog. But I wanted so desperately to feel a sense of home— some version of family that I was so completely starved of. At this point in my life, I had no idea how to express that love was something I wanted so deeply and yet completely feared. When you're broke in your twenties, you don't always have the tools to examine your childhood and your parental models; sometimes, you just have to buy a dog and hope that it helps.

Things didn't go smoothly; he suffered from horrible separation anxiety, and when I would leave to go to work, he would bark so loudly and for so long that my neighbor finally slid a handwritten note under my door that simply stated, "Your dog's bark is so shrill and frantic -- it's like nothing I've ever heard before." Not helpful, but a valid observation.

He was one of the most stubborn creatures I've ever met. He refused to be housebroken for much of his early life. I gotta be honest; he never really locked that in -- he was 90% housebroken at best. He would steal food if given any opportunity. Once, when I was painting an accent wall, he rolled in the paint tray for presumably no other reason other than he decided he wanted to. Our lives seemed to mirror each other at the time, and since he never judged me for over-drafting my bank account or stumbling in drunk, who was I to judge him for going through the garbage?

Things I want to remember: His insistence on following me into the bathroom, patiently watching me pee and poop, sleeping on the bathmat as I showered.

It's not that he didn't know the difference between right and wrong. He knew the rules, would assess the situation and then proceed accordingly. If I was out and he needed to pee, why should he hold it? If a sandwich was left unattended, why should he not eat it? Philosophically he raised questions that my young mind was not capable of debating.

Some may call this asshole behavior, myself included. But Harvey also possessed a kindness and ease with people that I envied. I imagined him as a proud young man on the day of his bar mitzvah, happily introducing himself and encouraging you to check out the dessert bar, "We have cake in pop form and by the slice! Please help yourselves!" He never met a stranger in his life; encouraging or demanding pets from anyone. Literally anyone, he was not picky. I loved to watch him happily trot up to people at the dog park, wagging his tail and waiting expectantly until they obliged.

Things I want to remember: My favorite compliment I ever received for Harvey, "He's perfectly proportional, a lot of little dogs aren't like that."

I loved to watch people melt in front of him: a living teddy bear with oversized ears. He indiscriminately trusted everybody and wanted to sit on every lap. Somehow, people would instinctively hold him like a baby, and he would stay in that space for as long as he was permitted.

I did not have the same effect on people.

As we got older, I finally started making money; we moved to New York and experienced snow for the first time (we did not care for it).

Things I want to remember: Landing at Laguardia at 5 AM and traveling to my new apartment. My furniture hadn't arrived yet so I slept on the clothes from my suitcase with Harvey in my arms.

He took everything in stride and quelled the loneliness of a new city. For much of my time on the east coast, he felt like my only friend.

Things I want to remember: Coming home early from work to find Harvey and my dog walker asleep on the couch.

I started a relationship that was abusive. When he would yell at me, Harvey would hide, and I worried about his safety long before I considered my own. When I eventually fled back to Los Angeles, it felt like we'd both aged several decades.

We entered our 30s at roughly the same time, and Harvey really came into his own. His food theft reached new heights of creativity. On a vacation, I made the mistake of leaving a room service tray in the room with Harvey while I went to lay out at the pool. When I came back, he had pulled some of my clothes out of my bag. I didn't think much of it, but when we got home the next day, he quietly waited for me to unpack before retrieving a room service dinner roll that he'd stashed away in there. The art of it. The patience. He had become a master.

Things I want to remember: Holding him when I was sad, him generously allowing my tears to fall on his fur.

Another breakup or two, another six months of crying into Harvey's fur before Covid hit. For a good part of 2020, he was the only thing I touched. Outside of logging onto Zoom for work, he was my only purpose. At nine, he had become a reasonable man. Still capable of zoomies, not above destruction or scampery in the name of food, but a calmness had settled over him and eventually me as well.

I fostered a puppy during the pandemic, just like everybody else, and I decided to adopt him. An unforgivable betrayal in Harvey's eyes. The new calm of our house was now loudly disrupted by the idiocy of a puppy. I'll always wonder if he felt replaced. He wasn't. He could never be. We were just adding to our family.

I eventually emerged from my Covid bunker to go on a date with the man who recently became my fiancé. When he first met Harvey, he said, "he really likes me!" I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was just another guest at Harv's unending bar mitzvah; he'd eventually realize it on his own. My family became the four of us, and we became The Unit. Man, I fucking love The Unit. I didn't realize that coming home could be the most exciting part of my day.

Harvey continued to age; he thickened around his middle, and little things started to go wrong. He developed a limp that was eventually fixed with anti-inflammatories, and he developed allergies. But he always bounced back. He seemed indestructible. Looking at him, you would never know he was almost 11. His white fur hid any signs of grey, and he still had the bouncy gait of a children's cartoon character. He had his final act of chaos that Thanksgiving. When we set him down without a leash and he took off after a pitbull (this is not an indictment on pitbulls — I only mention it because of the size difference and sheer lunacy of it — Harvey is an asshole, don’t forget that part). Harv ran after this dog faster than I'd seen him move in years. All four feet off the ground, a fluffy bullet on his way for vengeance. In one simple move, the pitbull took Harvey's head in his mouth and flung him a few feet into the grass. It all happened in a second. When I reached him, he was lying on the ground, stunned. It wasn't until I picked him up that I saw the massive gash on the left side of his head as blood started to spill out. I will never understand why he did that. He decided he wanted to, I guess.

Even that was no big deal for him. Antibiotics and a cone for a couple of weeks and he was back to normal. He really seemed indestructible.

Then, about a year ago, Harvey got really sick and was diagnosed with diabetes -- a disease I didn't think dogs could get. And again, he bounced right back once we figured out his insulin dosage. It became my morning routine. Feed the dogs, shake the insulin, inject, dispose of the needle, repeat at dinner. I almost enjoyed it. The ritual of it. Just a small dose of translucent liquid, and he was functional. He was my buddy, just like he'd always been.

Then, he unceremoniously went blind, a common complication of the disease. He took it in stride, learning the layout of our place and confidently patrolling the dog park. He still went on walks and still played occasionally. And I really thought that this would just be the new normal for the next couple of years, at least.

Things I want to remember: After he went blind, we would often lose him in the house, asleep in tiny spaces or little nooks, watching him quietly stare at a blank wall while his nose was inches away.

Then a week ago, he stopped eating. For a few days I was able to bribe him with turkey and rice but he eventually refused that as well. We went to the vet the next morning, he could no longer stand on his own. Of course I thought that this might be the end, I also had seen him defy Death at least twice and I had no reason to think he would get Harvey this time.

The vet took X-rays that revealed an evil black mass had taken over his whole belly; I finally realized that we weren't going to wiggle out of this one. I was brought into a second room by a woman who is best described as Kate Mckinnon's character from the Barbie movie. She had sparkly nail polish, although I can't remember the color, just the sparkles. She started by telling me not to cry, and I wondered to myself what exactly constituted crying, if not this exact situation. I Facetimed my fiancé, who is working out of the country. Weird Barbie returned with my dog, my best friend of 12 years. He could no longer support his head on his own. I held him like a baby -- like I'd done thousands of times before.

"There are so many puppies that need good homes in the shelters." I looked at Harvey for backup, I think in earlier years, he would've given me a look that meant, "Can you believe this lady? She is NOT invited to my bar mitzvah." I didn't acknowledge the comment, and she followed up by saying, "Do you want me to stay with you?"

"No," I answered without thinking, and she disappeared out of the room and back into her rightful place at the bottom of a toybox. I won't go into the next part because it's too hard. To sum it up, he died in my arms. The vet held up a stethoscope to his chest and whispered quietly, "And he has passed." I felt everything in my chest -- lungs, heart, guts -- all ripped out in one moment. It was, by far, the most painful moment of my life.

Things I want to remember: Holding him after he died.

And then he pooped on me. Just a little bit, but he got one more joke in, and I respect him for it.

--- In the nights since he passed I find myself wondering if he knew that I loved him and if I loved him enough. I'm afraid the answer is no. How can you ever love something enough? How can one 11-pound dog ever know what he meant to me?

I didn't. I couldn't. But he did it so effortlessly.

He was my constant and my family when I didn't have any, a beacon of kindness, and also the funniest person I've ever known. So goodbye, my sweet Harv, my grandpa baby, and my fuzz. You will always be the co-founding member of The Unit. I love you.

#wrote

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