......Photo of a Dog Like Duke

I have mentioned my dog Harley a couple of times because he's a big part of my life. Or a little one, since he's only thirty pounds, but he looks like he ought to be much bigger--at least fifty or sixty pounds. He's proportioned like a bigger dog, and I think he's part yellow lab because he loves to swim. His muzzle is black, but the rest of him is gold, though I'm told his color is fawn, which seems to fit because he looks like a little deer and has a weakness for deer. I used to be able to walk him in the park without a leash, but once he gets the scent of a deer, all bets are off. Nothing can stop him from chasing after a deer.


I once started writing a book about How to Be a Writer, but my first chapter--about whether or not a writer ought to have a dog, and if so, what kind of dog, and so on--got so long I never got to the second chapter. There was too much to consider about the dog.


I remember every dog I've ever had, from the time I was a small child, and I will write them all down some day. My daughter Heather, who lives in Tarrytown, New York, sent me a placard that I have hanging on my front door: Heaven is the place where every dog you've ever loved comes to greet you. Even though Heather has a cat, she loves Harley too. When she comes to visit he likes to sleep on her bed, even though he has his own bed the rest of the time.


My daughter Alexis, as busy as she is, has to have her little dog Rubi in her sphere. And my dear Lisa has her own special nutty relationship with Harley, who is also her dog in a big way. Their relationship is unique and maybe a little neurotic but close and fun. And maybe what started this talk about dogs is that Lisa has only had one other dog in her life, and his name was Duke.


Her mother, she says, always told her she was allergic to dogs, but that one day they might get a nice non-allergenic dog, but this black and tan dog followed her home. Her brother and sister came out on the porch and sat with it, telling her to ask their parents if they could keep it. Lisa told her parents they could put an ad in the paper, and someone did come to see the dog, but it turned out not to be theirs. On the phone, the couple said their dog's name was Duke, so Lisa and her brothers and sister started calling it Duke, to see if it would come.


Duke stayed with them his whole life. Sometimes he ran away, Lisa says, but he always came back. Duke had a troubled relationship with her mother--he seemed to intuit she never really approved of him. But Duke loved her Dad. When her Dad came home, she says, he would say Dukey Dukey Dukey and rub him and talk to him before he said hello to anyone else. I think Lisa loves Dukey more because he loved her Dad.


When we visited Heather in Tarrytown the last time, we went to Coffee Labs, a coffee shop up the hill from the Hudson where people can bring in their dogs. Lisa saw this woman who had a dog that she said looked like Duke, so she took a picture of the dog who looked like Duke. So among the photos of our trip to New York is the unknown woman--who looks very familiar--who let her take a picture of her and her dog. Duke may have died years ago, but she remembers him and casts his image on any dog who looks vaguely like him. In this way, Duke lives on, and all the dogs I ever loved live on as well, in memory, where they move and wag and bark and smile and curl up on the floor beside me.