A lifetime of dogs

Meet Rags, my new friend.

He’s a miniature schnauzer. But he looks to me like an extremely wise and dignified English gentleman. His manners are impeccable. His reserve only adds to his charm.

More about Rags, whose full and proper name is Ragsdale, in a moment.

Now that I am living in an apartment, I am limited to having just one pet. So Cassie is it. She’s the long-haired calico I adopted five years before I sold my house. I love her to pieces. But a cat is not a dog. The love you get is different. Dog-love is unconditional. Proof of that is clear every time your dog senses you need it. A cat demonstrates her love according to her own needs and schedule.

The first dog I remember was Snookie. He belonged to my Aunt Annie and Uncle Bick, who lived near Luck’s Field in Fairmount in Richmond’s east end. My mother and I were living with them while my father was in the Seabees in the South Pacific during WWII. Snookie was black and white. I hazily recall he was some sort of bulldog. I also remember that he would lick my face, much to my delight. I was probably about 3.

Later, after my father came back from the war and we moved into our own home on 24th Street, my father brought home an 8-week-old puppy, a black cocker spaniel with a freshly-docked tail. It was love at first sight for me. We named him Mr. Boh, after the cartoon character in a TV commercial for National Bohemian beer. He was a constant companion during my pre-teen years.

I was the one responsible for adding our next dog to the family. And I had been present for his birth and helped with the delivery.

I was 16 and was working at my first job, as an assistant to the veterinarians at Ambassador Animal Hospital on Broad Street near Horsepen. The owners of a pregnant Airedale had brought her in on a Sunday evening when I was the only one still at work. I made the dog comfortable until the vet could respond to my phone call. He delivered the puppies one by one, and I cleaned them up and kept them warm. Six weeks later, the grateful owner gave me one of the puppies.

I named him Sir Mordred, after the Black Knight from Arthurian legend -- which we were studying in English class -- but we all called him Mo. He lived with us, and slept with me, until I was ready to graduate from college. I came home one day after class to discover he had gotten out of the back yard and been hit by a car. He died in my arms on the way to the vet hospital where he had been born.

Service in the USAF in Germany for four years and a return to an apartment I lived in for 10 years in Richmond meant there was no dog in my life again until 1980, when I bought a house. I moved in with my cat Pusskuss and a newly adopted dog. She was a gift from a woman I worked with at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I named her Basket (after Gertrude Stein’s dog). Basket looked for all the world like a black lab, although the woman who owned Basket’s mother told me my new puppy was the result of an ... ahem … “unauthorized liaison” between her black lab and her neighbor’s black standard poodle. Basket lived with me for 16 years. She died of a stroke, in my arms, on the kitchen floor.

A few months after Basket died, a newspaper reporter who covered the museum asked if I would like to have a 4-year-old Australian Shepherd who had wandered onto her deck in rural Hanover. Lollie was the dog’s name. My friend traced it through the only ID Lollie had on her collar, her rabies tag. My friend got the address of the owner from the vet who had issued the tag, but when she took the dog to the owner’s house -- Lollie getting more excited as she got closer -- she found the house abandoned. Lollie raced around to the back door, obviously hoping to be let in. A neighbor recognized Lollie and told her that Lollie‘s family had moved away almost a year before.

Lollie had been left behind. She was emaciated and a bit battle-scarred from fending for herself in the woods for many months.

Once she moved in with me, Lollie put on about 30 pounds and wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She was the most loyal and loving dog -- could she have been grateful? -- that I have ever lived with. She would do anything for me once she could figure out what I wanted. Too soon, Lollie died of cancer at the animal hospital with her head in my lap, looking at me with her brown eyes full of trust.

Lollie was the last dog I ever owned.

So Rags brings me great joy. I see him in the mornings on my way to fitness class, in the early afternoon when he dozes among the potted geraniums on the patio in front of his owner’s ground-floor apartment, or when his owner is taking him for a walk around the grounds. He knows me now. I’m the guy who always seems to have a doggie treat in his pocket. I get a warm welcome when he sees me coming.

Rags is a shy little guy. I’ve known him for months, and he’s only now beginning to take a treat right out of my hand instead of waiting for me to put it on the ground in front of him. And he wags his stubby tail (in fact he wags his whole rear end) when I pet him or scratch behind his ears.

But Rags has yet to lick my face. I miss that most of all.

We’ll get there.