Today we said goodbye to Guff.
How many elegies have been written to dogs? I don’t think I have anything unique to say about the millennia-old relationship between man and dog. A relationship so many of us have experienced for ourselves a decade or so at a time.
In part because so much has been said before, and in part because Guff was only nominally a dog. Rescued as a stray, how he came into this world is a mystery to us. And as a cross between an English bulldog and a pug, he would be even more baffling to the people who first allowed wild canines into their communities in exchange for scraps of meat.
And while his poor breathing, wonky hips, and terrible eyes might suggest he was some mistake of accidental breeding, that mistake was a blessing to me. Nature’s happiest accident.
I adopted Guff a year and a half after my brother died. I was in an unhappy relationship, on opposite coasts from my family. Whatever life he was living had left him with serious medical issues and scars.
When Guff and I found each other, we were in the same place. Lost, malnourished — Guff literally, myself spiritually—and a little broken.
My ex once accused me of loving the dog more. I told him it was because loving dogs is simpler. But I realize now, that in loving Guff, I was desperately trying to relearn how to love more broadly. Loving Guff wasn’t simple, it was necessary to my survival.
Guff was an excellent teacher. Despite the neglect and other hardships he endured, Guff had unending reserves of love to give. He enjoyed nothing more than sashaying up and down the lines that formed around the ice cream shop next door — greeting strangers, basking in their attention.
Everyone loved Guff. Construction workers, schoolgirls, aging hippies from the Sonoma coast, and gay guys sunbathing in Dolores Park. People from all walks of life found joy in the strange little gargoyle that was aggressively backing up into them for butt scratches.
He also taught me patience. Despite his many virtues, Guff was often not “a good boy.” His first day on the job in my dog friendly office, he chewed through the cord powering everyone’s computers. He also claimed one of the office chairs as his own, growling at the intern trying to work from it.
Once, when we were living in Oakland, I saw him take down a full-grown hipster who’d snuck up on his bad eye by tugging on his pant leg while also acting as a stumbling block.
He bullied his way into two Greenies a night by barking for his nighttime treat earlier and earlier until he was getting it immediately after dinner — and then barking for another at bedtime.
No matter how much grief he had caused during the day, though, he would snuggle up at night, rest his heavy jowls on my bent arm or leg and let out an exhale so large and peaceful it carried all that away. Then, he would begin snoring loud enough to shake the bed like a cheap massage chair.
We went on like that for seven years, which is more than I expected to get when I adopted him. Bulldogs live pretty short lives, and he was already pretty far into a rough one when we found each other.
Seven years is also more than I would have expected from a dog who, 2 weeks after adoption — on the very first day his pet insurance coverage kicked in , plowed face first into a field of foxtails.
Those seven years feel like a lifetime. Not just because they were more than I had any right to hope for. Not just because the last two and a half of those seven were full of a decade’s worth of world events. But because of how different I am today from the day I picked him up.
We’ve been through countless moves, more than a few break-ups, and eventually finding the man who would become my husband, adding one more misfit to our ragtag family.
In a way, mourning Guff means mourning all the lives we lived together. The homes we shared that aren’t ours anymore. The people who loved us both — and whom we loved in return — who aren’t in our lives anymore. The rituals and excursions that won’t be part of our days anymore.
And as heartbreaking as it is to leave those things in the past, I know they were only possible because in adopting Guff, I learned to let happiness back into my life.
