Ellie

Ellie was, in a sense, the Chauncey Gardiner of dogs.

Ellie being Elska Abbott-Ries, the cancer-stricken greyhound our friend Julie Smith, DVM, euthanized in our home last month. Chauncey Gardiner being Chance, the blank-slate gardener onto whom others projected their hopes and expectations in Being There, the 1979 film based on a Jerzy Kosinski novella.

This is my third mention of Ellie in this blog. The first was contained in my post of July 16, when she’d visited our bedroom after an early morning earthquake. I’d mentioned her illness at that time. The second appearance came on July 29, when I’d kiddingly (sort of) blasted her failure ever to sniff us up a human corpse amongst the chicken bones she always seemed to find on our walks. In that post I’d noted Ellie’s death, but had added that the pain was too raw to linger there.

In between those dates, on July 24, Lynn and I had said our tearful goodbyes to our 10-year-old rescue dog, transported her body to a pet crematory and, the next day, brought her back home in an attractive cherrywood box that now sits on the baker’s rack in our sunroom. So, at this point Ellie has been gone more than a month. Time has helped heal that wound—Lynn and I truly have grieved—but it also has helped me clarify Ellie’s legacy.

Some readers of this blog received an e-mail from me the day after Ellie’s death that, upon rereading, strikes me as having been a verbose way of expressing what Lynn has been telling people in two short sentences: “I miss Ellie. I don’t know why.”

Meaning, more precisely, “I can’t easily articulate why.”

In my e-mail, I’d listed a succession of things Ellie was not: affectionate, responsive, playful, joyful. I’d pointed out that she’d spent the first half of her life crated at a dog track, and I’d speculated that her harsh and regimented years there had prevented sunny adjectives from developing in her. I’d praised Ellie’s adaptability and temperament, and had made note of her physical beauty. Those had been the tangible things we’d loved about her. Her easiness. Her gentle nature. That sleek, sinewy body. The sad doe eyes and the exquisite, deer-like snout.

But my e-mail had only hinted at the intangible things we loved about Ellie. I’d mentioned how she’d stand statue-like next to us and not budge until we stopped petting her. I’d submitted that as evidence we were pleasing her—meeting a need in her that had no other expression. I’d suggested that this had brought us joy. And it had. It always made us feel wonderful—as if, in adopting her, we’d done something very, very good.

For a dog who showed little and revealed less, Ellie had a remarkable capacity for expansively rewarding us. When she fairly scampered for an hour straight during walks in the crisp, autumn air, she reminded us of the importance of savoring every moment. When she maintained a doleful equanimity in the face of our cat Winnie’s endless tauntings, she tutored us in perhaps this century’s most useful skill: forbearance. When a halo of sunlight spotlighted her perfect body on a bright spring day, she almost made us believe in God.

As the news of Ellie’s death spread among our friends and family, many, many people called, wrote or came by the house to express their condolences. Every word and gesture was truly and deeply appreciated. But two e-mails in particular, I think, bespoke Ellie’s power.

One was from our friend Adrian, the husband of our friend and doggie daycare provider ilkim. Adrian had co-parented Ellie whenever she stayed at their rural home. The following are excerpts from his e-mail to us:

Ilkim told me Monday night about Ellie. I had to tell her that for some reason as I was walking to my car last Wednesday after work, Ellie entered my thoughts. There was no precursor. I was just walking, and shortly before I got to the parking lot she popped in. Being ever so light on her feet, I guess she is well capable of such stealth.

Perhaps the unusual part of this is the fact that Ellie, being such a quiet and easy-to-please girl, entered into our thoughts and conversations quite a bit. She left such an impression after every visit and I never tried to understand why. It was just there. But with her passing, I have been thinking all morning about her and why she had such an impact on us. I can only try to convey this feeling: She had a way of sharing a bit of her soul, and at the same time knowing the entirety of your own soul.

Then there was this from Ellie’s sometimes-walker Ritch, a friend and neighbor who frames our pictures and enriches our lives with his dark, funny and utterly idiosyncratic insights:

Ellie and I have had many insightful conversations together while walking. It’s hard for me to remember every profundity, every simple truth she blessed me with. I should have taken notes when the professor spoke, but she assured me that there would be no written exam. “Just go and attempt to live well, and be fair to everyone around you,” she would say. “And respect nature, and the animal world too, dammit.”

Once, she asked me if I remembered “the wind in [my] face while running full tilt” when I was young. I said, “Ya, wasn’t that great?” She nodded and said, “I miss it too. But I had it once, I really had it.” I said, “Ellie, I’m a little afraid of dying,” and she looked at me and said, “Don't be. It’s like the wind in your face once again. Just take one day at a time, and you’ll be all right.” I thank her for everything she did for me.

Sure, you can look at these as the hyperbolic musings and extrapolations of people—Adrian, Ritch, Lynn, me—who’ve superimposed our own stories onto the still photograph of a deceased animal. You can blow it all off as our attempts to parse why we so miss a dog who gave nothing back by way of face-licks, Frisbee acrobatics, or, frankly, much long-term interest in humans save our usefulness as food providers and walk facilitators.

But, in reflecting from this distance on my love of Ellie, I see these musings and extrapolations as something more than a mere collection of happy, self-soothing anthropomorphisms. Ellie was a sweet, gentle and sublimely lovely animal, to be sure. But beyond that, our dearly departed friend somehow enriched the spirit. She inspired what, given Adrian’s and Ritch’s beautiful words, can only be described as poetry. I’ve no idea how or why Ellie had this effect. She just did.

Perhaps she whispered her secret to Ritch. I must ask him.