It wasn’t love at first sight. I actually found Briggs to be rather rude at our meet cute. From the moment I walked into his house for the first time, all 70 pounds of his athletic, muscular, demandingly friendly body insisted on becoming my new best friend and lap dog. Sitting at the kitchen table talking to his owners, I had to push him off me over and over. As his heavy paws slid down my jeans making what would become the first of many bruises, I thought, “How rude!”
His owners explained that he was in mourning. Their beloved Jackson had died a few months before, and Briggs, now an only dog, had become a mopey mess. He needed a new playmate. What was my availability, they asked, for coming to play with Briggs twice a day during the week while they were at work?
I had all the time in the world. Eight months into my dog sitting career, I was mostly house sitting and doing drop-ins here and there. I didn’t have any regular clients needing me every day. It wasn’t my goal, either. I was spending my savings trying to become a writer and a photographer, and dogs were just a way to make a little income and ebb the flow of my expenses.
But I said yes because I had no real reason to say no.
And thus began a six-year relationship with this client that took me through four different dogs and a healthy revenue stream that allowed me to rely on dog sitting for my full-time income.
As many have said, I fell in love slowly, then all at once. At first, it was just a job. I went to Briggs’s house every day at 9:30 in the morning and 1:00 in the afternoon and played fetch with him in the backyard.
Retrieving a tennis ball was this dog’s one true purpose in life and watching him live out his dream melted my heart in a way I had not expected. Standing at one end of the yard, I’d toss the ball, and the powerful combination of his Labrador and pit bull muscles would have him flying after it before it had even left my hand. He’d snatch it up and then turn and trot back to me with his head held high and his whip-like tail wagging. He’d nuzzle his nose right into my hand, release the ball, and then turn and take off again. I could just stand there and throw the ball over and over, without ever coaxing him to drop it or even bending over to pick it up.
It wasn’t that he was well-trained exactly. He just loved chasing the ball so much, and he was so smart, that he’d figured out the most efficient way to run as much as possible was to return the ball directly to my hand, like it was a ball-throwing machine.
It was amazing.
I’ve always loved smart dogs. Breed doesn’t mean a thing without intelligence and personality. I knew Briggs was smart the day I threw the ball to the high end of the yard where it would bounce and then roll down to the low end. Briggs had figured out the physics of this so instead of racing toward the ball where it first hit the ground, he anticipated the downward roll it would take and ran to that spot instead, where, sure enough, the ball bounced right into his waiting mouth.
What a babe.
It wasn’t long after this that the big three words slipped out of my mouth. Playtime was over, and we were in the garage wiping down his paws. With his huge, pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, the sleek black fur of his sides heaving, his eyes trained on the door, ever eager for whatever was next, I couldn’t contain myself. “I just love you,” I said and impulsively wrapped my arms around his thick neck and gave him a loving smack on his precious rump.
It meant nothing to him, of course. After all, he was just a dog. But the words surprised me. I have always been very protective of my love, scared of it even. I was 26 before I ever told my dearly beloved sister that I loved her. Yet here I was, just a few months into this relationship, professing my love to a dog.
I hadn’t wanted to love a dog again. Just the previous year, our family had lost the dog we’d all adored with a zealous ferocity. The night he died, I wailed in my bed, the heartbreak overwhelming and all-consuming. I started dog sitting so I wouldn’t have to love again. So that I could pet other people’s dogs and play with them and then go home and not get attached. But Briggs had clawed my heart open again, and here I was loving once more.
And it felt so good.
The relationship started getting serious when Briggs’s owners began hiring me for overnight stays when they went out of town. Sleeping together really tested the strength of my love for him. He claimed the bed before I had even climbed in and lay diagonally across its narrow width so that if I wanted to stretch out I also had to lie on the diagonal. And then he became an actual boulder. I could kick him and shove him, but he wouldn’t budge an inch or even get the hint. He’d spend the night softly snoring in this rock-like state of immobility.
But in the morning when I started to stir, he stretched his way up to my face, nostrils flaring as he took in my scent, his eyes bulging, his tongue flicking out and wiping my face, his tail thwacking the bed, until his whole body was nearly on top of me and I was covered in slobber.
If I didn’t get up right away, he’d settle down again with his head on my chest or my arm, nuzzled in close to his human pillow. I wanted to stay in bed forever just for these snuggles. He never whined for his breakfast or to go out to pee. All he wanted was me.
His possessiveness extended to the couch and the yoga mat. When I tried to do my Pilates exercises at his house, he would inevitably make his way over to the mat, lie down, set his chin on my leg or arm, and go to sleep. When I sat on the couch, he’d jump up and help himself to my lap. As he got a little older and took more breaks during playtime, I would sit in the grass and he’d come over to me and turn around, first putting his butt in my face and then popping a squat in my lap. He’d sit there in the hollow of my crisscrossed legs and stare out across the yard at the pond on the other side of the fence while I stroked his side and tried to get a selfie of his unbearable sweetness.
Everything with Briggs was 100 percent. He cuddled with his entire being and focus. He chased his tennis ball as if the world held nothing else in it. He slept like the dead and played like his life depended on it and loved you like you were the last human on Earth. When I opened the door twice a day, every day, he ran over barking his hellos with a big “roo-roo-ROOO,” then jumped up on me in his excitement before running to fetch a toy he just had to show me.
His exuberance for life never slacked, not even when he began to loose his eyesight or when his energy drained with age and from his life-long fight against kidney failure. He was a fighter who never seemed to realize he was fighting because he was so fiercely enjoying the life he had with every cell and fiber of his being.
Briggs taught me the only thing you really have is the moment you’re living in right now. The moment you had a minute ago has passed, and future moments have not yet arrived, nor are they guaranteed. All that exists is now. So soak it up. Run and play and sleep and love like you’ve never been hurt, like you’ve never been sick, like you’ll never die.
Of course, he did. Die. His owner called me one evening with the news. I asked if I could come over, hung up the phone, and fumbled putting on my shoes as the tears flowed hot and heavy and I cried out loud over and over, “No, Briggs, no.”
My husband drove me over there as my body heaved between disbelief and grief. He stayed in the car while I went in to say my goodbyes. No “roo-roo-ROOOs” at the door, no jumping, no toy fetching, just a very still Briggs lying on the rug in the living room where he liked to nap.
I knelt down next to him and stroked his head and his silky ears and told him one last time how much I loved him. His eyes were open, and his tongue hung out of his mouth, a strange blueish gray. I poked it with my finger. It was fleshy and cold. Six hours ago, it had been pink and panting on what I hadn’t known was our last walk together.
This fine line between life and death both fascinates and haunts me. Briggs had eaten dinner and gone outside, and when he’d come back in, he lay down in the living room and died. Just like that. What tells the heart to beat one second and not the next second? His cells all busy at work one minute, and then the power’s turned off, and they all just stop and that’s the end. It’s just so cruel.
His owner had given me some time with him while he called the vet. When he came back in, he had an old sheet with him. We wrapped Briggs up in it, and I helped carry him out to the car, nearly dropping my end of the sheet, so much heavier in death than ever in life. I gave him one last pat on his precious rump and whispered, “Bye-bye, Briggs” between my tears. Then the car door closed, and he was gone.
When we got home, I lay on our bed, and my husband held me while I wailed. It had been six years since I had cried like this for a dog. “Was it worth it?” I wondered while my heart tore itself into shreds with every sob.
No. In that moment of pain, the answer was no. Nothing is worth that level of pain. I wished for anything that it would stop.
But as the sobs slowed down, though with tears still flowing, the answer turned to yes. Of course, yes. I sat up and began to write a tribute to post on Facebook because the world must know what a good dog it had lost that day.
Over the next week, my grief unraveled itself on Shutterfly as I put together a photo book to give to his owners. Of course, I ordered a copy for myself as well. It sits in the living room with our other photo albums, like Briggs was part of our family. After all, his owners had always joked that I was his girlfriend.
One night, half a year on from his death, I couldn’t fall asleep. I felt sad for some unknown reason. I got up and went to the couch and opened up Briggs’s book. I smiled as I cried over pictures of him trying to hold three tennis balls in his mouth at once, of him leaping through the air to catch a snowball, of him cuddling in my lap on a sunny day.
The world will never know another Briggs. One hundred and sixty-five dogs I’ve taken care of, and not one of them has had even half of Brigg’s wit and charm and personality.
I suppose that’s a good thing. I couldn’t fall in love with every dog I watch. But every once in awhile, a dog worthy of falling in love with comes along.
I thought I might give up dog sitting after Briggs was gone. There didn’t seem to be much point outside of the money. But here I am still trekking on. It’s back to just being a job, but I suppose you never know when the next love of your life will come along. Because after all, the more love the better.
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