33 Years

“I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone.”

Thirty-three years ago, on Tuesday, February 7, 1978, around 4:00 in the afternoon, my dog Sturm left this earth. He had been my closest companion and trusted friend for over 12 years.

I brought him home as a three month-old puppy — my aunt had a hard time giving all nine puppies away, thus the unusual delay. (And ultimately she kept two for herself.)

He was born in June and I visited him and his 8 siblings as often as my parents would drive to my aunt and uncle’s farm to see them. I once took some friends to see the puppies (we were all in our early teens), and they enjoyed the visit tremendously, playing with them and loving on them, but I remember their mother, a rather up-tight pediatrician, being unreasonably concerned that her kids would be visiting a farm, and looking askance at all of us as the puppies tumbled over the four of us and my mother, in the midst of it all. What the farm actually was was a 100+ acre ranch with horses, dogs, barn and house cats, and a host of rabbits. (We’ll leave the rabbit story for another time. Let’s just say they got out of hand.) But we called it the farm, and only God knows what this woman expected. Perhaps pigs and chickens. Who knows? But her kids were never allowed to visit again, which was a shame.

Anyway, being not only an only child but also an only nephew, I was given the pick of the litter. Naturally, I picked them all but sadly I couldn’t convince my parents this was a good idea. As a matter of fact, it was my aunt, a very forceful German expatriate and my father’s older sister, who insisted I needed a dog in the first place. I never really felt much affection for my aunt until then. She was, I am sure, a delightful person, a very talented and compassionate nurse, and an ardent lover of animals, but she was also pushy with me. But this time she pushed my reluctant parents instead, insisting that a dog was just what I needed. I gained a new respect for my aunt for that, as my parents seldom acquiesced on anything of consequence.

Backing up for a minute, I should explain my aunt bred her dog especially so I might have a puppy — a puppy she was sure would be healthy. (Actually, I think it might also have been a convenient excuse to have puppies, but she’s no longer around to ask so I'm just guessing.) She was insistent that I have a dog. I had just that past spring flunked ninth grade. Unheard of in my family. I didn’t fail because I was stupid. I failed because I refused to go to school. At a very early age I developed a strong phobia to social situations, and there’s not much more social than high school. One day during lunch I had had enough, snapped, and simply refused to return. I guess I probably had a bit of a breakdown as I was convinced all the kids hated me (and a few did), and it was just too much to bear. So I spent most of the spring semester locked in my room, unintentionally torturing my parents, thinking their only child had gone wack-o. A pretty hard pill to swallow, especially for my father, who was the Assistant Director of a major state mental hospital.

So, my aunt, decades before her time, decided a dog would be good therapy for me. Since I had so few human friends, she instinctively knew a dog would be a great companion — someone I could love unconditionally and who didn’t care if I was, as my good friend calls me, batshit.

And so the love affair began. Sturmie and I were inseparable. He came to live with us on September 2nd, just a week before school was to begin, and I was to start 9th grade all over again. But I was so taken with him and the love we shared, the rest didn’t matter. Crappy day or good, there was always Sturm to come home to. I had someone to focus on besides my adolescent, hormone-driven, self-indulgent self. He brought calm to the whole family. My parents had had another German Shepherd early in their married life and missed her greatly after she passed. (I knew her too, if just for a few years, and she was indeed my sibling.) So they were reticent about getting attached to another dog, since putting Heidi to sleep had broken their hearts. But Sturm just lightened the whole atmosphere and brought joy wherever he went.

In the summers we spent our days on the beach, and he was quite adept at finding rocks I would throw in the lake for him. Down would go his massive head, and up he’d come with the very rock I’d thrown. He’d drop it at my feet to be thrown again and again. He was popular with everyone on the beach — everyone knew Sturm. And he helped me make friends and get over some of my social phobias. In the mornings we’d leave the house just as dawn lit the sky. (We’d climb out the window so as not to wake my parents. The marks from his toenails are still on the windowsill.) We’d return for lunch, then be gone again until dinner. After dinner we were out the door again until the sun went down. It was a wonderful life.

In the winters, he loved the snow, and we’d go on long walks through the woods that surrounded the hospital. On one winter’s day, when he was out in our fenced yard and some patients were shoveling the snow from the sidewalk, my mother overheard a heated discussion between the two of them, arguing over whether he was in fact not a dog but a reindeer. After much discussion, it was finally determined he was in fact a reindeer, and after that they would regularly visit him on their shoveling rounds. Had a been a dog, they might not have been as comfortable around him, as he was rather massive and imposing; but his sweet nature must have convinced them he worked for Santa, so he couldn’t possibly be a threat.

As I grew older I turned to writing journals. I recently thumbed through some of them and I discovered how much time I had spent writing about him — his colors, his sleeping, his dreaming, his funny moods, his sharing my bed until he thought I was asleep and then jumping down to find a cooler spot. I even tried a few crude sketches of him. Oh — and the farts he’d leave in the room, looking disgusted as if his flowers of sulfur had sprung from me. But he was never far away.

It seemed suddenly, though, that he became old. We discovered a small mass on his leg, another under his eye, and a third on the tip of his tail. The thing on his tail would prove especially vexing as he was always a very enthusiastic tail-wagger. We had a very narrow, long hallway from the kitchen to the rest of the house. (If you’ve ever found yourself in state-provided housing, you know it’s not particularly inspiring but very practical.) The walls in the hall were very high and were painted a light, high-gloss yellow. And Sturmie’s tail, always moving with sheer enjoyment, would batter against the unforgiving plaster walls. The tip of his tail would break open and blood would splatter all over those bright glossy walls. Not enough to damage his tail, but enough to look like a very messy murder had taken place. This was regularly scrubbed down, only be to be replaced the next day by the same energetic streaks of blood.

Naturally concerned about the growths, we took him to the vet. They looked like overgrown dark warts, and even my dad, a physician, wasn’t unduly alarmed. Then we got the diagnosis.
Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

Keep in mind this was 1977 and cancer was relatively unheard of in dogs then. It certainly wasn’t the epidemic it is now. And, of course, there was no treatment for it. Especially out in the boonies where we lived. And even had there been, I don’t think we would have opted for radiation or chemotherapy. It is not a choice our family is comfortable with or confident it.

So there he was, growing older and grayer, slowing down and sleeping more. And he had cancer. It wasn’t so much a death sentence as it was simply a matter of fact. “Your dog has cancer.” Watch him. Enjoy him. And let him live out the rest of his life.

And so he did. While my dog had cancer, he didn’t know it, so it didn’t really matter. In the end, it was renal failure that ultimately determined our decision to let him go. Had the cancer metastasized to his kidneys? I don’t know. An autopsy was never done, or if it was I simply don’t remember.

What I do remember vividly is the day we drove him to the vet. My girlfriend, Judith, and I were simply taking him for a check-up. That’s what we told ourselves. He wasn’t feeling well, but neither of us, nor my parents, really suspected this would be his last ride. After dusting about 2 feet of snow off the car, all three of us struggled into my tiny hatchbacked Mustang. Judith was at the wheel and I was sandwiched in the back with Sturmie. The ride isn’t generally a long one, but this day it was. As I sat in the back with him, I stroked his fur and tried to memorize his beautiful face. He had typical German Shepherd markings, but he had gorgeous sable and red fur instead of the customary brown. His saddle was black, his legs were tan, and his muzzle was now a brilliant white. But his eyes were sad, and somewhere during that ride, both my girlfriend and I silently realized he would not be coming back.

Had it been possible, I would have asked the vet to make a house call. But back then it just wasn’t something that was done ‘for a dog.’ So I stayed with him until the end, leaving his body to be cremated. I managed to hold it together long enough to get out of the office, and then I just lost it. I don’t think I have ever cried as hard in my life. And Judith cried. And when we returned home, with only his leash and collar, doors closed and my parents cried. Not together, but alone.

I was 27 years old and I slept with Sturmie’s blanket hugged in my arms for months after that. I still have fragments of that blanket. And it still has a few of his hairs on it, 33 years later, although long ago it lost his smell.

His ashes, along with the ashes of the other dogs in my life who have passed, sit on my dresser. I have plans to be cremated too, and have all our ashes mixed and scattered, some over the lake and some in Texas. My wife has told me she will need a crop duster to scatter us all, but that’s OK. We’ll all be together again. Even if we are dust in the wind.

So this blog is dedicated to my beautiful Shepherd, Sturmie.

My mother would follow him, a month to the day, also from cancer.

But that story is perhaps for another time.

I miss you, Sturm. After 33 years, I still miss you.