Once in a Lifetime Dog. A true life story.

Once in a lifetime dog.

The sharp cry from Diane out the front door, “Maverick’s not breathing!” caused me to hurl aside my hoe and leave the half weeded potato patch and head for the house in a gallop “Honey, come quick, Maverick is not breathing!” Diane bellowed again, panic and pleading apparent in her voice. The Red Cross’ how-to-do CPR film that I had directed several decades earlier came back to me as I pounded the ground and wondered how to adapt what I knew about CPR to a dog.

Not just any old dog. No, the most intelligent, most loyal, most communicative, most connected to people animal I had ever known, so much so that it didn’t even seem proper to call him an animal. He was a person of a different shape. Our Maverick had stopped breathing….

Seven years earlier, in 2004 we had felt the “everyone is doing it” pressure and bought a house. And this real estate investment was miles outside the city limits with a yard that measured in acres. So I announced to the family, soon after settling in, that “its time we got another dog.” We were still stinging from the disappearance of our Chesapeake Chocolate Lab, Sadie, several years earlier, who had vanished at a time rumors floated in the neighborhood about a strange white van scooping up dogs and taking them to sell to a medical research facility in Omaha. The rumor was never more then that, but very unsettling to think such a sweet animal would have been stolen from us to be used as a lab rat. But this was a new beginning in a new home so I charged the family with the task of being on the lookout for a good dog.

And within a few days of my announcing we were to be dog owners again, Diane stuck a circled newspaper “Moving to a no pet apartment and can’t take my dog. Free yellow lab to a good home” ad in front of my face. “I prayed about it” Diane said with great confidence “this is the dog. I saw this ad and I just knew.” So I called the published number only to find out that I was too late and the dog was already promised to someone else. I hung up and said “I guess not, the dog has already been given away.”

But Diane was right and the dog was to be ours as several hours later we got a return call from the dog owner to let us know that the other arrangement for “Maverick” had fallen through and “did I want to come over and take look at the dog?” I said, “No need to look. I’ll take the dog sight unseen. Besides I have never met a Labrador I did not like”

But I should have taken a close look and asked a few more questions.

When I got home with Maverick and let him out of our Chevy Suburban, the family greeted him with wide eyes and “oh good heavens!” exclamations. They had never seen a dog that fat. Jordan, my youngest son exclaimed “that’s not a dog, that’s a walrus!” None of us had ever been near a 125 lb. Labrador Retriever before who certainly looked like he had never done anything but retrieve breakfast, lunch and dinner and a snack in between each. What health problems were we in for? And there was more. Maverick was 4 years old and had been passed from owner to owner to owner to owner. We would be Maverick’s 5th family. What bad behaviors lurked under that ample layer of lard that led to this monumental sized mutt being passed from address to address?

And then questions and the day got worse. Maverick saw the lake. One of the great benefits this new house had over every other place we had ever lived was the 3 acre fishing lake. And while Maverick might have been hefty, he could still really run when motivated. Like a charging rhinoceros, Maverick made a bee line for the dock while all 5 of us dashed down the hill behind, yelling all the way. The years have left this memory in slow motion for me and I can close my eyes today, see the dog pause on the dock, give a titanic leap that stretched out his great size and sent him on a high arc much too graceful and long for an animal of that size, ending in a monster splash into the fishy water. Okay, the dog couldn’t be all flab, but must be really strong too.

Unable to get such a large wet animal back on the dock, we had to coax and half drag Maverick through the swampy mud at the waters edge. His first encounter with the lake left him smelling bad. Frustrated and afraid me would soon be looking for this dogs home no. 6, I grabbed his head in my hands and looked Maverick in the eyes and said “Bad dog! Don’t you ever do that again! You stay out of the lake!” We had no idea how well he was listening at that moment as he thumped his tail, rippling the fat on his rump, till we had lived with him for several years and found he only had to be scolded about anything once and he (with only one real exception) would never even think about doing it again. That was the first and only time Maverick jumped into the lake.

“Has that dog ever been upstairs?” I asked. “Hey kids, has Maverick ever been up in your rooms?” To which everyone yelled back down “no!” He was a big boy and had only occupied half the house. There was more room to roam. I thought maybe he was afraid of the stairs and I can’t say I would blame him. Moving that much dog up had to take some umph and with the propulsion of gravity assistance, coming back down had to be scary. Maverick was there with me at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me with his soulful eye-lock and and causally, without commanding I told him “you can go upstairs, go see the kids, Maverick” and before I got the period on that sentence, Maverick bounded up and dashed from Shawn’s to Chelsea's room and back again. Room to room, several times. It started to dawn on me that instead of picking behavior problems along his many homes Maverick might have been exceptionally well trained somewhere on his journey to our family.

And this proved the case when he didn’t bark when the door bell rang or the someone knocked on the door. We wanted a dog that would put the fear in someone who showed up on our doorstep when we were not home. And just like the situation with the stairs, the only reason he hadn’t barked is because no one had told him he could. All we had to say was “you can bark Maverick, you can go woof, woof, woof” and away he went from a dog who hadn’t said a thing in the month we had him, to a dog that would bark with a big boom voice whenever we asked him too or when the doorbell rang.

Maverick’s only having to be told about something once happened over and over while he was with us. He chased the chickens once. “Bad dog! Don’t chase the chickens!” And he never tried it again. He chased the cats (and we had a dozen) once. “no Maverick, do not chase the cats!” And he never did again. He jumped into our in-ground swimming pool without permission once and we got him out and scolded him “bad dog! Maverick you wait” and from then on he patiently waited till we told hime he could get in the pool. And oh did he love to swim laps. Apparently blubber IS buoyant because despite looking like he would go down like the titanic, instead he was the Michael Phelps of the canine set. “Maverick do you want to go swimming?” Was all you had to say and he was doing his excited doggy bounce at the door. And you would let him out and he would wait till you caught up with him and gave him permission to get in and off he would go, swimming big circles around the circumference of the pool, happy as ever a dog was. I worried he would tire somewhere in the middle and he would go down and we would have to haul him out which would have been like pulling a wet mattress from the bottom, and to that fearing end we made him come over and rest every five or six laps. But he was always eager for more of his gold medal form dog paddling.

But his love of water did not extend to bath time. And doggie bath time was where Maverick’s penchant for drama always came out. This doggie “Hamlet” had a great range of expressiveness and seemed to love being a bit of a ham actor. “Oh Maverick you’re a stinky dog! Time for a bath!” Would cause him to hang his head or mournfully plop down with his head on his paws and do his best imitation of a sigh. “Come on Maverick…bath time” to which he would obediently get up and trudge toward the bathroom. Taking little shuffling steps, like a condemned man on the way to the gallows, Maverick would make his way without any more coaxing, to the bathroom and stand by the tub, eyes cast down tail drooping ready to meet his fate. This routine was repeated every bath time with precision of an actor hitting his marks and delivering his line on cue. Once in the bath he dropped the game and enjoyed the water and the wet completely forgetting his big “Oh not a bath! “ show. Afterwards was a whole other routine where we would drape a big towel over him and tell him “ go show Mommy how clean you are” and he would dash off, trying his best to keep the towel on, and go from room to room looking for Diane and when he found her Maverick would proudly strut around showing off to her how clean he was.

Super smart, and loyal, Maverick showed us how kind he could be when he got a pet of his own. We had a lot of cats during this time. Multiple females had liters of kittens, and there were dozens of cats in the yard. And somehow Maverick took a shine to one little scrawny cat and it became “Maverick’s kitten.” Maverick would be pacing, obviously wanting something. “Maverick do you want to go play with your kitten?” And the happy doggy bounce or a bark yes would tell us it was what he wanted to do. The patio door was slid open and out he’d bound looking for his cat. And in a minute or two there they were, chasing around the pool. They actually would play what looked like tag with maverick running off until the cat caught up and the the kitten would bond off until Maverick caught up. But the funniest was when they would race each other. They would take off side by side and sometimes Maverick would get to the other side of the yard first, sometimes he would hang back and let the little cat get there first. Then they would turn round and dash back down the length of the yard again. Always with big ol lumbering dog looking out for the little snip of a kitten seeming to ensure that the kitten won as many as he did. Then when they both tired out, Maverick would carefully plop down and the kitty, who was 1/125th his size, would snuggle up by his chin and they would nap together for a while. And next day by mid afternoon you asked him again “Maverick, do you want to play with your kitty?” And the game would begin again..

Many more stories could be written about his snoring and his werewolf like howling when he slept. And his total ignoring of the television except when there was football on, which he took great interest in. And his one weakness (naturally) the cat food, for which he could not be made to leave alone. And about taking care of him when his joints started giving out by the time he turned 12 making climbing stairs and getting up by himself nearly impossible. But the stories all ended one day….

“Maverick is not breathing!” Diane wailed.

When I got to the house I threw open the door and there he was on the big woven rag rug in the center of the living room, taking up way more of the floor then any Labrador retriever should have, on his stomach, his ever wagging tail, silent, his chin on his paws like always slept . Only this time he wasn’t going to wake up. All notions of canine CPR disappeared. Maverick was gone.

I must stop now. I can’t go on. I can’s see the screen any more. Diane was prayerfully right. Even sight unseen he was the dog for us. Family number five was the lucky ones, because he just was not any old dog. Maverick was the most intelligent, most loyal, most communicative, most connected to people animal I have ever known, so much so that it didn’t even seem right to call him an animal. He was a person of a different shape.

And he was everything people should be, but so seldom are.

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” — Will Rogers