A Big Black Hairy Valentine

When I first met my Big Guy, I had no idea he had a sidekick named JD; a Bouvier Des Flandres dog.


Now JD wasn't someone I would've immediately taken a liking to, but after a few days of being around him, he eventually grew on me and stole my heart almost in the same way that my Big Guy did.


JD was the largest dog I had ever met. He could stand on his hind legs and place his front paws over each of my shoulders and waltz with me across the kitchen floor, which we did often. He could walk right up to the dining room table and snatch a goodie off of your plate, swallowing so quickly, you hardly had time to react. With his mild and laid back personality and the way he would stare at you with those big brown eyes so innocently, it was difficult to be angry at him.


I honestly think I fell in love with this big smelly dog before I actually fell in love with my Big...ok I won't say it...wonderful Guy.


I had just gone through a divorce from my first husband who was also the father of my three young children, and the last thing I was thinking about at this time was another relationship, but Big Guy and I had become friends at college and our talent for winning in billiard tournaments kept us in close contact of one another.


One day Big Guy came to me and asked if I could keep JD for the next semester. He was leaving to attend another college and because they required all new unmarried students to live in the dorms for the first semester, he could not take JD with him. Being that I had a house with a yard and seemed to get along so well with his dog, he chose me for the job. I had no idea what I was in for.


JD got along great with the kids, almost too great. At night I would find myself constantly shuffling him out of their beds and back to the folded up blanket I had placed on the kitchen floor. I wasn't too keen about allowing my children to sleep with hairy animals. One morning, however, I woke to a cold, wet nose in my face. I screamed, JD barked and the kids came running into my room. Upon seeing JD laying next to me in bed, three little heads bobbed up and down and three little fingers shook in disapproval. Of course they never believed me and went on strike from eating breakfast until I finally allowed him to at least take turns sleeping on their bedroom floors.


Every weekend I would get a phone call from Big Guy, but not to talk to me of course, he would ask to talk to his dog. Although at first I thought it pretty silly, JD seemed to like it. When placing the phone close to JD's ear, he would get excited and make a very strange sound, kind of a long, drawn out, muffled groan. Then I could hear the same sound coming from the voice at the other end of the phone and I was beginning to understand the relationship between this dog, this man and my three young children; all needed parental guidance.


It was a clever trick on Big Guy's part I have to say, because as the phone calls continued over the months to come, I found myself having more conversation with him and him having less with JD. A year later we were married.


After moving several times and adding one more child, "Little Guy", to our family, we had now moved back to the town where it had all started. Big Guy planned to take a new job with a construction crew there but as luck would have it, that didn't pan out. He ended up driving back and fourth to his old job almost two hours away, so eventually he decided to stay with a friend and only come home on the weekends.


Our new home was a very large but very decrepit 1890 Victorian. It had two winding staircase; one at the front foyer and one in back off of the kitchen. The floors creaked, the doors rattled and at night it could get down right spooky. But we had our secret weapon to keep us safe from any monsters under the bed or worry of boogey men trying to get in; we had our big black hairy friend, JD.


Each night he charged up the stairs following after our small herd of children and then patrolled every room as they were tucked in to bed before he settled down to sleep. Each morning he greeted us with tail wagging and a big sloppy, doggie breath lick of the tongue across the face.
JD became Psychologist to my oldest daughter Maryanne. If she needed to talk to someone, she would sit with him on top of his dog house forever, telling him all of her problems. My oldest son, Robby, had figured out how to hold onto his leash and have JD pull him down the sidewalk on his skates and Miranda, my second daughter, would dress him in people clothes, always insisting he liked it. Even our Little Guy had found out he could hide in JD's dog house and JD wouldn't give him up when we were searching for him.


Every June we cut JD's very thick five inch long hair down to about an inch of his skin. Not only was it much cooler for him in the hot midwest Summer heat but we didn't have as much trouble removing the sand burrs that seemed to find him no matter where he went and he went everywhere.


Then one cold winter day, I noticed JD shivering and realized his hair had not grown back. In the almost eleven winter seasons that I had known him, this was the first time his hair was not long and thick. 


We made a decision to keep him inside more on cold days which seemed to work, but there were a few times when he would do a magic act and slip outside un-noticed, then later we would find him pawing at the door to get back in.

If only I could have known how our "Houdini" dog was able to do it, maybe I could have kept him from making his escape the one time that mattered the most.

It was Christmas Day when all of the family had come together for a big celebration, and JD, once again, had slipped out of the house un-noticed. This time he did not come back, in fact, Big Guy and my oldest daughter went to look for him. They found him almost right away, in the alley behind our home. He had gotten into the neighbors trash and helped himself to his own Christmas dinner which consisted of engulfing an entire turkey carcus, including the large black, plastic trash bag it was tied up in. 


We took him to the local vet to have his stomach pumped, but afterward when the vet continued to examine him, he did not have the best news. JD was old, more than thirteen years. The vet was surprised to see he had lived this long since large breed dogs don't usually make it much past age ten. And now he was telling us that there had been damage to JD's kidneys and other vital organs. It would cost a fortune to try and save his kidneys and in a dog his age, well, the vet recommended we take him home and give him some medicine he prescribed that would help him be comfortable.


JD tried hard to make a come back. He struggled to climb the winding stairs that took him to his night time route of patrolling, and some mornings we would still wake to his sloppy face licks but they were becoming fewer and fewer each day. 


The days turned into weeks and the weeks went by fast, which finally brought us to the morning of February 14th. The older kids had gone to school and Little Guy was busy playing in the family room. I had moved JD's bed to the kitchen near the back stairs a few days earlier. It had been almost two days now since he had touched his food and hardly a drop of water. He didn't leave his bed and barely even moved but when you spoke to him or sat near him and stroked what was left of his once thick, long black hair, his tail would wag with approval and his soft brown eyes showed he was grateful.


My Big Guy was expected home to a romantic Valentine Dinner that evening, cooked by me and chaperoned by one teenager, two preteens and a toddler.


I busied myself as usual with the household tasks; cleaning up the poptart crumbs left behind on the kitchen counter, unloading the laundry left in the wash the night before and checking on JD and Little Guy each time I passed by them. 


A friend called and I was talking to her while taking a load of clean towels up the back stairs. I had just reached the linen closet, when I heard a loud thump followed by a whimper. In a panic, I told my friend I had to go and dropping the phone into the laundry basket that had now fallen from my arms, I turned to go back down the stairs. I could see JD struggling, with his head on the last step. I hurried to reach him and sitting on the floor, carefully lifting his head into my lap, I asked him why he had tried to follow me up the stairs. Then holding his head between both hands, looking into his big brown eyes, I knew. JD was saying goodbye.


I pleaded with him not to go, not now, not on this day. I told that big black hairy lug that he couldn't leave us like this, that we weren't prepared, that I wasn't ready!


But as I watched the last billow of his chest and felt his head become lifeless in my hands, all I could do was remain there with him on the floor, sobbing with uncontrollable grief.


That night after my Big Guy came home, we buried JD under the giant Oak tree in the back yard. Six hearts were left broken that Valentine's day; there was no celebrating for any of us.


I was once asked by a total stranger, "If you only had moments left to live, how would you want to spend those moments?", and of course I had answered the way most people probably do, I said I would want to spend them with those who loved me, and now I realize, thanks to a big black hairy dog, what a blessing that would truly be and I smile when I remember a time when I once woke to a cold, wet nose in my face.