It was my first solo outing with Diego and I was rather nervous. I had been dating Diego’s owner – Guillermo, now my husband of eight years – for a few weeks, and my rapid transformation from naysayer of canines to budding dog lover left those who knew me feeling somewhere between pleasantly surprised and dubious to the point of incredulity. I couldn’t quite believe it myself.
I had set forth a lot of rules concerning Diego. At first he wasn’t allowed into the house I’d rented in Laurel Canyon on Wonderland Avenue – located, incidentally, next door to the where the famed Wonderland murders involving porn star John Holmes went down in 1981 – until I found that the futon at Guillermo’s across town in Silver Lake gave me a backache, not to mention that his ex was still living there with two dogs of his own. That first night at mine, I didn’t allow Diego up on the bed, and as a consequence we woke the next morning to the gentle pitter-patter of Diego’s urine as it hit the closet door, him looking up at me directly in the eye with brows furrowed and leg lifted. A bold act of defiance for an otherwise beautifully behaved dog, his message was clear: there are three of us in this relationship, and this second-class citizen bullshit must come to an end. I was struck by this little being’s ability to convey his situation, clear and simple, without guile or aggression, and found myself completely disarmed, left with nowhere to go but to get over myself. This sort of direct exchange doesn’t happen with cats, which are more likely to wait until you leave, then pee under your bed for weeks and weeks until you finally notice the stench then discover the floorboards have curled and must be replaced.
I’d been out with Diego in my Mercedes for a couple of hours, Diego just loved it with the top down, standing on my lap with his paws on the windowsill, nose first into the breeze, basking in every scent while I held him close by his belly. But on this, our maiden voyage, Diego started to tremble, quivering as if he were cold, yet bundling him up made no improvement. I rang Guillermo at work; Diego likely needed to pee or poop. I pulled over at Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills, and together we paced about on the grass, me willing him to do his business, but to no avail, he just looked at me, anxiously, seemingly uncertain about what was expected of him. After pulling away, his trembling continued, and now he was panting, too. Maybe he needed water? So I took a right off Beverly Drive onto Little Santa Monica, parking in a red zone in front of Baja Fresh, leaving Diego in the car, top down, hazards flashing, while I ventured inside for a cup of water.
The cause for his discomfort was readily apparent upon my return. Diego had tucked himself, guilty conscience and all, into the furthest possible recess of the passenger side footwell, and taking his place on the passenger seat was a birdbath-sized puddle of liquefied poop, slowly seeping its way into every nook and cranny of the saddle brown leather. He looked at me with those sweet brown eyes, with shame, and perhaps some fear, uncertain how I, who had so begrudgingly accepted him as the collateral damage of a package deal just a few weeks sooner, might now react. In that moment, my heart turned a corner, away from anger. Love was all I felt, love and relief that we’d sorted out what was wrong with him; and compelled to reassure him that he’s safe, and that I’d never let any harm come to him. In that moment, I loved unconditionally, I believe for the first time in my life. Diego opened that door in my heart, and whether I’d have fallen in love with Guillermo, and whether I’d have been the man that Guillermo would fall in love with, if it weren’t for Diego, is thankfully a question without need of an answer.
Last winter, Diego had a golf-ball size tumor, very large, considering he was just 16lbs, removed from his neck. He’d beaten all the odds with both his suitability for surgery at his ripe old age – one of his vets said, in a very LA way, that he’d been blessed with “the body of a puppy” – and he recovered miraculously from the operation and chemotherapy that followed as if these were merely bumps in a road with no end in sight. So miraculous that Guillermo and I had almost managed to put the idea of his death out of our minds for the seven happy months that followed, but now his scan results confirmed he was immune to neither time nor cancer, and soon we’d be helping him on his way. We were absorbing that news in the hospital lobby when my iPhone rang. It was my stepsister. “We just lost Dad a few minutes ago, your mom was with him when he passed, there was no pain.” My stepfather’s death, at 90, came as no surprise, nor did Diego’s, at 19, three weeks later, but losing them both in a one-two punch was dizzying. A giant of a man and the kindest of little dogs taught me much about life and how to live it, and that’s the light that brightens, and brings meaning and some measure of sweetness, to the loss.
