Frank

Every morning i get up, i start doing the dishes until frank wakes up and ambles into the kitchen. he's always been old, we got him ~5 years ago, in february 2020. he was picked up off the streets and spent a few months in the shelter before we got him as a senior rescue. they told us he was somewhere between 8-12. pit bulls dont live long lives - whatever his actual age is, hes a senior citizen now.

anyways, frank usually sleeps in. lately ive been having to go rouse him, so we can go for our morning constitutional. sometime's my daughter joins us, but not always. he's not steady on his feet anymore, so i have to be careful not to knock him over while he's on his feet. when my daughter comes, i put two leashes on, so she can hold one and practice walking him. it's a big responsibility for a 2 year old, but she's getting the hang of it. frank can't manage stairs anymore, and we live on the 2nd story of a walkup, so i carry all 60 pounds of him down the stairs, and when we get back, i carry him back up.

we have hardwood floors, and sometimes he has trouble getting up, because of his arthritis, so i try to keep my ears peeled, listening for him scrabbling on the floor.

he doesn't like other dogs, and i think a lot about how stressful his time at the shelter must have been. the shelter housed a lot of dogs, and he was isolated into his own area, but they were still right on the other side of the divider, barking and making noise. he's on a lot of medications for his arthritis, but when we got him he was also on a LOT of trazadone, an anti-anxiety medication. he also had, at the time, severe separation anxiety. he's gotten a lot better, but at our previous apartments, if we left him for more than 10 or 15 minutes, he would all but lose his mind. in oakland, during covid, he chewed up the trim on the front door. after that, we rearranged a lot of our schedule to ensure he was never alone. funnily enough, he is fine in the car - when we first got him, he would spend hours with his head out the window. his arthritis prevents that now, but we leave the windows down so he can crane his neck up and catch the breeze. so we learned to do lots of road trips, and go out to eat in the evenings, so the car wouldn't bake in the sun. whenever we got back to the car, even now in his advanced age, he somehow manages to climb into the driver's seat, usually curled up but sometimes sitting at attention, waiting for our return. when we moved to chicago, we tried again and left him in one of the bedrooms, so if he chewed stuff up, it would just be in that one room. he tore the closet door off the hinges, and it got wedged between the door and the dresser. i only barely managed to squeeze in and move it. again, we stopped doing that for a while. i realized, after that, it was the feeling of being locked in a room that triggered him. i leave the doors open where we live now. he's never chewed anything up here.

still, at night, if my wife and i shut the door to our bedroom, i can hear him pacing up and down the hallway, looking for us.

he never barks or growls, except at other dogs. ive learned how he talks though. he needs help getting up on the couch - he used to be able to clamber up on his own, but not anymore. he walks up to the couch, pointing at it, and peers at me sideways. as soon as i wrap my arms around his chest, he lifts his front paws up and hoists himself up with my assistance.

lately, i've had to wake him up for his afternoon constitutional/bathroom break. if he could, he'd sleep till dinner time. he used to be able to play, but age has taken that from him too. everyone who met him 2-3 years ago would be shocked at how methodically he would tear apart his ropes. it was surgical precision, really. he also once loved to play tug of war. at first, he would endlessly tug and tug until he was tired, but still hold fast onto the rope, insisting you to try to take it from him. when he stopped trying to wrest it from you, he'd still stubbornly hold fast while you tried to pull it from his jaws. he can't do that anymore, he has no balance. still, sometimes, usually when company is over, he will search for one of his ropes, pull it out of the basket, and present it to someone, requesting a game. he'll still try and play, but if you tug, he just falls over. i always get the sense in that moment that he's a little dejected or embarrased, like he knows he can't play like he used to.

frank will always be a california boy. in winter, when the snow flies and the sidewalks are covered in ice, he hates to go outside. it's not so bad in chicago, where it usually isn't below freezing, but in the few weeks where its frigid, his paws get cold. he'll gamely walk a few steps, then lift a paw and limp on bravely, and then lay down. i have to carry him back inside.

i work from home, and most of the day he sits curled up at my feet below my desk.

when we first met frank at the shelter, i had been arguing for months about getting a dog. i grew up with dogs around. at my grandma's farmhouse, for all the first years of my life, there was a shorthair husky named Hannah. She was one of the sweetest dogs ive ever met, and she has been the yardstick by which i judge all other canines. When I was 7, they found a puppy sequested in the boy scout shelter on the edge of town - bear in mind, this was in the middle of a central wisconsin winter. He was only a few months old, and when they found him, his bowl of water had been frozen over. It wasn't neglect, just an instance of youthful indiscretion - someone had adopted this puppy without telling their parents, and their parents refused to take him in. The adopter couldn't find a place to keep him, so they put the puppy in this shelter. he ended up in the humane society shelter in the next town over, and my parents took me to meet him. we, of course, fell in love and took him home. His name was 'Socks', but that wasn't a very fitting name. My dad wanted to name him 'Ike', after Eisenhower, but my mom refused. We named him 'Sherman'. He looked like a Rhodesian ridgeback, except for the titular ridge. Sherman's mom was an aussie shepherd, and the father was a coon hound. The mom was a farm dog that got knocked up by a neighbnor's dog, a tale as old as time. Anyways, that was my 'first dog' officially, although i feel like Hannah was that in all but name.

frank had spent 3 months in the shelter when we met him. my wife wanted a small dog - she had never had a dog before, her sister adopted a mutt after Sri Lanka was hit in a tsunami in 2010, but my wife was 'too busy chasing boys' according to her story and she never really imprinted on pinky until after frank. we went to the shelter to meet a bunch of senior fellows, all of them small. frank's cloister was sort of the vestibule of the operation - the other dogs were all in other areas, but to get to them, you had to go through this vestibule. between meeting Shrimp & Grits, a pair of dachshunds, and Moneypenny, an aussie on hospice, we ran into frank. the first moment you crossed into his domain, it was clear how gentle his soul was. he wanted to play with someone so badly, he grabbed his whole bed and hoisted it towards me like it was a toy. we spent a little bit of time with him, and despite his size, he was so gentle. later on, when we lived with my parents for a few months, between moving from oakland and moving to chicago, i would play with him in my parents garage - we would move the cars out and i would swing a rope toy around for him to chase. sometimes, frank would be on the other end of the toy as i swung. once, during this kind of play, he leapt for the rope but misjudged, and wrapped his jaws around my arm. he didn't bite down, didn't hurt me at all, and let go immediately (& sheepishly). before then, i knew his gentleness, but that confirmed it.

we went to spend some time with moneypenny after meeting frank in his vestibule. moneypenny was sweet, but she was sick that day, and it felt like she was really on her last legs. i hope the end of her life was peaceful, but this isn't her story. we took frank on a walk around the block. he doesn't do this anymore, but for the first few years, whenever we took him on a walk, he would carry his rope with him. whenever he saw a dog, he would chomp on it like a horse chomping a bit. it was like a security blanket, and he never left home without it, until he did, when the ropes started to get too tough for his teeth. we left the shelter that day without a dog, and a decision to make. my wife didn't admit it then, but her heart was set on frank - she was just afraid because he was 'big'. she left for a trip a few weeks later, and told me that when she came back, either frank was at our house or not, which was as close as she could get to saying 'yes' without saying yes.

of course, i went and picked him up. the rest is history, mostly. he's a good boy, and im grateful for the time i've had with him, and whatever time ive still got.

ill carry him up and down the stairs as long as im able, and as long as he's willing. i think thats what love looks like.

2024-12-15: im glad i got one more walk with him today.