Blue
On July 4 I awoke to messages that Blue, the senior canine of my family in California, had cancer and a brain tumor. Last week was his last in this world.
Though I did not live with Blue — whom my brother brought home more than 14 years ago when Blue was 10 weeks old — he always greeted me as though I fed him and slept under the same roof. Many visits, he would sit on top of my feet, as though to prevent my departure.
Blue was big for any pit bull breed at 85 pounds of lean muscle, and with his short and shiny platinum-grey coat, lumbering gait and clipped ears, he resembled a rhinoceros 🦏 sans facial horns. In his youth he would terrify visitors with a welcome inspection, leaping with his huge and crazy face. Once, as I set him down and walked away, he nipped my buttock with his mouth - no teeth, just demanding attention. It was the only time I was a little afraid of Blue. He was scolded, and never did it again.
Walking him prepared me to be a dog companion with Animal Care and Control in East Harlem—because of Blue, I knew how to handle the indomitable charging, delirious affection and pure might and heart of healthy and recovering pit bulls. I pretended to stay calm and in control with a beast that on its hind legs could look or lick me in the eye, and most dogs respected that. It was reciprocal.
Blue tended to head outdoors in a gallop. Even when calm, he would pull forward with a hulk nearly equal to my body weight, such that I leaned back at a diagonal the entire walk like we were doing some kind of sidewalk Pilates strength training. When we encountered neighbors or passerby, they waved or nodded - usually from across the street or at a friendly distance. Blue was not a dog anyone tried to pet. But I felt safe, and proud, tethered to my handsome beast. At home, I patted his barrel of a body up and down with both hands. I kneeled beside and hugged him. He let me embrace and lean on him as long as I liked, the longest of anyone in our family.
Blue did not often bark and hardly wagged his tail, but he had ways of letting you know where you stood with him. Once, a group of genial men acknowledged us as we passed. Blue waited. At an appropriate pause in our brief exchange, he let loose a forceful stream of urine - at his size, not unlike a garden hose - in their direction before turning, satisfied and cuing our exit. I laughed and apologized to the group, one of whom said “That’s alright. He’s letting us know.” They capitulated the pissing match.
Since my last trip home (pre-COVID), Blue had aged considerably. Last month his shiny coat stretched across a visible spine, hips and ribs. I would find him deep inside his dog igloo, laying on his side soaking up the heat of the concrete underneath his rugged solarium, illuminated in the California sun. When I ducked my head in looking, calling “Blue…?” he would slowly emerge and relocate to the cooler kitchen floor, allow me to pet him and lean against me until I left. He laid at but no longer sat upright atop my feet.
Blue has resided in three of our homes, all places my brother and I spent formative and fraught parts of adolescence and childhood. He outlived smaller, female, pit bull mixes before him. Change can be hard and death scary, but inevitable. Blue left us gracefully and peacefully today, surrounded by family and survived by two chihuahuas who in his company were fearless and disproportionately vocal. Courageous to the end, Blue showed no struggle and didn’t cry. He always was a gentle giant, most often silent among the rest of us.
Time and its passing will bite you in the a*s. Twenty years this November, I will have lived in New York City. I have been so lucky to have Blue highlighting my homecomings, to experience his devotion and determination (he once climbed past me into my rental car, ready to be taken along). Our emotions and tributes pour forth but soon will seep into the soil of our lives. And as certainly as when Blue relieved himself in my defense, at the root of all our memories of him will be great, sopping love.
Rest in Peace, best boy Blue.
