Gala dehydrates the Temple of Dendur

Overlap

Seen through his narrow kitchen window across the street, Stan’s head looked like a shiny egg as he bent over his plate, scooping up his (probably) soft-boiled breakfast.  Each morning as I ate my own toast and cereal, I watched the old man at his task and thought of a prisoner grimly slogging through a tasteless meal before shuffling off to make license plates or work in the laundry room. 

Stan and Rita lived across the quiet street for our first few years in Atlanta.  We met over our dogs.  Every evening, we dog owners walked "The Circle”, down the hill and back up and around, greeting others who lived in Virginia Highland, Atlanta’s version of a liberal, yuppie neighborhood.  We swatted insects until we’d have to move on to escape them, saying “Have a good evening!” to each other.  The old couple looked too fragile for the huge chocolate Labrador retriever that hauled them along on their walk, and so they were.  We learned that Dusty had been their daughter’s pet before her death two years earlier from breast cancer.  Her wish had been that they care for the dog until he died, and so, to honor this, they remained in the house that had outgrown them until Dusty’s passing would free them to move to a nearby retirement community. 

After a few years, Dusty did die, and Stan and Rita did move.  We missed them, but saw them occasionally when they returned for some neighborhood event or other.  They loved their retirement home and made new friends there. 

Meanwhile, we had our own dogs.  First there was Kia, a mixed-breed black and tan shelter dog that we had to qualify as good parents to adopt from a New Jersey shelter when we lived in New York.  She was a gentle animal who herded us when we hiked, constantly circling from front to the back of the group.  Kia barked a lot and was reduced to slavering paroxysms of delight when certain friends visited.  Once, when my husband made a wrong move in a corner, she bit him.  Then, when Kia was about seven years old, I accepted an abandoned “purebred Chow” puppy from a co-worker whose brother had a farm.  I put the puppy in a cardboard box and surprised our 8-year-old daughter with “What’s this?” when I picked her up at school.  She could hardly believe that this tawny furball was an actual, living puppy, a completely unexpected gift at afternoon carpool.  And both of us were shocked when, a few days later, little Taffy had her first bath and was revealed to be, not taffy-colored at all, but a pure white furball.  As the manure-fed dirt and water sluiced off her, an army of fleas scrambled to climb back onto their canine food source.  Taffy’s name stuck, though. 

Even though we didn’t plan for it, Taffy turned out to be our “overlap” dog.  When you have dogs, you often think of what you’ll do when they die, because, hey, you live longer than they do.  If you’re lucky enough to stumble into ownership of a younger second dog, at some point it dawns on you that, when your older dog dies, you won’t feel completely bereft.  As a child, I’d experienced doggie deaths, and they aren’t pretty.  Either pets die in some horrible, catastrophic way at the wheels of a car or bus, or you have to make them die, kindly but with agony about when, where, how, and who should be there.  With the overlap dog, you’ll always have a leftover to be comforted by, and to comfort, during those sad days after the loss.  It doesn't eliminate the pain, but it lets you continue with daily dog routines and slobbering smiles.

True to form, Kia died at age 13 of cancer a few years after we got Taffy. She had a large abdominal tumor and we made her as comfortable as we could before taking that last trip to the vet.  One of the saddest days ever.  But of course, we still had Taffy waiting for us back home, watching us curiously with her bright black eyes as we sobbed and reminisced.  We wondered if she would be one of those dogs who pines and refuses food after her lifelong companion was gone, but in fact, no change in Taffy’s exuberant personality could be detected. She remained as excited about cats, other dogs, the swimming pool out back, and, really, everything, as ever.  We were still sad about Kia, but at least we were busy with dog things: walking, cleaning up, cuddling, rewarding.  The overlap dog concept seemed to be working and our sorrow was, indeed, mitigated.  We still walked the circle at night with a tail-wagging, furry companion and bonded with the other dog owners as always. 

When Taffy was six years old, we brought CeCe home from a crazy-lady dog-adoption service.  CeCe was a “Georgia Black Dog”, as they’re called down South, and although she was a bit short on personality, she and Taffy established a friendly détente based on her complete subjugation to the White Wonder. 

Then, about a year after CeCe arrived, Taffy developed a horrible nasal tumor.  She started to shake her head and “reverse sneeze”, a creepy veterinarian term for a dog’s response to an irritation in the nose.  Taffy would suck in her breath with a loud snort, over and over.  The vet let me look up her nose with a scope and there was the tumor, glistening back at me with its evil black grin.  Taffy had seizures and died about a month later at the vet’s office where she’d been brought for palliative treatment.  We mourned this too-early loss of our young dog, still with so much life in her. 

But we still had CeCe. The overlap dog.

Now CeCe is about 11 years old and it’s time for another dog, another overlap.  Hey, let’s get a puppy!  But this time, something's different.  It’s us.  All these years, it hasn’t only been the dogs who are getting older.  We’re around 70 years old, a retired couple.  We want to do right by our next dog.

Is there an overlap master in the house?