Stuart lived with us for about 207 days. Under seven months. His death was shocking & tragic. He had become such an integral part of this household despite him not knowing us for most of his life. We had only a little idea what Stuart had been through. The only morsels of information we had from that past were the stories we were told by his sort-of owner & the Seattle Beagle Rescue people. & this one tantalizing photo of Stuart as a puppy.
The reason we got Stuart is because of our dog Pete. Pete is now three but from the time he was about six months old (maybe the age of Stuart in the picture above), Pete had terrible separation anxiety. He grew up with two big sisters - a chihuahua & a beagle girl - who were not the chillest of dogs. We kind of felt Yoko in particular amplified Pete's condition. My wife Magda did her best to treat Pete - behaviorally & chemically - but nothing seemed to work. When Yoko died last year - another tragic story - I began to think what Pete needed was another male beagle. We had had male beagles before & they had a kind of relaxed vibe. When I thought my battered heart could take another dog into it, Magda began looking for a male beagle - & we thought preferably older - to help Pete with his separation anxiety.
Spoiler alert: it seems to have worked.
But Stuart's introduction into the house was not without its problems. The first of which is that everyone was dishonest about Stuart's actual situation. We were told he was around eight years old & weighed 25 pounds - in Magda's words, "He's perfect!" We only had their testimony & this picture of him to go on.
Here's what we knew about Stuart. He had been living (probably since he was a pup) with a woman in Washington State who now had dementia & couldn't take care of him anymore. She was going to a facility to take care of her. Stuart had been temporarily adopted by the ex-husband of the niece of the woman with dementia (you couldn't make this up). The husband of the woman with dementia did not want Stuart &, we were told, "left for Idaho" once his wife was situated. The niece ex-wife also did not want Stuart - after the divorce she went to Oklahome. The ex-husband - a kind man named Robert - could not keep Stuart. He was going to surrender him to Seattle Beagle Rescue but because Magda had been chatting with them they arranged something unusual - we went up to Tacoma to pick Stuart up from Robert. (It was halfway between when he lived & where we live.)
Right away there were problems. Robert told us Stuart was nine - not eight. (We now think he was closer to ten.) & Stuart very obviously did not weigh 25 pounds. On his first vet visit, he weighed in at 55 pounds. He was not a small dog. & Magda, to her credit, did not turn around & leave once we met him. Stuart was very hard to control & he had to have a ramp to get him into the car. Robert insisted he was not fat but he was certainly treated like a dog with obesity issues.
The ride home was rough. Magda complained about being misled. Stuart whined the entire time. When we got home he whined more & barked more. His name, by the way, had been Dexter but because we have a Beatle/Beagle naming convention with our dogs, we renamed him Stuart, after Stuart Sutcliffe. Stuart never had a problem with that name & never responded if we called him Dexter. Furthermore, thanks to an obscure Jon Stewart interaction with Tracy Morgan I remembered from the Daily Show, I took to calling him the nickname Morgan gave Stewart: Stu Beef. Because he was a beefy boy.
Everyone who knows me knows I'm a softie & I loved Stuart instantly. I am not misrepresenting Magda when I say she did not. She was angry about what she felt was deception carried out to get him adopted & she worried about having the strength to help him if he needed to be lifted or carried. & to be fair his whining & barking were very annoying. He was hungry pretty much all the time, & we believed that his barking & whining got him food when he wanted it at his previous home - ergo, the 55 pounds he carried around. Magda openly discussed "giving him back" but I told her I wasn't going to do that. I said that whatever had happened to him in his previous life, or now, he had done nothing to deserve anything bad happening to him. Magda usually gets what she wants. She did not get what she wanted this time.
His barking & whining aside, Stuart was a good boy. He got used to jumping on the bed or the sofa & it was as if we had a walrus in the house. He seemed to sense that I was his number one supporter so he would sit with me - & sleep beside me at night. Or maybe I slept beside him - I go to bed later than everyone else so I would have to move him when I came to bed. But one thing Stuart might not have had much in his previous life was something it turned out he fucking loved: he loved going on walks.
Okay, sometimes he needed to be dragged away from a smell. But truly he was walking with us from the get-go. In the early days it was rough, he would pant like he suffered from COPD. We worried we might have to carry him & we couldn't really do that (tho we did get him a harness with a handle just in case). But since we walk the dogs twice a day, & since we were regulating his food, he got thinner & healthier & we didn't worry about him on walks any more. Indeed, he began to rush into the garage to demand-bark that we go on walks in a similar way to demand-barking for food. (Well - I give the dogs treats at different spots during our walks, so certainly he had incentives for walking.) He had been otherwise indifferent to other dogs but over time he actually became interested - & always a little baffled if they were aggressive toward him. In sum, he got used to his new life pretty quickly, he even got to develop habits he might otherwise not have, & he found his space in our family unit.
You might be wondering if Magda ever came around to accepting Stuart, & the answer is, she did. It was for the reason we adopted him - she will tell you, "Stu fixed Pete." Pete would have a very tough time when we left the house, he would run around the house, froth at the mouth, do self-destructive things. Something about Stuart's chill beagle energy tempered Pete's anxiety. Magda has cameras around the house to keep an eye on the dogs when we leave - one of them in the front window. Stuart would sit front & center on the divan there so often we began to refer to it as the "Stu-Cam." & as we left the dogs alone more & more, the Stu-Cam told us they were doing fine - even Pete.
It was amazing to be able to leave the house for more than a couple of hours. As much as I loved Stuart's love, his cuddles, his walrus body next to mine on the sofa, this was his greatest gift. He never quite got playful with Pete - Magda saw them play only once - but he lost enough weight (about ten pounds) to get in the car on his own, to roll on his back, to even grab food off the counters like the naughty beagle he could be. & I should mention the car - he loved to stick his head out the window when we were driving. It was truly one of his joys.
Since we didn't know much about him, his past history, there were of course issues. He seemed to have lots of allergies & had an ear infection at one point. It seems like he had to wear a cone several times. But that he was healthier than when we got him was undeniable. & since you know the end of this story you know how that makes everything all the more sad.
Because Stuart had helped Pete with his separation anxiety, Magda & I were able to go on vacation to Europe. We had people staying at the house with the dogs & cats & by all accounts everyone was doing fine. The day before we left they reported that Stuart didn't want to walk. We thought allergies, or something else. While we were in the air on the way home, the people staying at the house took him to an urgent care place. This den of quacks misdiagnosed him & sent him home. When I saw him - & I confess I had wanted to hear him bark with joy upon seeing me - he looked thin & miserable & had some swelling on his face. The next day he had stopped eating & Magda took him to a better urgent care place where the doctor, upon examining him, diagnosed him with lymphoma. Magda & I talked on the phone about getting him pain meds & bringing him home to have someone put him to sleep here the next day. But he made the decision for us. He died in Magda's arms, barely thirty-six hours after he began to show symptoms.
Everyone he met was charmed by him, by his natural chillness & kind vibe. He didn't have a mean bone in his body. He might have been a little too motivated by food (he was a beagle after all), & we have wondered if maybe he might have been happier to have eaten himself to death. We had hoped Stuart would help Pete & he certainly did, but he also became a sweet friend, a great companion, an unmistakable presence in a house filled with giant personalities. In spite of the challenges, we could not have hoped for a better creature to come into our lives when he did.
As for me, I have been grieving him for over a week now. He slept on the little dog bed in my computer room, right behind me, & when I would leave the living room, he would follow me wherever I went. He slept with me when I napped up until a month or so before he died - I assumed he got tired of all the hugs I gave & all the kisses I showered him with. Maybe he was starting to feel bad. Magda hated it but I loved when he would bark when I came home. Sometimes the barking & whining was too much but now I miss it terribly. I miss him terribly. I knew we didn't have as long with him as we would with the other dogs, whom we adopted as puppies. But seven months? It's all so fucking unfair.
It's a testimony to how good a dog he was that I could write so much about him after only knowing him for such a short time. I hope he knew how much I loved him, how much Magda came to love him, how much he brought to this house. I hope he felt enough at home - it seems like he did, but who knows. & I am so sad & sorry we could not help him at the very end. We did what we could but he deserved better.
Oh sweet Stu-Beef. Thank you. I love you.
