Giant George (8 page)

He would hump anything—absolutely anything. And being the sort of size he was made for a wealth of possibilities. If he couldn’t find anything vertical to hump, he would simply lie on the floor and hump that instead. And if he was in bed with us, which he still was whenever we let him, he would sit
astride a leg—either of our legs, he didn’t care which—and while away his time happily humping that. This was just fine for him—like most teenagers, he had a lot of hours to fill, and being a dog, he couldn’t fill them by playing Xbox or writing poetry—but it was definitely becoming something of an issue for my wife.

Christie, being, I guess, a normal human female, had a particular passion for
watching movies in which the women all wore bustles and had bosoms that routinely heaved from their corsets. These women also regularly swooned, caught their breath or got the vapors (sometimes all three at once) in the presence of any of those other period costume drama staples: brooding, magnificent and mostly taciturn men. If she could have dressed me up as Mr. Darcy in
Pride and Prejudice—
particularly as played by Colin Firth—I think she might have.

As it was, she would content herself with watching him on TV, and the place she most liked to do that was curled up in bed, late at night, with a glass of wine. It was on one such occasion—I was puttering around the house, doing jobs at the time—that it became clear that George’s attachment to lower legs was becoming a little bit distracting
for her.

“Dave!” she yelled. “Honey, you just
have
to come see this!”

Naturally, being a dutiful and loving husband, I would always respond immediately to such requests from my wife.

“What’s up?” I asked her as I entered the bedroom.

Christie gestured with her glass of wine, which along with the rest of her, was subject to a small but persistent tremor. George was there too—a great hairy mound
sprawled right across her, oblivious to my coming in, oblivious to our conversation, oblivious to just about
everything
.

“Will you take a look at this animal!” she said, shaking her head. “Honestly, Dave, it’s like he’s possessed!”

I noticed then that she seemed to have a tear on her cheek. I gestured toward it. “You okay, honey?”

She laughed. “You know what?” she said, waving a hand toward
the TV. “I was just sitting here thinking how crazy this is. There’s me sitting here, massive lump in my throat, trying not to cry, totally in the
zone
, and all the while this mutt—” She slapped his rump. “
Georg-eee! Will you quit that!
This mutt has been going at it like a steam train! It’s like the whole bed is in the epicenter of an earthquake or something. I’m honestly not sure if I’m watching
a movie or on my very own personally tailored amusement park ride!”

She reached for a tissue and dabbed at her cheek. “Which really does kind of spoil the moment, you know?”

I looked at the TV, where the “moment” was still in full flow—well, as much as these kinds of moments can be said to “flow.” While George continued to loosen all the nuts in our bed frame, Mr. Darcy or whoever (they all
looked the same to
me) was staring moodily out of the television screen, saying precisely nothing whatsoever. But then he didn’t really need to say anything, did he? He just looked so completely
un
amused.

It wasn’t only the vibrating bed that was a problem, or George’s endless attachment to straddling chair legs; George had morphed into this huge, manic, permanently excitable animal, who, given
his massive size, was now potentially a hazard to smaller animals, whether he intended to be or not. His intentions may at all times have been both amicable and amorous, but he was one big old boy to have coming in your direction when his libido was active.

It made people squirm. With spectacularly bad timing, we first really became aware of this when my family was over for dinner one night.
We’d just finished, and had moved into the living room, where my parents had settled down on one of the couches. George, who always liked to be right in the thick of it, had made himself comfortable on the other with Christie, sitting beside her in the way that he usually did—haunches on the couch, front paws on the floor.

I’d been into the kitchen to brew up some coffee, and when I rejoined
them, the first thing I saw was his “lipstick,” as we’d recently taken to calling it, at “full volume.” I went and sat beside my parents, where the view was even more arresting. Christie, of course, was oblivious. But if there’s one thing you don’t want to share with your folks, it’s anything to do with
that
sort of thing. I also felt for them—they must have been mortified. George was a big dog,
so it was completely unmissable. And they were respectable folks in their late sixties.

Conscious it was becoming a real conversation stopper, I stood up again. “Hey, Georgie,” I said, “you want a treat?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Christie came back at me, as quick as you like. “He’s already pinched way too many scraps for one day.” She clamped an arm around him. “No treats for you.”

I sat down again,
and willed it to disappear, which it showed absolutely no sign of doing. I then tried doing things with my eyes to alert Christie, but she looked at me as if I were mad.

I was just about to overrule her and take him to the kitchen, when my dad said, “You getting that dog fixed, Dave? Seems like he’s only got one thing on his mind.”

“Sorry, Dad,” I said, as Christie suddenly became fully aware
of the situation too.

“No worries.” My dad chuckled. “We’ve all been there.”

Happily, George was closing on the nine months of age that Doc Wallace had told us was the earliest he could fix him. Less happily, though the gastropexy was obviously important for his health and needed to be done, I felt like I was betraying George by secretly plotting to take away his manhood.

We had, for a short
time, considered breeding George. As a pure blue, with not so much as a single hair of white on him, he was a potentially brilliant asset to the gene pool. Before getting him, we’d been to a dog show, out of curiosity, which was held in the courtyard of a hotel in town. It was specifically for Great Danes and had been put on by a local Great Dane Club, with owners traveling long distances from several
neighboring cities
and states to be there and show their animals. We were surprised by the variety of fur colors of these Danes and had marveled at the amount of commitment and energy, not to mention organization, that it seemed to take to show and breed dogs.

But the word “commitment” said it all really. If you took it seriously, showing dogs was way too much work to be called a hobby, and even
if you kept it simple and
made
it your hobby, you’d have no time for doing anything else, it seemed to us. As well as all the logistics of traveling long distances with your pet (something we would find out—boy, and
how
—in a couple of years), there was stuff like getting them trained, early on in life, specifically for the show ring, by having them learn to walk on your left at all times and training
them to understand a multitude of commands. Start that too late and you probably never caught up.

Plus we were not really hobby people at this time in our lives. We both worked long hours because we really enjoyed our jobs, and in our downtime, when we weren’t up to our necks in the house remodeling, we mostly liked to chill. Christie liked music—to see bands, go to concerts—and we both liked
to eat out (given the state of our kitchen, not really a luxury) and were getting to know all the restaurants around Tucson. We both loved the variety there was, living where we lived: steaks, lots of Mexican, as well as Thai, Italian and sushi. Not that we were picky anyway—basically, if someone else cooked it, we loved it.

All in all, we didn’t think we had enough spare time to get involved
in such a major undertaking as rearing a show dog. We didn’t think we were set for breeding either, in the end.
Though George was clearly an amazingly good specimen of Great Dane—that coat of his really did make him special and rare—we didn’t see him as a stud. Had we gotten ourselves a bitch, perhaps it would have been the right thing to have a litter, but as things stood, we didn’t see any great
purpose—he was bought as a family pet and that was what he was. Evolution could probably manage just fine, we decided, without his genes being dropped in the pool.

Despite that, it was with a heavy heart that I took George along to Doc Wallace’s surgical unit on a blisteringly hot day in late September. It is no small thing to put an animal under anesthetic, certainly, but I hadn’t been prepared
for my feelings of anxiety about leaving him there that morning.

With both procedures to be performed, I knew he’d be under for a couple of hours and I also knew Christie wouldn’t relax for a second till he was safely conscious once more. It was a weekday, of course, so we were both hard at work, though our minds and hearts were anything but.

I got my first text from Christie around eleven:

Hi hon. You heard anything yet?

Nope, I haven’t,
I texted back.
It’s too early.

You think? Text me soon as you do, okay?

You too.

What, text you? You think they’ll call me, then? You gave them your number didn’t you?

I think I gave them both.

But I have to switch my phone off in a minute. I have a meeting.

So they’ll call me. And I’ll text you. Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.

But shouldn’t
he be out by now???:-s

Not sure. You want me to call them to see?

I think… no, it’s okay. They’ll call us when he’s out, won’t they?

They’ll call us. Stop WORRYING. He’ll be fine.

I do know that. It’s just—what if he’s not fine?

He’ll be fine.

You really think so?

YES. You want me to call them?

No. I’m being stupid, aren’t I?

No, you’re not. You’re just being a mom, honey. Stop worrying.

I am trying… :-s

You sure you don’t want me to call them?

No. It’s okay. xx

Exactly!

… and so on.

We were texting again at 11:30, and then at 11:45, and then at 12:00… The big thing, I decided—what really blew me away—was how agitated I was about the whole thing myself. I felt guilty, obviously—it was me, a fellow male, who was responsible for removing his manhood, after all—but I was also
stressed by the thought that something might go wrong, no matter how much I tried to reassure Christie that it wouldn’t. And it wasn’t just because I knew she’d be inconsolable, either.

It had been less than a year since we picked up our puppy, far less time since I’d cursed him under my breath (and out loud) for all the inconvenience and hassle he’d brought into my
life. It had been even less
time—a few hours—since I’d picked up his poops and muttered to myself about having to do such an unpleasant job every day. Yet, as I worked (I was ripping out some old cabinets that day—good, solid, take-your-mind-off-stuff toil), I had my ears on full alert for the sound of my phone and the call from the clinic with the news that it was over, and all was well—Georgie was okay.

The call came
in a little after noon, and when I phoned Christie, which I did immediately, I could hear the relief in her voice too. George was supposed to stay overnight at the clinic, so they could keep an eye on him, but neither Christie nor I could imagine us not being with him that night. We wanted him home safe with us. It wasn’t what normally happened, they told us, but as long as we were sure we could keep
a close eye on him, they agreed that we could come pick him up.

We met back at home, then set off together in the truck, and arrived around seven in the evening. We were so glad to see him, looking sleepy but well.

It was one hell of a thing to get him up into the truck, though. I couldn’t help but wince when I thought about the location of his stitches, and how they must really, really hurt,
especially when we hefted him up into his bed on the backseats, and he whimpered in obvious pain. But soon we were home and, though he was moving very slowly, we could see he still had a spark of the old George in his eyes.

Getting onto our bed was obviously beyond him, even though I’m betting it was the place in the world he most wanted to be. You could almost see him standing there, weighing
the
options: should he risk attempting it or not? On the plus side, there’d be the comfort, but on the other, the pain—how much agony would he have to deal with to get up there? He hovered beside our bed for a moment, swaying slightly, looking tempted, but then lowered himself gingerly down onto his own bed.

He was up only once more—to totter outside into the yard to use the bathroom. In the
end, he spent the entire rest of the night on the bedroom carpet, not even attempting to climb back onto his bed. But he slept soundly, even if we didn’t.