A one-person dog, and that person was me

When I see it, all I register is the word “hospital” and the slender silhouettes of a dog and cat. Illuminated in the front yard of the building, the sign conveys competence, professionalism. At night with no one else around, it also promises a quiet goodbye.

I’m buzzed in with Curdie bundled in a towel in my arms. He is light. The lightest he’s ever been.

Even before all this, he was always a bit of a mess. To most, he was unlovable. But for 17 years, he got the best love I had and showed me that that was enough.

He wasn’t supposed to be mine. My mom wanted a lap dog. Curdie would be hers, a calm thing in a chaotic world with four kids and a crowded country house.

But that plan didn’t make it through the first day. I claimed Curdie, wrapped him up in a pink baby blanket and carried him everywhere. He slept with me that night. And because bichon frisés are affiliative creatures, he claimed me back.

Because of a pact whose depth I didn’t realize when we made it, I was the only person he pined for.

Not that he showed it. His affection was a limited natural resource. His scorn — renewable. At the vet’s office, he wasn’t so much scared as frustrated. Once, after a routine shot, the vet tried to tempt Curdie with a treat. He walked to the vet’s open hand, sniffed it and then turned around and walked away to face the corner — treat untouched.

After graduate school, I was able to claim him again. We lived for a year in a sterile Minneapolis apartment. It was a lonely time. I’d ride the bus across the river each day to an unglamorous job, cry about a bad breakup at night. But when I got home each evening, Curdie would be waiting behind the door. We’d run up and down the carpeted hallways. Up and down. Up and down. It was the happiest part of that year.

He came with me for two more moves, just outside Washing-

Cton, D.C., and then finally into the city where I planned to start my adult life at last. But it didn’t take. I moved again. This time to Houston. I found a bungalow and we started over. His beds, his stroller, his diapers and special foods filled the house, making it home for us.

It was a hard move. Another relationship seemed to be crumbling at my touch. I was finally old enough to admit that I might just be difficult to love.

By Houston, Curdie was mostly blind and deaf, but he sensed me the moment I walked in the door. And I sensed him, always. People used to ask how I could sleep with him in the bed without rolling over on him, small as he was. But that was never really possible. There was never a time that part of my mind wasn’t wherever he was, constantly aware of him. As he got sicker and more dependent on me, the web only thickened. By the end, we lived together in a dense architecture of being.

He got harder to care for, but never harder to love.

His reliance on me made me feel capable and competent at the same time it broke my heart. Since the first boyfriend, I had always worried that about my own ability to be reached. But the love I had for Curdie — the way I sang to him every morning to wake him up, put the eye drops in his eyes and helped him stretch out his legs before putting on a fresh diaper — was easy and natural. It allayed, in small increments, these fears I had about myself.

The night I put him down, I knew it was coming. He’d stopped eating. He didn’t even show interest in the eggs I cooked for him, the sushi I bought, or the peanut butter I spread over his food because it had always been his favorite. He had given me everything he could. He was tired.

All those little moments of caring now had to add up to something bigger than anything I could’ve found within myself alone.

I called ahead. I drove him there, one hand on him the whole time. The staff was quiet and kind. I watched him take his last breath. When I walked out to the parking lot, I let out a cry at once completely alien and indistinguishable from my entire being. I didn’t realize the vet was still at the door, watching to make sure I made it to my car. I guess I did.

I don’t really need to explain that the house isn’t the same without Curdie, that I look at pictures of him and wake up in the dark thinking he might need me. For now, I feel like I don’t have anything more to give either. But I know at least that for 17 years, I loved him the best I could, and it was enough for him.

leah.binkovitz@chron.com