This photo graces the cover of Bruce Jackson’s new book of essays, Ephemera 1995-2022. Don’t be fooled by the self-diminishing title. Jackson’s dog earned her paper monument…
Emily Rose
Meeting
The first time I encountered Emily Rose was at the Buffalo Animal Shelter, where she was trying to claw her way out of a cage with a concrete floor. She was then about 50 pounds and six months old. Her paws were bloody from the digging, but that seemed to bother her not at all. The whole time we were there she dug, and bled. She wanted out of jail.
Across the aisle was a dog who seemed mostly German Shepherd, who sat very neatly, wagged his tail and seemed to be saying, “Take me, I’ll be good.”
Emily Rose was, the animal shelter person told us, a castaway from someone at the Seneca reservation near town. She kept running off and was too much trouble for her owner to bother with. Henry, the mostly-German Shepherd, she said, was a stray found in the streets of Buffalo. They thought he was about three years old. “That one,” he said pointing at Emily, “will get bigger.” That day, Emily came up to Henry’s shoulder. She would eventually tower over him and top out at 110 pounds.
We took them both. Henry (no one knew what his previous name had been; Henry is the name our daughter Rachel gave him, in honor of the author of Walden) and Emily Rose.
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Henry and Emily
Henry was to be Rachel’s dog and Emily ours. Rachel was then living in the apartment above our garage. She bought all kinds of things for Henry: bowl, pillow, dish, toys. But all Henry would do was go to the bottom of the stairs and moan. When she opened her door, he rushed to our house, very close by, and scratched at the door. It turned out the only thing Henry wanted in life was to be near Emily. They had never known one another before the animal shelter but he had fallen desperately in love with her there, in his cell, across the aisle from hers. Rachel wanted a dog and we didn’t want two dogs, but we couldn’t beat true love. So Diane and I found ourselves with two dogs and Rachel found herself with none.
For the next thirteen years, Emily dominated Henry, and Henry, without reservation, adored Emily, his former across-the-aisle jailmate. We would give them both dried chicken breast treats; she would eat hers, and then go take his out of his mouth. It always seemed as if he were waiting for that. When we split a can of tuna between them, he’d always leave a little in his bowl, a tithe for her. She’d eat most of hers, go lap up the tithe, then go back and finish hers. Henry never once attempted to have at what was uneaten in Emily’s bowl.
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Runners
When they were young and she sometimes took off, he would get frenetic. Henry couldn’t stand not knowing where she was. If he were outside when she took off, he would follow her for miles. We’d get calls from people a town or two away saying, “We’ve got two big dogs here and both their tags have your phone number.” If we went for walks with them on leashes, he was happy to be in front leading the way. But if she got in front and turned a corner where he couldn’t see her, or jumped up on a neighbor’s raised lawn, he’d go quite mad. He always had to know where she was.
Emily liked to run and, for the first year or so she was here, she continued what she’d been trying to do in the animal shelter: dig her way out of our fenced-in back yard. A few times she succeeded, so we lined the entire fence with railroad ties.
One evening when she spotted a rabbit in the adjoining yard, she took after it at a dead run and cleared the fence by a good six inches. We were at the edge of real trouble then, but she never did it again: the chase happened so fast she did it on instinct and didn’t absorb the fact that the four-foot fence was no obstacle. Emily was a really smart dog and I haven’t a doubt that if it had happened a second time she would have recognized it as an option, but happily it didn’t happen a second time and she stopped sailing over the fence. There is something very impressive about seeing a 110-pound dog sailing over a four-foot fence, so I always had mixed feelings about that. I wanted to see her do it again, but I knew that if we did see it, we were in real trouble. She learned how to do things very quickly.
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Dead squirrels
She liked to bring me presents. Once I came out of the shower on the second floor of our house, opened the bathroom door, and found a dead squirrel, perfectly aligned with the doorway, its tail straight out behind it. Emily had not only caught and killed it, but carried it upstairs and arranged it. Several times she did the same thing on the back step of the dining room, placing the kill right there, off the yard. If the animal was a rabbit, we usually only got part of the catch. She never ate the squirrels, but the rabbits were another matter entirely. They were to be shared. Not always. I know she got some rabbits, took them behind the garage, and didn’t share them at all.
She had a lovely sense of geometry. Sometimes we’d go out back and find her things—real and rubber bones, balls, a squirrel or rabbit, a nice stick or two—all neatly arranged in parallel rows. I don’t remember ever having had a dog so into geometry.
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Rabbits
She wasn’t much interested in barking. Usually the only things that would set her off were rabbits outside the living room or dining room window or small black dogs, which she loathed more than anything in God’s universe. Often, when she started barking at a rabbit through the glass the rabbit would freeze, as they tend to do when frightened. Emily would continue barking, the rabbit would continue not moving. Emily was very perseverant and rabbits are very stupid. She never got bored barking at the terror-frozen rabbits and the rabbits would never think of moving into the bushes that surround our house. Usually, Diane or I would have to go outside and scoot the rabbit into motion before Emily would stop carrying on.
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Mud
Once, during the Bush years, there was an anti-war rally in Delaware Park, at the corner of Parkside Avenue and the Scajacwada Expressway. It had been raining for days and the ground was slick. Perhaps 100 people were gathered there, holding candles in the dark rainy night. Emily spotted a small black dog the far side of the group and went after it. Usually, I could hold her without much difficulty, but my shoes could get no traction in the mud and slick grass, so she hydroplaned me about thirty feet before I managed to dig in and stop her. I was able to stop her only because Diane caught up and grabbed the leash or my belt and also dug in. Someone said, in a very flat but widely audible and patronizing voice, “That is not the kind of dog to bring to a peace rally.”
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Feet
When strangers came into the house she wagged her tail, went over to be petted and, if she liked their voice, lay on the floor under their feet. That made some of our visitors nervous because they had no place to put their feet. We’d tell them it was okay, she didn’t mind having feet on her rib cage. Some believed us; some did not. Some people were comfortable having their feet on a dog almost their size; some never quite relaxed. Emily never directly vexed any of them.
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Work
Emily was my working dog, the only one I’ve ever had. We’ve always had dogs, but Emily used to come with me to creepy places when I was photographing and she’d check out the dark corners for villains. When I’d be shooting slow, using a tripod and concentrating totally on the shot, I didn’t worry because I knew if anything odd were going on she’d let me know about it in time. At least, that’s what I liked to think. I couldn’t have done a lot of the work I did in Buffalo’s grain elevators were it not for Emily. She knew the ground level of those places every bit as well as I did, and perhaps a lot better.
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Breeds
We never knew what breed of dog Emily Rose was. Everyone who knew about dogs who met her told us something else. We heard dozens of opinions, all of them different. Dog fanciers, vets, people we met in the park or the street or at the elevators, all of them had another configuration for her gene pool. All we know is, she was one of the great dogs.
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Dogshit in the car
A year or so ago two old friends were in town, Tom Rankin and Bill Ferris. Both are writers and photographers and folklorists and our paths have crossed for decades. At the time of that visit, Tom was Director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, and Bill was Joel Williamson Eminent Professor of History at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He’d previously been chairman of the National Institute for the Humanities. We’ve been friends for nearly 50 years.
When we were a few blocks from the Silo City group of grain elevators in which I was then working and to which I was taking them for a visit, Bill said, “Emily just shit all over me.”
At first, Tom and I took it as a joke. Then the aroma filled the car and we knew the joke was description. Bill said, “Pull in that gas station there.” I said, “There isn’t any gas station there,” and kept on driving. It turned out Bill was right, but the gas station was on the left side of the street at a traffic light and I’d never seen it because of a hockey game accident a few years earlier that still keeps me from turning my head very much. “There’s a gas station there,” Bill said. “We’ll be at the elevators soon,” I said. Tom laughed like a fiend.
A few minutes later we got to the elevators, we got Bill partially cleaned off, and we did a big walkaround. When we got back to the house, the three of us stood at the back of the car recounting the trip and laughing about it. Emily went off somewhere. And Diane said from the kitchen windows, “What’s with you guys?”
What I didn’t know then but realized later is, that was the beginning of the end for Emily, the first time she lost control.
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A pal, slipping away
For many years, she would come upstairs at night when Diane and I went to bed and would leap into the bed between us. It always amazed me how she did that: she’d leap from the floor and land in the small space between us but never upon us. At first, she’d have her head at our end of the bed, toward the pillows. Then after a while she would do a one-eighty and have her head at our feet. Then she’d leave the bed and spend the rest of the night on the cool marble in front of the fireplace in the room. It was like she’d twice established her community and authority, and now was going to sack out in comfort. Much later, in the early morning, she’d move alongside the bed, either on Diane’s side or mine. When we got up in the morning we’d always look to see if we were about to step on rug or on dog.
For most of the past year, she’d come up, but she wouldn’t leap up on the bed. Then she stopped coming up.
And then she went into her endgame. She slept most of the time, and for a while had a difficult time standing. We took her to the vet and got some pills and she could stand again. And then there came a time when she once again couldn’t get up. We again took her to the vet who said, “There might be a mass around her heart or lungs. Why don’t you leave her here for the weekend and we can take pictures to find out.”
“By ‘mass’ do you mean cancer?” we said
“Well,” she said, “yes.”
“If there is a mass, can you do anything for a dog that size who is thirteen years old?”
“Not really,” the vet said
“So why bother?” we said.
“That makes sense,” the vet said.
That was a Friday. We took her home and when we got here she went out back and wouldn’t come into the house. We brought her food, water and treats, all of which she pretty much ignored. She hadn’t eaten the previous two days either. Saturday was rainy and gloomy. Diane kept going out to check the blankets over her. When they got wet, she’d go out with another one. She did that through all of Saturday night.
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Sunday
On Sunday, every so often Emily would lift her head, but not for long, and then she put her head on the ground and didn’t raise it any more. She turned a few times. The last time, she turned toward the house. And then she was gone.
That evening, two friends came over and dug a grave under our big magnolia that miraculously survived the snowstorm a few years ago that killed a third of the trees in Buffalo and half of the trees around our house. And that is where Emily now resides.
Of all the six great dogs Diane and I have had since we’ve been in this house, every one of whom we’ve loved as they’ve loved us, Emily Rose is the only one we’ve wanted out there, outside the dining room windows, under the magnolia tree that survived the storm.
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Great dogs
Diane and I have had a lot of great dogs over the years. Most of our good friends are dog or cat people and know how close you can get. Writing this, and gathering images of Emily Rose, I’ve realized that what I love most in a dog is being able to say, “Let’s go,” and the dog, with unqualified enthusiasm and not a single question of purpose, would leap into the car and we would go. To wherever. As long as that window was down and you could put your head out and smell the air, life was just as it should be. What more could you ask? What more could you want?
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Originally published in Buffalo Spree, November 15, 2013.