On My Last Day as a Dog Walker
"I can’t remember the last time I cried this hard in front of another person."
May 28, 2018
Boston, Massachusetts
I was 24 years old
After not getting my schedule as usual, I texted Ann* asking if I had any dog walks today. She said no. I was still dog sitting Kahlua and Cream so I was obviously already in the neighborhood. But I suppose it had more to do with owners being home for Memorial Day weekend and less with Ann trying to spoil me on my very last day. She did invite me to brunch but I turned it down. She’d already taken me (and Grace! and Molly!) out to dinner last week and I didn’t want to impose.
It was a rainy day. I’d cleaned Kahlua and Cream’s apartment and done all my laundry the day before so, this afternoon, all I had to do was sit with my thoughts. Was laying on their living room couch, listening to—wait for it—“Breathe Me” by Sia when—shockingly—I began to cry. Ann called right around then, asking if I planned on closing my bank account but really calling me to ask if I would at least join her for a coffee. I said yes.
We met up at Caffè Nero. Ann brought along Guillermo*, which was fine, probably for the best considering what was still to come, but I would have preferred just her and I. Ordered a mango smoothie. Guillermo started talking about how one of our owners was too codependent with her dog, and how “no man would want to date a woman who kickboxes.” Oy. Told Ann I’d swing by her apartment to drop off the Kahlua and Cream key a little later, once I grabbed all my things.
Took my time in Kahlua and Cream’s apartment, doing my usual final sweep to make sure I had everything. Turning off all the lights. Saying goodbye to the girls. Saying goodbye to my life as I’ve known it, these last two years. Locked the door behind me and went over to Ann’s.
She was outside with her own dogs, Argus and Bootsy. All was good at first, handing over my ring of keys and chatting for a bit. But then I thanked her, thanked her “for everything,” and I began to weep. I can’t remember the last time I cried this hard in front of another person. I really can’t. Not when I graduated, not when I said goodbye to Shannon. Nothing. But this was such a momentous goodbye. It felt so big, so consequential. I was able to compose myself after a bit, joking around a little before I kept walking straight and she turned right. And then, despite my many bags from this past week of dog sitting, I walked all the way through the South End to Copley.
Sobbing every step of the way, I was almost surprised at how upset I was, at how I couldn’t make myself stop crying, even if I tried. Thinking about how much this job had perfectly met me exactly where I was. Providing me with the chance to work on my own terms and step inside the lives of others and experience a wealth so (...currently…) foreign to me. Taking care of dogs who (...for the most part…) took care of me too. This has been my education. I recognized that tonight. More than what I’d learned or who I’d become at Emmanuel, these two years that followed—my time with Ann and my time with the dogs—just completely formed and informed me. So for that, and for things I maybe haven’t even realized yet, I cried.
*Names have been (kind of) changed.
June 8, 2022
Brooklyn, New York
I am 28 years old
I recently had a friend from Boston who now lives in London forward me a post from some girl she knows in Brooklyn pursuing—what else—a dog sitter. Albeit a touch more transnational than I’m used to, this isn’t unusual. I only have a couple New York dogs these days, what with 24 precious hours of my week hogged up by a part-time job, but all of them are friends of friends’ dogs. My canine reputation affording me not only the occasional walk with Dixie or weekend stay with Maya but for just about anyone in my life to inform me whenever and wherever a dog needs taking care of. Ethan, an old coworker, par another exemple, texted me about a friend moving to Los Angeles who needed someone “patient” and “gentle-spirited” to take over their dog sitting gig. With cheery eagerness, I told Ethan to pass along my number. And with sage boundaries, I said I’m selective with dogs, that not all owners like that I have another job to go to. Minutes later, Ethan sent me a screenshot of his exchange with this member of my tribe, this peer, a comrade who said, “If he’s picky about people and dogs, it’s probably not going to be a great fit.” With dignity, with restraint, I responded, “Comical! The plight of being a dog walker AND a realist. My cross to bear. Who is this asshole?”
This friend of Ethan’s doesn’t know me at all but I read his text and, of course, I took it personally. Feeling suddenly like a Mormon at a punk show, like a Boomer in Eckhaus Latta. Like what I’d done and who I thought I’d been for so long was being questioned, and maybe even rightfully, by someone who’s down in the pet care trenches a lot more often than I am. Flashing right back to my time with Ann, those otherwise halcyon days when I was devoting 24 precious hours of my week to the dogs of Boston’s South End only for my friendly hellos to fellow walkers to go universally unreciprocated. The kind of people inclined to work with animals, outdoors and alone, perhaps not the most exceptionally social—but still! Either instance more than enough for me to feel like a phony. Like my true, writerly motives of peering into people’s lives were being clocked by walkers a lot more altruistic about passing through the homes of strangers. And though I’m a half-decade removed from my day-to-day with Ann—with the job I sincerely, and a little unexpectedly, grieved—all that passing time, and the self-mythology it affords, only seems to make my grasp on that old identity all the more tenuous and all the more crucial. Because who am I, really, if I’m not a dog walker?
Granted it hasn’t happened in a while, a mitzvah likely chalked up to three-quarters of my face being regularly masked to the public, but I’ve often been told I look older than I am. Sharing my age with some new stranger only for them to cackle, finding it so very hysterical that my 39-year-old self remains so committed to his shtick. After a childhood spent chasing maturity wherever I could find it, it’s my rightful comeuppance. That said: I hate it. And yet whenever I’m talking about walking dogs in Boston, something I only did for two years, I find myself saying, “Oh, I was a dog walker for a very long time.” Because it’s an impulse that feels so good to satisfy, this harbored hope that, after enough dazzling turns of phrase directed at whoever’s listening, I can reveal my humble little truth and know that they’re surely, certainly, inevitably thinking to themselves, “No…really?” An underestimation—willful and, yes, writerly—I was conscious of then, and still reaping the benefits of now. Because pitching editors and writing essays and getting a move on with my own life, that would take work. But being an undiscovered talent, some untapped genius pounding the pavement, toiling away just meekly enough to inherit the earth, all that ever took was a dog.
I’ve written a screenplay about a Boston dog walker. I understand it’s something of a “no no” to publicly declare that kind of thing, what with the money that’s usually on the line and the professional representation who’d otherwise prefer keeping mum. Having neither of those things, all I have to lose here is some face. Either that or the good juju of keeping such a pie in the sky project close to the chest until it actually becomes something, if ever it becomes something. I’ve been writing, and rewriting, and rewriting it again for the last year, for the last 14 months. And, admittedly, I still haven’t made perfect sense of it. For a story I’ve considered ever since I was living it, I’m still struggling to figure out who exactly Brian was, before and while and after he walked these dogs. Struggling with a character’s capacity for change when act three still looks a lot like page one. If that time in my life was indeed some grand education—as I understand it, as I believe it to be—well, then here are my characters and dialogue and subplots to serve as the lessons learned. Conveying, with cleverness and subtlety, with warmth, and maybe even a little marketability, all I’d been taught. And yet. So until I completely understand Brian, and can realize his ending, thank God I still have a couple dogs left to walk.