Obituaries can't be for their subject (they're gone, and despite his name, Chompsky couldn't even read) so I guess that means they're for us. I'm trying to capture some sense of what this wonderful beast was like, trying to share both the best and worst parts of him so they can live on a little longer in all of us, and it's impossible. Can't be done! That's why we cry when people die instead of bustin' out their obits and saying "Look, it's just as good!"
That said, he was great, and I want to try.
He didn't have a name, and we were at least his third home.
On their website of adoptable dogs, Toronto Animal Services called him something like "Dog A315391". When we went in to meet him, they told us all they knew about him was that someone had come in wanting to surrender him earlier that month. Toronto Animal Services isn't the Humane Society and they don't do surrenders - they're more the "government agency you call to handle wild animals or dogs at large" people - but another member of the public was there looking for a dog, and the two of them made a deal for him right there in the parking lot.
It must not have worked out, because a week later Toronto Animal Services picked him up as a stray.
We took him home, and we named him Chompsky.
"Separation anxiety" is when a dog is afraid of being alone, and for a dog on his third family, in retrospect it wasn't surprising that Chompsky suffered greatly from it. He followed us from room to room, and he'd only stop crying that first night if I was touching him, so I slept on the floor, my hand on his paw until morning.
He didn't leave our sides for the next six weeks.
Jenn had to go to work during the day, but one of the perks of being a cartoonist was I could be with him 24/7 to help him work on his problem. Initially it was so bad that I'd have to give him a marrow bone - the highest-value treat I had - just to have a shower: he'd be done with it in three minutes, but if I was fast, I could be finished showering by then too.
After tons of exercises and practice, we got to the point where Chompsky was ready for his greatest test: being left alone for three hours. (Our trainer told us that anything three hours and up is just "a long time" for a dog, so if you can hit three, you're golden.) That first time we gave him a bone, but shortly afterwards we began giving him a meat stick instead: a special treat that he only got when we were going to be apart for a little while, our way of telling him it was fine to go snooze for a bit, because we were promising to return. In any case, we left, and when we came back three hours later, Chompsky got up from his mat sleepy-eyed, yawned and stretched, and came over to say hello. He'd never fully conquer his fear of being abandoned, but he'd learned to manage it.
In the end that touch of separation anxiety was a benefit: it meant he was never a dog who'd run away at the dog park - a whistle or calling his name was usually enough to get him to come bounding back. And on the occasions where he didn't want to leave, where he'd hold back, keeping us in eyesight but wanting to stay and play for as long as possible - I took it as a compliment, as proof of how far he'd come. Our little guy.
He was the belle of the ball at the dog park, because he was a dog who'd play with anyone, scaling his play down for little dogs a quarter of his size and up for larger dogs. He was just endlessly happy to be there every day, to run around and chase and herd and wrestle. His best friend at the park was Miles, and whenever they were both there at the same time, they would wrestle for so long that they'd both end up exhausted, lying beside each other, trying to invent new ways to wrestle while lying on their backs.
He loved people, and if you loved him back, it was just an endless loop of the two of you being excited to see each other. And he was obviously super subtle about his affection:
Here's the only trick Chompsky came with: sit.
Here's some of the tricks we taught Chompsky: stay, lie down, chill, stand up, dance, come, backup, leave it, release, drop it, pick it up, sit pretty, left, right, shake, high five, high ten, go pee, spin, play dead, roll over, fetch, touch, on your mat, bow, up top, crawl, find it, catch, in the car, go see Jenn, and go see Ryan.
Here's some of the tricks Chompsky taught himself:
the apparently-distinctive way I'd say "okay, let's go" before getting up to leave the house which was thus a secret harbinger of walks
how to go for walks in such a way that his photo ends up in The Guardian
how to be an alarm clock for overnight guests
how to befriend local ice fishers in order to steal their fish when they weren't looking
then he did it a second time, oh my god
after that we stopped letting him go off-leash around Ontario's overly-trusting fisherfolk
Like most dogs who spend time outdoors in Ontario, he had a few run-ins with skunks and porcupines. The skunk encounter only happened once (thankfully, since it meant we both had to sleep in the garage), but he got slapped by his spikey friends several times. The first few times it happened I thought "oh wow he really got lucky!" because it was only ever just his nose. Then I realized it was his shagginess that was keeping him safe! Quills couldn't get through all his that fur, so it was just his nose (and sometimes between his toes) where he could get hit. Anyway he never learned his lesson and enjoyed getting treats while we pulled them out, and also the porcupines never learned anything either. Nobody learned anything and everyone had a great time except for me and Jenn, the end
When we got him he loved to countersurf, getting up on those hind legs and see if there was anything he could grab from the counter. We did what we could to train it out of him with positive reinforcement, and that - along with keeping our counters clean - helped! He wouldn't do it when we were in the room, but if we were in someone else's house - and especially if we were out of the room in someone else's house - he could spot an opportunity and go for it. One time he pulled a whole Thanksgiving turkey off my parent's kitchen counter (he only got one chomp mark in the leg before we stopped him and then ate it anyway, it was still good), another time he ate so many peanuts from a tin he stole off the counter that his poops the next day were, and it brings me no joy to say this, exactly like what you see in your mind's eye when I say the phrase "Snickers: Oops, All Peanuts", and once he ate an entire pound of butter which actually gave his coat a delightful sheen but we still didn't let him do it again.
Two weeks before he passed, I brought him to a dog park, hoping he'd poop. It was a few days before the vet would tell us he had a very aggressive melanoma in his bowels, which was blocking him up and causing him pain - at first we just thought he was constipated and were changing his diet to softer, wetter foods. On this visit to the park, he tried several times to poop without success, but even in all that, and as uncomfortable as he was, he still picked out a complete stranger and sat down beside her. She gave him some pets, he leaned into it, and within a minute she'd crouched down and the two of them were like this:
That was just who Chompsky was, making friends wherever he went.
(After his diagnosis, he would finally poop on my birthday, and that bowel movement - and the laxatives he was on to make his stool soft so he wouldn't get backed up again - gave us our last perfect week together, where he didn't have to suffer. In other words, yes, a week's worth of hot-off-the-presses dog poop was my favourite birthday present this year.)
Last week, we brought him to a cottage, and spent all our time together. We went on big hikes, he ran and played and got special food and his own steak dinner and breakfast and everything else he wanted. The vet was coming Wednesday at 2pm.
Wednesday morning was perfect. October can get cold, but it was an unseasonably warm day - perfect weather for Chompskys. We got up early, and walked out to the lake, where the sun was taking its time burning off the fog, and things were just were effortlessly spectacular. He fetched sticks in the lake and played tug with us on the shore, and then we all walked home.
We hung out and did what we could to keep it together ourselves so that Chompsky wouldn't worry about us. Time moved slowly and quickly and not at all.
He passed away outdoors, in the afternoon sun. While he was falling asleep, we petted him and told him he was a good dog, a good boy, and we gave him treats - including meat sticks. It was the treat he only ever got when we left him home alone, our way of telling him "we're going to be apart for a little while, Chompsky, but we promise it won't be forever."
A few minutes later, he was gone.
Noam Chompsky, 2010-2022.
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