Coppi Dog died yesterday, and I buried her in the backyard. She was a good dog, nearly perfect. She was incredibly stoic and tolerant–suffering silently through kids, kittens/cats, poor sight due to glaucoma and near deafness in her later years, occasionally being stepped on (a hazard from staying constantly underfoot), shots at the vet, and lots more. She didn’t shed, she was housebroken when we got her, she rarely barked and never bit. My mother-in-law once claimed she wasn’t a dog, she was an animated stuffed animal. She was also a pretty dog with a cheerful, eager-to-please face.
We thought she might die soon after we got her, 14 years ago. We had gone to several animal shelters looking for a dog, and Debbie saw this sandy-colored, Benji-looking dog at the Durham Animal Shelter that reminded her of a dog Debbie had growing up. When we went into the visitation room with the dog, there were no chairs, and Debbie squatted down with her back against the wall. The dog came over and crawled up onto the top of Debbie’s legs, and the deal was sealed. It was 1994 then, and our vet estimated her age as 2-3 years, though her teeth were in such bad shape that the vet that spayed her thought she was 10.
When we brought her home, it was obvious that 1) she had been someone’s pet because she was housebroken, and 2) she had also been a stray for a while because her coat was completely matted and she was constantly scavenging for food on her for walks. She got sick very soon after we got her, and the vets first thought it was a fatal disease. They cleaned up her face, but she stayed matted for a few weeks because they didn’t want to shave her while she was sick. Ultimately, she got better and we later found out she had a new strain of kennel cough. Even then, the vet couldn’t groom her except to shave her down and wash her, which they did. We had dropped off a sandy, shaggy dog that looked to be 30 lbs, and we got back this skinny little rat-dog who was 18 lbs and nearly pink with short, snow-white hair. We later found a groomer that did Bichon Frises, and it was then obvious that Coppi was a Bichon-Poodle mix: Her face and beautiful white coat were Bichon, but she was a few inches taller due to longer legs.
We took her nearly everywhere we went–parks, most vacations, etc. She saw a pre-cancer Lance Armstrong win the Tour DuPont in 1995. Well, she was at the final two stages of that race: I’m not sure she was actually watching the finish. I decided around that time that dog heaven was to be the dog of a childless couple. There’s a lot of extra love and money for a dog in that situation. Coppi was pretty spoiled by us but kept her loyal, obedient disposition. At first she did not bark at all. We particularly like to go on hikes around the Eno River in northern Durham/Orange counties. On one of these hikes about two months after we got her, we passed another dog and heard a bark near us. Debbie and I both looked around for the source and finally realized it must have been Coppi. The thought “Oh yeah, she’s a dog, and she may bark” initially escaped us.
After that first outburst, she started to find her voice again, but only at the sound of knocking or a doorbell. It was from this doorbell-triggered barking that we discovered that “The Simpsons” had the most doorbell rings per half-hour of any television show or movies we watched.
When we got her, I wanted to give her a bicycling-themed name. Greg Lemond was our hero then, but neither ‘Greg’ nor ‘Lemond’ made a good name for a female dog. I had once read an article in Cyclist magazine about a dog named “Fausto,” which led me to the name Coppi. Fausto Coppi won the Tour de France in 1949 and 1952, and won the Giro d’Italia five times between 1940 and 1953. I also fancied myself a climber–which at 5’6″ and 120 lbs (then) I had the build for, if not the lungs–and the Cima Coppi is the prize awarded to the first rider who reaches the Giro’s highest summit. Being in the South, where more names is a sign of affection, “Coppi” gradually became “Coppi Dog.” The double name was never planned, but perhaps a reflection of being glad to be back in the South during my 3-year exile in Boston while retrieving my wife.
Had we kept Coppi a little longer before naming her, she would have been called Twizzler. She was not too pushy about food, and did not beg at the table, but she did always get excited whenever we ate Twizzlers licorice–usually the red ones. Admittedly, we indulged this tendency by twisting off the end of a strand we were eating and tossing it to her. In her younger days, she often caught it in the air. She would also catch popcorn, though she was never as excited about it or other food as she was about Twizzlers. When she had to take medicine, slipping a small pill into a hollow piece of Twizzler would do the trick. As pills became bigger and more frequent in her later years, we switched to folding them in slices of American cheese.
Sometimes she would get unusually excited and wound up–often after a bath, but other times more spontaneously–and dash down the hallway of our apartment, turn around in the bedroom, dash back up the hall, circle the coffee table in the den, and dash back down the hall. If she was really excited, she would repeat this 3-4 times or more. Coppi did not show much interest in chasing balls or sticks, but chasing a thrown tennis ball or toy during these frenzies caught her interest. When we moved to a house in 1995, the dashes became around the circle of rooms on the ground floor. When we moved again in 2001 to a ranch house, there was an occasional dash up and down the hallway, but it was infrequent and just one dash when it occurred. Our kids then were ages 4 and 1, and it was regrettable that they never saw the playful, younger Coppi.
She was friendly, though. She also was such a pack animal that she would very deliberately insert herself into photos.
When the doorbell rang, she would run to the door, then bark and jump repeatedly about 2-3 feet vertically in front of the door. Once when another couple came to visit they heard the barking and pictured a ferocious guard dog. When we opened the door, they came in, and she immediately rolled over onto her back so they could scratch her tummy. I can also recall coming home to my parents’ house where Coppi was waiting in the kitchen. The door leading from the entry way into the kitchen had window panes on the top half, and three steps leading up to the door. Standing on the floor of the entry way, we could see this little white head bobbing up into the window every few seconds until we opened the door.
Our house in Durham had a window in the living room that looked out into the front yard by the driveway. It was just low enough that Coppi could sit up with her chin on the windowsill. Seeing her white face peering out the window as we pulled up the driveway and got out of the car was always a welcome sight.
One of my strongest images of Coppi Dog, preserved and reinforced by videotape, was when we brought our newborn daughter, Katie Rose, home from the hospital. It was early March, and the small dogwood tree between the driveway and the house, and in front of the window where Coppi waited with her chin on the windowsill, was still bare of leaves and buds. I had tied irridescent white and pink ribbons its limbs, which caused Debbie to cry at the welcome. We got in the house, bringing Katie Rose in her car seat carrier, and I put her down on the floor. With the videotape rolling, Debbie got down on the floor beside the carrier and Coppi got on the other side of Debbie and got a pat. Katie Rose then cooed, which caused Coppi to glance, start to look away, then turn her head back sharply to look at Katie Rose. It was the only time I’ve seen a dog do a double take, and humorously captured the poignant realization that Coppi was no longer the center of our world.
Also on videotape, a 6-month-old Katie Rose is sitting in a bouncy seat in the doorway, looking at Coppi, and laughing hysterically. The way Katie Rose is laughing, you would think Coppi is dressed as a clown and performing tricks, but Coppi is just lying quietly under the kitchen table.
Debbie and I would also laugh heartily at a sleeping Coppi Dog on occasion. Sometimes Coppi slept on her side, and her ear would stick straight up, and the little pink ear sticking up looked funny. She also slept on her back sometimes, or would roll over onto her back for us to pat her tummy. In either case, sometimes her left front paw would stick up, and the “Heil Hitler” look it evoked contrasted strongly with her easy-going character. When she would fall asleep on her back, Debbie or I would laughingly joke, “The dog’s dead.”
She had been having back problems the last year or so, though, and sleeping on her back or rolling over was a thing of the past. For the last couple years she has been nearly blind and deaf. Consequently, she was constantly underfoot since she wanted to stay with us all the time. She was also slow to move when we did, and we tripped over or stepped on her a lot lately. Since Christmas, she had been having neurological symptoms such as being sometimes unable to move or go left, leaving her walking around in circles for brief periods, or once walking all around the edge of a room pushing against whatever was on her right until we realized she was headed for the door and picked her up. Her back legs were also not working very well when she would have these episodes, and sometimes had trouble walking, particularly on slippery hardwood or linoleum floors. Finally, after a day in which she didn’t seem to move or show any improvement, we took her to the vet, who recommended she be put down. I held her as first she went to sleep with a sedative, then became limp from another shot. She died quietly and easily, like the dog she was.