The whole process whereby we got Clarence remains a little unclear to me. We had had three dogs for a while, and Duke died. Jim got in touch with a group that did mastiff rescue, and then had his heart stolen by Louis, so we had three dogs. And then the mastiff rescue people got in touch with us. They had a four-year old mastiff. And so we ended up with four dogs.
So, we took the pack—Ella, Louis, Marquis—up to a neutral place where they could all meet (basically a barn). And they all wandered around and sniffed each other and things, and Clarence came up and put his head in my lap, and, well, that was that. We would later find out this was odd—Clarence didn’t like strange dogs, and really didn’t want to be approached by them. He wasn’t always okay with strangers. But he was fine with this pack, and he was fine with us.
Having passed the adoption test (they have to be careful about people who are getting dogs because of dog fighting), Jim and I went up and got him.
Louis was dubious about Clarence, but Louis was pretty much dubious about everyone (and kind of the fun police). And Louis ended up getting along fine with Clarence, basically because Ella was actually in charge of the pack.
When we adopt a new dog, we set up a bed on the floor in some room in such a way that I and the pack are all sleeping together. For Clarence, we set that up in the living room, but it happened to be a night with a major thunderstorm, something that always agitates dogs. And that’s when I discovered that Clarence’s previous owner had, for reasons that remain obscure to me, decided it would be a great idea to teach a 160 lb. dog to jump on people and nom their arms. So, I found myself with a 160 lb. (or maybe 170 since he’s thinner now than he was then, and we’re pretty sure he’s now around 165) dog who was leaping around, especially leaping on me, and trying to hold my arm in his mouth.
I threw the other dogs out of the room and was, for the first time in my life, edging on intimidated by one of my dogs. But it was so clearly high spirits, and—and this continued to be the case—although he was grabbing my arm in his massive mouth and holding it tight, I didn’t feel any teeth. I still don’t know how he did that. He spent the first night across the room from me. The next night he was closer. The third night he was spooning with me.
The storm passed, in both senses.
I’m calling him Clarence, but we hadn’t decided on his name. We were considering various big guys, such as Charlie Mingus, but also guys with wrinkled faces, like Willie Nelson or Levon Helm. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown was a small, wiry guy, so no resemblance, but Clarence felt like a Clarence (and I do love me some Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown). Also, Brown had, as far as I know, a good and long life, and we wished that for him. He came to us with the clear signs of having been fed the wrong food for four years, but no real signs of abuse (except for, in the backyard, a male carrying something).
He was a momma’s boy from the beginning. We discovered that it was cheaper to buy twin mattresses (he required two, on top of each other) than dog beds. We discovered that he got cold at night, so we took to putting a blanket over him when he went to bed. He often created a doggy burrito. It was hilarious.
We discovered that he got lonely at around 5 am, and wanted me to roll off my bed onto his. If he had a bad dream in the night, he would insist that I move over and give him room to get in bed with us. We have a ritual of waking up and cuddling with all the dogs and whatever cats choose to show up first thing in the morning. Clarence would wake us up, and then pretend to be asleep. He would, and I’m not kidding, fake snore.
We often joked, or perhaps it wasn’t entirely a joke, that he would wait till we were asleep, and then unzip his dog suit and emerge as a really empathic and mildly neurotic human.
He loved walks. He hated strange dogs approaching him. He loved stuffed animals, and would cuddle with them. He was intimidated by the cats. If a cat lay on his bed, he would come and get one of us and look sad. Or just lie on the floor and hope the cat would move. He would, if they wanted, let them boop him, but he was always at least a little worried that they would kick his ass.
In other words, he was intimidated by a being that weighed .06 of him. Our cats weigh less than his head. He could have eaten either of our cats in one gulp. But, instead, he was sad and hoped he could get his bed back.
The whole “no strange dogs” thing was fraught. It’s really common for dogs who are totally comfortable with other dogs off-leash to get freaky on-leash. The problem is: if you have a dog who weighs 165 lbs, who can swallow some dogs whole, you can’t risk that he’s got an on- or off-leash distinction. So, after someone lost control of their dog, and it charged Clarence, and he alpha rolled it, Clarence (and Jim and I) spent a day every week with a really good dog trainer, who got him to be okay with other dogs. As long as I wasn’t holding the leash.
As I said, Clarence was a momma’s boy. So, for years, I was the one who held his leash. And, when we saw a strange dog, I got nervous because I was afraid that Clarence would get agitated, and then Clarence sensed my agitation, and he thought he needed to protect me. It was a nasty spiral of anxiety about the anxiety of each other. The solution was for Jim to hold the leash, but still, when things got twitchy, Clarence attached himself to me. So, for Clarence’s sake, I had to learn to manage my anxiety more effectively than the method on which I’d relied for 40+ years–pretending I wasn’t anxious. He needed me to recognize when I was anxious, even when I “thought” I wasn’t. I did that for Clarence, but it turns out that it applied in all sorts of other areas. Clarence demanded that I learn something about myself. Clarence made me a better person.
Clarence did that with Pearl too. She came to us a dog who didn’t like to eat, who didn’t like people, but who loved Clarence. And Pearl, on walks, checked in with Clarence (and Jim—she’s a daddy’s girl) in order to be a little bit more brave. And she is. Because of him.
Clarence tolerated Louis, but he loved Ella and Pearl. He was the gruff older brother who was sweetly grumpy about their getting up in his face. On walks, when Pearl was upset (by airsocks, people with yellow vests, really scary leaves, that asshole Labradoodle) she checked in with him, and he had this move that always gave me a catch in my throat. It was a kind of shoulder bump, and it calmed her down. We all need that shoulder bump. I miss that shoulder bump.
Clarence loved rolling in the grass, and his method made me laugh every time. His roll started from his nose. He rolled in various places along busy streets, and it was fun to watch drivers laugh. He had a few favorite spots—we really don’t know why. Sometimes he wouldn’t roll on a favorite spot, and we never figured out the criteria.
Clarence’s previous owner probably paid a lot of money for him (since he appeared to be a purebred bull mastiff, and they’re pricey) and then fed him the wrong food (as is clear from his paws), taught him to jump on people, nom arms, mistrust males holding things while in the yard, and yet gave him enough love that he came into our home expecting to be loved. So they did something very important very right.
Mastiffs have a lifespan of 8-10 years. Given that he had clear signs of having been fed the wrong food, we figured he’d be on the short side. About a month after we got him, I gave him a corncob (something we used to do—the dogs nom on it for a while, and then cheerfully lose interest). He swallowed it whole. It was an obstruction. We ended up at the emergency vet. They stapled down his stomach (thereby preventing bloat—what kills a lot of big dogs), so I’ll admit I had hopes that he might live longer. But last summer was hot and long.
We used to walk the dogs for two miles every day. And Clarence had three places that he stopped to roll. Near the coffee place, where he got a treat, in front of an auto repair place (where people driving by would laugh), and on a particular lawn (sometimes two). In summer, Jim would wear a pack that had water and water bowls, and we’d stop halfway through and give them water. But, even so, Clarence was panting way too much (we all were—it was a long summer), so we took to taking a one-mile walk with him—up to the coffee place, where he got a treat—and then back home where we dropped him off, and then took the girls for another mile. He was always thrilled, to his last day, to go on a walk, but also quite happy to be dropped off.
He was stoical. In the four years we had him, he never yelped. He once flinched (this last week, when I touched a sensitive spot). But, he stopped eating, and seemed to be holding himself as though he was in pain, and so we took him to the vet, discovered he had cancer that had metastasized, and we were in the realm of palliative care. So we were. And we got lots of great advice from friends who had been through the same thing, some very recently, even the same time (take lots of photos and videos, offer scrambled eggs, indulge). We gave him lots of pain meds, and were getting up twice during the night in order to ensure he was always medicated. And then it was time. Pearl and Ella saw him after he died, but we put them away while they took his body away, and I watched them track the path of his body.
And so, here we are, without him, but blessed and better because of him.