Pablo, our gentle giant. Photo courtesy: Ayoung Kim

This is a collection of stories

I sent to family members in the year before our beloved golden retriever Pablo’s passing. I never intended to publicize any of these. However, Pablo’s light shouldn’t be kept within the confines of our family. These stories bear witness to the greatness of his being, and to the hapless humans coping unceremoniously with the inevitable. Pablo himself remained dignified, and as his strength weakened, his energies focused intensely inward.  The year before his passing, he crawled under the Christmas tree and fell asleep on top of the presents. To remind us of the gift he was and will always be.

Every time I hear classical music, I think of Pablo.

Now I’m going to cry. Damn. Pablo was one of the most enlightened beings I ever met. He also happened to be an 85lb gorgeous golden retriever. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2 in C minor, Albinoni’s Adagio—that dog had a musical palate of renaissance prodigy. When I learned to play Moonlight Sonata, he would break away from wherever he’d been in the house, promptly plop down behind the piano bench and howl. Wail. Weep. Such was his ability to feel so deeply, to be moved so deeply. We both cried tears as my fingers trembled along the keys, swooning to Beethoven’s melancholy masterpiece. We hushed at the pianissimo, we surged during the accelerando, and surrendered to the fortissimo. Maestro! Maestro! Emotionally spent, my dog would collapse onto his side like a corpse. That’s Pablo.

Like Beethoven, Pablo became deaf in his older years, yet it acted to embolden his powers. He became more than a dog; he became a force. He transcended the mundane.

It was beautiful to live

when you lived!

—Pablo Neruda, Finale

Pablo is named after Pablo Neruda,

the Chilean poet, and an artist he was. A monk he was. The largest of his litter, he was chosen last, and we considered him the biggest gift of our lives. Our gentle giant. He evoked an urge in strangers to not just pet, pat and smile at him, but to clutch him as if he were the Golden Child. One time we had leashed him to a parking meter while we stepped into a store. Upon coming out, we found a middle-aged woman stretched out on the pavement, nearly on top of Pablo, as if performing a full body prostration. 

Often it seemed as if Pablo operated in the timeless; how at the dog-run surrounded by dogs and humans, he would elect to sniff one blade of grass. Such attention. No amount of impatient calling would hurry him. When I yanked him away, I had the feeling I had ripped him from a subtle world.

While Pablo maintained refined tastes, he also exhibited downright fierce obsessions.

It started with Barney, the purple dinosaur. We were visiting my mother. At the time, she lived in a spacious bungalow with a large backyard rimmed with rose bushes and an oak tree. We let Pablo and Liko (the younger golden retriever) out to chase squirrels and roll in the cool, damp grass. At some point, I noticed Pablo gnawing on a flaming pink object in the middle of the lawn. I moved to investigate more closely. It was a stuffed pink flamingo. Pablo was not gnawing on it as much as he was “mouthing” it. He did indeed have his opened mouth on the flamingo, his tongue spilling over the toy, his eyes shut tight. He didn’t even bother to look at me.

As he seemed content, I let him be. A moment later, I noticed Pablo mouthing a different stuffed toy—a brown bear. The pink flamingo, now slimy with saliva, lay next to him. I started to pay attention: Pablo would spend some time mouthing a stuffed toy, then stand up and walk to the side of the house. I followed him. There was a large black garbage bag that had not been tied up properly. Inside were at least two dozen stuffed toys my mother had intended to donate. 

Pablo stuck his nose inside the bag, and proceeded to pluck out another toy. Back to the backyard to lie down on the grass. He would grip his paws around the toy, open his mouth, and fall upon it. From this point onward, he seemed to enter a meditative trance. With his eyes closed, he would hold this pose, twitching rhythmically, in union with the God of Stuffed Toys.

By the time we left our mother’s house, Pablo was surrounded by every toy that had been in the garbage bag. So much for being able to donate them—they were crusty from his saliva. He was now mouthing Barney the purple dinosaur. 

I called him, “Pablo!” No answer. “Pablo!” No answer. “Pablo, come here!” No answer. I reached down to take the toy from him. He would not surrender it, instead reluctantly standing up with Barney in his prayer-portal-mouth. He pranced proudly with his new toy out the front door, hopped up into the truck, and lay down in the back to commune with Barney the whole way home. 

Pablo taught me a lesson

in what I had deemed his “childish obsession.” He taught me the definition of unconditional love. When he had loved one of his stuffed animals literally to pieces, I would toss a monkey arm into the bin. Pablo would hover over the bin, whining incessantly until I retrieved said limb. With maternal relief, he galloped with the monkey part and secured it safely onto his doggie bed.

When a lion’s tail became detached, it didn’t mean Pablo became unattached. He did not see any defect; he adored the lion-sans-tail as much as he adored the tail-à-la-solo. He refused to let me trash any ear, eye, leg, or foot. They were no less worthy of love because of their condition. He lay down, surrounded by his stuffed toys and toy bits, appearing as if a bomb had gone off on his doggie bed. Pablo nursed each one with loving care, he the Mother Teresa of Broken Stuffed Animals. Bring me your weary and down-trodden!

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

—Mother Teresa.

That’s Pablo.