Category: Max

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Goodbye, Old Paint

Max cheated Death so many times that when it finally came for him, I was unprepared.
In his element (water), as he would like to be remembered.
Max, my ancient, wheezy Jack Russell Terrier, finally passed away yesterday. Requiescat in pace, you old reprobate. I hate to admit it, but I’ll miss you.
Max was atrociously old—balding, bedsores, few working teeth, and unable to fully control either bladder or bowels. I said I would never be a nursemaid to a dog, but he was saved by his good humor. He’s not unhappy, we would tell ourselves, and we’d get out the mop and bucket and clean up after him again.
Max was the Great Houdini at escaping death. At nineteen, he was frail but not sick. I thought that he might outlive me. Or, since he frequently caused me to trip over him, we might die together. His very kind vet, Dr. Carissa A. Bielamowicz, told me that this is true of the breed. They tend to die of simple old age, not illness.
It wasn’t until his late teens that he started to act like a normal dog.

He was never a good dog. We ended up with him because he wouldn’t stay home. He would trot off to ginger up the neighbor’s dairy cows, or swim across the Erie Canal to chase cars on the state highway. “That dog’s going to get killed,” my mother said, and arranged for him to move to our house. We had him for more than sixteen years.

He was constitutionally unable to walk on a leash. People were just too slow and incurious for him. He was an inappropriate hunter. His victims included several cats and an African Grey Parrot. He could catch songbirds in mid-flight. And, of course, he chased cars whenever he could slip out. He was fractious with the mailman and with other dogs, but his worst ire was for a neighbor’s Jack Russell Terrier. He and Lucy snapped and feinted at each other whenever they met, which was often. “Just like they’re married,” we said.
In his killing days, when he still had teeth.
Like many small dogs, he was fearless. He loved to pester Canada Geese and gulls, swimming out and snapping at them, unaware that he wasn’t a water dog. Once he tried that with a Mute Swan. It didn’t go well, but he was undeterred.
His fearlessness made him a great plein air buddy. Many times I camped and painted with him as my only companion. He would have died defending me. His last painting trip with me was last fall. “Don’t fall in,” I kept telling him, as he tore up and down the rock cliff chasing the tide. “I’m not coming in after you.”
My studio will seem empty without his muddleheaded presence.
I’ve had dogs all my life, but he will be the last. There are fewer places where dogs and people can roam unfettered. Dogs are great instructors when they can snuffle and burrow and show you the world through their eyes. I’ve learned much about natural history from them. But leashed and fenced, they become a management issue.
Dog and boy, much younger then.
Max started failing again on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, he could no longer stand. His boy—my youngest child—sat with him for most of the day, quietly chattering with him. I took refuge in housework. “Cleanliness is next to dogginess,” I told Max. He was in too much pain to laugh.
As he relaxed into his final rest, I realized just how much effort he had been putting into merely surviving. But he was a dog, and dogs never complain.
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The Dog with Nine Lives

The Beggar of St. Paul, Carol L. Douglas, is a parable based on Watteau’s Pierrot, 1719. A younger Max was the model for the American dog who eats better than starving Africa.

While I was in the Bahamas my elderly Jack Russell terrier, Max, stopped eating and drinking. My husband, who professes to hate this dog, spent many hours tempting him with various delicacies. Nothing worked.
Jack Russell terriers are very long-lived. Our vet says the old man is nineteen. Since we got him second-hand, I can’t say for sure, but he’s slightly younger than our college-sophomore son.
In January, I thought for sure that Max was done for. I packed him up and took him to the vet to be put down. On the way, I stopped at the North End Shipyard, where I ran into Sarah Collins and Captain John Foss of the American Eagle. Neither had met Max before, but they came out to my car and said a kindly hello and goodbye to the old thing. When I got to the vet, they announced that Max’s wound had healed nicely, and he still had a few more miles to go.
That wasn’t the first time he’d fooled me. When he was a mere lad of 17, I took him in because he was having trouble breathing and was bloated in the midsection. I was sure he had a tumor. “He’s getting awfully fat,” the vet said. Oh, the indignities of middle age!
Max spends most of his working day in my studio.
But now he seems to be in renal failure. My goal is to let him slip away naturally, since he isn’t in pain and still seems to enjoy our company. To that end, I called the vet’s office to ask if they can help me when the time comes. Early March is no time to dig a hole here in the Northeast. They warned me that dying at home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Jack Russell terriers are ferocious little beasts. Max has killed an African Grey Parrot, two cats and innumerable songbirds, which he could pluck out of the air in his youth. I never left him with small children until after his teeth fell out.
That ferocity made him an exceptional guard dog. I am used to traveling alone to paint, and would often bring him with me. Compact, he would sleep in a tent with me or allow me to stash him in a van overnight while I couch-surfed. He would stand guard while I worked in isolated places. Nobody ever walked up to me without him knowing.
The last time I took him along was to Boothbay Harbor last spring, which is when I realized that his judgment was impaired. “I am not going in after you,” I told him repeatedly, but he still took outrageous risks for such an old dog.
When the model didn’t show up at the Art Students League, my daughter Julia and Max volunteered. Kathy Gulrich captured his wriggling in a wonderful chalk drawing.
On Friday, I made meatballs. I slipped a bit of raw meat to my ever-present sidekick. I watched sadly as he sniffed it, and then in considerable surprise as he ate it. Ultimately, he ate four ounces of the stuff.
Since then, he’s been eating small amounts and drinking chicken broth. I am not fooling myself into thinking that the old geezer is going to survive much longer, but he always surprises me.
If you’ve ever attended an old person, you know that death is not predictable. You can’t schedule it. Perhaps our inclination to euthanize our pets blinds us to that reality. But where there is life, there is hope. Sometimes it takes a frail old dog to remind us of that.
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Clifford has a friend

Max, 2003, by Florentijn Hofman, from the artist’s own website.
If you were born after 1963, you’re probably familiar with Norman Bridwell’s children’s book, “Clifford, the Big Red Dog.” Since 2003, Clifford has had a real-world double in the Netherlands, a large, red, eco-friendly sculpture of what we would call a German Shepherd, named Max.
Max, 2003, by Florentijn Hofman, from the artist’s own website.
At 40X26X82 feet, Max towers over the village of Leens in Groningen province. He was built from locally sourced, low-impact materials like potato crates, pallets, wood, straw and rope, and bound together with wire. He was then wrapped in bright red shrink-wrap.
His creator, Florentijn Hofman, is a Dutch artist whose other work includes a rubber ducky floating in Hong Kong’s harbor and hippo in the Thames.
Max, under construction in 2003, from the artist’s own website.
It took two months for him to build the dog, with assistance of local youth. “Max is the watchdog which guards the farm as a cultural heritage,” writes Hofman. Leens itself is a tiny village in a marsh which has been more or less occupied continuously since the Iron Age.
Max, under construction in 2003, from the artist’s own website.
I promised details on my 2015 Maine workshop today, but they’re not ready. Still, don’t forget my holiday sale, or the workshop, which I promise to roll out tomorrow. Really.