Living With Cujo

Content Warning: Pet Loss.

In 2008, Darren and I had been married for a while and I was watching a Shiba Inu puppy cam. As the puppies went to their new home, I informed Darren it was high time we expanded our family to include a dog, and that he could either come with me to the pound and pick a dog out, or I would bring one home without his input.

At the time, we were living in North Hollywood in a garage that had been converted into an apartment, so we headed to Los Angeles City East Valley Animal Shelter.

Here’s my moment to beg you to adopt a dog. Adopt, don’t shop. There are so many dogs that need a home.

It happened that the day we went to the shelter, Cujo (Named “Valentino”) was one such dog who needed a home. We would have missed him if he didn’t give one, strong, firm bark at Darren as he walked by.

As soon as I met him, I knew he’d have to come home with us. We were let into a little room and I basically sat on the floor with him and just held his trembling, desperate little body. He was our “most expensive dog” costing us all of $75 (the other two we eventually collected were free). We had to sign paperwork saying we understood that he was a bit mental — he’d never be normal, he had been turned in with head injuries and was not a well-adjusted dog.

We took him home on the bus (we didn’t have a car when we lived in Los Angeles, I’ve always been a public transportation type), and the first thing he got introduced to in his new home was that he got a bath. He smelled so incredibly bad. And the second thing I found out about Cujo is that he hates baths.

The first thing? He’s terrified of everything, which is how he got his name.

We’ve learned from vets since getting him that there are two ways the name ‘Cujo’ goes for a dog — either that dog is big and terrifying, or tiny and terrified, and Cujo has definitely lived up to that. He’s reserved and shy, and when we first got him we had to move him around because he barely wanted to walk on his own. He tucked his tail up so much we weren’t even sure that he had one.

Another thing about Cujo is that he loves sleeping. Most of my early pictures of him are of him sleeping.

Eventually we got a second dog, a beagle-chihuahua mix named “Cesar” who was essentially a helper dog for Cujo. They took to each other right away, but Cujo was always more aloof than Cesar, but they had a good time working out puppy energy on each other.

When we moved back to Pittsburgh, Cujo got to experience flight. He wasn’t a fan. In Pittsburgh we collected one more dog, Miss Pants. Shortly thereafter, Cesar died tragically young. After his death, Miss Pants and Cujo developed an interesting relationship — and while Miss Pants was a fearsome girl — all chihuahua — she was a great ‘nurse dog’ to Cujo.

Unbeknownst to us, this was making Cujo cultivate some pretty weird habits. He never directly asked to go for walks or go outside — a helper dog would.

When we moved west, to Oregon, it was by car. That was quite an experience for Cujo, as for all the years we had him, we didn’t have a car. But Cujo had Miss Pants there to keep him calm while he freaked out in the backseat of this new, scary thing.

He had Miss Pants there to remind us when to take breaks. Miss Pants was there to help us settle into the new place. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, we lost Miss Pants to cancer about a year after arriving in Oregon. For the first time in many years, Cujo became the single dog in our household. I’m not sure if it’s his age or the fact he felt like he could finally be himself — but as he started to age, some quirks started appearing.

First, he started getting a lipoma on his chest. He started losing his vision, and is now pretty much completely blind from cataracts (I can sympathize with him), and since he has a heart murmur we don’t want to risk surgery.

He started developing ‘canine cognitive decline’ (doggie dementia), which drastically changed my routines with him. Sometimes he walks in circles. He forgets why I’m taking him outside. He doesn’t enjoy walks anymore, and prefers to just walk mindless circles in the yard for as long as I let him (and then pees the second his feet hit the pee pads inside). Yet with his failed eyesight, he started getting braver.

I joke around that it’s because he can’t see anything that he has become more bold, but he has definitely become more bold. Which is generally not a great mix with the canine cognitive decline.

We changed his diet and he enjoys food more and is generally more healthy looking. Every few days I cook up a batch of Cujo’s dinner — and this dog eats better than a lot of people I know.

Here’s the recipe for dog food my vet approves and my weird dog loves:

2 lbs of pork

2 cans of kidney beans

1 cup of rice

1 bag of Peas and Carrots

2 cans of canned pumpkin.

2 cups of water.

I brown the pork until it’s done, and then stir in the beans, peas and carrots, and rice — and add the pumpkin in last. I also prepare this in the Instant Pot now, I just put in the meat to saute and once it’s done I add in the other ingredients and let it cook to pressure for around 35 minutes, until it starts to fall apart so I don’t have to puree it in the food processor. I must love Cujo a lot, because I’m a vegetarian and can’t stomach the smell of meat cooking anymore — and I still cook this for him.

By the time we moved back east from Oregon (by car again), he became quite a handful. Not only did we have to figure out how to feed him his food on the road (this was tricky and involved a cooler and a massive cook before we left), but he’s also become a bit incontinent in his old age, so I always have pee pads at the ready. Cujo was such a nervous wreck about the car he didn’t pee for the first two days. I begged him to pee in Boise, no go, even though we diligently took him out every two hours.

He finally let loose somewhere in Utah, which made me grateful for all the pee pads I laid out.

I think I was more worried about the huge questions I felt were hanging over my head — where would we go, what would we do, how would we sustain ourselves — that I worried too much about Cujo — but that just seems to be what we do. We worry too much about Cujo.

Because, if I’m being honest, Cujo has adjusted to Kentucky better than we have. To him, he still gets roused to go outside before he even realizes he has to go to the bathroom. He still eats his yummy food and gets cuddled on schedule. He gets his own nap room with his cozy blanket.

There are a lot of challenges living with a nearly toothless, demented, blind dog. But I try to make those challenges easier for him (even if it’s frustrating for me). Sometimes I wonder if I’m frustrated because I have to clean up a lot of pee, or if it’s my own fear of my mortality, or what will happen when I begin my own decline. It’s hard to watch the ones we love go through things like that — even if it’s just a dog.

At the end of the day regardless of what has happened, I scoop him up for kisses and treasure the moments — even if there’s a lot more pee than there used to be.