Vito DiPaolo-Larssen
6/1/92  -  6/26/08

On June first, we had a cake in the store for Vito’s sixteenth birthday (112 in dog years). Two weeks later, he had a stroke, and two weeks after that, he was gone. No dog has ever loved a human the way Vito loved Jeanne, and for that alone he has always had my respect and gratitude. And yet, his life was so much more.  Vito shared with me the lowest point of my life, and one of the happiest. He touched more lives than the average dog. He was a good boy.

From our very first days with Vito, he and Jeanne had a special bond. They were together constantly. In fact for sixteen years except for trips and hospitalizations, they were together 24/7. He was our ‘first born’. In our family we name our oldest son after the father’s grandfather-and Vito was my grandfather’s name. Early in Vito’s life, Jeanne had a surgery that kept her home for two months. That gave Vito plenty of attention, time to play, and time to learn.

He developed an incredible vocabulary in those days. “Vito, go in the office and get your pork chop.” He knew where the office was, he knew the pork chop from the hedgehog from the ball, from four other toys. “Go play with the kids.” He would go out in the store in search of children. “Last one Vito.” The next time you threw the ball, he wouldn’t bring it back. He would go someplace else and sit with it ( or find someone else to throw it for him.)

When you talked to him, he stared intently. He wanted desperately to know exactly what you were saying. You looked at him and knew how disappointed he was that he could not be a full part of your conversation. He communicated constantly, though. When he needed to go out, he told you. When he was happy or sad or lonely, he told you. His lonely howl when Jeanne was away (sometimes only for fifteen minutes) was heartbreaking. Towards the end of his life, his whining could become annoying-but still, it was his communication of how he felt.

Vito grew up in the store, and customers loved him.  He would walk up to you with a street hockey ball in his mouth, drop the ball at your feet, look you in the eye, and bark just once: “Throw it!” He loved chasing the ball. He was so good at it that a Little League coach once brought his entire team into the store so Vito could show them how to catch a ground ball away; by running past it, stopping it with a paw as he went by, twirling around on the spot, and catching it in his mouth.

One of my happiest moments is walking on the golf course behind our apartment after closing, and throwing a golf ball for him to chase. I threw one up a hill, and that little athlete ran up the hill about as fast as the ball traveled through the air. His run back was less than a run and more a series of joyful bounds. He was so happy. I don’t have children, but watching him at that moment gave me an insight to the joy parents feel in the joy of their children. It just made me so happy to watch him so happy.

The three of us were in the store seven days a week in those days, and everyone got to know and like the dogs (Valentine joined us two years after Vito).  People would come in in just to visit the dogs and leave-no purchase required. Once, Anna was babysitting Vito, and brought him to a park where dogs were not allowed. A town parks employee came up, and Anna assumed that she would get a fine and be sent away. The parks guy said, “Hey Vito”, patted him and walked away. I was pulled over for speeding once in Brookline. It had been a long, depressing day. We had dropped Vito off  at the Tufts Eye Hospital, where they were working to save his right eye, then onto the Lahey Clinic for Jeanne’s chemotherapy, then back to Tufts to pick up Vito, and home. I really didn’t need something else to go wrong. The policeman looked into the car, and said, “Hey Vito”. He patted Vito and let me off with a warning.

Customers knew Vito well enough to pick up on his moods. When Jeanne was not there, let’s say on a fifteen minute run to the bank, his mood would change. People would say “What’s wrong with Vito?” Except for an occasional game of “chase the ball” he would stay where he could see the front door. When Jeanne came back in, he would run at full speed at her, and launch himself from a dozen feet away, at her chest. He had no backup plan if she did not catch him and there were a couple of mishaps before she realized that she must always stop and brace herself when entering the store.  For him, it was unbridled joy.

As he aged, his joy at her return became less physical, though the depression at her leaving became more vocal and obvious. Ball playing became a few times a day, rather than constant-but up to the time he became completely blind in his last two weeks, it was central. We played ball in the store, outside the store, in the house, in the field.

When he lost his eye, and depth perception, he adjusted to always stopping the ball with his body instead of his mouth. When he was very old and he could not run fast, we played indoors. When his eyesight worsened he was content to just sniff it out, rest, then demand another throw that he could not catch anyway. Or he would shoot it into a corner or under the wood stove, and then try to pull it out again.

No dog or human has ever been more loyal than Vito has been to Jeanne, but he also taught me about patience and bravery.

The day before Jeanne’s breast cancer surgery, she drove herself to the surgeon for her pre-op appointment. I took Vito to work as I had no idea how I was going to hold the company together as we lost Jeanne’s time mostly, and mine a lot. And at the time, I had no idea what or when that time would be.  I was trying to grab office time whenever I could.  I didn’t want Vito to distract me, so I left Vito with the store staff and went down the street to the office. Later, they called me to say that something was wrong with Vito’s eye, and they had brought him to the vet. I drove right there, and Jack Gleason brought him into the exam room. I remember his eye being all white. He licked my face and I knew I had let Jeanne down by not protecting Vito right before the fight of her life. I cried in the exam room. I cried in the waiting room. I cried in the car. The only thing that I could do for Jeanne in this fight was to get her places, listen for her, help her  make decisions, and take on her other responsibilities so she could focus on the fight.  And I let her down the first day. I have never felt so guilty, so ashamed, so unhappy.

The fight to save Vito’s eye took months of eye drops, pills, and eye doctor appointments. Eye drops or ointments were maybe fifteen times a day. He was calm and patient throughout. In the two months before I lost my eye, I had the same experience-except I knew what I was doing and why. And I had the option of giving up the fight when it became too much, and accepting the loss. We were in a fight mode to save Jeanne from cancer, and we never gave Vito the option to stop, until the medicines destroyed his eye and it had to be removed.

One day Jeanne and I watched the eye doctors try to get  a hair out of his eye, after they had already been poking at it for fifteen minutes. They went at it for another ten, and we wanted them to stop. How could he stand it? He was brave and patient for so long, and he so deserved to whine and snap towards the end. It was heartbreaking. I know he was being good for Jeanne.

Vito was a good boy and always modulated his behavior to the people around him. He was so gentle to babies and young children. He could play fast and rough with adults and adolescent boys. He was not outwardly affectionate to everyone, as are Dixie and Valentine. If he licked your hand or face it was special and meant something.

In his final days, Vito mostly wasn’t Vito. He was blind, deaf, but most seriously, confused.  He still had bouts of energy and wanted to walk constantly even though he was too brain damaged to back out of a corner, or to not bump into the thing he just bumped into. Putting him into a crate was safe, but it made him so miserable. For sixteen years he had been free, never caged, never on a leash. He accepted a leash in the last few days so I could help him walk out in the yard, wherever he wanted (mostly in random circles) without hurting himself. He accepted even the slightest tug, to keep him on a safe path. That little athletic body kept going (in short bursts) after he was mostly gone. Still he licked my hand and my face on his final day. He was a good boy.

On the way home from the vets after Vito died, less than a minute after we left, we were passed by a red car with the license plate DEVITO: Italian for "from Vito", or "family of Vito".  Plus, Elvira DeVito was the maiden name of the wife of the Vito DiPaolo that our Vito was named for. He was telling us he had arrived safely on the other side. I know that whenever Jeanne should make her way there, she should brace herself because Vito is waiting there for her, and he is going to launch himself at her without a thought to a backup plan.

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