Ruby was born on Long Island, the accidental offspring from a long lineage of miniature pinschers raised by Elaine Hicks, an elderly retired breeder. She came with a health certificate and a handwritten note: “Puppy sold to Jonathan and Lisa, June 2003.”
I was fresh out of college and in the midst of a quarter-life crisis. In the absence of a reliable alpha human, dogs often take matters into her own hands. Such was the case for Ruby — she was the understated fearless leader in our duet. I took her everywhere in a bag. Movies. Dinner. Grad school. First dates. We lived in NYC, San Francisco, Boston, and Tokyo. Her home was an innocuous oversized bowling bag with mesh vents and a little velcro flap on one end. Most of the time she floated next to me with her head happily peeking out of the flap; when I closed her little window, she tucked her nose under her paw and went to sleep.
Most people with my lifestyle would never even dream of getting a dog. I grew up on the other side of the world, and all my jobs throughout the years have had an element of global exploration that requires airplane travel. But Ruby and I made it work. She loved being carried around, and she didn’t mind flying. Her curiosity and sense of adventure complemented mine, and we made friends everywhere we went.
Ruby spent her puppyhood on the streets of Manhattan, fending for herself against giant male dogs ten times her size in Washington Square Park and co-hosting champagne and beef jerky breakfasts with a posse of small dogs belonging to celebrities and TV producers. Every morning, she walked me to the Petco on the corner of Broadway and 18th so she could scan the aisles for treats missed by the night shift cleaners.
Everyone who knew me knew Ruby. She was an extension of myself, a more fearless, in-the-moment, fuzzy little version of me. Boyfriends came and went, but I never got sick of being around Ruby. Instead of eating treats, she stashed them under blankets and pillows and then asked me to look for them, sometimes leading me to the wrong hiding place just for kicks. She was an indiscriminate healer; she licked tears and instilled wisdom through intense head tilts and a silent affirmative bark.
We spent a summer in Japan, a designated rabies-free island nation with notoriously strict quarantine rules. All inbound dogs are required to undergo microchipping, multiple rabies vaccines, and a blood serum test. The rules have changed now, but back then, she was supposed to be quarantined at the airport. Many wonderful vets cooperated with me to help me make our lives easier for travel; writing letters alerting me to a heart murmur and administering half a vaccine dose in respect for her tiny frame.
We moved to San Francisco in the fall of 2004, where Ruby and her dog friends were key stakeholders of the patch of grass between the horseshoe pit and SF Parks and Rec headquarters in Golden Gate Park. At our home on Stanyan, Ruby had a boyfriend named Jake (a toy poodle), a bodyguard named Xica (a black lab), and a quiet stalker who lived downstairs named Smokey (a cat). Ruby came to work with me every day at Wired Magazine, where she took naps on my desk and wandered the aisles in search of bacon and adventure.
2008 brought Malcolm, a handsome young black male from Tucson who fell quickly into the role of her loyal lifetime follower. With Malcolm, Ruby enjoyed a laid back lifestyle, staring out the window of our Corona Heights home, sitting shotgun on road trips to Tahoe, galloping across the sand at Fort Funston and Ocean Beach. Ruby’s muzzle started to turn gray, and I realized she was travelling toward the end.
In 2012, at age nine, Ruby was diagnosed with transitional cell carcinoma, an aggressive bladder cancer. The day I found out, I hit the pause button and cried for a few days straight. To the great befuddlement of our vet, she lived happily, miraculously, beyond her prognosis on a minimalist treatment plan of antibiotics, visits from friends, and cookies. In Ruby’s last days, I treated her like she was the most important soul on earth and she thanked me by sticking around for as long as she could and continuing to stare at me as if nothing else in the world mattered.
She died when I was out of town on a business trip. I’m told she fell asleep in her favorite bowling bag and never woke up. Malcolm allegedly ignored her at the time, knowing that her spirit had journeyed to another place, but when I brought her frozen body back from the vet he sniffed it over and over and cried out loud. He repeated this many times. I think this ritual helped him come to terms with her passing.
Ruby’s cremation day was one of my favorite days of my life so far, That day, with her best friends as witnesses, Ruby completed her travels in the little body that carried her for nearly 12 years. Her beautiful little body lay just below the shadow cast by the afternoon sun, in a ray of light.
Interestingly, after about a month of mourning, Malcolm started to exhibit Ruby-like behaviors. The other day, he hid a salmon skin treat in my underwear drawer and asked me to find it. He’s really good at traveling too. In the month since Ruby died, I’ve taken him to Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Honolulu, in Ruby’s old bag.
Ruby has journeyed beyond the world as we understand it, but Malcolm and I continue to travel around the globe with Ruby’s spirit of adventure in tow.
Lisa Katayama moved to San Francisco from New York City in the fall of 2004 with her dog Ruby. During her years as a journalist, she wrote for Wired, Fast Company, Boing Boing, PRI’s Studio360, and the New York Times Magazine. She now has a job at an academic institution in Cambridge, MA and runs a nonprofit with operations in Tokyo, Japan.
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