Louis Roney: Sweetie

At one time in my life, I had an apartment in New York and a house in Richmond, Va. I commuted by car in a rather haphazard way.

One day, my Virginia neighbors invited me to swim with them and friends in their pool. I was disgruntled to see a medium-sized shaggy black dog being tossed into the pool over and over again, and getting quite exasperated and fatigued with it all. The dog could not climb alone out of the pools high sides. I got out of the pool, borrowed a car, and went to the nearest grocery store, where I bought some beef and some vegetables. Back in the neighbor’s kitchen I cooked the beef and veggies for the dog. He was most enthusiastic about the good meal, and from that moment on, he followed me everywhere I went. My friends asked me to let the dog go home with me to my Richmond house. When I got into bed that night, the dog found my room, pushed the door open with his nose, then there was a thud as he landed on the bed at my feet. When I left to go back to my New York digs, my Virginia neighbors insisted that I take the dog with me. The dog made it clear to me that he was coming with me. For some inexplicable reason, I agreed to try it, and the dog made so little trouble for me, that soon all my friends were calling him “Sweetie” and the name stuck. He snuggled up next to me as I drove.

When I took him to a doggie salon in New York, he emerged looking like the beautiful medium (24-pound) poodle he was! After Sweetie received a bath and a “sheep-trim” — (very plain, no fancy poodle cut” — he was clearly conscious of his good looks and the acclaim he got on the street from passersby. He actually would strut down the street with an invitation on his face that said, “Look at me, ain’t I grand?!”

At that time, I had many singing engagements in Europe, and Sweetie went with me without having much trouble. With Lufthansa and Swissair he could lie under my seat, whereas on the American airlines he had to put up with being in a crate. But whatever the travel method was, he clearly was worried only about not going with me, which was never the case. In Europe, dogs are treated much better than they are here, and Sweetie was allowed to be in my dressing room during my performances. One day I showed up for a rehearsal at the Paris Opera without Sweetie on a leash.

The conciérge asked concernedly, “Where is your little friend?” I told him that the salt spread on the sidewalks to melt the ice was very bad for Sweetie’s paws – that I had taken him for a walk before coming to the theater and then washed his feet before leaving him in the hotel room.

Fortunately, my New York apartment was just across the street from Central Park, and I was able to let him off his leash in the park to play ball and run while I jogged. When I bounced his red rubber ball hard on the ground, Sweetie would jump some 6 feet in the air to catch it and he often did so to the applause of admiring on-lookers. He was a natural show-off and knew instinctively what show-biz was all about.

As the years went by, Sweetie began to develop macular degeneration, as I coincidently have done. He did well without his full powers of vision. Indoors he seemed to have memorized where everything was, and outside he was very much at home at the end his leash. On the sidewalk around the corner from my apartment, Sweetie knew where his favorite stores were. He insisted on going to my friend Arno Heller’s deli where Sweetie knew a nice piece of Braunschweiger leberwurst would be waiting for him and he accepted it gratefully and gracefully. Arno had a place in Sweetie’s heart! Another block farther down Sixth Avenue was the 10-cent store where Sweetie halted and insisted on entering. In the store, I would take his leash off, and he would find his way to the back of the store where there was a big bin of medium-sized rubber balls. Somehow he would always pick out a red one, walk back up to the cashier where I would pay for it, and he would proudly carry his new “purchase” back to the apartment. Dogs exist to bring happiness to people, and they justify their existence at every opportunity. It’s impossible not to love dogs in return.