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Opinion

My greyhound teacher

How I connected with an internet famous dog from Frisco

The day Dolce Gambino died, I burst into tears by the cherry tomatoes display at Central Market. I cried when I was telling my mom about him before we got out of the car at the frozen yogurt store. And I cried when I was shoe shopping and saw a brand called Dolce Vita.

I cried a few days later at church on Easter Sunday, telling myself I was crying for my dad, but knowing in my heart that wasn’t entirely true.

Dolce wasn’t even my dog, but I had met him years earlier while he was being fostered through Greyhound Adoption League of Texas (GALT). I swooned over him for a decade, seeing him every so often and writing about him here.

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My tears were for him, and then for every dog and cat I’ve ever loved who has left this sweet earth and whom — if I want to ever come to grips with their deaths — I have to believe I will see again. They were for Christine and Don Beisert, from Frisco, who loved Dolce most in the entire world, who gave him as much a wonderful life as he gave to them.

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Dolce Gambino was their dog, their greyhound. But — and I don’t think I’m going out on a limb too much to say this — in a way he belonged to us all.

He had 1,300 friends on his own Facebook page, cleverly cultivated by Christine, who referred to herself in posts as his “Momager,” to Don as “Papa,” and to the two of them as “the Panookies.”

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Through beautiful photographs and phonetic spelling, Dolce posted amusing and endearing updates that kept his groupies, like me, hoping that whenever we logged on, we’d read an update of his life.

When Dolce died, four months shy of his 15th birthday and a day after being diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable cancer, more than 400 people commented with their condolences on his heart-wrenching Facebook post. Dozens of others posted messages of love and sorrow on his wall. Still others changed their profile photos to one of Dolce.

As human beings, way too much separates us. We bicker too much and we worry too much. We lose ourselves in phone screens instead of in the canvas of blue skies and of the sunflowers reaching up to touch them. We get mired in problems which, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really matter all that much.

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But love for our pets unites us — engulfing us, as Dolce did, in serendipitous goodness, in love pure and unexpected, in eloquent observations about life and hope and possibilities. Not all pooches do that through a Facebook page, but each has lessons to teach us, their loyal owners. Those lessons engulf us in their purity, their innocence, their exuberance about the mere thrill of being alive.

And that, I think, was Dolce’s gift and is his legacy. He didn’t harp on the past or worry about the future. He didn’t question what was happening in his full and joyful life; he just lived it with gratitude, moment by precious moment.

Greyhound Dolce Gambino and Don Beisert play tug-of-war at their house in Frisco.
Greyhound Dolce Gambino and Don Beisert play tug-of-war at their house in Frisco.(Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

He reveled in journeys to 45 states and three Canadian provinces. He ate delicious food. He sported outfits for every weather episode and every holiday. A trained therapy dog, he made more than 150 visits to nursing homes. One of his videos, orchestrated by Christine and filmed by Don, earned him the highest-level trick-dog title offered by the American Kennel Club.

He excelled in rat hunt and agility trial competitions. He was an ambassador and tireless volunteer for GALT, through which Christine and Don met and fell in love with him. He earned 170 titles, often as the only greyhound ever to do so, from the American Kennel Club, United Kennel Club and Barn Hunt Association.

And above all, he won hearts.

Calm, courageous, handsome and unassuming, he was like the good-looking kid in high school who wins awards for academics and athletics and whom everyone likes. Polite, goodhearted and tons of fun, he never quite gets what all the attention is about.

As Dolce got older, he handled his aging with honesty and grace. Facebook posts recounted his diminished appetite, and how his Momager was trying every food she could think of just to get him to eat. We saw photos of Don carrying Dolce up the stairs so the two could be side by side while Don worked from home. Yet Dolce’s videos still showed his spunk as he zoomed around his yard and competed in barn hunts with enthusiasm.

If we are lucky, we have loved and been loved by a dog. Our dogs make us laugh, they get us outside, they may even give our lives purpose. We count on them and they count on us — even, and maybe especially, when it’s time to say good-bye.

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The pain is — and I’m borrowing Christine’s word here because it’s so heartbreakingly fitting — excruciating. Yet, would we trade one moment of our lives with these beautiful creatures to never feel such sorrow?

So we let ourselves cry, for our own beloved pets and for those belonging to us all. And maybe, just maybe, when we wipe away our tears, we’re more clearly aware of what we have, of what we share, and of what truly matters: lessons learned from an unassuming teacher like Dolce Gambino.

Leslie Barker is a Richardson freelance writer and former staff writer for The Dallas Morning News.

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