Ziggy Conte (September 9, 2005 – August 27, 2018)
“The more I learn about people, the better I like my dog.”
I’ve often muttered that phrase. With all of the head games and angling that goes on in the music world – and with people in general – it has has rung true quite often during my life in New York City. After many a disappointing encounter with a human I found solace back home on the couch, licking my wounds while my faithful dog licked his feet.
And it is on that note, that I must eulogize a most trusted friend…my beloved Miniature Pinscher, Ziggy.
My wife & I raised him from a 3 month old pup, helping him battle his many health problems along the way until my wonderful sister Jennifer took him in at age 10 and cared for him right up till the end – just 2 weeks shy of his 13th birthday.
In my life I had never owned a dog for more than a year or two, and that was back when I was a kid. They were always strays that we took in; there was no discipline given to them, they ruined our house and eventually my mom said we had to give them away. But I was determined that it was gonna be different with Ziggy. I vowed to take care of this little guy from womb to tomb, so to speak.
Around Christmastime in 2005 I started feeling like I wanted to have a dog, and though I never wanted to buy one from a pet store, my wife and I stopped into a shop in our Manhattan neighborhood just to see what sort of dog we would gravitate towards. We searched the place, un-moved by any breed…but then, we saw him…a little tan-colored pup who I thought was the cutest Chihuahua I’d ever seen. The pet shop girl told us he was a Min-Pin, which i had never heard of but it made sense when we took him out of the cage and saw his perfectly sculpted body and long snout. He was so beautiful…but we didn’t want jump into anything so we took him and a few of his siblings to the dog playroom upstairs to see what the vibe was like. There were other cuties too; black & tan and red Min-Pins that we brought up to look at, but this guy was the smallest and cutest. We started referring to him as, “The Shrimp”. When we sat down on the floor all those other pups ignored us and played only with each other…but Ziggy climbed right into my wife’s lap, curled up and went to sleep. We knew right then. But – we had such bad feelings about buying a dog from a pet store when there are so many dogs in shelters in need of a good home. We decided not to take him but knew that we loved Min-Pins now.
That night when we went home we lay in bed regretting our decision and thinking, “What if someone else came in and bought The Shrimp?” We’d never forgive ourselves. We were the first ones at the pet store the next morning and as we entered we prayed The Shrimp would still be there. We approached the cage where he was the day before…and there was that little face! It was as if we were meant for each other. And what a beautiful first Christmas we shared together a few days later…
We were at a loss for what to call him so I asked my sister what she thought and she said, “He looks like a Ziggy!” And there was no question about it, that was his name (although we still liked to refer to him as “The Shrimp” from time to time.)
Zig traveled the world with us; from NYC to Holland every summer for his 1st decade, on tour with me & the New York Dolls from the East Coast to Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SanFrancisco, Los Angeles, and more…always offering a comforting presence and a cold, wet nose. One of the highlights of his life with The Dolls was backstage at a show in Hoboken, NJ where David Johansen had started to eat a chocolate muffin and made the grave mistake of putting it down for 10 seconds and turning his back. Ziggy had apparently been eyeing it up and seized the moment, descending upon it and devouring it before David turned back around. Johansen yelled out, “Hey – that was my dinnah!!” The comic relief was welcome.
Ziggy was not a dog’s dog but a people’s dog. He never liked to run and play with other dogs – in fact, he just plain hated them. He thought nothing of trying to attack German Shepherds 5 times his size on the sidewalks of the city. He had no idea how small he was. One of the only somewhat successful interactions that he had with another dog was when I left him for the weekend with a Doberman Pinscher, a sweet girl named Elvi owned by our friends Sami Yaffa & Karmen Guy. But apparently he did terrorize the household a bit…(there is hilarious photographic evidence of this, and many other similar moments.)
On New Year’s Eve, a few weeks after we got him, we left Zig at home by himself for the first time while I played a gig with New York Dolls at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. We were like a couple of nervous parents, thinking and talking about him the whole night and couldn’t wait to get back home to our baby. But it was later that year when The Dolls played Irving Plaza that we had our first scare leaving Zig at home alone. There was an after party at Otto’s Shrunken Head on 14th street and my wife & I started walking there from Irving, dragging heavy guitar cases when we finally thought, “Ya know what, let’s just go home to the shrimp…” And it was the best thing we could have done because when we opened the door there was no Ziggy running to us – he was lying on his side the floor, lifeless with bodily fluids leaking out of both ends of him. We rushed him to the Animal Medical Center where he had to get a complete blood transfusion among other major procedures. This was my first glimpse into how much a dog can cost to keep in good health, which was nothing compared to what was to come later. As it turned out, he had eaten a bone which I bought from Whole Foods that had lots of fat on it but was not refrigerated. I had my doubts about it before giving Zig the bone but thought “It’s from Whole Foods, they must know what they’re doing…” Wrong! That incident seemed to kick his gastro-intestinal tract problems into high gear.
From the beginning Ziggy had a very sensitive bowel situation so it was a bit of trial and error, figuring out which foods he liked and which made him sick. But we had now entered the era of him constantly purging liquid waste from both ends. We had to fence him into our kitchen area when we went out for fear of him ruining the carpets & couches – but that little rascal figured out how to climb over the fence and we’d open the front door to find him happily sitting among the couch cushions. After trying many different kinds of fences that still didn’t keep him from jumping over we finally had to get a big crate to lock him up in when we left, which broke my heart. The trips to the vet were frequent and he’d be put on all kinds of meds to help the diarrhea & abdominal pain that we could see he was in by his body positions.
Then one day he just stopped eating and his urine turned orange so we took him back to that hospital only to find out that his gall bladder was about to explode so we were told that it was either get it removed or he would die. What were we gonna do at that point? Spend the thousands of dollars. It’s our baby and of course we’re gonna pay. The complete picture of Ziggy’s health started coming into view; he had pancreatitis, scarring on his liver & kidneys and was ultra-sensitive to certain foods which were making him sick. We sought out a holistic vet who prescribed a “novel protein” diet of venison which seemed to work pretty well for a couple of years but what he didn’t tell us was that after awhile a dog builds up an intolerance to that food as well.
Ziggy was protective of my 1st son but by the time my 2nd son was born, the old dog was getting cranky at age 11 and became aggressive towards the baby so we knew he had to go live elsewhere. That’s when my sister stepped in and cared for him, miraculously nursing him back to health numerous times.
By the end, Ziggy had gone blind, had diabetes, was getting daily hydration shots in addition to insulin, plus he still suffered from the pancreatitis, liver & kidney issues and the gall bladder removal operation. But he was a fighter and he fought right to the end. Every time he was at death’s doorstep we would save him. Money was no object, he was still our baby. My sister was particularly amazing at doing that, whether it be with changing his diet so he wouldn’t refuse nutrition or taking him to local vets & animal hospitals in New Jersey, consulting with me along the way. She helped him have an enjoyable last 2-3 years of life.
The last straw came last Friday August 24 when he was having trouble breathing and the vet discovered fluid around his heart and stomach. For a dog as old and sick as he was, it made no sense to put him through invasive testing to find out whether it was cancer or something else because the treatment would not be worth it to buy him a few more weeks of life. He was frail, all skin & bones – down to about 6 pounds from his normal 8 to 10 lb range – and was obviously not a happy camper any longer. That day we made the difficult decision to stop his suffering and Jen made an appointment with her local vet to have him euthanized at 2pm on Monday. But at 10AM Monday morning she called saying that he was really suffering and that she was going to bring him in at 11:15. I had commitments of my own that morning in the Bronx so I prayed he could hang on till I got to Jersey. I knew that the 1 hour drive could be longer with traffic and that he could very well be gone by the time I got there but no matter, I was going. I drove like mad with my wife navigating and luckily when we arrived he had only been given the sedative and was still lively enough to stand on all fours (barely). He wasn’t making any sound and couldn’t lick us or chew a treat. It was time.
After spending 20 minutes or so with him we called the doctor in to administer the final shot. I laid Ziggy on my lap and we spoke softly to him telling him what a good dog he was. He was all out of energy but the moment that the doctor pushed in the plunger on that syringe Zig jumped up and snapped at her. A fighter till the very last second. A moment later his breathing stopped and he died in my arms.
Rest in peace sweet Ziggy, we’ll never forget you.
