Our sweet Brussels Griffon, Lamonte died yesterday. He’d been in decline the last 6 months, deaf and blind, but still basically in good health. I say “ours” because I got Lamonte with my ex, Roswell Hamrick, and we split up when he was just six months old. So for the past 18+ years he has gone back and forth every two weeks between our homes in The Catskills in upstate New York. Roswell’s partner, John Pizzolato, round out Lamonte’s trio of caregivers. We are all “devastated”, as Johnny put it.
I have a place in Merida, Mexico and was there for 6 weeks over the holidays and returned for Lamonte’s 19th birthday last month which wasn’t so much of a celebration because it was becoming clear, he was nearing the end. I got to spend almost a month with him before I gave him to Roswell last week. He had a cold, which turned to pneumonia and he died at noon yesterday Feb 20, 2024 at 19 years old and one month.
Hundreds of people have sent their condolences as he was a real presence in a lot of lives, not a person, but up until recently he was always very aware. If you know anything about Brussels Griffons, they are bred to have almost human features. Sometimes called a “monkey face dog”, they were what George Lucas modeled his Wookies and Ewoks after.
George Lucas apparently owned the breed and was inspired by it to create Ewoks & Wookies
With best buddy Jasper, who belonged to my best buddy, Cary
I’ve been looking through lots of photos today. There are MANY and I’m sharing a lot here. Why not? My Instagram is 25% him since the first days it’s inception over 10 years ago @treynyc.
Lamonte had quite an interesting life, as he went pretty much everywhere with us. Roswell is a former art director for film and TV so he was on many sets. I worked at magazines like Radar, OK and Us Weekly when we first got him and later when I was a full-time artist, he was in the studio all the time. In the gallery he was there for hanging the show and he held court a lot of times during openings. At my the book signing for my YES: Transform Your Life with Color by Number he has right there a presence at every major event from 2007 to 2022.
He traveled to visit our families, to friend’s houses for parties and dinner parties, to countless openings in Chelsea. When I had a month-long exhibit on Governor’s Island in New York, he came on the ferry with me and hung out all day. Roswell & I lived close together in the city for years, in Chelsea and the Meatpacking District and when we walked him, we’d be constantly stopped by people who knew he was a Brussells or others asking what breed he was. He had multiple celebrity “ooh-ahh” street encounters with neighbors Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Joel Gray and more.
Kate O’Toole with Lamonte at The Barn, 2010
Johnny and Roswell are friends with Melissa Gilbert and husband Timothy Busfield, who live upstate and they once dressed as Johnny (Tim) & Roswell (Melissa) carrying a stuffed version of Lamonte. In August of ‘22, I helped stage a doggie fashion show at the Pump House, renamed for a day the PUP HOUSE and Melissa presented Lamonte with a style Lifetime Achievement award, even though his winning (drag) look was seemingly modeled on her Little House on the Prairie nemesis, Nellie Olsen.
Roswell & Johnny have several businesses upstate including Stickett Inn and Barryville Oasis where Lamonte is VERY well-known to friends and patrons. He had his 18th birthday party holding court in his 1940s baby pram barking through choruses of “Happy Birthday Dear Lamonte…” He’s been a model for many holiday cards and set-ups throughout the years, sitting with Marc Jacobs’ Santa on Bleeker Street, terrified. Posing and wearing stuff was not really his thing, but he indulged us.
Lamonte has been immortalized in art; by Scott Lifshutz in an oil portrait, by photographer Valerie Shaff, in a mural at Roswell & Johnny’s bar in NYC and even by an anonymous artist who painted him with Danny Devito for some reason? He’s appeared in Radar magazine in 2007 in the “Overrated Hall of Fame” representing “highly portable breeds”, and shot wearing Juicy Couture for Us Weekly.
He got the name Lamonte before we even met him. My ex journalism teacher, Diane Stafford, wrote a baby name book that she had sent me because the origin of my name was included in it. We had found a local breeder and had just seen a photo of a cute Brussels pup (first photo below) I had read the breed was “magnum in parvo”, latin for a big dog In a small package. Flipping through the book I saw the name Lamonte, and it stuck –The Mountain in French.
Everyone who has ever lost a beloved pet understands the intense grief. It’s not like losing a loved one, another human you love, it sometimes seems worse. We are often loved unconditionally but relationships with people are all complicated. They aren’t with a dog, they love us, we are their world, that’s it. We share everything with them and let them ALL THE WAY IN, like no one else in our lives. They are forever our babies. There’s nothing sadder than losing a baby.
We were lucky and had 19 years of pure joy with him. He was the perfect dog. We always looked forward to “getting Lamonte back”, the hand-off usually involved catching up and discussing how he was, especially later in life when he required care 24/7. Friends would always ask after him and his fans are literally scattered across the globe. He was the Dolly Parton of dogs – everyone loved him.
So, I after this period of mourning and sadness, I have to learn how to flip my grief to joy and be happy I lived in his world for as long as I did. They teach us a lot, our pets, including how to be better people.
Goodbye, sweet baby, see you in my dreams.
