A friend of mine passed me the other day and told me that his dog of thirteen years had died two days before--went to sleep one night, and never woke up. He said it so calmly, and I started sobbing. He had to console me about his dead dog.
As a kid I remember watching cartoon movies about dogs who helped kids solve crimes, listened to the pain of little girls, and the heartbreak of little boys. I watched the Pound Puppies. I owned a few stuffed Pound Puppies, but I wanted the real thing. For my fifth birthday, or seventh, I can never remember, I suppose it could have been sixth, we went to a breeder (SO BAD) and got a Cocker Spaniel, the weird looking one of the litter. Mom said it had to be a girl, because "boys "spray!" I think she just felt outnumbered in a house full of boys.
I asked that she be named Samantha, after the youngest daughter on
Gimme a Break. Mom added Princess to the beginning, and Dad added Anne, after mom's middle name. My little Cocker Spaniel's name tag said
Princess Samantha Anne.
The part that is so painful to remember and so tedious to write here, is the part about Samantha's life once she came to live with us. She was a pee-er and chewy. Mom said she was bitchy, but never really cited a specific instance. She said that Sammie didn't like us so she peed in the house. She became an outdoor dog because "she smells" and I wasn't very good about playing with her once I got older. I didn't know dogs had to be walked
even if they have a yard. Mom said Sammie wasn't a good walker, anyway. So this dog spent most of it's life in a backyard alone, watching the lives of four dysfunctional humans unfold around her through a glass window. Cats pawed at her from the screen door. An African Gray parrot talked to Sammie from the kitchen, but this dog, this little gift to me as a little boy, lived a sad, sad, lonely life, sitting patiently for sixteen years next to her water bowl, hoping someone would throw her a tennis ball and no one ever fucking did.
It was never questioned, really. No one ever said, "Hey, maybe she could go to a trainer to get potty-trained" or "Do you think there's a happier home for her somewhere else where some adult is willing to train this fucking animal so she can receive the kind of love and attention and care and reverence that a domesticated animal deserves by virtue of being bred and sold for that purpose?"
What Mom said went back then. So if she didn't approve of the animal, it either was neglected or given away. Later, the parrot was given away to a gay couple she worked with. A cat got it's tail run over by accident, and was also sent to live outside because she was too unsightly for company to see with just a nub of a tail. That was Bailey, and she died of FIV ten years later.
And I think that subconsciously, by the time I was 16, I vowed that one day when I could take care of an animal on my own, I would--and I would love that animal and give it the best home that an animal ever had. And that animal would likely be a dog, and not from a breeder, but a rescue. It should be a pug, I thought. But like a family trying to conceive, I didn't care what it looked like, as long as it knew how much better I'd be once I was in charge.
When I was 21, I had the chance to get one, but I made $8.50 an hour as an NBC page and I turned away the opportunity. At 24, I was on the verge of moving to Sacramento to lose 100 pounds, and it came up again, and I turned down the dog in question, because I knew my health had to come first.
In 2008, my ex called me to his office with a surprise. I thought it was a new couch, since we needed one. But it was Cricket. A little Jack Russell Chihuahua mutt that had been left for dead at Disneyland. Infected with mange at six months old, nobody wanted him. I wanted him. I picked him up and felt tears in my eyes and a big lump in my throat and realized I was being nuts. "It's just a dog." I tried to think. "Get it together, Faggot."
But it wasn't just a dog. They told me Cricket might not grow his hair back. I didn't care. I just wanted him to come home with me. I bought every book I could find on how to potty train, how to walk, how to discipline. I learned that I was supposed to be consistent, though I never was at first. I read that dogs need exercise, discipline and then love, in that order. But all I could think about was the love part. How lucky I felt to have this little animal that depended on me, who's hair grew back in a week. How I wasn't my mom because slept WITH me. He walked WITH me. He went to work WITH me. I was doing good. I was getting points, somewhere.
And then we got Ralph. Same situation, a rescue. He's a Puggle. That's part Pug, and part Beagle. I wanted Ralph because I thought Cricket should have a friend in case I had to leave to work longer or go on a date that lasted longer than a movie. I just kept remembering how lonely Sammie was. How lonely I was as a kid. And it's crazy, I get it. Dog's aren't people, but I fought for Ralph so that Cricket would have someone to keep him company. And turns out, Ralph is the biggest pain in the ass of my entire my life. He barks. He chews. He still pees sometimes. He vomits. His favorite food is iPhone earpieces and Argyle socks you can only find online.
And after all that fighting for Ralph, Cricket's kinda mean to him! And this is gross, but he actually makes Ralph blow him at night. Seriously, it's disgusting, and yet, friends can't stop watching it while it's happening.
And if you want to know the truth, when the second dog came, I became a bad dog owner and an even worse boyfriend. I was distant to everyone. I was afraid to leave the house because of the barking and the peeing and the chewing. i lost interest in sex. I became resentful that I had to do a lot of the work. I pawned off the dogs to my partner who didn't want dogs in the first place. I made
him my mom. Wow. There it is. I said it. I made him my mom. And he tried to prove that he wasn't her, and he didn't even know that he was trying to prove that. He paid hundreds of dollars in vet bills, he cleaned up so much diarrhea. OMG. My mother would have had them put down long before that.
And now it's just me and these dogs. I remember my first night alone in this house and how the morning came and I didn't think I could get out of bed. I was so hurt and so depressed and so humiliated. I felt so ugly and so fat and I just wanted to go home. And then I heard Ralph in the corner throwing up an earplug. And I saw Cricket start eating it. And I laughed so hard and I jumped out of bed and ran down to the floor and we cuddled and played in the puke and then we walked for two hours.
I wanted to just die, but who would let them out of their crate? I could not just move out of my apartment because where would I have taken the dogs to? I could not stay in my house under the covers because my dogs needed to potty. I had to get a real job because my dogs needed to eat. When I could not love myself, I had to love them, because I knew Sammie was watching me (All Dogs Go To Heaven, remember?) and I wasn't going to let my own depression destroy my promise.
And now, 2 years after getting Cricket, I finally make enough money to have a dog sitter during the day, a housekeeper to help clean up the puke and the shedding, the insurance and the shots and the flea meds, and a therapist to work out my parent issues. I've figured out a way to make time to be around to get to hang out with them and still see friends and family, and bang hot dudes once in a while, and it makes me feel like I've finally arrived--like I'm finally an adult, and a really good one, because of these two little furry boys with no balls. But it still kills me when I hear of someone losing their pet, because it's through these pets that I'm able to see how to thrive, how to forgive, how to say I'm sorry, and how to really feel.
Oh, and Mom now has three cats, an indoor dog whom she walks daily, and volunteers at Petco's weekend Rescue. They even let me bring Cricket and Ralph to see them for three days at Christmas, and she bought them outfits for Christmas Breakfast, and somewhere Sammie is in a giant mansion in the sky with twenty other dogs and all of my favorite dead wrestlers, drinking from a gold bowl and watching us be better care-takers.
