M's dog is dead.
I lost a lot of dogs as a kid. We were roughnecks and played street football. So it was a common occurrence for us to know kids that got hit by cars and even more that dogs got hit by cars. We grew up in the pre-airbag society.
Nubbin got a hernia in a dog fight. Shaka got run over by the number nine bus. My mother took some of our dogs and even more puppies to the pound. She had no patience for dog mess, even in parts of the backyard she never visited. We did a lot of crying as kids, and knowing a lot of ghetto dogs - many with the dispositions of junkyard bitches, somehow the death of dogs has never smacked me in the gut as an adult.
I can remember walking down 7th Avenue in Park Slope back in '92 when I first saw Iams. I was so impressed by the packaging that I became convinced that I could eat the stuff, and being an organic, started down the road to being the kind of callous crank I am today. How could people have dog walkers? We lived on Cragmont pop and Springfield Corn Flakes. My dogs never ate Dr. Ross or Alpo, they got one can of 10 cent plainwrap dog food on the daily.
I like Cesar Milan and though I haven't watched him on the regular for about a year, I like his attitude for what it was. He helped people understand animal things, like what dominance means. So I always wonder if people who baby their animals or who actually love them are indulging human feelings rather than animal instincts. You know the old expression - the more people I meet, the more I love my dogs. That's devolution. Dogs in their social role, I think, should remind us of base instincts. At the very least the expression 'die like a dog' should remind us of the distance between civil men and dumb animals. And so dogs should continue to die like dogs whereas humans never should. Every inch of respect that goes to dogs, I think comes out of our respect for humanity. Dog health care? Dog diets? I can't do it.
I have a lot of 'hood feelings associated with dogs. I never understood how there could be such a thing as an 'inside dog'. It never seemed right to me. The right dog always seem to me do be a hunting dog, a mountain hiking dog, a dog that chased cats, not a dog that would roll over or shake hands. The perfect dog to me was a police dog, a trained German Shepherd. As kids, we always made the distinction between an ordinary German Shepherd and a police dog. A fierce, large dog that obeyed its master. A dog that could pull you out of a rushing stream if you had a broken leg. A dog who never barked at night unless the threat was real. Balto. Rin Tin Tin. White Fang. A noble dog.
I couldn't understand how the President of the United States could have a dog like Checkers. It stood in complete contrast to what I expected the First Dog to be. There was something wrong with Nixon, I knew that. Sure Snoopy was cool, but mostly when he was chasing down the Red Baron. Lassie? No, I'd rather have Flipper.
A dog to me was like a horse, a working companion in whose character yours was reflected as a boy and as a man. To train a dog, to tame a horse, these were fundamentals of American boyhood. See me? I've got a pair of jeans on, a t-shirt, a ball cap and a walking stick. There's a bunch of marbles in my front pocket and a slingshot hanging out my back. That there beside me is Rusty. Or Bullet or Spike, or King. We're both tough, big pawed and dirty. I'm squinting at the camera and I'm an American kid. Now we're taking off running somewhere at full speed in a cloud of dust.
It has been more than 20 years since I've had a dog. I think about it from time to time. What kind I should get - what's right for my personality. I don't know if I'm capable of thinking about life with a dog as an adult. Amy at work has one. A little tiny one, smaller than a football. It's got the nerve to bark and somehow it just doesn't register as a dog in my heart. Cognitively I know it, I recognize the motions and behaviors. I know how it plays, how it explores, what its emotions are. I know dog. I am drawn to its dogness, repelled by its tiny stature, its irresistible cuteness. I want to give it to my 10 year old daughter, the one who loves the planet. I want to see how far I could kick it. I refuse to let it lick my face. I'd rather have a cat.
I'm a dog wrestler. I like dogs who can pull me on a skateboard. I like the dog who leaps to attention at the sound. I hate dumb dogs, unless they are big old lazy dumb dogs.
Beck bit me straight on the nose when I stuck my face in the hole in the fence. Some crazy dog bit my ankle as I rode my dirtbike through the alley over near Dorsey High School. I couldn't say anything about Beck, I was just being stupid because everybody knew Beck hated everything and everyone. Still, he didn't bite Rabo and I couldn't let Rabo outdo me. But I was mad as hell about that other dog. If his owner hadn't come out all apologetic I would have gone back and beat the shit out of it. I think it was T. Boyle who wrote the story about the kid whose father forced him to kill a vicious bulldog with his bare hands as a right of passage. I always thought that was cruel fathering, but some dogs deserve to die.
M is all broken up.
Her dog went nutty in old age, was too cantankerous to be sheltered by any of the new age pounds, and had to be put down. I wondered if she might have been spared some grief if he had simply wandered off. We lost dogs. We put up signs. Nobody called. I think that if I had a dog so close to me that had to die I might want to hire somebody to walk it over a slow rising hill into the sunset. But there's no good way to lose a dog.
Buster took a rattlesnake bite in the face for Pops on a hiking trail on the way to Josephine Peak. The dog's head swelled up like a watermelon. Buster almost died but did not. It would have been a heroic way to go out, the perfect death for a dog I think. Dogs are faithful companions, always at the ready, reminding us in their own doggy way how human we are. We attach narratives to their ways which tell us who we are, and in no greater way than when they die. I'm tempted to say that every dog's death diminishes me but I know better.
There are always new puppies.
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