Before I was born my parents had a dog who went crazy
when they started having babies and started pooping in front of my
infant sister's door and then ran off. My mom was allergic to cats so
we never could even play with a cat and come home all hairy without
her almost dieing. So a cat was right out. That meant that even
though I deeply and truly wanted a pet I was relegated to watching
other boys have great dogs which they could brag about. In the
trailer-park that bragging was generally about how their dog had
maimed or killed someone. At first blush this seems like something
other people would have heard about but when a bluff was called one
time I remember the kid saying that the dog did indeed bite a robbers
leg off but that the cops told him not to tell anyone. Oh, man,
awesome! I wanted a dog that could bite a whole leg off and the cops
would just say, ''good dog, good dog, who bit bad man's leg clean
off? Who did? Who?' and pat him on the head. That junkyard-type-dog
dream was never realized but our neighbors the Shepherds did give us
a puppy when they moved. I was eight and we had moved across town so
we had the room, not that we needed much for that little girl. She
was a spunky little cocka-poo named Lady that was the best dog ever.
She was such a sweetheart around the family, and she was just
absolutely psychotic and fearless when it came to defending us from
danger. Like many little dogs she had no idea that she was tiny, or
her limitations. If she sensed danger she would fearlessly bolt into
action to protect us from much bigger dogs or even just a nebulous
sense of danger that may be in a closet at 2 am. The shear shock of
seeing a snarling little ball of hate many times took the bigger dog
off guard and they would make an expeditious retreat.
One day after we had her for a few years my family was
going to a car auction to pick up a new ride and I was overcome with
a very strong feeling that I should say home for some reason. I was
inside reading a book on the living room floor when I heard a
horrible whimpering cry from the back of the house. I ran out and saw
lady with her intestines pulled out fighting with two of my neighbors
blue heelers that they used as cattle dogs. I chased them off and
even with her guts out Lady wanted to press the fight but I caught
her up and took her inside and tried to wrap up he guts as gently as
I could in some gauze. I wanted to do something else but in those
distant dark ages there were no cell phones and I would just have to
wait for my family to come home. So I knelt down beside her with my
hand on her side and stroked her head and cried and prayed and
plotted a painful death for those bastard dogs who did this. It got
dark but I never got up from lady's side to turn on the lights so the
house was dark when my parents finally came home. When I saw their
headlights I ran outside and told them that Lady was dieing and that
we need to go to the vet. My mom and dad came inside and we picked he
up in a blanket and went to the vet who told my parents that she
needed 600$ worth of surgery. This was in the 80's when my family was
struggling to make ends meet and six hundred dollars was a huge
amount of money. My dad told the doctor we would have to let him know
in a little while but that he was taking the kids home in case she
needed to be put down. We went home and he started to try and break
the news to us but we broke down first; the whole family was crying and
begging and saying we would earn back the money we needed to pay for
the surgery. He was trying to explain to us the sacrifice that $600
represented but we could only think about how much we loved that dog.
We cried and begged and offered to forgo birthdays and Christmas for
the year and our allowance and to sell our toys if we needed to.
After we had plead all we could pleed and promised never to ask for
anything else in the history of the world he relented and called the
vet to okay the surgery. She had the operation and got all the
insides back on the inside and came home later that week she had a
limp for a very long time and had to have a head cone and antibiotic
on he wounds for a long time but she was alive and that is all that
mattered. She was our dog for six more years and then she got in
another fight with big dogs and while it was not as bad as the first
she still needed medical attention. At that point we decided that she
needed a safer home so she went to live with by grandpa in Colorado.
He had a fully fenced yard and was single at the time so his was a
good place for lady to grow old. She lived until she was almost 20
and then died quietly. My dad didn't hold us to our bargain and we
got Christmas and birthdays again before 'never ever again' as the
contract stipulated.
