Awwwww

Indulge me a little bit. I found this in my drafts folder. I wrote it after we put Buddy down.

I don't write poetry. Ever. So it's bad. But it wasn't about being good, it was about expressing sadness after loss.

The house is quiet

The tears are shed

He's gone

As far as he was concerned

he was one of us

he was a person, not a dog

he liked our food

he ate chocolate

and chicken wings

Dogs aren't supposed to eat those things, they'll get sick

He loved his girl

would play games with her

would watch over her

protect her when her brothers would rough house

I'm not leaving the toilet seat up

it feels strange

We don't have to close the door quickly so he doesn't streak out

it feels strange

He's not here anymore

it feels strange

The Immortal

We had to put Buddy down last month.  Like a phantom limb, it feels like he’s still here. 

 

 

 

August 18, 1991 – September 11, 2009

So long Budman. 

Even now, it’s difficult to write about it.

I’ve never had to put an animal down before so I had no idea how it worked.  Got some wonderful advice and support from my sister-in-law Char, then I called a few vet offices so I could get a sense – glad I did, since some places put animals down differently. 

We chose to take him in and the nurse anesthetized him.  He fell asleep while we pet him so he wasn’t too scared.  Meg and I were allowed to stay as long as we liked – which was about 10 minutes after he fell asleep.  We left and the doctor’s office took care of the rest.  We chose not to keep his ashes, though we could have.

The vet sent us an impression of his paw.  Meg and I cried.  The last little dirt that was on his little paw is in that impression.  We cried over that too. 

I’m still afraid to leave the door outside open, for fear that he will run out.  When I wake up in the morning, I can still feel him by my bedside.  I still look for him to be under my feet in the kitchen. 

So much for not being a dog person.

Punctuation Chick

I haven’t had a real Chick sighting since my appendix was removed. 

There have been, you know, moments when I walk by his condo and see the blinds move slightly, and a moment a few months ago when he was unlocking his door and I waved as he stared.  Oh, and when I came back from the hospital after having my appendix removed, I noted a stickey on my door that said I had flowers, but since I wasn’t home, that they were delivered to my neighbor.  I knocked on Chick’s door, but there was no response.  I went back home and just as I drove the deadbolt through, there was a knock at my door.  Strange, no one showed through the peep hole.  I opened the door, and there were my flowers, but no Chick.  He must have scurried away.

So there has really been no significant contact since the last Chick incident. 

Until yesterday.

6:20 am.  I was out walking Buddy the Immortal, as I always do.  You know I’m a bit paranoid (from reading too many Zodiac serial killer John Douglas Forensic Files books) and I occasionally change up my routine so it’s not so routine.  I like to thwart serial killers stalking my route, so they can’t kill and dismember me leaving only the DNA from my teeth to identify my charred remains. 

My imagination is colorful.  The color is blood red, but still, it’s colorful. 

So I varied my walking route this week.  I think it’s good for Buddy too – then he doesn’t get tired of all the same old smells.  And smell he does - Buddy likes to sniff!  It’s really all he has left after 17 good years - he can’t see so well, he can’t hear much, and he’s got stiff old bones.  He spends a lot of time sniffing around, seeing what’s what ~ it’s his final joy and I don’t like to rush him. 

Buddy decided to spend a little time sniffing Chick’s “lawn”.  The 10’x10’ slice of heaven that ever he’s tending.  As I waited for Buddy to reach his conclusions about the scented patch he was working on, I heard Chick’s door open.

“Mind getting your dog off my lawn?”

Understand, that there was a time in my life that any confrontation made me feel like a bad girl and I would noiselessly comply.  That time is over.

“Why?  He’s just sniffing.”

“BECAUSE I DON’T WANT YOUR DOG SHITTING ALL OVER MY LAWN!”

“HE’S. NOT. SHITTING. HE’S. SNIFFING.”

We stared each other down for a beat of three seconds.  I could hear the music of a thousand western high noon stand offs in my head.

I didn’t back down.  I was the bigger person.  I still think that creep has a bunker hewn out of concrete in his condo and I don’t want my daughter or I to become a tenant in it.  Discretion, better part of valor, all that. 

“But yeah,” I said, “I’ll get him off your lawn.”  Buddy and I moved away.

As I prayed some of my regular prayers later on, I realized I’m supposed to try to see Christ in Chick.  OhhhhKayyyyyy.  Some times it’s harder than others. 

Stockholm Syndrome

Poor Buddy. I am convinced he has finally given in to symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome; defined in Wikipedia as a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the risk in which the hostage has been placed.

When then-husband brought Buddy home, we never crated him. He lived free, roaming the house at will, ate when he pleased, lounged as he liked. His work was 24/7 protecting his girl and the other people in his house from thieves and plunderers. I am convinced he thought he was a person.

When I moved to Northern Virginia three years ago, 12 year old Buddy stayed with my sons until we were ready to bring him down to live with us. It took Meg and I time to adjust; it took Buddy a little longer and he was slightly more dramatic. He went insane.

Separation anxiety on acid. I came home one evening to find that Buddy had trashed the house; ripped holes my new couch, broke a lamp shredding the shade to bits, and tried to gain his freedom by digging holes into both my external doors and walls. $400 worth of damage. Not good. I was worried we might have to put him down.

I took him to the vet, where we talked about a lot of things. Not unlike my Vacuum Man Super-like Heroes, he wanted to do $2000 worth of tests on Buddy in an effort to rule out other more organic reasons for his psychotic break. I understood this and appreciated the wisdom of getting a baseline, but I was hard pressed to get $400 to fix my apartment; $2000 on my 12 year old insane dog was, unfortunately, not an option.

We crated him.

Buddy hated the crate. Hated. The. Crate. He wrenched the iron bars apart, he broke the clasps, he flipped it over and would crawl out the larger holes in the bottom. He would somehow manage locomotion to move the crate 10 feet to reach the doors and attempting to dig his way out again.

We drugged him.

Got him a prescription for alprolazam – an anti-depressant. Appreciate, if you will, the fact that if anyone deserves anti-depressants in that house, its me ~ and I don’t have any ~ so for me, the "not an animal person" to get a vet’s prescription to give my dog meds – it’s a big deal. I was vilified for doping him, but I couldn’t keep missing work and Meg couldn’t keep missing school to babysit crazy dog. He was 12, old by any doggie standards, and crate training was devastating him. He’d pant heavily and run when we’d say “Buddy? In the crate!” Every day, it was an ordeal.

Three years later we no longer have to give him daily doses of alprolazam and he has finally accepted the crate as his home, his cave, his life. He is now one with the crate. See? Stockholm Syndrome. Embraced the evil crate, surrendered to it’s (and my alpha-dog) will. He goes in there when he's scared, when he's tired, when he just wants to chill.

I have broken him, and I am sad.

The Immortal

I grew up on a dairy farm. I know lots of people who grew up on dairy farms that have a deep and abiding love for animals of all kinds. I also know people who were instilled with a commercial, sort of a clinical detachment regarding animal life.

That be me.

Know what? The second I fell in love with a kitten, it got it’s eye kicked out by a cow and held on for the rest of its life with puss oozing out of a cold black hole. Uhm, ew? And as soon as you named a puppy, it got hit by a tractor and your last vision of it (after its leg stopped twitching) is one of the hired hands scooping up the carcass to toss in a field.

Circle of life. I learned the harsh realities of it on our farm. Calves = cash, pets = death. Others come to take their place. Best not to get too attached.


So I’m really not an animal person, though for the past 14 years, I have housed a 50 lb crazy-dog. All those years ago, then-husband brought home a dog he found wandering the streets. Home to my children’s delight and to my dismay. I’m not stupid ~ I knew darn well who would be taking care of that animal. Meggie, who was 2-ish at the time, gleefully clasped her hands together and cried, “Let’s call him Housedog!” The hungry dog promptly found a dead baby rabbit and chewed him up in two bites. Nice. We named him Buddy.

Buddy was a runner; all he wanted to do was get outside and feel the wind in his face and work his legs stupid. I remember getting on a bicycle, and holding Buddy on a leash while he pulled me for 5 miles. We were going at quite a clip too. Buddy was a hunter; he could spot a mouse in tall grass and lunge. Buddy was good natured; he always had a smile on his face, his tongue lolling out waiting for affection, which he got in abundance. And boy, could he wrap his teeth around a ball or a Frisbee or anything you would throw – Buddy’d jump in the air at it and catch it every time.



So gentle; when Meg was three, Buddy would carefully grab the other end of the rope bone she held out and would pull her around the room all the while she squealed. Protective; let one of us roughhouse with his girl and Buddy would nose right in between barking to make us stop. I get more than a little creeped out when he stands in front of a door and just growls.

I used the past tense up there a lot, but Buddy is still with us. Poor Buddy is not the lithe animal he once was (who is for that matter?) There was a time when we couldn’t leave a door open a crack for fear Buddy would streak out. Still well conditioned, we take care not to leave an opening for him, but I get the impression these days, like a eunuch at Hef’s, there’s not a lot of interest. The thrill of the hunt has faded; he can’t see large rabbits right in front of him, he doesn’t hear so well. I think his smeller is a little off too, since he has to lick most of what he smells these days to figure out what it is.

Buddy still loves to play catch. He’ll bring his ball up and caper around making a game of pretending he doesn’t want me to get the ball out of his mouth and throw it. He still loves to go outside and I know that the joy these walks give him is immense. He’s always looking around taking in what he can, sniffing and licking and traipsing along. Then his old hip starts to bother (a youthful indiscretion chasing cars) and he stays closer to me as he gets more and more tired. We get back home, he takes a drink of water, goes into the room my daughter is in, sits next to her and protects her from all the evils that lurk.



He scares easily, worries when we leave him, gets nervous if there are too many people around and panics if his routine is altered. He is important to my daughter and has been in her life for almost as many years as she is old. For all my bluster above about not being an animal person, I can’t let him go so easily. I profess to care nothing, yet I love him too much. I will not willingly have another animal after him, but none have touched me quite as much as Buddy, dubbed by my children and their friends as The Immortal.