This is a little essay that I wrote for my Autobiographical Forms class. I thought it was kind of fun, even though it's about dead puppies...
Tonight while cleaning out his bowl I
nearly dropped my pet fish David Bowie down the garbage disposal. I screamed
and tried to catch his little slippery body. He slipped onto the plastic cover
over the disposal and I scooped him up and dropped him into a warm, safe cup of
water. Tragedy averted. What would I have done if he had gone into the
disposal? Would I mercy kill David Bowie by flipping that switch? Would I try
to fish him out before giving up, even if that meant smashing him with my own
fingers? Yes, probably. I wouldn't give up on him. I would fight for him. There
is no doubt that if that fish dies because of me, I will be devastated.
As a child the death of a pet fish was
nothing. When Gil died we flushed him without much thought. My mother came home
and panicked. "Where is Gil?" "He died and we flushed him. We
didn't want you to have to see him dead." She wailed. Gil was her
fish and she had him for nearly five years. She loved him, and we were cruel to
flush him.
But what's the death of a fish when you
live on a farm and witness countless deaths over the years? I helped my dad
slaughter rabbits and chickens and was never fazed when he used the crowbar to
knock my pet rabbit senseless. I helped him pull the skin off, excited that I
had come into possession of such a fine fur, and saddened when he told me I
couldn't keep it and wear it as a hat. I gutted chickens, plucked turkeys,
chased a headless duck into the bushes, and during one hunting season my older
sister and I asked if we could keep the poor deer's brain. My grandparents said
yes and we wrapped it carefully in tinfoil and put it in our refrigerator. I'm
not sure if my mom realized what was in the tinfoil and got rid of it, but we
soon forgot that the brain was even there.
We also had a lot of dogs, but living on a
farm meant that no one dog was too cherished to shoot if he or she killed a
beloved goose or peacock. I hated my grandparents for doing it, as if the life
of a goose was worth that of a dog. But they had few qualms and would punish
when necessary.
My parents once tried to breed Rottweilers,
but failed when one of the dogs slept on her puppies to keep them warm one cold
night and killed them all. My dad made my sister and me gather them up and put
them in a large, empty dog food bag to take to the dump.
Dogs also knew no mercy from the farm
vehicles. When six or seven or eight dogs are chasing after a truck, it was
always possible for one to get caught under a wheel, especially if the truck is
moving slowly. Sparky was the first that I can remember clearly, although I
know there were many before her. She was a little, black, beloved toy
poodle. My mom hit her right in front of
our driveway. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Rowdy was my dog. My parents saved him from
the pound and claimed that he had once been a circus dog. He was little and
stocky with curly white hair that would collect the snow in perfect golf balls
around his feet. While slowly backing up her big red truck in a garage my
grandma hit him and he died. I was crushed, but moved on rather quickly. There
were ten other dogs to hold my attention.
Buster was another beloved. Short and long
with rough black and brown hair, I don't remember where he came from but we got
him as a puppy and had to save him from choking on his food on a nearly daily
basis. One day we packed up our old yellow Jeep Cherokee with cages of chickens
and headed out to the county fair where we would win best in show and countless
other ribbons. It was a proud moment for all of us. When we got home we
couldn't find Buster anywhere. I finally spotted him laying off the side of the
road. We had probably hit him on our way to the fair without noticing. We
should have brought him with us.
We buried Buster next to Sparky in a quiet
little area between some trees, one of the many unexplained piles of red
sandstone rocks that dotted the property. My mother again was the most
distraught. When an animal died she performed her best. In some other part of
the world she could have been a fantastic professional mourner. Her histrionics
made me even more stoic and accepting of the fate of death. All I wanted was
the mourning to end and to move on with our lives. When Sparky died I joined in
on the wailings, but Buster hardened me, and I knew my heart wouldn't break
again for a dog.
When I was eleven or twelve my dad brought
home a puppy for my birthday. She was a brown border collie and Australian
shepherd mix and I named her Bobbie Brown. She was not a well behaved dog and I
didn't put the effort into training her because I was irresponsible and easily
distracted, so she got into a fair amount trouble. We had to tie her up in the
back yard and would bark and bark. I never gave her enough attention while she
was young and troublesome, but she became a close companion to me when we both grew
a bit older. She had spirit and personality and she was often the leader of the
pack of our six or seven dogs that roamed the ranch. I'm almost certain she
would lead them into the North Hills and go running with the coyotes. She
wasn't afraid of anything, and she was sociable and kind. It wasn't too long
before she had her first litter of puppies, and we had no idea who the father
was.
About a week later another dog, Kylee, a
little blue healer mix and who was barely a puppy herself, had a litter. One cold dark morning in February my dad
burst in the house with a puppy in his hand.
"Kylee's having puppies!" He told us how he had gone out to
his truck and saw Kylee in the snow surrounded by blood. He thought she had
been attacked. Unlike Bobbie, Kylee was
too young to be having puppies and we had never even suspected that she was
pregnant. We brought her in the house
and Haley watched over her while she gave birth the rest of the litter.
I became the proud mama of twelve puppies:
George, Macca, John, Cecelia, Yoko, Julia, Jake, Bart, Linda, Jude, Martha, and
Lucy.
We made Bobbie a bed in our room and I
watched as her pups grew fat and round. My favorites were Jake and Bart. Jake
was the fattest puppy, the slowest and the laziest puppy I have ever seen. His
fur was pale brown and I loved him. Bart had an old face and was the darkest. I
was enchanted by his sweetness. Kylee's puppies lived in my sister's room and
after they were all big enough we moved them into one of the empty chicken
coops. Every morning I would get up and go out and play with the puppies, feed
them and watch them grow. Babysitting twelve puppies was probably the best
thing that has ever happened to me.
I was always a nurturer. My mom tells me
that when I was five and my little sister was born I was very serious and
excited about helping to take care of her. She was my baby. As she got bigger I
took on the responsibility of bathing her, dressing her, and feeding her
breakfast. I was just thinking of a home video I watched with my family last
year. My mom had been recording Lindy playing with Xia, a Rottweiler who
treated Lindy like a puppy. They were best friends, and Lindy would crawl all
over that huge dog without a thought. At one point Haley and I came out into
the kitchen. I was smiling and happy, indomitably cheerful. Without asking for
permission I found myself a popsicle and then proceeded to fix Lindy her bowl
of cereal. How many hours had my mom been up with Lindy and didn't make her
breakfast? I asked her about this and she told me that I would have been
disappointed if she had already fed her. I don't doubt this.
As my twelve puppies grew bigger my family
decided it was time to try to find them homes. I don't remember feeling too
broken up about giving them away. I would keep Bart, and my grandpa would take
Jake, so I would have my favorites. We also decided to keep George. I could
write a book about George. Not only did he become our beloved, but he stayed
with us for fifteen years and was the best dog that anyone could ever ask for.
When I was living in London last year I visited in April and was able to say
goodbye to George. He lost his ability to walk, and my mother, ever patient and
strong, would carry him outside and around the house and finally to the vet. He never looked more like a puppy in those
last weeks.
I didn't have Bart for long before my dad
ran him over. He was just barely growing out of his puppy stage.
Bobbie had another litter a couple years
later. This time they were all black and white. My dad and his friend went out
one day and lopped all their tails off, except for the one we would keep:
McCaffrey. He was the fluffiest, fattest, and sweetest of the litter. My mom
got him with her little red Neon.
When I was fifteen we decided to move to
California, and along with our house, our chicken coops and dog sheds, we had
to leave four of our six dogs behind. We found homes for two of them, and my
dad decided to take another two to the pound. They chose to keep George and Romeo,
one of Bobbie's puppies, and take Bobbie away. I was stoic and accepted the
decision, even though Romeo was not a very good dog and not one that I loved.
They told me that keeping Romeo was just like keeping Bobbie because he was
hers. They put her in the back of a pickup and I said goodbye. I didn't fight
for her. I didn't cry or wail or hold on to her. It wasn't until years later
that my stoicism, that my blithe acceptance of loss and death, finally broke down
and I realized my complicity in the loss of that dog. I lost Bobbie but it wasn’t
an accident, it wasn’t necessary and it could have been helped. I so
desperately wanted to forget and move on with my life that I forgot too soon, I
forgot about her even while my dad lifted her into the back of the truck. I
would now do everything in my power to save my fish, but I wasn’t willing to do
so for Bobbie. I can only hope now that someone saw her beautiful face and her
kind eyes and took her home, that she was able to have a second chance with a
family, with children and a warm bed and plenty of space for her play. I have
to believe it because the alternative would break my heart.
