It all started with the movie My Dog Skip. It had been a couple years since the parakeet boondoggle. Then it started up again. Our two oldest kids had matriculated to high school and 8th grade. Our youngest was in 6th grade. He had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 8, so we occasionally gave him an extra measure of consideration, given the cross he had to bear. My wife and I decided to take him to see the movie one Saturday night. Synopsis: A shy boy named Willie is unable to make friends in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1942, until his parents give him a puppy for his ninth birthday. The puppy, which he names Skip, becomes well known and loved throughout the community and enriches Willie's life as he grows into manhood.
Sounds inspiring, right? All that enriching of lives and whatnot?
On the drive home he got all emotional and said, “Dad, why can’t we get a dog?”
“Well, we’ve been through this before. Remember your demented bunny and brain-dead parakeets? I ended up taking care of them after you kids lost interest.”
“This would be different! I promise. I’ll feed it and take it for walks. I promise!” Then he turned up the pressure. “Are you aware that I’m the only kid in 6th grade that doesn’t have a dog? The only one!”
It just so happened that I was his 6th grade teacher. While I realized that a number of kids in his class did have dogs, his statement that ‘he was the only kid without a dog’ was, in fact, a lie.
I looked over at my wife. Much to my surprise, she raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Well, whaddya think?”
“We’ll talk about it when we get home,” I told him.
That night, after dinner, we had a family meeting to address this latest request for a pet. All three kids were super excited about the prospect of getting a dog. We had cracked again. The next day I went to Barnes & Noble and got a book about all the different dog breeds. Each member in the family got to pick the kind of dog he or she wanted. One wanted a boxer; one wanted a golden retriever; one wanted a black lab; one wanted a shiatsu. Frankly, I was ambivalent. In the end, none of those breeds won. We ended up agreeing on getting a Chinese pug, mainly because of the size and general friendliness. Not to mention, they’re kinda cute.
I found a local breeder and we set up a meeting. The breeder lived out in the country in a large house. When we walked inside, we were met by what must have been 30 to 40 rambunctious pugs. I’ll draw the curtain of charity down on the interesting smells that permeated that house. We met the mother pug that had recently delivered a new brood of puppies and picked out the one little girl pup that was sitting quietly off to the side of her siblings. She seemed well behaved. We paid the woman $600, packed up our new family member and headed home. We were both wearing black pants that day and were covered with dog hair when we got back in the car...a harbinger of things to come.
The family agreed on the name Lacy for their new pet. Honestly, things went well for the first couple weeks. All the kids helped out by feeding her, cleaning up after her and taking her for walks. With her lovable pushed-in face, Lacy snorted when she ate and loved to snuggle on the sofa. Surprisingly, she took the strongest liking to my wife, the person in the family who was least interested in getting a dog. Since she worked from her home office, she and Lacy spent a lot of time together while the kids and I were in school.
Then we started noticing something strange. Like most puppies, Lacy had a few accidents on the kitchen floor and on the carpet of the family room. We also noticed that she never barked. Even after several months of potty training, she still kept going to the bathroom in the house. My wife’s dad was a farmer. He said, “I think your dog has diabetes or something. There’s definitely something wrong with her.”
We had gotten Lacy in May; 10 months later things had not improved. Finally, we decided to take her to see a vet. Lisa was on the hook for the doggy doctor visit since I was busy at school. After examining Lacy, the vet told Lisa that she had a liver problem that he had seen in pugs before. He said it was something that would not get better. He gave us two options: A.) we could take her to the University of Wisconsin vet hospital for a surgical procedure which was not guaranteed to work, or B.) we could put her down. Neither option was appealing.
Against my hard-hearted advice, Lisa dropped Lacy off at the UW hospital on Tuesday afternoon and gave the doc carte blanche to try and fix the pooch. As she was leaving, the doctor told her that if Lacy didn’t have a seizure for 24 hours after her surgical procedure, she would more than likely pull through. The next day, at the 20-hour mark, the doc called Lisa and said things were looking good. She could come and pick Lacy up. Lisa was on her way out of town, so she asked if Lacy could remain overnight. The doc said sure. Then, and I’m not making this up, at the 23-hour and 52-minute mark, the vet called her again and told her that Lacy had suffered a seizure. At this point, it didn’t make sense to me to continue treatment, but Lisa, on advice from her father of all people, told the doc to give it one more try. The billing meter was spinning out of control at this point. We had run up a significant tab and there was no end in sight and no turning back.
The next day the doc called one last time to tell us the final procedure had not worked and that Lacy was suffering. At this point, Lisa gave the doc permission to put Lacy out of her misery. Our best friends happened to be at our house for dinner. Lisa’s friend was, how can I say this, not really a fan of dogs in general. In fact, she’s the founder and president of PAPETA. However, out of sympathy for our loss, she agreed to head down to the vet hospital with Lisa and Kyle. When they got there, the doc had placed Lacy in a doggy casket of sorts. There was a soft light glowing over her. Lisa’s friend, who had never petted Lacy while she was alive, gently stroked her as she lay at rest. Tears were shed, the $3,650 bill was paid and they returned home red-eyed and somber.
After the dust and pet dander had settled, we called the breeder from whom we had purchased our beloved Lacy and told her what had happened. She felt terrible and told us she would give us a replacement pug. We looked at each other again. Against all better judgment, we decided to take her up on the offer. We drove out to the breeder’s place and grabbed us another pug. This one already had a name: Petunia. When we got home and told the kids her name, our oldest son, Jonathan, said, “That really ticks me off...that her name is Petunia!”
To make a long story not too much longer, Petunia entered our lives at an inopportune time. All three kids were busy with school and sports, and Lisa and I were traveling a lot. In the end, we gifted Petunia to one of Lisa’s assistants who loved dogs and would be able to attend to her like she deserved. Petunia lived to the ripe old age of 12. (84 in human years.) Thus ended our history of pet ownership. It was a bumpy, yet memorable ride through the years filled with chewed computer cables, bird seed scattered all over our floors and a couple of ne’er-do-well canines! They blessed our lives in strange ways. May their memories be somewhat shorter than eternal.
Comments