I grew up hearing the saying “gone to the dogs,” but I have “gone through the dogs,” although some would probably say I have done both. I have had more pets than I can recall or even name and it all started with Trash, my first and forever favorite dog. I might tear up just writing about her, these 40-plus years later.
The name, you’ll be glad to know, was an accident; however, it was certainly less than creative. One of my mother’s students, from a rather wealthy family, offered her a Collie puppy from the Lassie line or so they claimed. Their last name was Thrash, and I insisted that we name her in their honor. Since I couldn’t say my “h” plainly, she instead because Trash. Mother wanted to name her Goldie—now how silly would that have been?
Trash was my dog. She followed me everywhere. When I started school, she waited patiently on the hill where our house was everyday without fail. She ran beside my bike and she went where I went. We were inseparable, and I loved her dearly; she loved me without reservations. When she died at seven and a half from a heart attack, I was 12, and a part of me and childhood died with her. To this day I will never love another dog like I did Trash. Because everyone in town knew her, the local newspaper editor ran an obituary about Trash and her relentless love for a little girl. Her living and dying, I truly think, was a shared event.
The next dogs just never measured up, but it wasn’t their fault. I thought I wanted each one, but I couldn’t muster the love I needed to give them. Each one offered me something I didn’t fully return. They became my mother’s dogs because she fed them, loved them and tried to fill in for me. All were long ago carefully and lovingly buried by my dad who marked each grave with a small hand-made wooden cross and their tags by the tree-lined fence at the back of our huge yard. You could do those things back then in a little town.
My first year of teaching brought a little gray poodle, a gift from a friend. He was named Napoleon, and I just don’t do dogs with long names. So, a group of teachers got together for the sole purpose of re-naming this puppy. I wanted something more masculine than he was, so in deference to his French heritage and to give up a boost of testosterone, if by name only, we named him Jacque e Strape, or Jock as he became affectionately known.
He was cute and fun, and lived to be 12, but even then his life was cut short by a useless and stupid event. I took him to have his teeth cleaned, a yearly routine I had started when he was about 9 and began killing me with dog breath. Right before I went to pick him up at the animal hospital, I received a call that he had died in surgery. What had really happened we all surmised was that he was given too much anesthesia for his size. I learned the hard way, as I often do, but I know now to never take a poodle to a vet who specializes in horses!
And then there was Snicker—my second best dog ever! (to be continued)