Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends.
Dog rescue is so much part of my life now that it is hard
to remember the time when I didn’t know anything about shelters or rescues or
dogs. I had a dog, a small homely mass of anxieties named Blackie, that I had
acquired by accident. He was a bite-first-think-later dog, afraid of everyone
and everything except me and Paul. He didn’t really count as a dog, though. He
was more like a foster child from Childrens’ Protective Services. He’s the
reason I could not adopt Lassie.
Lassie was the dog of my heart.
I first saw her running with a pack. I was taking out the
garbage for my client, and the pack streamed up the driveway, intent on
foraging. I do in-home care for disabled people and my client was a member of a
Native nation where it was normal to see packs of roaming dogs. Cleaning up her
yard after the dogs went through the trash was part of my routine.
I have a snap shot in my memory of my first sight of Lassie:
a brown and while mixbreed dog with a gimpy back leg and a queenly aspect. She
was leader of the pack. She ran up to me confidently, sure that the garbage was
for her. She was first to eat, before the lesser dogs got their chances. It was a bright sunny day. The dogs seemed happy.
She approached me with a bit of caution and I held my hand out to be sniffed. I
was a little afraid of Lassie; she was the first pitbull of my acquaintance and
had that large blocky pitbull head with a lot of teeth. It’s hard for me to
think of her now. I can feel the tears coming.
I fed Lassie and her crew for about a year. I don’t know
where she lived. She just showed up when she saw my car. She often had a
playmate with her. She loved to play tug of war with stuff she found around the
neighborhood: odd scraps of clothing, a bit of rope, a piece of tire. Sometimes
she slept in my client’s garage on an old couch. She was a dog of the
neighborhood and seemed to be confident and content. I looked forward to seeing her and brought
her gifts of bones and good quality dog food.
Then one evening when I drove out for a late shift at my
client’s house my headlights caught the gleam of eyes in her garage. It was
Lassie, curled up on the funky rotting couch in the garbage-strewn darkness.
She was beat up, her face swollen and her paws bloody and lacerated. I sat down
beside her and she snuggled up to lay her head on my lap.
Snapshot of Lassie with her eyes closed and her head on my
lap. She had been just a dog I knew but now she became my dog. I stroked her
dry rough fur and whispered that I would be her guardian angel. I would help
her. I promised. My client donated some table scraps and a blanket. I wrapped
her up and fed her. That evening I googled dog rescues and discovered that a
no-kill kennel style rescue in the area. I emailed and got a reply: take her to
the vet. She would be accepted into the kennel after her spay, shots, and
repairs of wounds. The next day I drove out and convinced her against her
better judgment to get in my car.
This is getting harder and harder to write. Lassie hated the
kennel. She was used to being free and was good at it. She was tough,
independent, smart, but in the kennel she became clingy and needy and looked to
me to care for her. I started volunteering so I could be Lassie’s helper. For
the next seven months I was at the kennel almost daily. I took Lassie for long
walks in the woods, I drove her to McD’s for hamburgers, I drove her to the
park to run on the beach. I loved her. I knew I could not adopt her, though,
because she was possessive. She would not tolerate another dog near me. Once she
grabbed a hound dog and threw him to the ground because he asked me for a pat.
I knew that I could not bring her into my house where my little neurotic mutt
found what comfort he could in the safety of his favorite refuge: the closet.
Snapshot: It’s a winter day and there’s ice on the pond. I’m
walking Lassie up in the wood lands behind the kennel. It is our last walk
together; she has an adoption appointment. I am memorizing her: her brown eyes,
the silver fur mixed in the brown along the ridge of her back, the little
floppy pitbull ears, her high curved tail. She is enjoying the walk, doesn’t
know why I keep crying. She looks at me with concern; she was like that, very
focused, always looking at me for approval or direction. Or wanting to show me
things: an insect in the grass, the wonder of ice, her pleasure in the sun and
fresh air. Sometimes when we walked together she would take my fingers in her
mouth and we would walk “holding hands”.
Then I took her back to the kennel and walked away.
I didn’t forget Lassie. About a week later I got an email
from Danielle, her adopter. She said Lassie was a “daddy’s girl” and hung out
with the man of the family. Then a week or so later I heard that Danielle and
her husband were having trouble with Lassie: she loved them so much that she
had become aggressive to other people. She lunged at people when they were
taking her for walks. The kennelmaster made some recommendations for them. I
emailed Danielle and got a confident response from her: she was sure she could
teach Lassie good leash behavior.
I didn’t hear anything after that. I did not email Danielle;
Lassie was her dog now, and not my business. But I didn’t forget. I had
recurrent fantasies that someday Lassie would be my dog. Someday Blackie find
peace across the Rainbow Bridge
Three years later Blackie died of congestive heart failure.
He died at home in my arms. I did love him, but this isn’t his story. This is a
story about Lassie and I became obsessed with the email address I had saved for
all of those years.
Snapshot: I’m sitting at my computer, my fingers hovering
over the keys. I don’t have much hope; I’m not expecting Danielle to write back
an offer to give Lassie to me. I’m not going to ask for Lassie, only ask about
her. How is she? Is she happy? Is she still “Daddy’s girl”?
So why am I feeling this vague dread? Please don’t tell me
how the story ends.
Lassie was dead. She had been dead for years. Danielle had
returned her to the rescue about a month after adopting her and the
kennelmaster took her straight to the vet and euthanized her. For three years I
had been hoping to see her again and she was dead.
I have stop now. I can’t write anything more.
Okay. I’m supposed to be a Buddhist. I try. I wrote a letter
to the kennelmaster and told her that I knew of Lassie’s death. I told her that
I knew she had saved many, many dogs--about three hundred a year—but that I
could not understand why she had killed Lassie. She wrote back that she knew she had erred and
that she had cried herself to sleep many times. She is religious and she said
that she had prayed to Jesus and to Lassie for forgiveness. She asked for my forgiveness.
I knew she was sincere so…I do forgive her, but I still
grieve for the dog of my heart. I would have quit volunteering except that by
then I had sort of adopted a little neurotic black puppy that was so fearful he
would attack male volunteers. By “adopted” I mean he was my project at the
kennel; I went to see him every day, took him for walks, took him to the
drive-in, tried to teach him that life didn’t have to be scary.
And I went on to rescue more dogs: twenty-three last count.
I am always picking up strays and separating neglected dogs from owners. Here
are their names:
Pogo
George
Moochie and Joey
Sylvia
Charlie
Chewy
Rose
Chloe
Tawny
Jake
Wanda
Mollie
Twinkie
Bambi
Chica
Henry
Speck
Speck’s puppies
Billy Boots, Nipper, and Runt
Teddy Bear, Mercy, Billy, and Cody
Lassie isn’t on the list.
Her name is on memorial stone I bought for Stray Rescue of
Saint Louis. I made donations in her name to a pitbull rescue for a couple of
years. This is the first time I have been able to write her story.
Oh my Oh my oh my this made me cry
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