Not an Animal Lover
Growing to love a dog despite myself
Here is something extremely vulnerable for me to share. I’m not a dog person. I’m not a cat person either. Or a fish, hermit crab, rabbit, ferret, pig, or any kind of pet person. I probably just lost some of you. I swear it doesn’t make me like Dexter.
I’ve never been a pet person. I don’t like for them to be near me. When I see one, I don’t immediately feel warm in my insides and need to touch it. Once when I was growing up I begged my parents to let me get a puppy. They finally did. I named it Kaz after a character on the TV show Hardball played by Richard Tyson. I have no idea what happened to that puppy. I don’t know what happened to Richard Tyson either.
I mean the puppy grew. I took care of him for a bit. Honestly, it is likely that he was run over by a car because we lived on an extremely busy street where folks were usually traveling at about 50 miles per hour. We had no fence around our yard. I can’t say exactly what happened to that dog. That is weird.
We had cats, but they were all strays that came for the meal scraps that we always threw into the backyard. We had an enormous backyard. We never threw food into the trash can inside because then the mice from the cow pastures would come inside. We liked to keep all animals outside!
I’m a lot like my father. He felt the same way about animals. Fine to look at from afar. There is no need to have one in your lap. I think most of my friends already know this about me, but I have found over the years that it becomes increasingly more difficult to admit such a flaw in my character. This is why it feels so vulnerable to me to share this. It seems like to be a person who isn’t in love with pets these days is the equivalent of being Cruella de Vil from the original 101 Dalmations movie. I haven’t seen Cruella yet. No spoilers!
Feeling as I do about animals — I want to watch them from a distance. I want to see elk in the wild. I want to watch a moose eat in a swamp. I think seeing a Mama Bear and her babies is THE BEST NATURE I’ve ever seen. But, I’ve never felt like I wanted to own an animal or have an animal as a pet.
Here is the truth. I am more nervous about this post than most others I have written! I am truly afraid people are going to get mad at me for admitting that I don’t love their pets. Radical vulnerability . . .
Hubby does not feel the same, but he does believe animals are made for the outdoors. He was lucky enough to grow up on lots of land where dogs could run down to a pond for fun. He never intended that we would have pets in our house. And, of course, I didn’t either.
That is why it is very confusing to be feeling the feelings I’m feeling for our dog. I guess I can share his name with you. He is Buster and he is an old dog now. I’ve never known a dog as long as I’ve known Buster, at least not up close and personal the way I know him.
Shortly after we moved to our house where we have now lived for over thirteen years, my mother called me to tell me that someone had thrown out a puppy near her house. He woke her up crying and because it was below freezing outside in the middle of January, Mom got up in the middle of the night, took a flashlight, found where the whining was coming from, and took Buster (though he didn’t know his name yet) inside her utility room attached to her house. She wrapped him in a blanket and, of course, gave him water and food. When she called to tell me about this, she started the whole story by saying, “I know y’all have been wanting to get the kids a dog.”
Nope. Not true. The kids HAD been wanting a dog. That did not mean WE had wanted to GET the kids a dog.
She asked if Hubby would come by and just look at him. Hubby brought Buster home that day. He was tiny and adorable. My tiny, adorable children loved him immediately.
Buster does not get a lot of attention from me. Hubby is his person. I can go days without touching Buster. (Please, don’t hate me!) And yet, these days I’m finding myself thinking a lot about his death. Not in a “oh, good, he is almost dead” way either!
He is old. He has grey hair. I know you dog people want to know what breed he is, but we don’t know. Somebody tossed him out in the middle of the night. Mixed-breed definitely. Medium-sized. Beautiful.
When he tries to stand up now, it takes him a minute and it is clear that his hips hurt. He and I have that in common. His breathing is often labored. He sounds really terrible. About once a week now somebody in the family wonders out loud, “Do you think it is TIME?”
We have told our kids since the day Buster came home, “We are not the kind of people who will get surgery for a dog or spend a lot of money on medicine for a dog.” From that very first day, I’ve been preparing the kids for his death.
I forgot to prepare myself. I didn’t think I would care all that much. But, I can’t imagine our house without Buster. He has been with us for almost all thirteen of those years. He may live another thirteen for all I know, but watching him age is hard.
The first dog I remember knowing died when I was a teenager. The dog belonged to my oldest sister and her husband. Mike was his name. Mike and my brother-in-law rode around in a pick-up truck together. No kidding. And, when Mike died, it was the first time I remember seeing someone grieve the death of a pet. Mike was a good dog.
I grew up hearing about Prince. Prince was my mom’s dog when I was born. I haven’t thought about Prince in a long time. In fact, I haven’t heard about Prince in a while. Prince the dog was Prince before the rocker became famous. My mother used to talk about him all the time. She loved that dog so much. She talked about how protective he was of her while she was pregnant with me. Prince was a Pomeranian and after he died it was a very long time before my mom gave her heart to another dog. She recently had a birthday celebration for Patch. I think Patch is also a Pomeranian and is the most spoiled dog you have ever seen. That isn’t true, but I like to give her a hard time about it.
Hubby had a dog during the first part of our marriage, but he lived outside (as God intended). I never called him “our dog.” He was always “his dog.” He was a black lab named Stone. He was with us for a long time too and was old when we lost him. We don’t know if he died, ran away, or was stolen. My parents went over to our house to feed him the day Kid #2 was born and Stone was gone. We never saw him again. I think he ran into the woods behind our house to die alone. He was a proud dog.
Buster doesn’t seem proud. He lays on his belly with all four legs stretched out in different directions. That isn’t a proud dog. He protects us. He is sweet. He is patient. I know he is patient because of the way he quietly ignores the cat. (Yes, we now have a cat living with us too. That is another story and was almost the end of my marriage!) Buster is a kind dog.
I don’t know how much longer we will have with Buster. That makes me sad. It also makes me glad that Mom called all those years ago and assumed something that was not true — that we wanted to get a dog for the kids. Whether we wanted it or not, Buster ended up here. I can’t imagine our house without him. He is a good dog.
