Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Scenes from a parking lot, 1989 and 2006
I was nine years old and just finishing up dance class. I went out to the parking lot to meet my mom and sat in the front seat of our blue van as she told me that our dog, Barkley, had died. He had wandered up to the gas station at the end of our street to be alone, and when the owner found his body in the grass, he called my dad to let him know. My dad buried him in our backyard under a tree--a place that was a little bit removed, a little bit more special, from where we had deposited countless goldfish and a hamster or two over the years.
I think I must have cried a little bit, but I don't remember crying much. Barkley never really felt like my dog. My parents got him right after they moved to Kentucky, years before I was born, so I never knew him as a puppy. And he was an outside dog, only allowed to peek his head into the house on Saturday mornings to eat our leftover pancakes, so he kind of did his own thing most of the time. By all accounts, he probably shouldn't have lived as long as he did. But somehow, he survived countless fights with the neighborhood dogs, collisions with the cars he loved to chase, and even some sort of poisoning, to live to the ripe old age of 14.
Barkley was my dad's first dog as an adult, and it took him a while to move on from his death. For three years, my and my sister's pleas for a new puppy fell on deaf ears. Then, on Christmas morning in 1992, after we'd opened all of our presents and marveled at the snow falling outside my grandparents' house in Tennessee, someone opened a crack between the living room's sliding doors, and a tiny black puppy with a huge red bow around his neck came wriggling through. It was love at first sight. ("It's snowing, and we got a puppy?! This is the best Christmas ever!" was my sister's oft-quoted expression of glee.)
With Boone, things were different. No longer wanting to find deer heads dragged from the woods into their yard or to have to call Poison Control in the middle of the night, my parents decided Boone would be an inside dog, and would be kept on a leash when he was outdoors. Of course, he soon figured out how to slide out of his collar, necessitating many frantic chases around the neighborhood.
There was part of him that never stopped being a puppy. Even when he was nearing the triple digits in dog years, he still might try to run amok if you let him off the leash. Even though he couldn't spring up to greet us quite as quickly as he used to, he'd still come to the door as soon as he heard the crunch of tires on our gravel driveway. And he never stopped wanting to be the center of attention--if one person got tired of petting him, he'd move on to the next person, working his way in a circle around the room. If you tried to give anybody a hug, he'd try to worm his way in between, or he'd bark until all eyes were on him again.
Yesterday afternoon, in the parking lot of a Hampton Inn, my dad told me that they put Boone to sleep on June 2. He had a growth on his lung that was making it increasingly hard for him to breathe. It was inoperable, and we knew that eventually this day would come. The vet didn't think he'd make it through last summer. I thought that when I saw him last Easter, it would be the last time, but he was still there when I came home for Christmas. This Easter, I knew it really was the last time. I had time to prepare--I even had time to get my crying out, both when Doc was put down on Grey's Anatomy, and when Nikki and Jon had to put Griffin to sleep last week. But that didn't ease the flood of tears that came when I actually heard the news.
The vet made a special trip to Windy Hill, my dad's hunting cabin and Boone's favorite place (not that he had many places to choose from). He got to eat a piece of toast (Windy Hill was the only place where he was ever allowed to eat "people food"), and then they did it on the porch. My dad buried him in a spot where he always loved to play.
There will be more dogs that will come and go from my life, I know, but he was my first puppy love. I'll miss him.
I was nine years old and just finishing up dance class. I went out to the parking lot to meet my mom and sat in the front seat of our blue van as she told me that our dog, Barkley, had died. He had wandered up to the gas station at the end of our street to be alone, and when the owner found his body in the grass, he called my dad to let him know. My dad buried him in our backyard under a tree--a place that was a little bit removed, a little bit more special, from where we had deposited countless goldfish and a hamster or two over the years.
I think I must have cried a little bit, but I don't remember crying much. Barkley never really felt like my dog. My parents got him right after they moved to Kentucky, years before I was born, so I never knew him as a puppy. And he was an outside dog, only allowed to peek his head into the house on Saturday mornings to eat our leftover pancakes, so he kind of did his own thing most of the time. By all accounts, he probably shouldn't have lived as long as he did. But somehow, he survived countless fights with the neighborhood dogs, collisions with the cars he loved to chase, and even some sort of poisoning, to live to the ripe old age of 14.
Barkley was my dad's first dog as an adult, and it took him a while to move on from his death. For three years, my and my sister's pleas for a new puppy fell on deaf ears. Then, on Christmas morning in 1992, after we'd opened all of our presents and marveled at the snow falling outside my grandparents' house in Tennessee, someone opened a crack between the living room's sliding doors, and a tiny black puppy with a huge red bow around his neck came wriggling through. It was love at first sight. ("It's snowing, and we got a puppy?! This is the best Christmas ever!" was my sister's oft-quoted expression of glee.)
With Boone, things were different. No longer wanting to find deer heads dragged from the woods into their yard or to have to call Poison Control in the middle of the night, my parents decided Boone would be an inside dog, and would be kept on a leash when he was outdoors. Of course, he soon figured out how to slide out of his collar, necessitating many frantic chases around the neighborhood.
There was part of him that never stopped being a puppy. Even when he was nearing the triple digits in dog years, he still might try to run amok if you let him off the leash. Even though he couldn't spring up to greet us quite as quickly as he used to, he'd still come to the door as soon as he heard the crunch of tires on our gravel driveway. And he never stopped wanting to be the center of attention--if one person got tired of petting him, he'd move on to the next person, working his way in a circle around the room. If you tried to give anybody a hug, he'd try to worm his way in between, or he'd bark until all eyes were on him again.
Yesterday afternoon, in the parking lot of a Hampton Inn, my dad told me that they put Boone to sleep on June 2. He had a growth on his lung that was making it increasingly hard for him to breathe. It was inoperable, and we knew that eventually this day would come. The vet didn't think he'd make it through last summer. I thought that when I saw him last Easter, it would be the last time, but he was still there when I came home for Christmas. This Easter, I knew it really was the last time. I had time to prepare--I even had time to get my crying out, both when Doc was put down on Grey's Anatomy, and when Nikki and Jon had to put Griffin to sleep last week. But that didn't ease the flood of tears that came when I actually heard the news.
The vet made a special trip to Windy Hill, my dad's hunting cabin and Boone's favorite place (not that he had many places to choose from). He got to eat a piece of toast (Windy Hill was the only place where he was ever allowed to eat "people food"), and then they did it on the porch. My dad buried him in a spot where he always loved to play.
There will be more dogs that will come and go from my life, I know, but he was my first puppy love. I'll miss him.
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