Dog Gone

I’m not a dog person, but I used to be. As a child, we owned an intelligent Boston Bull named Jay Bo who delivered our newspaper to the door. Jay Bo lost his intelligence and his life when he followed my sister across a busy street.

“Now I have to go get my own paper,” was Daddy’s only nod to grief. My dad was never a dog person. He surrendered to the ladies in the family who wanted a dog. Since Daddy was the only male, he was outnumbered. Our next dog was a nervous, carpet-wetting Chihuahua named Nippy.  My mother tried tricks from every canine training manual in the Winston-Salem Public Library. When visitors came, my sister and I were placed on “doggie deposit” alert. If a really important guest came like the preacher or one of Daddy’s clients, the dog was banished to the bathroom. When I released Nippy from the bathroom she was rewarded with a new coat of pink nail polish.

Nippy also met her reward (or punishment) on the same curve of our busy street. I was devastated, but my dad’s first act was to replace the carpet, he seemed ecstatic despite my grief.

I had a long interlude without animals until my children were born. Stephanie and Mike, just like their dad, watched “Wild Kingdom” and read the ads from the Humane Society in the Easley newspaper. A trip to see friends who raised animals yielded a dog.  I wasn’t along for the ride so Steve and the children took advantage of my absence. Little Bit was a twelve-pound, part Chihuahua and part Terrier with a nervous carpet-wetting demeanor. Now it was my turn to pay for the agony my dog Nippy had caused!

I made a firm declaration; this dog would never see the inside of my house. Lord, make my words sweet, for tomorrow I might have to eat them! Two months after making that statement, a car hit Little Bit. She lived very well after that. We rushed her to the vet for surgery in the amount of $1,000 before being released with a hip brace, medications, and a firm warning not to let her sleep outdoors. The children could hardly suppress their glee all the way home.

Even after the brace was removed, the dog limped badly. She earned the nickname,  “Arithmetic Dog” because she put down three and carried one, (leg that is!)

As the years passed, her expenses mounted with a variety of problems:  sterilization after an affair with a German shepherd, an infected tooth, treatment for arthritis, and kidney problems.

However, her companionship was invaluable, especially as she rested beneath my husband’s hospital bed near the end of his life. She stood patiently as my daughter dressed her in a ballerina tutu and brushed her teeth. At the age of fifteen, she died peacefully and was given a respectable burial. The night she died, Stephanie, Mike, and myself had a three party telephone cry as we remembered Little Bit. There would never be another dog so loving and loyal. That’s why I’m no longer a dog person, there’s not another who can compare.