Sunday dawned as it usually does, with Flash prompting me to
get out of bed 20-30 minutes earlier than I do on a workday. Kath took care of his morning desires, rising
with the sun to feed and let him outside.
I awoke again an hour or so later, finding my wife reading on the sofa
and the dog sound asleep after his pre-dawn rituals.
We love our Sunday mornings.
We’ll watch a couple of movies or catch up on a Netflix series before
going about our chores. When the work is completed, we will settle down on the
back deck and listen to the Tiger game at 1 pm when they’re home, which they
were today. With the lawn freshly cut
and my wife’s gardens lush with glistening foliage, we no longer need a
television. The drinks are ice-cold and
a lot cheaper than they were at the ballpark.
When you have a good imagination, you have a front row seat for every game.
Yet, it was impossible to avoid looking at the garden in the
back of the yard. We had transplanted a
hosta that was over Flash’s final resting place, moving it to a spot under a
tree that we hope to place signage over, a little tribute for our departed
pooch, in recognition. But in the
garden were so many memories.
I remembered Brooklyn, a 40-pound Shepherd/Beagle mix, the
first dog that was truly MINE. My
brother had found he couldn’t keep him in an apartment he was moving into and
brought him to my parents, hoping they could find a place for him. They found a place. It was under my feet.
I knew the dog before I knew the girl, and practically
begged Kathy when I proposed, that, if you take me, you take Brookie. She agreed.
She’d never had a dog she considered hers, but Brooklyn would jump into
my arms if I patted my knees, slamming his rear into my chest as I caught him
around the trunk. He didn’t even snarl
when Lucy would grab his ear to help herself stand. He moved to a new house and even stood up to
ANOTHER baby, before his end came.
It was Christmas Eve morning, a joyous time. The house was decorated for celebration, a
yearly treat that Kath has kept up to this day.
But on this glorious Eve, Brooklyn slipped going down the icy, concrete
back steps and hurt his leg. After watching
him stumble around on three legs for about an hour, I called my wife at work
and told her I had to take him to the vet. With the kids at their Grandparent’s house, I
took the first available appointment. The
news was not good.
The vet explained that he had blown out his knee (or what
passes for a knee with dogs), and that surgery would cost $1100. Even after that, he would need injections for
pain and after he said THAT, I told him no.
I wouldn’t put my friend through that.
The prognosis was pain, more on than off.
When the portal was placed in his leg and
Brooklyn was returned to the exam room, Brookie hugged the wall. He didn’t like what had been done to him and
he blamed me. Hell, I blamed myself. I held him in my arms as the doctor put the
poison in the portal and watched him go.
The vet put his hand on my back and said, “He’s at rest.” And he was.
I carried him to my car and came back and paid the bill.
When I got back home, I dug into the frozen earth at the
back of my property, crying like a child.
There were men standing on the roof next door, doing an emergency patch
job. As my crying became louder, they
stopped working. They removed their
hats, oddly. I buried Brooklyn Dodger in
his favorite blanket and moved on to celebrate the worst Christmas ever at my
parent’s house. We told the children on the 26th.
Dean came along two years later. He ran in for dinner when you sang,
“Everybody Loves Somebody”, the song his namesake had made famous. He was not a bright animal. Sweet as hell, but lacking in grey
matter. But what can you do when you
send a dog to Obedience School and they get a C-minus? At about the age of two, he slipped from the
confines of the yard and lost a density contest with a black SUV on Packard
Road. A couple of animal lovers brought
him back to me and I took him to an emergency vet, who told me it would cost $800
for Dean to live through the night, that the dental surgery would be a lot more
and, since the impact was to his head, they didn’t know if he would EVER be
right again. I held Dean as he was
released from his pain. He took up the
left side of the garden.
As I listened today to Dan Dickerson and Jim Price sharing
catch phrases and late season hyperbole, I remembered when ‘T-Rex’, not yet
‘Flash’, came to our house for the first time.
I didn’t want him in my house and I didn’t like him. But he was here, and he would remain here for
the rest of his life. To remain in baseball parlance, I suppose it was
something like being the manager of the Yankees, hearing of a new free agent
signing. I don’t like this guy, but
EVERYBODY else does, so we’re going to have to get along.
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