Skinny

I was raised in a pet friendly home. As far back as I can recall, my family always had some sort of animal running around. The first dog we ever owned was named Lindy and was a ghoulash of breeds, the most recognizable being a border collie. One day, while my parents were hanging around outside of my grandpa's radiator shop, a car drove past, slowed down and tossed a bag out the window. Inside the bag was Lindy.

Lindy stayed with us for many years, maintaining the solitary role of pet and general generic guard dog until her later years when we decided to adopt a golden retriever puppy from, what I believe, was a traveling salesman. We named the dog Chester and he grew to be bigger than most average canines. A bit later two cats came into our lives via some friends named Butterscotch and Dusty (those were the cats, not the friends). Later still, I purchased two gerbils whom I dubbed Stan and Eddie after two characters in Stephen King's "IT". Eddie was friendly and liked to be held. Stan liked to stay to himself and decoupage. After the gerbils my mom decided to get some fish and then a stray cat decided to wander into our basement and have nine kittens and then a friend of ours decided to "adopt to us" three stray kittens from around their trailer park.

During this time, Lindy became ill with old age and his health began to descend at an alarming rate. Eventually we had to make the unfortunate end decision. My dad and I rolled her onto a blanket and carried her to the family suburban. The four of us loaded up and drove her to the vet and had her put to sleep.

A few years later Chester died of colic and my two gerbils each died of cancer, only to be replaced by two OTHER gerbils named Gizmo and Gadget who also suffered the unfortunate fates of C. My sister adopted the class albino rat named Mickey and the 13 cats in the basement were given to the Humane Society where they were probably put to sleep as well. Most of my mom's fish ate each other, Dusty ran away and my neighbor shot Butterscotch. Mickey died and was replaced by a hedgehog named Sonic who eventually had to have a leg amputated. Hedgehogs are horrible pets because you can't touch them. It's like having some dry ice for a friend.

Lastly, in the past few years, my mother has adopted a (now) fat farm cat named Toby, two, tiny, imbred dogs named Puggy and Chi-Chi. She's adopted a red terrier-ish animal from her brother and has received a dog named Poncho that finds it imperative to eat everything in sight (edible or not) from who knows where.

My gerbils died during the winter and the ground was too cold to bury them so we wrapped them up in an old towel and placed the towel inside of a Pop-Tart box which was then placed inside of a larger storage box in my treehouse. Spring came and went and I never found the time to give the little rodents a proper burial. Winter came and went AGAIN and finally, the following spring, I decided that it was time to put things to rest. I wondered what Gizmo and Gadget would've said if they'd known that the corpses of my old gerbils were resting in my treehouse. Would they have been nervous?

Once, during an outside sleepover I was having with some friends, I got into a particularly heated argument with my friend Derrick and he grabbed my deceased pet's dual casket and threw it from the treehouse where it crashed into my neighbor's driveway and slid across the cement. I pushed him and screamed at him and kicked over my neighbor's clothesline in anger.

When Lindy died we had him cremated. Today, his remains rest in a fine oak box on our encyclopedia shelf. For many years, when I would bring a new girlfriend home, my dad would enter the living room, pick up the box with the plaque "Our Beloved Pet", sit down across from us, open the box and pet the plastic bag filled with dirty gray ash while he whispered, "Good dog" to himself.


Jade was also raised in a pet friendly home. Actually, to be precise, she was raised on a pet friendly FARM populated by dogs, rabbits, horses, cats and one pot belly pig who liked to bite visitors. Living on a farm, death is much more prevalent, even when compared to my animal house. When a dog dies on the farm, it is a sad day. Someone digs a quick hole under a shady tree, they lower the dog down, cover it up and hope and pray that the other dogs don't come digging around too soon. They do not cremate their pets and turn them into home decorations.

The "other dogs" in question are Rhodesian Ridgebacks and Jade's mom raises them. Now, just like every company, every business must have gain and loss, so is the dog breeding world. A big litter was born in the summer and in this litter, a little puppy that refused to both live or die. The dog was clearly runty and couldn't seem to keep any of his food down. June fed him with an eyedropper until he was old enough to take bites on his own. However, everything he bit into seemed to come right on up again. But this dog didn't mind. It ate dinner, it ate puke, it puked up dinner, it puked up puke. Nothing would stay down and the puppy slowly started to lose weight. It was due to this unfortunate physical attribute that he was crowned with the name "Skinny". June took the dog to the vet. What was the problem? Ulcers? No. The vets think it's some kind of throat problem. They do surgery and it doesn't help anything except make the purse a bit lighter. Skinny is still getting skinnier.

One day we're all sitting about the kitchen island and June asks me if I'd be willing to go dig a hole, back by the barn, under a tree. There was a shovel in the garage. Just make it about two feet deep. Doesn't need to be that wide, she says. I comply and head out for the task at hand. As I'm digging, the hot afternoon sun burning down on me, I hear the kitchen door slide open and the puppies are all released into the yard. The pack comes tearing over towards me, running and screaming, tripping over their own and each other's feet. They role and play and bark and bite. They reach me only to realize that they don't know why they came over. I had nothing to offer but a shovel and a mysterious hole.

The puppies run off, disappearing in groups of two and three, disappearing to explore the rest of the driveway, the horses and the backyard. All but one. Skinny decided to stay by my side and keep me company. I stabbed the shovel down into the dark Earth and pulled out another mound. Skinny jumped down into the shallow hole and began pawing at the ground, loosening the soil for me. I laughed and poked him with my shovel. I scooped up some extra dirt and tossed it aside. I looked back down and there was Skinny, sitting on his haunches, ribs straining through his skink, scar stretched across his neck from the surgery, his sallow face upturned and happy.

It was then that I realized what I'd been called to do. It was then that the pieces all fit together. It was right then that I realized that Skinny was not sitting in a shallow hole. Skinny was resting in a shallow grave and he was playing with my shovel while I dug it. I tried pushing him aside and scooting him out of his final resting place, but he just pounced back in with all the enthusiasm of a Disney character, attacking the shovel with playful growls.

A truck engine. The vet. She's here. June meets with her briefly before grabbing Skinny from the grave she'll be laying him back into in moments. He curls up in her arms as he's been taught and June pets his head, whispering little words in his ear as the vet administers the drugs. I watch from a distance. Most of my animals run away or are killed and I don't do well with death. I haven't been exposed to it enough. I watch Skinny's head slowly slink down onto June's arm and I can see that June is sad. She brings Skinny back over and I fill in the hole, trying to spread the excess dirt over the top as much as I can.

The vet comes over and stomps on the grave. Literally jumps up and down on it. Says something about packing in the dirt.

Don't want the dogs snooping around here too soon.