We're Dog People

It was another Saturday night with me and the boys staying up late to watch some television before heading to bed. By the time our show was over, Evan was dozing at one end of the sofa and Rocky was curled up behind me on the other end. I roused the guys from their slumber and told them it was time to call it a night while I turned off the light and the TV. As usual, by the time Evan and I stepped over Samson and Mac to enter the master bedroom, Rocky had already taken up his position at the head of the bed and was snuggled close to my wife, Lisa, who had already been sleeping for a couple of hours.

We’re dog people. Our Akita, Samson, was the first dog to share our Lugoff home with Lisa and me and our three children. That was more than ten years ago. Mac, Lisa’s first yorkie, joined us a few years later and would become the school dog at Blaney Elementary School where Lisa was the principal. Lisa had wanted a lap dog, but in a few years Mac had grown to tip the scales at around thirty pounds – a burden no lap should have to bear. Rocky was our second shot at a regulation-weight yorkie. Rocky met the physical requirements for a good lap dog, but he never matched the sweet disposition of Mac who has the gentlest nature I have ever seen in a dog. Evan, the yellow lab, completed the brood. He was supposed to be a Christmas present for my son’s college sweetheart, but college didn’t work out, and it time, neither did the girlfriend, so Evan stayed with us.

Sunday morning came with the usual mad rush to get everyone ready and out of the house in time for church. We followed our usual practice and put the dogs outside in the fenced-in back yard where they are content to romp in our absence. For awhile, Samson got into the habit of climbing the four-foot high chain link fence. A hundred-pound Akita roaming the neighborhood can have an unnerving effect on folks who aren’t dog people, so we fitted him with an electric collar and a radio-controlled boundary that kept him close to home. Rocky, our other escape artist, was a tunneler. True to his terrier nature, he would burrow crawlspaces at different intervals along the fence line to make his great escapes.

Rocky’s excursions beyond the fence weren’t motivated by a longing to explore; he was looking for love. Of the four dogs that lived with us, Rocky was the only one with all of his original equipment. Samson was a rescue dog, so he was neutered when we got him. Mac was fixed because no one wants to breed their delicate yorkie with a thirty-pound behemoth. Evan, like Samson, was a rescue, so his coin purse was emptied as part of his adoption agreement. Rocky was blessed with all the good breeding stock one would expect in a yorkie, so he was spared the blade until we could find him a suitable dame.

Rocky was neither as patient, nor as particular as his owners when it came to finding a proper partner to perpetuate his lineage. So during one of his forays outside the confines of the back yard, Rocky took up with a trollop a block away. She must have really been the love of his life because anytime he escaped we would always get a call from the little old lady up the road to inform us that Rocky was shacked up with his strumpet.

When we returned home from church this morning, it had just started to rain, so we hurried the dogs indoors. Samson, Mac, and Evan bounded inside and shook the water from their coats. There was no sign of Rocky. Assuming the paramour had once again escaped his chain link prison, we resigned to drying off the other boys and waited for the phone call from the Madam up the street.

Lisa had decided that after the rain stopped, she would go outside and check the perimeter for breaches while I settled down for a Sunday afternoon nap. A few hours later, I was awakened with a start when my daughter barged into the room. “DAD! ROCKY IS DEAD! MOM IS OUTSIDE! ROCKY IS DEAD AND MOM IS CRYING! HE WAS STUCK UNDER THE FENCE! ROCKY IS DEAD AND MOM NEEDS YOU!”

I rushed to the front door to see my sobbing bride holding Rocky. Lisa was cradling the tiny dog in her arms like a mother holding her child. His eyes were dim and his fur was wet and sandy. I hugged Lisa and helped her into the house. She was inconsolable.

We gently wrapped Rocky in a couple of towels and placed him in a box that had previously contained seashells retrieved from our visit to Holden Beach earlier that summer. My youngest son and I dug a small grave beside the eucalyptus tree in the backyard while my daughter and a family friend tried to console Lisa. As we were finishing covering the grave, my oldest son arrived home from work and joined in the efforts to comfort his mother.

I’m no canine forensic scientist, but from what I can gather, after the rain had stopped, Lisa walked outside to survey the fence line and almost immediately saw Rocky’s body trapped under the chain link fence. His collar had become snagged in the bottom of the fence, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how this would have killed him. The collar was loose-fitting, so strangulation doesn’t seem a likely cause of death. It had been raining, but he wasn’t found in a puddle, so I doubt he drowned. I guess he could have died from the shock and embarrassment of being trapped under the fence in the rain. I don’t think any of our other dogs held a grudge against him, so they’re off the hook.

After church tonight, Lisa wondered why she had been so devastated by Rocky’s untimely end. I reminded her how my brother and I had been inconsolable in similar circumstances. My father died in July 2011 and Lisa’s father died three months later. I was deeply saddened by my father’s death, but during the funeral for Lisa’s father, I could not contain my grief. My brother, like me, grieved for our father, but when his poodle, Bo, died a few weeks later, he wept like a baby when he buried his pet. For some reason, the second loss triggered a deeper, cumulative sense of grief in both of us. Since Rocky’s death is the second loss Lisa has incurred since her father’s death, that’s the only way I can explain her devastation over the loss of her dog.

Someone once said that dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and they depart to teach us about loss. I don’t know if that’s true, but we’re dog people. So it hurts when one of them leaves us. Tonight it’s just Evan and me on the sofa.