|
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Card 
Pets
| | I knew yesterday, the 17th of June, had some significance, but I couldn't remember what it was. Somebody's birthday, I thought. |
| | It was a few minutes ago (4:07am, approximately), when I was flipping yesterday to today on the blog, that I realized it was Sparky's birthday. |
| | Sparky was my dog. My father gave him to me on July 29, 1956, my 9th birthday. |
| | Of course Sparky wasn't just my dog. He belonged to the whole family, I supppose; but he was most loyal to my mother, who did more than the rest of us to feed and take care of him. My relationship with Sparky was basically: fetch. |
| | The fetching did not involve a ball or a stick. It involved Sparky. Mostly, Sparky ran away. If we didn't tie him up or trap him indoors, Sparky's main purpose in life was to run away. It was a game for him: he ran away, and I ran after him. He wasn't usually hard to find. What Sparky wanted when he ran away was sex. I didn't understand that at the time. I just knew he'd be looking for other dogs. |
| | This was the 1950s. Neutering male dogs was a rarity. Every so often my father would say something about "getting Sparky fixed," but he wouldn't explain exactly what that meant. I knew it wasn't as bad as "put to sleep," but that it wasn't good, either. |
| | Our prior dog, Kim, was a strong male mutt my father picked up at the pound, which was the basement of a guy named Kahn who lived two streets away. The first time I held Kim's leash, he dragged me on my belly the length of our back yard. I was six. |
| | When Kim ran away, he always went back to the pound. But in the summers, when we lived in the South Jersey woods, Kim had no specific destination. I got a lot of practice for chasing Sparky by chasing Kim. I just found this picture of Kim, in a wheelbarrow with myself and my sister Jan. I'm holding him by his collar from behind. This was in 1955, when I was eight. Kim was killed by a car that summer, and we buried him in a little graveyard for pets that we made in the woods behind my grandmother's house. |
| | Sparky was killed by a car on Labor Day night, 1957. He ran away that evening and didn't come back. I remember hearing brakes squealing out on the main road a couple of times and hoped it didn't mean the worst. The next morning, my father told me the bad news. He and my cousin Ron (on the left in that last picture) found Sparky dead at about midnight, and buried him right after that. I had seen Kim dead — he didn't look that bad. I could only assume that Sparky didn't fare as well. Pop and Ron wouldn't talk about it. Sparky wasn't much over a year old. |
| | One of the popular songs at that time was "Tammy," by Debbie Reynolds. For years I couldn't stand hearing it because it brought back the heartbreak of losing Sparky. |
| | Last week I sat next to Debbie Reynolds on a plane from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. That's what I thought for the first twenty minutes, anyway. The woman was a dead ringer. Turned out it wasn't Debbie, so she was spared my dead dog story. |
| | A couple years after Sparky died, my father brought home a small neutered female fox terrier that had already produced two sets of puppies and a proven history of not running away. She came with the ironic name "Sissy," and immediately defended my mother from all threats, real or imagined. On the day he brought her home, my father reached over to hug my mother and found Sissy chomped onto his arm, growling. |
| | Sissy was a great dog, but she wasn't my dog. I only had one dog after that: a small black labrador mutt I picked up my senior year in college. Her name was Pogo. We had to give her up when we moved to an apartment that didn't allow pets. She laid her head on my lap all the way over to her new owners' house. It was clear she knew what was going on. It was a sad moment, but I was sure she'd be loved by her new owner: a little boy whose father was an FBI agent. |
| | When I raised my first round of kids, in the 70s and 80s, we had a series of cats, all of which died awful and sometimes expensive deaths. |
| | Last night when I was putting my eight year old boy to bed, and we were saying our prayers, we talked about how lucky we were, compared to many people in the world, and how we should be grateful, and care about the needs of others. You know the drill. "I love our family," he said. And added, "Sometimes luck is beautiful." He's a sweet kid. |
| | Is it lucky he doesn't have pets? |
| | Maybe. The decision not to have any isn't based on experience with losing so many of them. It's a matter of convenience. Our lives are busy enough. |
There are responses to this message:Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005, Henry Joe Peterson, 6/20/05; 8:21:09 PM Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005, Dean Landsman, 6/19/05; 8:21:38 AM Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005, Marty Heyman, 6/18/05; 5:10:36 PM
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
