Originating from and returning to Arizona. One dog’s story.
I am reading a novel at the moment that touched on a very potent point that both myself and my dog of 12 years can relate to: The idea that we don’t come from places, but rather from events, from stories. These happenings, seemingly chance occurrences string together to fling us forward into our present situation, whatever that might be. It’s who we are, right at this moment. Where we come from; not where, but what.
A little over 12 years ago a little puppy was born somewhere in Arizona. She traveled to her retail pet store temporary home in a mall in a western suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. The year was 1996. The month, August. In October, a young nineteen year old girl in her second year of college arrived at the pet store with her “best friend.” This was the term the young girl used to describe the counterpart with whom she was always together, unless they were not together, short intervals that for the young girl and her best friend were reduced to waiting. The young girl was at the retail pet store in the mall only because she had been unable to adopt a large breed puppy from the animal rescue, due to her landlord’s policy. The young girl brought the best friend in hopes that this significant day would become a part of their story, their history, another link to join them. But the story was not theirs. The story was between the puppy and the young girl.
The young girl bought the puppy for $500.00 (charged it to her visa, the entire balance of which would later be discharged in a bankruptcy). The group took a taxi back to the young girl’s apartment, the puppy in a cardboard box carrier, wining and scratching all the way.
When released into the apartment, the very small puppy (approximately three pounds) exploded from the box and whipped around the place, seemingly flying up the very walls, a small gray blur with flash of pink tongue, a single tight muscle brimming with energy, a whole-body wag of a puppy that can’t contain its own happiness, spilling it out onto everyone around it. The young girl’s brother, living in the apartment with her, gave the puppy a name. And their life together unfolded.
•   There was the eating of the decongestant pills when the puppy had to be cabbed to the animal ER where they pumped her stomach.
•   There was the time she jumped from the car window to say hi to the little boy on the sidewalk.
•   There was the time the young girl’s big, heavy father stepped on the little pup with all of his weight.
•   (She emerged unharmed from all of the above)
•   And the move to the east side where the puppy was neglected due to the young girl’s alcoholism.
•   Then the happy dance the puppy did when the young girl stopped drinking and slowly, slowly became sober.
•   There was the change over from puppy to dog, neither of them knew exactly when.
•   There was the move from place to place in Ohio, then the move to Chicago.
•   All the while there were changing people that came into their lives and went back out.
•   There were hard times in Chicago and there were good times.
•   There were more people, more places, and endless games of fetch.
•   There was the passage from Chicago to Phoenix that took place in an overstuffed white Toyota, driving across the country, just the two of them and their stuff, landing back in the place where the puppy began, bringing them both full circle.
The eight months that followed held so much change for the not-so-young-anymore girl, that the aging dog who still behaved like a puppy knew she had to stay with her, see her thought just a little bit more.
The dog’s decline began abruptly and progressed rapidly and she aged 12 years in three months, and her heart grew weak, and her lungs filled with fluid until she found it hard to breathe and she found herself on the floor with her grown up girl beside her, comforting her. When the morning came, she was ready. They both knew it. Everybody knew it.
At the ER, the dog was calm and brave, the girl was a weeping mess. There was nothing more that could be done, it was a progressive disease. The dog was ready to die. They told the girl to take as much time as she liked, but she found that she didn’t like the time, not that time, not in that cold room on that cold metal table with her dog in her arms struggling to breathe–each of them struggling to breathe–over the blue tape on the dog’s leg holding in the catheter that provided access to her veins for the chemicals to go in. No. The girl called the doctor back in.
When the door opened, the dog gave one shiver. Just one, small, barely perceptible shiver that communicated to the girl everything. That she knew this was it. That she was a little bit scared. That she knew where she came from. That she knew who she was. And the girl changed again. That shiver becoming one more happening on the map of the place she comes from, continues to come from, an evolving, ever changing landscape. The shiver made an earthquake in that place. It opened up a volcano, it melted down the side of a mountain, a mountain made up of 12 years. Very long, very full years. A circle. One full circle.
Then the dog relaxed. Then she died. Very quietly. So very quickly. In moments, less than moments, the dog was gone. The girl knew the instant it happened. The gray body on the metal table with the blue tape was nothing. There was nothing there anymore. The tide of nothingness rushed in so forcefully that the girl choked on its inhaling, turned, and ran out. The shiver, the dying, the nothingness, the running–all a part of where she’s now from. Who she now is.
A map of everything and nowhere. Including now. And now. And now.
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