I grew up watching reruns of Lassie on Nickelodeon. I longed to be just like Timmy and have an unbreakable bond with a dog all my own. I would imagine all the things my dog and I would do together. If I were trapped in a well, my dog would bark for help. If I had been bitten by a rattle snake, my dog would drag me safely home by the collar of my shirt. And, if my dog and I happened to be aboard a burning ship floating aimlessly in the turbulent sea after the crew had jumped overboard taking with them all the life vests, my dog would certainly know how to bark out an S.O.S. into the ship’s radio. My dog and I would be an extension of one another, just like Lassie and Timmy.
I was seven-years-old when my older brother Pat told me that we were getting a puppy. Pat burst into our shared bedroom where I was going over multiplication tables to a classroom of stuffed animals. He ripped the little chalkboard out of my hand and tossed it to the floor, barely missing Perry the Penguin. I started to scream for our mom, assuming that Pat was going to hold me down and fart on my face like usual. He cupped his hand over my mouth and wrapped his free arm over my torso and dragged me into our closet.
“I’ll take my hand off of your mouth and tell you a secret if you promise not to scream for mom,” he whispered, then blew a big breath in my face to let me know that he had just eaten peanut butter.
I shook my head up and down under his hand. He then took his hand off my mouth and slumped down so that he was eye level with me. “I heard mom on the phone,” he said in a barely audible whisper. “She’s getting us a dog.” I shrieked in sheer excitement and attempted to bolt for the closet door. He grabbed me and smacked me in the mouth bloodying both my upper and lower lips. In retaliation, I kneed him as hard as I could in the crotch and while he fell into our clothes hamper moaning, I was able to free myself from the closet and our bedroom.
“What in the hell happened to you?,” my mother asked running for the paper towels.
“The dog, dog...,” I said out of breath, blood running down my chin and covering my large gapped smile.
“We don’t have a dog,” she said holding a wet wad of paper towels to my mouth.
“But, we’re getting one,” I screamed in excitement through the soggy mess affixed to my lips.
Pulling the bloody glop away from my mouth, she laughed and shook her head up and down smiling while she examined the cuts on the insides of my lips.
A week later, my mom came home with a tiny curly golden retriever poking his nose out over the edge of the box that she was carrying. I loved him from the moment I saw him. I actually loved him from the moment that I knew we were getting a dog, but now that I saw him, I really loved him. I finally had my Lassie.
My parents debated for days over what to call him. My parents occasionally took into consideration the names that my brothers and I offered, but much to my consternation, they were not as sold on names from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as I was. I thought Shredder was a perfectly legitimate name for a dog, even if it was the name of the turtles’ arch nemesis. My parents finally decided to call him Mac. My dad believed that it was a fitting name for a dog who was obviously as Irish as the family he belonged to and who also had very large paws like the wheels of a Mac Truck. After Mac chewed his way through my baby blanket, an encyclopedia, and the arm of Rocky, my stuffed racoon, I felt that perhaps Shredder would have been a completely appropriate name. He clearly liked to clamp onto my mom’s ankle while she was cooking. A few times he drew blood, but he was only playing.
Mac and I would spend hours running and playing in the backyard. Well, I mostly ran and played. He spent the majority of his time chewing grass underneath a laundry basket that I had trapped him under so he wouldn’t get away. When I’d get tired, I would lay in the grass next to the laundry basket and poke my dirty index finger through the holes and stroke his snout. He especially like it when I poked dandelions through the holes for him to nibble on. I loved his sweet puppy breath and couldn’t wait for him to get bigger so that I could ride him to school.
He did get bigger, and unfortunately, so did I. I was never able to ride him to school, so I contented myself with dressing him in my clothes. I thought he looked especially dapper wearing my white briefs with his tail frantically wagging through the fly. He reminded me of Tom Cruise in Risky Business, the epitome of cool. I even put black sunglasses on him that I bobby-pinned to the fur on his ears to keep them from coming off. He was the younger brother that I never had. When I had made myself a bologna sandwich, I made him one too. When I got a haircut, I would come home and trim the long hair that hung from his legs. And when I came home from Sunday School, I would recount the entire lesson to Mac.
“In the beginning...,” I boomed, imitating the preacher at the Pentecostal church that my family attended, while Mac rested his head on my lap. “God created the heavens and the earth.”
“What are you doing?,” my mother asked poking her head inside my bedroom.
“Reading the Bible to Mac so he won’t go to H-E-L-L,” I replied, careful to spell-out “hell” so that I wouldn’t get in trouble for cussing.
“I don’t think you need to read the Bible to the dog,” my mother said snidely closing my bedroom door.
“Pagan,” I whispered under my breath so that only Mac could hear. He looked up at me to concur. Mac and I both knew if anyone was bound for H-E-L-L, it was my mother for screaming profanities from her bedroom every Sunday morning when she put yet another run in her pantyhose, only to tear them off and put on a new pair that she would ruin en route to her bedroom door. I knew that with each “Son of a Bitch!” emanating from her bedroom, I was allotted an extra five minutes to play with my hair.
My mom and I had to take Mac to the vet because he had an ear infection. Apparently, ear infections are fairly common among dogs with floppy ears. “What’s that?,” the vet asked pointing to the quarter-size bald spot on Mac’s right paw. My mother and I both shrugged.
“He licks it all the time,” my mom finally managed, afraid she might be deemed and unfit pet owner.
The vet determined that much like girls who play with their hair, or people who bite their nails (like myself), Mac had developed a nervous habit. I didn’t dare mention that he would lick it so loudly at night that my mom couldn’t sleep so she would give him a Benadryl to knock him out. When I once protested about drugging the dog, she claimed that the vet had once prescribed an antihistamine when Mac swallowed a bee. Weighing 120 pounds, he was the size of a grown adult, so at least she wasn’t administering him an overdose. The vet did also mention his weight and wondered how he had gotten so fat. I didn’t bring up the fact that I fed him bologna sandwiches or let him lick my ice cream bowls either. The vet put him on a diet and prescribed him a bad- tasting ointment so he wouldn’t lick his paw anymore.
“How did he develop a nervous habit?,” my dad asked once we got home. “He’s gay you know.”
“Mac is not gay,” I fired back.
“Sure he is, look at the way he squats when he pees instead of lifting his leg. He probably has a nervous habit because of the way you brush him, Conor.”
“Dogs like to be brushed,” I said with authority in my voice.
“They don’t like their fur brushed the wrong way,” my dad retorted.
“Big hair is in!,” I screamed running to my bedroom and slamming the door wondering how I could belong to such an unfashionable family. What did my dad know, he wore flannel shirts and had a beard. He looked like a lumberjack.
I didn’t care if Mac was gay, he was still my dog and I wanted him to know that it didn’t matter to me. I wondered what gay dogs looked like, then finally it dawned on me. That night, I waited for my parents to fall asleep and I snuck out of my room and into the bathroom with Mac on my heels. I locked both of us in the bathroom and plugged in my mom’s curling iron. I was going to give Mac a make-over. I curled the long hair that hung from his legs into tiny spirals and asked if he had any plans for the night. He looked at me as if to say, “I don’t care if you’re gay, you are still my master and it doesn’t matter to me.” When I had finished, I marveled at my work and knew that although my mom would be mad, she would also be impressed since she was a beautician.
When I entered high school, Mac and I didn’t spend as much time together. He was often busy licking his paw while I was going to movies or attending parties with friends. We did however find the time to catch up every night. I would tell him about the girls I liked or who got in trouble at school, he would lick his paw. He always had my back. Like when I was 17 and my mom found cigarettes in my book bag, he totally tried to tell her that they were his, but she was being completely heinous about the whole deal. I was grounded for a month, and it was just like old times with Mac and me, we spent the entire month together. By then, he was getting pretty old and had bad arthritis.
Although my mom swore she never liked him since he chewed a hole in her ankle while she was cooking, she gave him an aspirin everyday to help with his joints while I was away at college. By the time I was 20, he was in bad shape because of his arthritis and could barely walk. My mom and I took him to be put to sleep, to end his suffering. I said goodbye to my best friend for the last time. My mom and I rode home in silence for what seemed like an eternity. She finally said, “remember when you used to read the Bible to Mac, I think he’ll go to heaven.” I think he did go to heaven.
CJM, signing off....
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