I hate telling the truth. Not about most general things, but mostly the fact that all I have to tell is sad stories. It's true. And when I do share these sad stories, people don't believe me, or if they do, they pity me. And I hate that. I never ask for pity, it's really my stories that ask for it. Such as the following. I could've entitled this A Boy and His Dog. But we never hunted quail together or saved the neighbor from the town well...
One late evening, my dad brought home a black puppy, a mutt. My dad and mom wake me (pre-divorce days, so I was about 5 years old) and told me to look down beside my bed. There, in a box laden with a towel, was the smallest, cutest black thing I had ever seen. My grin exclaimed all my merriment. My dad said when he was getting back into his truck after work at the local Circle-K (no longer found in New Mexico, methinks) that he heard a faint yelping, looked down, and there he was. We named him Ranger.
I had him for years. Past the divorce, past starting school, all that growing up Phase I stuff. My mom, my sister, and I had moved into a house owned by my grandmother deep in the South Valley of Albuquerque. There, with the largest backyard I have ever lived with, Ranger grew up. He grew up funny looking, too. He was no taller then my knees, furry and black, and long. My mother was sure he was part chow and weiner. Nonetheless, he was the nicest and funnest dog. He barked at strangers. He loved to play catch. He could run around forever. He was a good pup. Until one day, he didn't come home.
He was missing for about three days, if my memory serves me right. My mom seemed more devastated than me. I figured he had left never to return, which was fine with me because I felt that there was a huge world out there to be explored and lived, not to be restrained to a wooden house, under a tree, in the South Valley. She wasn't so upset that had he ran away but that I had lost my pup. On the third day, I was playing outside with my sister, as per the usual. And there he was, limping back through the chain-link gateway. I jumped for joy. My sister screamed in excitement. But something was wrong. He was sad and limping, and something was wrong with his neck.
My mom shoo-ed us into the house where she called my uncle over to investigate. My mom bandaged up Ranger. He had scratches and bite marks on his face and had a huge chunk of his neck ripped out, plus he was infected. My uncle, being the experienced dog-owner that he was as a farm-boy announced it as gangrene...an unrevocable infection. My mom had explained to me that it seems he, being the friendly dog he was, was noticeably attempting to fraternize with a pack of loose dogs (I myself remembered this as they passed our gates...truth is, one of them was probably a hot mama). But he escaped, ran with the wrong dogs for a couple days and came back tried and scarred. My uncle said there was no way he'd survive and had to be "taken to the hills to be shot." He actually let those words fall from his mouth. I don't remember crying just yet, however...
So, my last memory of Ranger, at the ripe old age of 8 years old, is me standing in my driveway watching Ranger being ushered into my uncle's pick-up wagon, wrapped, sad, and dying. It looked like he knew where he was going. And that's when I started crying, not when I realized that he was about to die, but when I saw the gun in the back. My uncle slammed shut the wagon doors, and off they drove, to the hills.
Since then, my general distate for guns remains and I have yet to own another puppy, much less even like another person's pet. I know, I know, I sound bitter and scarred. And I guess I am. But this story is just to sad to live through again. However, I do plan on having another dog in the future. I'm just not sure a world with guns is a nice place to raise puppies.