Lessons from a Dog

What a rush! After a year and a half break from composing something new, I finally finished my newest essay. I found the process of writing this piece incredibly cathartic; it allowed me to flush my emotions and memories into an essay about my favorite little dog, and I'm pretty proud of where it stands after only a few revisions. Molly was an unconditional companion, a faithful friend, and a true member of the family. We miss her dearly.

"Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them the most, filling an emptiness we didn't even know existed..." - Thorn Jones

I dedicate this newest essay to Molly, the loving Shih Tzu who taught us to...

play games...

show off...

be mischievous...

seek solitude...

be okay with a bad hair day...

smile...

dance...

and love. <3

Lessons from a Dog

by Kayla D. Knutson

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

Although I couldn’t quite describe it, the scent was vaguely familiar but carried with it a hint of rancid fish. It hit me as soon as I climbed into the passenger seat of the van next to my mom. I had received the devastating news only eight hours earlier, but I found myself still denying the finality of the event since I hadn’t actually been there to see it happen. Now the smell permeated the air in and around me as we pulled out of the driveway on our way to a place where neither of us had been and had no plans of retuning to. After silently staring through the rain-pattered windshield for a few minutes, I gave in to reality and spoke a sentence that I’m positive we both were thinking.

“It smells in here,” my voice cracked, horse from all the crying I had done already that morning.

“I know,” my mom responded briefly, not wanting to say anything more.

As the wipers whisked away the water drops on the glass in front of me, I sensed tears stream silently down my cheeks. In that moment, I finally allowed myself to accept the identity of the scent coming from the trunk: the haunting mixture of wet dog and death.

***

At the age of twelve and a half (almost ninety in dog-years), Molly peacefully left the world surrounded by the people she loved. When I received the call from my mom at 6:14 that Friday morning, I was somewhat surprised, although I know I wouldn’t have been ready for that news even if I had months to prepare. In retrospect, the warning signs became obvious during the last weeks of her life: we learned that Molly had a stage five-heart murmur, hypertension, and rotten teeth that needed to be extracted. She spent her final few days breathing heavily, eating very little, and resting for hours at a time. I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked by the loss of our little Shih Tzu, but when death suddenly strikes and personally stings you, it’s hard not to dwell on its painful effects.

The last time I had to deal with the death of someone close to me, the deceased also took the form of a canine. My family always said that Charley was “the greatest,” and even though I was only eight when we had to put her down, I believe that to be true. A Golden Retriever-German Shepherd mix, Charley was the perfect size for me as a young girl. I remember straddling her furry body pretending to ride her around the front yard and using the soft back half of her torso as a pillow when we went inside the house later, both exhausted from play. Even if my hugs looked and felt more like headlocks to her, Charley just endured my unconditional love the way that all great companions should. She spent sixteen great years on this earth before falling into my grandparents’ pond and catching pneumonia while we vacationed in Montana. We always took the middle seats out of the van to make traveling with a dog easier, but that time I rode the whole way home in an empty spot, nestled in the blankets that now only held the old scent of my faithful friend.

After we put Charley down, my parents insisted that we were done with pets. They claimed their reasoning was that no dog could ever replace Charley, but I knew there was more to it than that. I saw the way my mom still looked longingly to the top of the stairs every time she walked in the house after work, and when my dad went into the garage, I would catch him rubbing the cool metal of the large cylindrical can that used to hold Charley’s food. The truth, I realized, wasn’t fear of another dog failing to live up to Charley’s life; rather, they were terrified of becoming vulnerable once more to the inevitable pains of death.

When dogs die, it’s not uncommon for owners to initially boycott the idea of welcoming another pet. Some may find it inappropriate to grieve over the loss of an animal (after all, it was “just a pet”), but many owners consider losing a pet as devastating as the death of a family member. Many support options exist, including therapy groups, grief hotlines, and even online message boards, to help owners cope with the loss of their pet in an appropriate way. Psychologists believe a healthy response to death, human or animal, includes cycling through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, guilt, depression, and acceptance. While the first four steps deal with the difficult reactions to death, the final step may be the hardest yet most important to achieve. Acceptance comes in many forms, but its purpose is always the same: to bring the survivor back to reality and remind them what it means to live.

All three of the dogs that my family has cared for came into our lives in an unexpected fashion. First there was Clyde, the scraggly Airedale Terrier that my dad picked up from a national park while hitchhiking from Montana to Minnesota. Charley joined shortly after when my parents found her barking outside their door during a Thanksgiving blizzard. Immediately, they recognized her as the neighbor’s dog, but when my dad went over later to return her, all he found was an open door and an empty house. As saddening as the scene was, the vacancy was a clear signal that she now belonged in our home.

Ironically, those neighbors to the south were not the only ones whose canine would find a place in our home. Only a few years after Charley’s death and my parents’ vow against any future pets, acceptance came to us in the form of a black and white Shih Tzu puppy. Layne and Barb, our neighbors to the north, had decided to adopt the little ball of fluff as a companion now that their children had moved away from the cities, but they were concerned about raising a puppy since they both still worked full time. At the age of ten and a rate of three dollars a day, I was hired for my first job as a dog-sitter for Molly.

At first, my responsibilities were quite limited: go next door after school to let Molly outside to do her business and play with her for a little bit before locking her back in her kennel and leaving. Of course, the dog-lover in me didn’t like those restrictions, so I started bringing Molly over to our house during that time. I’m not sure exactly when the shift occurred, but it eventually became routine for Layne to stop by after he was done with work to pick up his dog from “daycare.” Still wounded from the loss of our beloved Charley yet thirsty for the unconditional affection that only dogs can provide, my family found that having Molly as our “part-time” dog slowly broke down the walls around our hearts to love another pet.

Molly became a more integral part of our family as the years went by. When Layne and Barb would spend the weekend at their antique shop or go on a vacation with their grandkids, Molly had a second family to take care of her. We brought her to baseball and soccer games where she would bark at every dog until we allowed her to sniff it, took her on long walks to the park with multiple bathroom breaks along the side of the path, and even let her climb up in my mom’s lap at the dinner table where we would feed her baby carrot slices, the only food that she would actually chew.

On special occasions when Molly got to stay overnight with us, I would always quietly bring her down to my room and set up a cozy spot for her at the end of my bed. Even if I stayed up late into the night to finish homework or talk on the phone with my high school boyfriend, I always found comfort in watching her scratch up her bed for the night, turning around and around until she curled into a ball, closed her eyes, and allowed her long tongue to relax and stick out the front of her mouth. In the morning, I could always count on Molly affectionately licking up and down my arm to wake me up, a sweet yet sloppy reminder that she was still there.

For most people, life boils down to simple routines. Sure, everyone goes through big changes like getting married, finding a new job, or having children, events that undoubtedly make large prints on our timelines of life, but those instances comprise only small moments of life in the grand scheme. Routines are comforting because they are predictable; forty hours of nine-to-five workdays during the week, three meals a day on the dining room table, and weekly and monthly appointments and activities allow us to run our lives on autopilot even when they may seem out of control. Unfortunately, we oftentimes exhaust ourselves immediately upon waking up knowing that what awaits in our day is the same schedule as the previous days, weeks, and months. Despite all the comfort they offer, routines harm us by blurring our worlds into a sense of monotony, stripping away simple beauties like waking up to live another day.

 As I neared the end of my junior year of high school, I learning that nothing knocks the wind out of the sails of life’s routine quite like death. School was coming to a close and I was already mentally filling up my summer calendar with softball games, graduation parties, and weekend getaways with friends along with the twenty hours a week I received as a cashier at Target. My mental routines jolted to a halt when I came home from school one day to find my mom crying. As I sat down to comfort her, she recounted the devastating news from that morning: our neighbor Layne suffered from a ruptured brain aneurism, was in a coma, and the doctors were unsure if he would ever wake up.

Layne’s death left us all unsettled for a while. Just one day before the tragedy, Layne had followed his usual routine of picking up Molly from our house after work and stopping to chat for a while before taking his dog for their evening walk. The absence of those seemingly insignificant actions brought back daily reminders of the heart-wrenching sadness that abrupt change can bring into our lives.

  The months and years that followed were obviously difficult for Barb, but her strength through the whole situation illustrated the silver lining that exists behind every negative situation. In three years’ time, Barb renewed her faith by joining our church as a regular member, met a wonderful man (also widowed) who became her healing companion, sold her house, and decided to get married again. Her new relationship gave her the acceptance she so desperately needed, and her eyes were opened to a beautiful new life.

Barb’s new living arrangement didn’t allow her to bring all of her possessions; during my sophomore year of college, Molly was promoted from part-time to full-time in our house. The transition between owners came easy for her since she was already comfortable with our house, and we easily began to make our own new routines. In the mornings after she went outside, Molly would always race back into the house and stop directly next to her dish, waiting to be fed her morning meal. In the afternoons as each family member arrived home from work or school, she would be waiting at the top of the stairs to “dig us up,” her furry little paws attempting to excavate through the Pergo flooring until we came to pet her. During dinner, Molly would sit by our feet and politely grumble until we let her climb up in our laps, paws on the table and mouth salivating. She knew that after dinner came the “Find It Game” where she would scour the living room in all the usual places for the three hidden treats, working harder than we ever saw just to get the food. After crashing near one of the air vents for a few hours, my mom would finally announce that it was “bedtime.” No matter where in the house she was, Molly would rise and follow at my mom’s heels to the bedroom where she would curl up at the end of the bed for the remainder of the night only to wake up the next morning and do it all again.

             Humans have much to learn from their canine counterparts. While most of us can’t stand our schedules of monotony, dogs have the ability to find excitement in the most routine events: a walk around the block, the presence of a ball, and a pat on the head all make dogs feel loved and appreciated. Dogs never take for granted even the smallest of events, and I’d like to believe that we should take that approach to life as well. Each moment in our lives plays a part in shaping our futures whether we realize it at the time our not. An abandoned house can lead to sixteen years with the world’s greatest four-legged friend. The death of a dear neighbor can bring you to open your heart to love once more. A final goodbye to a loyal companion and best friend can conjure honest reflection and acceptance of the life that is to come. Although it still tears me apart knowing that she is no longer with us, I realize that it took Molly’s death to remind me what it truly means to be living.

***

           

            The smell still lingered in the air of the van as I slid back into the passenger seat, but I could already tell the scent would fade with time. I bit my lip as my mom started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot of the Humane Society, the final resting place for our little dog.

            “Well,” my mom broke the silence with a shaky smile, “now we can finally get new carpet in the bedroom without worrying about it getting ruined.” I smiled bravely at the memory of Molly secretly urinating on my younger brother’s green carpet for months because she thought it looked like grass.

            “This is it, though,” my mom said with tears in her eyes. “No more dogs.”

            I stared out the windshield only to see the sun finally start to peek out of the grey clouds and the slightest hues of an unexpected rainbow off in the distance.

I smiled, this time for real as I thought of Layne now having the opportunity to take Molly on eternal walks in the clouds. “You never know, Mom.” I said. “You really never know.”