An Unremarkable Dog

My dog is almost entirely average, in everything except maybe his ability to drool everywhere he goes. He's never saved a drowning kid or sniffed out drugs and sent criminals to jail. It took him a long time to be house-trained, and even longer to learn how to walk with a leash. I could never take him to school, he'd get too excited and scare the kids. He chases butterfly shadows and has never caught one. He always hides our shoes.

We kept him because he was the only dog in the litter who couldn't stray too far from his mother, our first dog.

He had never spent a day alone in his life, and when his mother died he had to sleep with someone for a week afterward because he would cry and cry.

He got scared of the dark when there was a power outage, and lighting roared outside. He sat at my feet and moved with every single step I took. Leaning the entire weight of his body on mine, giving me foot cramps as he sat on them.

In grade six when a heavy weight had begun to settle in my chest, and frustration seeped into my actions, my parents didn't listen. I was difficult, I was going through "that time." And they sent me outside, "talk to the dog," they said.

So I sat on the lawn, and the dog came with me. And he sat squarely in front of me, tongue lolling out to the side, head tilted as if in sympathy.

And I looked at him awhile, and then I talked. And he sat there the entire time, enraptured, with the problems I barely knew how to talk about. And I knew he couldn't understand because he wasn't even a smart dog, but I think he listened anyway.

Every time you came home, he acted like it was the first time. Like he thought he would never see you again, which to him, was probably completely possible for all he knew.

He whined and slammed into you when you walked through the door. Then he picked up a shoe and dropped it at your feet.

When I was older, that weight began to settle deeper in my chest. His deep brown seemed to fade, along with the rest of the world. Sometimes I couldn't move from my bed, my mother would yell at me.

I stole from my parent's liquor cabinet; from my brother's stash. Late at night when that weight seemed to push all the breath out of me, to crush me from the inside out. Anything to feel something else.

I would pick up my red school scissors, my name stamped across them boldly by my mother. Heavy, good quality, the kind you get only after you've given up arts and crafts.

I put them back down.

I kept a smile on my face, my grades were good. Nobody thought anything was wrong.

I fought back with my mother, because I was angry she couldn't see, couldn't see something I thought was so obvious even after I had mastered hiding it. I was a teenager, "what am I going to do with you" my mother would say, frustrated and angry. "Everyone tells me you are so amazing, so lovely, but I don't see it at home."

But that dog, who chewed on the drawstrings of your hoodie when you bent down to pet him, who barked every time the house seemed to get too quiet, who wanted to fill the space. The dog who ran too fast when he was old and hurt his back leg. The dog who stuck his nose in a wasp nest and got himself and my mother stung. The dog who wouldn't let his mother win at fetch.

That dog would come into my room in the mornings, after he woke up, and push the door of my room open. He'd circle my low bed and stuff his wet nose in my face. Then he would jump up in the cool dark mornings, and lay down on top of me.

"You stink, so much, and you're probably so dirty from your walk outside." I would say to him. "You can't come under the covers because you'll make them dirty."

He would sigh, and lay his head on my stomach. And I would reach down and stroke his soft ears, his grey muzzle. In the early morning, before I had to get up and smile again, it was nice to have a different weight on my chest. It was nice to have someone who listened, even when it was only a breath in, a breath out.

No, he isn't really an astounding dog, in fact, he's very ordinary. In terms of barking, bravery, speed, and smell he's probably below average. Maybe that's what makes him the best unremarkable dog there is.