An Old Spaniel

I have never had a dog die of old age. I do not know what to expect. Lucy’s ears have gone silver, her face is mask, and her paws are flecked with gray. After breakfast she wants a nap in the sun before she will regard the day. On walks she tires sooner and insists on a slow pace. Some days she is sore and stiff and needs to be hoisted onto things or carried up steps. Little things stack atop each other, and in another five years or so, they will pull her to sleep eternally.

I have always thought it a privilege to watch a pet die of age. It was one, for many years, that I could not give. The first dog I remember owning was a spunky terrier named Benji. He tragically got into poison. Next came Goldie, as warm as her name. We lived on a farm and there were rules. Well, Goldie liked chasing chickens.

“It’s just a dog,” my dad always said when they did something he deemed intolerable. I had seen what had happened to my sister’s dog who chased the chickens; a bullet found his skull. I begged and pleaded with my father, and by some miracle he spared her with a new home instead.

For a while I had no dog, instead we all shared. We had a collie named Lassie that we adored. She never did anything wrong, but alcohol is strong. After a nasty fight between my parents, we went with our mother to visit family. He shot Lassie while we were away and told us he would not take care of our pets for us. Every trip after left me fearful and sometimes abandoned due to his threats.

There were others we shared, too many to list. Farms are rough on a dog without a proper fence. Rougher when the farmer takes aim. My next dog was a setter mix named Patch. She was clever and playful, white flecked with black spots. I loved bird dogs forever after. But, well, bird dogs kill birds, and the farm had rules.

After that my father degreed, “No more dogs.”

But, I was lonely and hopeful. I wrote him a letter pleading my case, reasoning that all kids needed a good dog. He laughed when he read it, but it worked. He took me with him to pick up a beautiful blue tick with ears so long they could touch her nose. Grace was always eager to run and just as eager to bay.

At barely a year old, she got knocked up by a roaming lab and tragically died three days after giving birth. She crawled out into the woods and collapsed, sick with the stink of dead and too weak. I held her and cried, then helped my mom burry her. I bottle fed the seven puppies. Only three survived, two girls and a boy. I was permitted to keep one, so chose the very best and named her Beauty after the famous Black Beauty.

Beauty was my everything. She was cunning, perhaps too much. There was not a collar she could not slip or fence she could not escape. I roamed the woods with her circling around me, dashing through the pines, checking in and then chasing rabbits. She got all of her mother’s drive with the attentiveness of a lab. She waited for me at the bottom of trees while I climbed as high as I could or napped with me in the sun.

If my dad got too drunk, which was often, I would sneak out of the house and down to the tree she stayed chained at. Together, we would curl up on the musty blankets in her dog house and sing with the insects. When there was nothing else to hold on to, I held her.

But, labs are bird dogs and Beauty was half. It started as chasing, which we could not stop. Then, like the rabbits in the woods, she caught the birds. I was sent to burry the dead chickens and informed of what was next. The gun.

I remember running down to the barn where she was and flinging my arms around her. I sobbed and prayed that somehow, this time would be different. But, my dad had just killed my sister’s dog for the same thing. There were no exceptions. Never. I hugged Beauty tightly, told her goodbye, and begged her to run away. Of course, she did not understand.

When I returned the house, almost unable to breathe through the tears, a miracle happened. Dad changed his mind. The gun was set by the door, and he called me over. First, he told me to stop crying, then he assured me he would not kill her. He stayed true to his word, even when she killed three more chickens.

When college came around, I had a serious conversation with my father about if I should take my dog. I was very forward with him and let him know that he if he had any intention of harming my dog, I wanted to take her with me. He thought it would be silly for me to take her to college and gave me his word that she would be fine. I told him, repeatedly, that if things changed, let me know.

The first two years were easy, smooth. He even took her on walks with him. Suddenly, Beauty was the oldest dog I had ever owned. When I went home for visits, Beauty was there, eager and clingy. I would plant kisses on her head and tell her, “I’ll take you back with me eventually.”

Eventually. Beauty was used to lots of space to roam. The tiny apartment I was squished into was hardly fitting for her. My dad called her a good dog. He understood, as much as he could, what she meant to me. My dad had always kept his word, even when it was cruel to, so I trusted him.

I got a call one year, right before a holiday visit, to warn me that Beauty had run off. My mother sounded worn, worried, as she told me. It hit like a punch, but I shoved it aside. Beauty would come back. She always did. The hound in her liked to explore. Naturally, I gathered up a leash and set to look for her when I got home. That was when my brother told me the truth.

My parents had gotten into a fight, a real nasty one, like always. Dad was controlling and cruel. At the end of the fight, my mother went to visit her parents. While she was away, my dad drug Beauty to the back of the property and shot her. He did the same with his own dog. Punishment for my mom’s actions. Abuse in one of its ugliest forms.

Fearing I would blame her, my mother had lied about it to me. And, worse, it had happened months ago. So, I found Beauty, a pile of bones, in the back pasture. If there was any doubt, her leather collar rested in the rubble. I picked it up and felt something in me snap. The only heartache that has been worse was when family members died.

Intermixed with it all was an overwhelming sense of betrayal. My father, Allen, had lied. He had said she was safe. He could have called me if that changed. I would have come and gotten her immediately. He saw me crying and I avoided him. It seemed like letting him win if he saw my anger because that was the whole point. My pain was the point. My anger at him, at my mother, was the point. Click, boom, and control was regained. Everything else was just an excuse. Years later, when our relationship finally collapsed to nothing, I confronted him. But that day, I just left the house to cry alone.

Beauty was only eight. The number stamped into my brain as the longest I had ever owned a dog. All my promises to her felt like a mockery. It was naive that I had thought she would make it out. No dog escaped that house. I cannot even began to talk about the cats. There are wounds that will never heal.

At the end of children’s dog books, they usually have the dogs die to symbolize the loss of childhood. Mine certainly was lost. Lucy was my next dog after that, and she has lived the best life of any dog I have ever had. She saw me through the rest of college, through my career starting, marriage, moving to Alaska, now Spain. Lucy has been with me through anxiety and grief, joy and adventures with just the two of us.

I made a lot of promises as a little girl to my pets, especially my last dog. I wanted to run away with them just as much as I wanted to flee myself. One day, we will be free. One day there will be no yelling. One day we will go on adventures. One day they would sleep in a house with blankets and toys. One day they would have a quiet place to nap and make messes without either of us worrying about a gun. One day they would grow old and gray.

Those hopes stamp across Lucy’s black fur in washes of changing color. They rest on her dry nose after a long nap. They curl up in bed with me after breakfast and share their stinky breath. I have never had a dog die of old age; I think it will be nice.

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If you made it to the end, thank you! I do not usually issue an author's note for the pieces I write about abuse, both fictional or non. With this one, I felt more compelled to. It is, unfortunately, nonfiction. I could probably write an entire book about the twisted dynamics with pets on the farm. One of the often overlooked sides of domestic violence is the harm committed to animals to create emotional distress and maintain control. While I have spent plenty of time in therapy unpacking these things and healing, I still find some power in putting them to paper. I hope that if it echoes someone else's childhood, they find some solace in knowing that they were not alone in the experience and that things get better.