Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

Dogs' Fates

When Beau was nearly a year old, fully grown physically, but mentally still quite young, he was as much a mystery to me as ever, with his shifting moods and personalities, a growling fiend one moment, a lovable clown the next.

We took the same walks through the neighborhood as ever, but there were many changes among the dog and human population.

Do you remember Reggie, the fox terrier? His family decided they could not keep him, that their house was just too busy with four kids to do justice to a little dog. So they handed him over to another family, a block away. Freaked out by his transfer, Reggie did poorly in the new household. He chewed the wrong things, he messed in the wrong places, and worst of all, he bit someone. He had had none of these problems at his original home, but they were deemed intolerable by his new family, who had him destroyed.

Harley and Buster, the two dogs from the duplex who climbed the high snow to stand on top of their garage, were split up, when Harley and her master Brent moved a few doors away.

Barney, the gouty beagle whose owner ushered him away from Beau, disappeared. I never found out what his precise fate was, but I imagine he got sick and died.

Ginger, the funny boxer Beau loved to shimmy with, never became the breeding dog her family planned. She became quite broad in the back. She was still cute, but she was no longer handsome. Worse, she developed a malignant tumor on her back, which left a divot of scar when it was removed. She was spayed, and is now just a house dog like Beau.

Some dog stories took a strange turn. Cobi and Sonja, Noelle's dogs and Beau’s best friends, cooled toward him after his neutering. Whatever it was that he had before the surgery, he no longer had after it. Sonja became positively hostile to him, preventing him from entering the house. Noelle and I remained friends, but with the dog thing no longer working, we saw less of each other.

Mango, the golden who seemed to share the same spark as Beau, seemed to lose his spark after he was neutered. Neutering seems to take a heavy toll on golden retrievers. Basil, the other golden in our neighborhood, continued to exhibit his customary personality deficit.

I now, belatedly, came to understand why so many dog owners, seeing Beau down the street, hurried their dogs away. It was not because they were party poopers, but because their dogs were like Beau – they were willing to fight to establish dominance. They had been embarrassed too many times, and did not want to be embarrassed again.

But the saddest story involved the two Samoyeds, Sophie and Bear. Both were angels and very childlike, but Bear, age 8, looked quite ferocious. And he was said to be part wolf. One day he got off his rope and chased the neighbor’s cat. Both Walter, his owner, and the cat’s owner looked on in horror as bear caught the cat and tore it apart and ate it. Walter cried out to stop, until it was too late. Bear never responded to the command, and thereby sealed his fate.

“I couldn’t have a dog that would not respond,” Walter told me. “So I took him down to the hospital, and we sat, and I fed him his favorite food, raw beef, and I stroked him and sang to him as the injection went in, and he lay down and died.”

“That must have been so hard,” I told him.

He nodded, tearing up again. “I blubbered for days.”

A statelier death awaited the noble Sherlock, the bloodhound. One day, following a week of 95-degree days, Bob found him in his bed, the mighty heart stilled by the heat.

Poor Bob – he loved that dog like a giant bride. His solemn dutifulness was the perfect counterbalance to Bob’s inventiveness and wit. I tried looking up his name in the phone book, to tell Bob how sorry I was, and how great Sherlock was. But Bob is one of those American originals who don’t have a phone. Bob, I'm so sorry.

So we walk trough the neighborhood and note the changes -- who is gone and who remains.

When Beau approaches a Sheltie in one yard, the little dog yaps and a face appears in the doorway, studying us to see if we pose his little dog a danger or not.

At another yard, I can't even see the dog that whines and wags by the gate. Beau is just another shadow in the darkness, and when I pull on his chain he resists. He wants to experience this dog. I let them get excited at the idea, but there is no possibility, what with the leashes and the gate.

I am feeling morose thinking of the crummy deal dogs have cut for themselves. They ache to play with one another, but countless obstacles impede them from happiness. They can look, they can smell, but they cannot fully engage. We drag them here and there by ropes around the neck, and lop off their sex organs, as if that would resolve the issue of nature.

It can't. The dogs are still aflame with desire and love, but the ropes and gates and missing sex organs make it all so difficult. We drag them from their joy back inside our screen doors, and put them in their places, and they nuzzle our hands, transferring that wild unkillable love to us, who despite the ropes and razors are still beautiful to them.

They are better than us, and deserve better than us, but until such time, they circle on the rug, and close their eyes and sleep, and dream of big yards with open boundaries, and other dogs, and a happy life of tooth and eye.