Someone should put her down.
His dog had displaysia. My dad left me alone with her and was surprised when he got off work, came home, and she was still alive. Panting and sweating while laying & lolling about immobilized there in the beauty bark (and believe Me, trust Me, this dog had to go, it was well past her prime time… “No…
me?” “Peace! *door slams–tires squeal*), eyes basically rolling back into her head with delight as she caught a glimpse of Her Commander & Master one last—final—time through the cataracts and whatever else God put in a dogseye. (I wouldn’t know, I’ve always preferred goaled & black & gold cats– & pink pussyeyes.) Perhaps she was hoping He would be the one to hold her ass one last—final—time, as she hadn’t been able to stand on all 4 legs and crouch down to properly to shit for months by that point; and by that point that day, she probably did have to go, and I don’t mean to lunch, because rather than brain her with a brick, as my father once (or thrice) somewhat casually remarked would be an easy way to do it, or at least, an easy way to save a hundred bucks and a drive to the vet without getting to re-up. Now, I hadn’t ever done a single G-ddam thing my father had ever yelled at me to do even once in my whole G-ddamed life up to that point, and I remember whispering in her ear, “well, I ain’t about to start being obedient on this gig either, Billykins; let’s see how many steaks that lush has left in the chiller. (*yip*-
whine) Oh, right,
sorry: look, look, listen, listen: just try to forget that I said the ‘s’-word, just stop crawling, it really freaks me out. I’ll be right back, just hang on and pretend we both deserve this.” I fed her three or four lovely last meals that I hope she enjoyed the memory of on her way to Doggie Heaven. I sure remember my dad’s uncamofluaged
moue of disgust when he expressed surprise—an actual visible grunt—that I had spent the majority of the day doing little else than talking to her and pre-loading her poop chute. Dad was pretty tired of the duty, and of course he was too cheap to pay for a double hip replacement for his poor ol’ huntin’ dawg—this man would pass up both Monarch and Burnett’s unless it was on half-price clearance, and he would’ve recycled his Budweiser on the daily, if I would’ve told him how to do it. (Just run it through a seive & shake, almost as easy as calculus.) I was in my twenties—maybe he had expected me to fuck her to death. That would’ve solved two problems of his at once for him, maybe three… if he ever could’ve gotten his Polaroid working. (It was complicated.)
Instead, we just sat on the porch and waited for him to come back. Also, he didn’t give me any money to take her to the vet. So I took an early lunch and several at that, and knew that after he was done slaving away so he could score his booze and pills on the DL—oh, no wonder he didn’t want to be seen with a dead dog at the vet, huh, I just figured that one out right now, WOW—he would be back to keep watch on the pastel ceramic as it continued to slowly, glacially glaze over.
Hungarians aren’t good at saying goodbye.
