Looking at Dogs

I present episode 22 of Looking Back! Sometimes we choose pets and sometimes pets choose us. For Merit V. Bidwell, it happened like this:

I had a phone call yesterday. I dread that. Getting a phone call is never a good thing. It is almost always bad news. Anyway, that call dredged up lots of memories. I was still living in San Antonio when I sort of adopted a dog. I say that because there was never any official adoption. Every day I’d walk to and from work and every day I’d pass this house with a dog chained up to a tree. Most of the time I’d walk past the dog and we’d ignore each other. But sometimes I’d toss the last of my breakfast over the fence. I figured it was “good karma” since that dog was so thin. One day I walked by and the house was obviously empty but the dog was still chained to the tree. I figured they had moved but were coming back for the dog. The dog was there the next morning and I tossed most of my breakfast burrito to him. When I walked home he was still there. He didn’t have any water so I decided to fill his bowl. I wasn’t sure if he was friendly so I used a stick to get his bowl. He drank all the water immediately. Then he looked at me with sad eyes and wagged his tail. I didn’t want a dog. The next day I lugged a gallon milk carton of water and filled his bowl to the brim and left him a corn dog and a day old cake doughnut. As I approached the house on my way home, he started wagging his whole body as soon as he saw me. I managed to untangle the chain from the tree and he walked with me to my apartment. From that point on he was my dog. We had some good times. He wasn’t young but when the vet said he was probably 8 -10 years old, I was shocked. He didn’t live much longer after that. They said it was likely a combination of heartworm disease and liver failure. The vet wanted $75 to dispose of the body. I decided to wrap him up in his favorite blanket and bury him myself. I ended up having to buy a shovel and digging the hole in the middle of the night so no one would know I was burying a dog in the courtyard.