Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul (34 page)

©Calvin and Hobbes. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission.
All rights reserved.

The Price of Love

If only I can keep the kids from naming him.
That would be the trick.

“No family needs two dogs,” I began dogmatically. And so I invoked the Bauer Anonymity Rule (BAR), which prohibits the naming of any animal not on the endangered-species list. That includes anything that walks or squawks, sings or swims, hops, crawls, flies or yodels, because at our place a pet named is a pet claimed.

“But we gotta call him something,” our four children protested.

“All right, then, call him Dog X,” I suggested. They frowned, but I thought it the perfect handle for something I hoped would float away like a generic soap powder.

My no-name strategy proved a dismal failure, however. Long before the pup was weaned, the kids secretly began calling him Scampy, and before I knew it he had become as much a fixture as the fireplace. And just as immovable.

All of this could have been avoided, I fumed, if Andy, a neighborhood mutt, had only stayed on his side of the street. But at age fourteen, this scruffy, arthritic mongrel hobbled into our yard for a tête-à-tête with our blue-blooded schnauzer, Baroness Heidi of Princeton on her AKC papers, who was a ten-year Old Maid. Before one could say “safe sex,” we had a miracle of Sarah and Abraham proportions.

We were unaware that Andy had left his calling card until the middle of one night during our spring vacation in Florida. I thought the moaning noise was the ocean. But investigation revealed it was coming from Heidi, whom Shirley, my wife, pronounced in labor. “I
thought
she was getting fat,” I mumbled sleepily.

When morning brought no relief or delivery, we found a vet who informed us that a big pup was blocking the birth canal, which could be fatal to Heidi. We wrung our hands for the rest of the day, phoning every couple of hours for an update. Not until evening was our dog pronounced out of danger.

“She was carrying three,” the doctor reported, “but only one survived.” The kids took one look at the male pup, a ragamuffin ball of string—red string, brown string, black string, tan string, gray string—and exclaimed, “Andy! He looks just like Andy.” And there was no mistaking the father. Heidi’s only genetic contribution seemed to be his schnauzer beard. Otherwise, he was an eclectic mix of terrier, collie, beagle, setter and Studebaker.

“Have you ever seen anything so homely?” I asked Shirley.

“He’s adorable,” she answered admiringly. Too admiringly.

“I only hope someone else thinks so. His days with us are numbered.” But I might as well have saved my breath. By the time Dog X reached ten weeks, our kids were more attached to him than barnacles to a boat’s bottom. I tried to ignore him.

“Look at how good he is catching a ball, Dad,” Christopher pointed out. I grunted noncommittally. And when Andy’s folly performed his tricks—sit, fetch, roll over, play dead—and the kids touted his smarts, I hid behind a newspaper.

One thing I could not deny: he had the ears of a watchdog, detecting every sound that came from the driveway or yard. Heidi, his aging mother, heard nothing but his barking, which interrupted her frequent naps. He, on the other hand, was in perpetual motion. When the kids went off on their bikes or I put on my jogging shoes, he wanted to go along. If left behind, he chased squirrels. Occasionally, by now, I slipped and called him Scampy.

Then in the fall, after six months of family nurture and adoration, Scampy suffered a setback. Squealing brakes announced he had chased one too many squirrels into the street. The accident fractured his left hind leg, which the vet put in a splint. We were all relieved to hear his prognosis: complete recovery. But then a week later the second shoe dropped.

“Gangrene,” Shirley told me one evening. “The vet says amputate or he’ll have to be put to sleep.” I slumped down in a chair.

“There’s little choice,” I said. “It’s not fair to make an active dog like Scampy struggle around on three legs the rest of his life.” Suddenly the kids, who had been eavesdropping, flew into the room.

“They don’t kill a person who has a bad leg,” Steve and Laraine argued.

Buying time, I told them, “We’ll decide tomorrow.” After the kids were in bed, Shirley and I talked.

“It will be hard for them to give up Scampy,” she sympathized.

“Especially Christopher,” I replied. “I was about his age when I lost Queenie.” Then I told her about my favorite dog, a statuesque white spitz whose fluffy coat rolled like ocean waves when she ran. But Queenie developed a crippling problem with her back legs, and finally my dad said she would have to be put down.

“But she can get well,” I pleaded. I prayed with all my might that God would help her walk again. But she got worse.

One night after dinner I went to the basement, where she slept beside the furnace. At the bottom of the stairs, I met Dad. His face was drained of color, and he carried a strange, strong-smelling rag in his hand.

“I’m sorry, but Queenie’s dead,” he told me gently. I broke into tears and threw myself into his arms. I don’t know how long I sobbed, but after a while I became aware that he was crying too. I remember how pleased I was to learn he felt the same way.

Between eye-wiping and nose-blowing, I told him, “I don’t ever want another dog. It hurts too much when they die.”

“You’re right about the hurt, son,” he answered, “but that’s the price of love.”

The next day, after conferring with the vet and the family, I reluctantly agreed to have Scampy’s leg amputated. “If a child’s faith can make him well,” I remarked to Shirley, “then he’ll recover four times over.” And he did. Miraculously.

If I needed any proof that he was his old self, it came a short time after his operation. Watching from the kitchen window, I saw a fat gray squirrel creep toward the bird feeder. Slowly the sunning dog pulled himself into attack position. When the squirrel got to within a dozen feet, Scampy launched himself. Using his hind leg like a pogo stick, he rocketed into the yard and gave one bushy-tail the scare of its life.

Soon Scampy was back catching balls, tagging along with the kids, running with me as I jogged. The remarkable thing was the way he compensated for his missing appendage. He invented a new stroke for his lone rear leg, moving it piston-like from side to side to achieve both power and stability.

His enthusiasm and energy suffered no loss. “The best thing about Scampy,” a neighbor said, “is that he doesn’t know he’s got a handicap. Either that or he ignores it, which is the best way for all of us to deal with such things.”

Not that everyone saw him in a positive light. On the playground, some youngsters reacted as if he were a candidate for a Stephen King horror flick. “Look out,” shouted one boy, “here comes Monster Dog!” Tripod and Hop-along were other tags. Our kids laughed off his detractors and introduced him as “Scampy, the greatest three-legged dog in the world.”

For better than five years, Scampy gave us an object lesson in courage, demonstrating what it means to do your best with what you’ve got. On our daily runs, I often carried on conversations with him as if he understood every word. “I almost shipped you out as a pup,” I’d recount to him, “but the kids wouldn’t let me. They knew how wonderful you were.” It was obvious from the way he studied my face and wagged his tail that he liked to hear how special he was.

He probably would have continued to strut his stuff for a lot longer had he been less combative. In scraps in which he was clearly over-matched, he lacked two essentials for longevity—discretion and, partly because of his surgery, an effective reverse gear.

One warm August night he didn’t return at his normal time, and the next morning he showed up, gasping for air and bloody around the neck. He obviously had been in a fight, and I suspected a badly damaged windpipe or lung.

“Scampy, when will you learn?” I asked as I petted his head. He looked up at me with those trusting eyes and licked my hand, but he was too weak to wag his tail. Christopher and Daniel helped me sponge him down and get him to the vet, but my diagnosis proved too accurate. By midday “the greatest three-legged dog in the world” was gone.

That evening Christopher and I drove to the vet’s office, gathered up Scampy and headed home. Scampy’s mother, Heidi, had died at fifteen, just a few months before; now we would bury him next to her in the woods by the garden.

As we drove, I tried to engage Christopher in conversation, but he was silent, apparently sorting through his feelings. “I’ve seen lots of dogs, Christopher,” I said, “but Scampy was something special.”

“Yep,” he answered, staring into the darkness.

“He was certainly one of the smartest.” Christopher didn’t answer. From flashes of light that passed through the car I could see him dabbing his eyes. Finally he looked at me and spoke.

“There’s only one thing I’m sure of, Dad,” he choked out through tears. “I don’t want another dog. It feels so bad to lose them.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. Then drawing on a voice and words that were not my own, I added, “But that’s the price of love.”

Now his sobs were audible, and I was having trouble seeing the road myself. I pulled off at a service station and stopped the car. There, I put my arms around him and with my tears let him know—just as my father had shown me—that his loss was my loss too.

Fred Bauer

Forever Rocky

One gray morning I took the day off from work, knowing that today was the day
it
had to be done. Our dog, Rocky, had to be put to sleep. Sickness had ravaged his once-strong body, and despite every effort to heal our beloved boxer, his illness was intensifying.

I remember calling him into the car . . . how he loved car rides! But he seemed to sense that this time was going to be different. I drove around for hours, looking for any errand or excuse not to go to the vet’s office, but I could no longer put off the inevitable. As I wrote the check to the vet for Rocky to be “put down,” my eyes welled with tears and stained the check so it was almost unreadable.

We had gotten Rocky four years earlier, just before my first son, Robert, was born. We all loved him dearly, especially little Robert.

My heart ached as I drove home. I already missed Rocky. Robert greeted me as I got out of the car. When he asked me where our dog was, I explained that Rocky was in heaven now. I told him Rocky had been so sick, but now he would be happy and be able to run and play all the time. My little four-year-old paused, then looking at me with his clear blue eyes and an innocent smile on his face, he pointed to the sky and said, “He’s up there, right, Dad?” I managed to nod yes, and walked into the house. My wife took one look at my face and started weeping softly herself. Then she asked me where Robert was, and I went back out to the yard to find him.

In the yard, Robert was running back and forth, tossing a large stick into the air, waiting for it to return to the ground and then picking it up and throwing it higher and higher each time. When I asked what he was doing, he simply turned and smiled.

“I’m playing with Rocky, Dad . . .”

S. C. Edwards

“So you’re little Bobbie; well, Rex here has been going
on and on about you for the last 50 years.”

Reprinted by permission of Charles Barsotti.

The Lone Duck

Early every morning I’d stand gazing out the window at my husband, Gene, as he left for his walk in his gray running suit. I always felt as though my love for him ran down the driveway and padded along beside him. We’d been married four years. He walked rapidly. Sometimes it looked as though he were trying to hurry away from something or someone.
Silly me,
I’d think,
friendly Gene
would never try to avoid anyone.
Why, then, did I stand at the window each day and watch him with a gnawing apprehension? Was I reading something into his body language that simply wasn’t there? My husband has often told me I have an overactive imagination.

When we first met I thought I might be imagining that we were falling in love. But it wasn’t my imagination at all. It
was
love! Gene was fifty-five when we became acquainted, and I was fifty. We’d both lost our mates of twenty-five years. I’d been a widow for four years when we married and had struggled through my own horrendous process of grieving. For some people, grief takes longer to heal than it does for others.