Every Boy Should Have A Dog

Fred.
(Reading time 2-3 minutes)

Every boy should have a dog. For me that dog was Fred. I don’t remember exactly when we got him but I was small. Fred was smaller. He was probably the runt of the litter. A small black puppy, part labrador, and  part something else. His fur was all black with the exception for one white patch under his neck that said, “hey pick me I’m special”.

We adopted him from a local animal shelter on the the north shore of long island. I’don’t remember that well but my grandmother would always say, “He was sick. The dog had high fevers when we got him, we fed him rice and he got better.”

As he got bigger he loved dirty tennis balls and spilling water outside his dish when he drank to fast. He loved tracking dirt on the rug and taking naps on the sofa once the car had left the driveway. And more than anything, he loved what all dogs love. Just being your friend.

At some point man (I was about 20 or so) and his best friend must part. That is the way things go. It wasn’t like old yeller. Pa didn’t have to go get the shot gun because he had been bitten by a rabid raccoon. It was just old age.  The disease of time had come to take him.

One night it just happened. Seizures.

The last I remember seeing him was on the hallway floor.  It was the same hard spotted floor tile that I raced match box cars up and down before dinner. The same hallway floor that connected all the rooms on the first floor and had a stairway to the basement. The same cold tile I saw stained with drops of my grandfather’s blood as he walked to the bathroom and I asked, “Grandpa are you okay?”

He clenched his teeth tighter and lied to me like every other person being eaten alive by cancer. “ Yeahh, I’m okay.”

It was the same hallway.

Fred’s old body, slow and worn from years of chasing down dirty tennis balls, was violently shaking. The grey specks on the short hair of his chin were covered with foaming saliva. Not the slime on the tennis ball that said “Throw it one more time. I’ll get it–––but your going to have a hard time getting it from me.”  It just said: “–This is it.”

A few minutes later– . I couldn’t watch. My parents bundled him in an old blanket. They took him where parents take old dogs at times like this.

The next morning at 6:00 am grandpa would let him-out rain or shine so he could do his business. Grandma would join them both almost 10 years later.

Thats all I have to say.

PeteR Weis

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