Dog days

You can't always get what you want

I was going to resume writing about housing related stuff this week, but find that I just don’t have it in me to project a future that is still shrouded in smoke from fires of our own making.

Instead, I am writing about my dog. Or rather, our dog; the family dog.

We put her down this week, after 14-plus years. We got her from a rescue organization on September 11, 2010, about a year after we moved full time “to the country.” She was 3-5 years old, our vet guessed. So, she had a good 18-19 year run and a life well lived.

Getting her was my idea. I was always a dog person. We had a couple of good pups growing up, which was a challenge in a 2-bedroom apartment in a city. But we made it work, mostly. My brothers and I took on most of the care. We had one dog, Uhura, for about 10 years, and she was our constant companion as adolescents.

My wife is a cat person. She ok’d the canine addition, with the proviso that the boys (Sam, then 12; Ben, then 8, and me, way younger than that now) take care of it. We readily agreed.

What we did not agree on was the dog we chose. I wanted a puppy; a dog we could train. I wanted a short-hair, as I am allergic to animal dander. Jen wanted an older dog, who would be less trouble. We got a hairy older dog.

(Cue portentous music.)

Within the first hour of having her, Soxy slipped her harness and ran off into the surrounding cornfields. She was impossible to catch.

After a time, we gave up chasing. The boys cried. Eventually, she emerged and promptly ran into the road, where a car thankfully stopped and opened its door. She jumped in, and we were able to be reunited.

A few years later she chased a squirrel into the road and a car did not stop. She recovered, and never ran into the road again. She once escaped a local boarding kennel and it took us a week to find her.

Soxy eventually warmed up…to the boys and Jen. She seemed ambivalent about me, which soon turned into downright anxiety and fear. She was a nervous terrier, and, early on, when voices were raised, she would cower and whimper. She also paced incessantly, circling the rooms whenever we had guests.

We later learned that she had been abused, and truly feared men, especially ones who resemble me. She once completely freaked out when a burly plumber came into the house carrying a length of pipe.

I would try my best to win her over by feeding her, talking to her, doing all the things that the experts told me to try. Soxy would have none of that. I was persona non grata.

Soxy became Jen’s dog, and they became fast friends. Jen took her on daily walks, and on the occasions that I would join them, Soxy kept her distance. I usually trailed behind, heeling obediently.

And that’s pretty much how we co-existed: tolerably. Jen and the kids loved her, and Soxy returned that. That turned out to be good enough. I took a daily allergy med and got on with life.

As it became apparent she was failing, the disappointment of our co-existence became meaningless. Life isn’t fair. As the Boss once sang, “you learn to live what you can’t rise above.”

There’s a void at Casa Castleton this week. It’ll be there for a while before it gets swallowed up by life moving forward. So it goes.

Goodbye, old girl.