There are two kinds of people in life. Dog lovers and those who don’t love dogs. If you are a member of the latter group and not the former, you probably won’t get this blog. So you might want to click-off my page now. But for the dog lovers in the crowd, I want to tell you a story about the favorite dog that I ever had, and about something that recently brought all these feelings home for me. He was a West Highland White Terrier (Westie) and his name was Tuffy. He sure lived up to his name. He was tougher than a cheap steak.
Tuffy came into my life on a warm summer day. He was being carried into the SPCA (the pound) on McDonough Street in Joliet, Illinois. His owner was taking him in to be put to sleep because she said that he was too mean and that he was killing the other puppies after they were born. She was putting him down, despite the fact that he was registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC). I leaned down to look in the cage and as I said hello, Tuffy growled at me. I told him, “Pipe down, little man. You’re a dead-dog-walking, so you should be a little nicer. He growled again. I talked to his owner for a few more minutes and she agreed to let me take Tuffy home.
Tuffy bit me on his first day in my house. He tried to run after he did this, but I grabbed him and held him tightly and bit him on his ear so hard that he yelped. He broke free of my grasp and ran to the other side of the room and stopped and just stared at me. He never bit me again after this man-bites-dog bonding session though. He understood from that day forward that Big Daddy was El Jefe.
Tuffy and I had a good life together. I was still using drugs on-and-off during this period of my life so he really got to see a lot of the world. He got his ears scratched by Made Men in the mob, peed on a kilo of cocaine one time, swam underneath a waterfall in the Great Smoky Mountains, walked the streets of Chicago, Miami, and swan in the beaches of Key West; and even rode shotgun on a bank robbery or two. When I came running out of the bank, he would have his little paws on the side of the window and his little nub of a tail would be going 240 mph. But just like all relationships between people and their pets, one day it came to an end. And it still hurts me to think about to this day.
Tuffy contracted intestinal parasites and when they were detected, it was too late to save him. The vet let me take him home for one last weekend. When I brought him back on Monday, I held his paw as they gave him a lethal injection. He knew. And he just stared at me with a look of love in his eyes as he left this earth. I went outside of the vet’s office and sat in the grass and cried for an hour or so.
Thoughts of Tuffy, and the time that I was lucky enough to spend with him, recently came back to me when my friend Steve and his wife Shannon had to put their 15-year-old beagle to sleep. Her name was Sadie, and, like Tuffy, she was a sweet soul. The vet came to their home and they were petting and loving on her as she crossed that rainbow bridge. I am presently finishing a children’s book called The Adventures of Sadie the White Fox (she had a white patch of fur on her back that looked like a star or a fox) that Steve is illustrating. It is a memorial to Sadie and her sister Maui that died a few years before her. It has children’s poetry in the book, and it’s meant to make children giggle as their parents read the book to them at bedtime.
Dogs seem to be the only animal (or “Being” on earth) that is truly happy when we are happy. They’re never grumpy or in a bad mood and they take such obvious pleasure from our happiness. They also have consciousness, and you can tell this when you look into a dog’s eyes. I have wondered before if they might be angels in disguise. One thing is for sure. I got the better end of the deal in my relationship with Tuffy. He always loved me though, even when I didn’t know how to love myself; even when I was destroying myself.
My best friend on this earth is a nun. Her name is Sister Margo and I asked her one time if our pets are in Heaven when we get there, or in my case, “If” we get there. She answered me quickly and in a certain manner when she told me, “Yes, our pets are definitely there waiting on us.”
I hope Sister Margo is right because I still miss Tuffy. I would like to think that he is Up There waiting on me and wagging around, drinking water out of God’s toilet, and peeing on St. Peter’s Pearly Gates. I sure hope I get to see him again one day.
All I have to do is make it to Heaven. No pressure there, huh? If the Creator, whatever you choose to call Him or Her, grades our lives on the curve and doesn’t consider so much what we have been as He does what we have become, I might have a shot. Who knows how these things work though. Certainly not me. I’m just a dumb old blogger/writer who forgot to wear a mask to several bank robberies. However, I have figured one thing out. Love never dies. Yes, it even survives death. Tuffy (and my parents) is living proof of this.
