Thing is, the narrator guy was blabbing on and on about this dog, really over-the-top stuff: How loyal! How loving! Break out the Kleenex! Blah blah blah, wah wah wah! Man’s best friend!
They made a statue of this dog. I kid you not.
A statue of the dog who sat around nine years waiting for a dead guy.
in my opinion
That dog was a ninny.
A numskull.
A nincompoop.
i’m yours
Lemme tell you about being man’s best friend.
Being man’s best friend can mean a lot of things. Companionship. Belly rubs. Tennis balls.
But it can also mean a dark, endless highway and an open truck window.
It can mean the smell of the wet wind as hands grab the box you’re in with your brothers and sisters and you go sailing into the unkind night and still, still, crazy as it sounds, you’re thinking, But I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours.
no one
That’s what being man’s best friend can get you.
A black highway.
An empty box.
And no one in the world but you.
early days
I don’t remember much about my early puppy days. It was three years ago, but sometimes it feels like three hundred. Mostly I recall fighting with my sibs for the primo meal spot. Lots of squirming and squeaking. Everything soft and milk-smelling and movable. Like we were one great big complicated animal.
I never met my dad, and my mom didn’t say much about him, except that he was trouble. Mom had a beautiful fawn coat. Chihuahua, some this, some that. Nice messy bloodline.
Mutts rule.
Mom crooned to us. Told us stories. Laid down the law.
I wonder if she knew she didn’t have much time to prepare us for the world.
We were born in a dark place. Probably under some porch stairs, I suspect, since I remember the sound of boots plodding up and down, the biting and ugly smell of human feet.
They called my mom Reo. And they fed her most days, though sometimes she had to fend for herself.
She never showed fear toward them, or respect. Indifference, I guess you’d say. Unless they tried to handle one of us. She growled then, hoping to make it clear that we were hers and hers alone.
I myself got picked up a couple times. The hands reached in, grabbed. They were rough and smelled of strange scents, bitter and meaty.
My mom’s growl made me fearless, and I wriggled and yipped. The hands shoved me back to the warm place, where I could sleep and drink and dream in safety.
Still, I understood, in my simple puppy way, that dogs belonged to humans, and that was how it would always be.
boss
My mom wasn’t much for names. She’d had a lot of litters. I guess she’d run out of ideas.
My brother “First” was, natch, the firstborn. “Runt,” my youngest bro, was the last. “Dot” had a little spot on her back, and “Yip” was always complaining. I was “Rowdy.” Goes without saying. And that left my oldest sister. We all called her “Boss.”
Boss was small but mean, with a distinctive sharp-sounding bark. She could outmaneuver any of us to the best spot for dining.
I admired her grit. Even if she did get on my nerves.
When we got a bit older, less blind, more cocky, I fought her off occasionally. But mostly Boss won. She was fearless, that pup.
alone
The truck happened without warning one night. They threw us in a box, left my mom behind. I can still hear her frantic howls.
I landed in a muddy ditch. It was a cloudy night, nearly freezing. Even the moon had abandoned me.
And the smells! Everything so wild and unknown. Animals with big jaws and bigger appetites. Birds that swooped in to kill. Death and life all mixed up together.
I searched for my siblings until the truth became clear:
I was utterly alone.
cars
The next morning I began my slow journey, moving through the tall, wet grass, my limbs stiff from the cold.
Now and then, I’d drink from a mud puddle or gnaw on some grass. By evening I was wobbly with hunger and thirst.
I followed the highway. Every time a four-wheeled creature roared by, I froze in fear. And yet—and this is what slays me—I knew that cars meant humans, and humans meant the possibility of living, just as much as they meant the possibility of dying.
the owl
Darkness had fallen when it came out of nowhere, the owl.
A shadow in a shadow.
They don’t make a sound, you know. Not a sound.
It’s quite impressive, when you think about it.
luck
Just as her talons, those marvelous weapons, raked my fur, I caught my right front foot in a small hole and stumbled.
If she’d gotten hold of my body, I wouldn’t be here. But all she managed to do was grab my tail.
Only time in my life I’ve regretted my handsome hindquarters.
I was airborne, hanging upside down, dizzy and dazed. And just crazy enough to think, Hey, I’m actually flying, before the terror hit full force.
I caught a whiff of other animals below. Later I found out they were pocket gophers, but back then I just knew I was smelling something completely foreign.
The owl must have decided the gophers would make a more satisfying meal. She let loose her grip, and I plummeted to the earth.
more luck
Maybe it was my puppy fat, or my soft bones, or my incredible good fortune.
But I didn’t die.
Didn’t even break anything.
I’d flown twice in my short life and lived to tell the tale.
will
I found a small hollow at the base of a fallen tree. Poked my nose in and got a swat and hiss from a grouchy raccoon.
Kept going. Waddling, whimpering.
Lights ahead. New, strange smells.
Kept going.
Kept going.
It’s amazing how much the sheer will not to die can keep you moving.
exit 8
I finally came to a small road curving off the main highway. Exit 8, turned out to be. A big billboard overhead had a picture of a terrifying animal on it.
Course I didn’t know what a billboard was. Didn’t know that the scary animal was a gorilla, let alone that he would become my dearest friend.
But something told me to follow the off-ramp.
And eventually I ended up at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, Home of the One and Only Ivan.
history
I made it to the mall. Slept in dirty hay by some garbage bins. The next night, I found that hole in Ivan’s cage. Stole his banana. Slept on his belly. And the rest, as they say, is history.
For two years, I lived at that seedy old place that was part mall, part circus, and all crummy.
But that was nothing compared to Ivan. He spent twenty-seven lousy years there. And our dear friend Stella, an old circus elephant, was stuck there for most of her life, too.
When Stella passed away, it nearly broke Ivan’s heart. I tried like crazy to get him through those dark days. But what really saved him, I think, was Ruby, our baby elephant friend.