I found her when she was just a pup, a little toddler of a thing. Wiggles. She was a basset hound, but not one of those clean, perfect pet store models. No, this one was a reject. White, with light brown patterns and these strange, pale albino eyes that looked right through you. She was a sweet girl.
Usually, I’m anti-animal. I don’t get attached. It’s a weakness. But this one, this goofy-looking bitch with the sad eyes, she got under my skin. I was working twelve, sixteen-hour shifts at the shipyards back then, and every free minute I had, I’d spend with her, playing, cuddling. She was a kind soul. She’d just let me lay my tired, drunken head on her, and she wouldn’t move a goddamn muscle.
We were living in a three-story townhome in San Diego at the time, right next to a neighborhood where the American dream had come to die and get pissed on. A place full of shitheads that made me want to join the Mormon church for a couple of weeks, just to feel clean. We’d converted the laundry room into a giant litter box for Wiggles, with a grate and newspapers down below. It was a unique, messy, and completely insane setup. The whole house smelled of her big, honest turds.
On the weekends, we’d drive down the 8 freeway to Dog Beach, next to OB. Christ, the women loved her. I’d take her out into the surf, chest-high, and teach her to swim. Then I’d let her go, and she’d paddle her way back in, a real champion. There was a river that ran into the ocean there, the current nice and strong. I’d throw a ball out into it, and she’d jump in, swimming like hell, the current pulling her out towards the Pacific at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. I’d have to run down the beach, cheering her on, yelling at her to come back before she got swept out to sea. It was a good time. A real, honest-to-God good time. I loved that dog.
She tested me, though. Twice.
The first time, I came home from a long shift and she was just miserable. When I tried to play with her, she was all protective of her tail. I touched it, and she cried out. I figured some sonofabitch had hurt her while I was at work. Normally, I wouldn’t take an animal to the vet. You just get a new one. But this was Wiggles. It was a test.
So I put her in the car, nice and gentle, took her to the vet. The doc lays her down on one of those cold, stainless-steel tables. He pokes her belly, touches her tail, and then he puts on the gloves. He lifts her tail, and slow and sure, he sticks his index finger right up her ass.
And it was like a goddamn firehose went off.
Shit. Uncontrollable shit. Not runny, not packed, just a continuous, yeasty rope of it, like one of those black snake fireworks you light on the Fourth of July. It just kept coming and coming, a long, connected, chorizo-sausage-looking motherfucker. The vet was holding her tail up, trying to keep it from getting contaminated, and when it was all done, there was at least four pounds of dog shit on the table.
Turns out, the little fucker was just constipated. The ex-wife, back before she went completely nuts, she’d warned me about buying the cheap dog food. She was right, of course.
The second test came when we were hiking. A waterfall trail, all uphill, the rocks getting bigger and bigger until I was having a hard time jumping from one boulder to the next. The wife was with me on this one, the one who was about to turn into a crazy, fucking nutcase. She was on a big rock, with a huge gap to the next one. She looked a little worried, but I just egged her on. “Come on,” I said, “you can do it.” And like a goddamn superhero, she took a leap of faith. And she ate shit. Landed right on the side of the other boulder. Blood started squirting out of her leg like a cheap horror movie. A baby artery, I guess.
We were getting ready to move to Oregon at the time. I got her back to the house, went to the drugstore, got the supplies. I sat her down on the kitchen floor, put her leg between mine, and I went to work. I shaved the area around the wound, cleaned it with peroxide, watched it fuzz and bubble while she squirmed in pain. I dabbed it with an alcohol wipe, blew on it to dry it, and then I pinched the wound together with my bare hands and started slapping on the butterfly stitches. One in the middle, one on the top, one on the bottom. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Wrapped it up with a little gauze. A real goddamn battlefield surgeon.
My favorite time with the dog was up in the mountains, a cliff overlooking a ninety-foot waterfall. It was summer, and it was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. I hadn’t brought any water, just a cooler full of beer, which, in my infinite wisdom, I had strapped to the dog’s back. We were about halfway up the trail when Wiggles just… stopped. She threw her body into the shade of a cactus, didn’t even cry when the goddamn pricklers stuck in her. She just looked at me, her tongue hanging out, dry as a bone. I pushed her for another five hundred feet, and then she just dropped.
She wasn’t going to make it. The look in her eyes, I knew I was going to lose her. So I picked her up, all sixty pounds of her, and I carried her down the hill, past the bushy trees, to a little creek that fed the waterfall. My arms were burning, I was just as thirsty as she was, but I kept going. I got to the edge of a little pool of water, and I just threw her in.
She splashed down, sank to the bottom, and then slowly, slowly, she came floating back up, her feet kicking, and she just started drifting downstream. “Oh, great,” I thought, “now she’s going to go over the goddamn waterfall.” But she finally got her legs under her, paddled to the side, and climbed out, shaking and alive. It was not a good day for her.
I’ll admit, I was proud of the place I got in Oregon. A big yard. She was always out there with me while I was building the retaining wall, reseeding the grass, cutting back the ivy. We had a park nearby, and I’d play this game with her. The wife, before she went completely nuts, she’d hold onto the dogs, and I’d run off into the woods, climb a tree. Then she’d let them go, and I’d watch from above as they followed my scent, circling, searching, until they found the exact tree I was in. Then they’d just look up and start howling, like they’d cornered a goddamn prisoner.
It made me happy, seeing her run around out there. She was a family member. She completed the postcard, the whole phony, beautiful picture of a life I was trying to build.
I was working outside one day when my neighbor came over. “I ran over your dog,” she said.
It was my fault. I hadn’t fixed the goddamn fence right. I didn’t think she’d get out. Stupidity on my part.
I walked up to the road, and I saw her, just lying there. A car had stopped. I went to the shed, got a moving blanket. She didn’t look like she was in pain. She was already gone. It was instant, probably the best I could have asked for. She didn’t test me a third time. I probably would have failed that one.
I put the blanket over her, picked her up in my arms. I could hear the bones, feel the dead weight. She was crushed, but they’d gotten her good, kept her dignity. I took her into the backyard, and I just… broke. I couldn’t stop crying. I wrapped her up, sat there on the grass, put my hands on her warm body, and I said a prayer. A prayer from a boy who never really loved anything, from a man who would have a hard time loving anything ever again.
This simple, fucking thing. She stole my heart.
I dug a hole, four feet deep. Put her in, said one last goodbye, and then I covered her up.
There’s something incredible about getting unconditional love from something. There’s nothing like it. It’s an amazing, powerful, human connection that goes beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve had it with a couple of people in my life, a few good women in the wreckage.
But I never thought I’d have it with a goddamn dog.
