Everybody has their “defining” pet — the pet dog/cat/rat/snake/chicken against which all other pet dogs/cats/rats/snakes/chickens are judged and found wanting. For instance, my defining cat, although it’s a very close call, is my long-haired black cat, Log. He was going to be named Cramp, but Kris talked me out of it and I settled for Log. He was named after the old Ren & Stimpy bit (“It’s Log! It’s Log! It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood!”), and, far more than any other cat I’ve ever owned, Log loved me. He always came to me when I called him, he was never too “independent” to hang with me (personally, for the most part, I think the preconceptions about cat behavior are misconceptions — like most pets, their behavior is more dependent on our behavior than we think) — he was a cool cat, and I have yet to have another cat that was as cool.
It's Big, It's Heavy, It's WOOD!!
But I didn’t come here today to tell you about Log. Rather, this is about Teddy, who, I guess, really is not my defining dog, but this experience was a defining pet-owning experience.
Teddy was the dog who knocked all my pins over in the Hilltop blog. Teddy was a terrier-based mutt who was rambunctious and fun to be around, playful and joyful and happy. He was the only dog that everyone agreed was my dog while I was growing up, and he was only mine for about a year or so. He used to play tag with us — he’d take a ball or whatever and run all over the yard evading our attempts to catch him and take it away. In all honesty, I really don’t remember too much about him, because he was born when I was four or maybe five years old, and he was taken to the pound when I was six.
I was playing with Teddy in the living room when my uncle walked in. This uncle never came to our house — he was something of a pariah, for good reason. He was a wife-beater, and his wife was my mom’s sister. This, understandably, made him pretty unpopular all around. So even at the young age of six, I knew there was something rotten in Denmark when he walked in. Having not learned the appropriate social niceties yet, I blurted to my mom, “What’s HE doing here?”
Grabbing my arms and walking me toward the bathroom, she answered, “He’s come to take Teddy to the pound.”
I don’t remember the next moments very clearly. I know I screamed and fought and kicked and yelled like a miniature demon, but Mom managed to hold me down, mostly because the bathroom was so small. I also don’t really remember much about the rest of that day, except, again, I know I cried and cried and cried. I was SO pissed at my uncle! That son of a bitch!! Took my dog! My Teddy!!
My cousin, the uncle’s stepson, and I used to rank the uncle to the dogs and back for years after that for what he’d done. The first time in my life I ever wrote the word “motherfucker” was in a diary entry about him when I was maybe seven years old. It was a deep and abiding rage that held on well into my teens, even after my aunt finally got smart and booted his ass out before he killed her. By then, the Teddy business, though it still rankled, had taken a major back seat to the bastard kicking the shit out of my aunt on an almost daily basis.
Eventually, though, after having a son of my own, I started to look at that whole situation a little differently. My uncle had come to the house to collect my dog and take him to the pound. On whose orders? My mom’s and dad’s, that’s whose. He was just the bagman. It was my parents who decided to get rid of my dog and didn’t even have the decency to let me know in advance so I’d've had a chance to say goodbye. My mom actually had to practically sit on me while, in my poor little six-year-old brain, an evil shithead was, essentially, stealing my dog. No, there was never any apology, no explanation, no admission that hey, maybe they could’ve handled it better.
And I can hear the tough-love types already — Man up! That was over thirty years ago! Yeah, it was. And no, I don’t dwell on this. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t ever think about it either. What this is is one of many examples of how my parents taught me to parent. A lot of parents serve as positive role models for their grown children. Mine? Mostly, I look to my parents as examples of exactly how NOT to behave toward my child.
