Dog's Best Friend

            by Natalie Gaber

 

When Dad informed Meredith, Dave and a three-year-old me that we would be “just looking” at puppies that day, I had a sneaking suspicion that we would not come home empty-handed. A few months earlier, our parents had dragged my siblings and me to the Chrysler dealership to “just look” at minivans, and we had ended up driving home in a brand new white refrigerator on wheels.

            The whole family packed into the van for the trip to the house of the breeder, Janice. When we arrived, I entered the house and was immediately accosted by the unmistakable aroma of wet dog mixed with the smell of kibble. I followed Meredith (she was seven, so I figured she knew what she was doing) to a beige canvas couch in the canine-themed living room. Janice went to the kitchen to retrieve the newborn Tibetan Terriers. She returned with a basket full of brown, black and white fur balls. It took me a moment to realize that these squirming bundles of fluff were the dogs.

Out of the basket, the puppies came to life and playfully romped around the room.  Meredith and I squealed in delight at how adorable they were.

“Mommy, they’re so cute! I want one!” I told Mom. Meanwhile, Dave, a too-cool-for-school eight-year-old, feigned indifference. His stoicism didn’t last, though, and before long he was down on the floor with Meredith and me alongside the frisky puppies.

            Half an hour later, we had all decided which dog we wanted to take home. But then Janice emerged from the kitchen cradling a small bundle in her arms.  She put down the miniature coffee-and-cream-colored puppy and said, “This is Regalia. She’s the runt of the family.”

            Regalia, no bigger than a guinea pig, teetered over to us on her stumpy legs, and as soon as we saw the pink splotch on her shiny black nose, we fell in love. Her silky beige and white hair reminded me of the sheep-skin rug at Grandma’s house, and her perky tail wagged jauntily back and forth like a pendulum. When Regalia rolled onto her back, she revealed a sprinkling of tan spots on her belly which, when tickled, caused her to kick her left hind leg. The best part was that I could fit her in the palm of my hand.

            In my excitement at seeing the smallest dog I had ever laid eyes on, I clumsily scooped up the puppy, only to be instantly reprimanded by Dad.

            “Nat, careful! Put her down!” he said, concerned that I would drop the miniscule creature.

Even after my scolding, I was still convinced that Regalia was the puppy for me. After minimal begging from my siblings and me, Dad signed the necessary papers, and we piled back into the van with the newest addition to our family. On the way home, we decided that “Regalia” did not suit our youthful dog, and we settled on “Sophie” as a more appropriate name.

           

Sophie’s first few months at home were a learning experience for all of us. One of the first lessons she taught us was that she liked to dig. In particular, she liked to dig up, and consequentially destroy, the cow-spotted foam bed we had bought for her.

To clear up any confusion, Sophie made it clear from the get-go that she owned us, not the other way around. If we dared to leave her home alone, barricaded in the kitchen, she made sure that we understood just how unacceptable this was. She perfected a high-pitched whimper rivaling that of an abused child, and, if left alone long enough, she would attempt to escape her bondage by engraving the innocent wood of the doorframe with her surprisingly sharp nails. Our neighbors, hearing Sophie’s desperate cries, asked my parents worriedly if everything was okay. I suspect that they assumed Mom and Dad were torturing my siblings and me. My parents responded, “That’s just Sophie.”

 

When Sophie reached the tender age of three months, the canine equivalent of the Terrible Twos, Mom enrolled her in puppy school. One day each week, after I had watched my daily dose of the 90s classic Full House, mom and I took Sophie to a class where she was supposed to learn how to sit, lie down and even shake hands. I often thought they should have called it “treat school” rather than puppy school because all they ever seemed to do was give the dogs beef-flavored biscuits. Even with all the treats, Sophie wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, so she often got the commands mixed up. To save her from embarrassment, I learned to tell visitors, “Look what Sophie can do!” rather than, “Look, Sophie can sit/lie down/shake!” That way, if I did the hand motion for “lie down” and she offered her paw for a shake instead, nobody would have to know that she was slightly dyslexic.

Sophie came away from puppy school with a sweet tooth for rawhide. Every Christmas Eve, I would dutifully hang six stockings on the fireplace: one each for Dad, Mom, Dave, Meredith, me, and Sophie. The next morning, while I enthusiastically removed hair ties, highlighters and Lindt chocolates from my stocking, Sophie pulled a dehydrated, barbecue-flavored pig’s ear from her own. She proceeded to spend the next several hours devouring the delicacy, while the rest of the family opened presents in the living room. My delirious joy at receiving an American Girl doll was only rivaled by Sophie’s rawhide-induced coma of happiness.

One lesson they skipped at puppy school was how to avoid getting skunked. Most dogs encounter skunks at some point in their lives, but Sophie always was a cut above the rest: she was sprayed four times. I thought that she would have learned her lesson after the first, second or third time that she got drenched in a foul-smelling shower. Alas, she did not. The spraying usually happened late at night, when Sophie would wake up the whole family by barking at the back door. Thinking that she needed to relieve herself, Dad would groggily let her into the yard, only to regret that decision a few minutes later when Sophie sheepishly re-entered the house reeking of eau de skunk. The next time Mom went to the store to buy me some extra-strength anti-frizz shampoo (puberty had caused my hair to start resembling that of a French poodle), she picked up some special skunk shampoo as well. However, the insidious odor, which was a cross between sour milk and burning rubber, always lingered in the house for days afterwards.

 

One day, when Sophie was five years old and I was eight, Dad and I took her to Codornices Park for a little off-leash recreation. While Dad tossed volleyballs to me so I could practice my setting skills, Sophie, still a puppy at heart and in size, ran right up to another dog, hoping to play a game of chase. The dog was twice as big as Sophie and half as friendly, so the interaction soon took a turn for the worse. Sophie came out of the altercation with a grisly wound in her side where the other dog had taken a bite. We rushed her to the pet emergency room where she was sewn up and given a large plastic collar to wear around her neck.

“Dad, why is Sophie wearing a lampshade?” I asked.

“It’s not a lampshade. It’s called an Elizabethan collar, and they gave it to her so she won’t try to bite her stitches,” Dad explained.

We spent the next week taking turns spoon-feeding Sophie’s meals to her.

 

After she had recovered, Sophie more than repaid me for taking care of her in her time of need. When I came home from an exciting day of third grade with a secret that I was dying to share with someone, I immediately spilled the juicy details to Sophie. I knew for a fact that she wouldn’t snitch. The next year I skinned my knee playing volleyball, and Sophie enthusiastically licked the raw wound. I chose to overlook the fact that she was just interested in the saltiness of my sweat. And when I came home crying in sixth grade because I had lost the student council elections, Sophie consoled me by snuggling with me on the couch and lapping up my tears.

 

When she wasn’t recuperating from a skunk encounter or dog fight, Sophie loved to play fetch. Unfortunately, she missed one of the central concepts of the game. As soon as she had retrieved the tennis ball once, she proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes running around the backyard with the felt-covered orb in her mouth, refusing to return the ball to me.

“Sophie, I can’t throw the ball for you if you don’t give it back!” I exclaimed with increasing exasperation. After I had grown so frustrated that I gave up and went inside, Sophie would settle down with the ball and meticulously remove all the green fuzz, leaving only a grungy rubber shell behind. She would return to the house with shreds of fluorescent green felt tangled in her beard and stuck between her teeth, but with a triumphant grin nonetheless.

 

After my ninth birthday, I was finally allowed to take Sophie for walks by myself. I now see that this “privilege” was actually just a clever way for my parents to give me a chore. After several years of pooper-scooper duty the task became less than thrilling, but at the time it seemed like the ultimate honor.

Our first walk together started out smoothly enough. I proudly attached Sophie’s turquoise leash to the metal ring on her collar, and, being the upstanding citizen that I was, I brought along a plastic Safeway bag for picking up after Sophie. We had taken about ten steps from our front door when the wind began to blow. Suddenly, Sophie lurched forward, chasing after a pile of leaves that was tumbling down the street. Her unexpected speed, coupled with her shrill yipping, caught me off guard, and I nearly lost control of the leash. Luckily, the breeze died down, and Sophie returned to a normal pace. I exhaled a sigh of relief, and we continued on our way around the block.

Several minutes later, Sophie and I were walking down Los Angeles, a quiet, secluded street around the corner from our house. I saw a gray-haired woman approaching with a colossal German Shepherd and figured that we would each shorten the leashes of our respective dogs as we passed each other like I had seen Dad do so many times before. But as the woman and her beast got closer to me and my lap dog, I realized too late that the German Shepherd had no leash to shorten.

Before I could cross the street, the Shepherd lunged at unsuspecting Sophie, who was about the size of a large cat. I shrieked, yanking at her leash with my nine-year-old muscles, trying to remove her from harm. I could hear her yelping in desperation as the monstrous dog gnawed at her face.

“It’s okay, they’re just playing!” said the carefree woman. I felt my blood boiling as I realized that this idiot of a woman had no plans to remove her dog.

“No, they’re not!” I cried, willing my tears not to fall. Scared for Sophie as well as for myself, I tugged at Sophie’s leash harder than before, and, thankfully, she managed to escape from the jaws of the slate-colored canine. Together we set off at a run and didn’t stop until we were well inside the safety of our house. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I let the waterworks begin. I refused to walk on Los Angeles for several months after that.

 

I got my first alarm clock for my tenth birthday, but a fancy digital timepiece was unnecessary: I had Sophie. When it was time for me to wake up and get ready for school, Mom would open the door to my room and let in Sophie, who would immediately leap up onto my bed and begin to slather my face with sloppy kisses. If the tongue bath didn’t wake me up, Sophie’s breath, which smelled like a tuna-fish cannery, definitely did the trick.

 

At age eleven, my parents finally allowed me to stay home by myself, and I began eagerly looking forward to the minutes or hours in which I would be the sole occupant of the house. I spent far too much time fantasizing about all the exciting things I would do once everyone else had left: I would look through Meredith’s drawers, being careful to replace anything I moved, and I would attempt to figure out Mom’s e-mail password so I could see what kind of messages she’d been sending.

I was never truly alone, though; Sophie was always there with me. When the novelty of independence was overshadowed by the fear generated from a strange noise in the basement, I locked myself in my room with Sophie and frantically called Mom.

“Hi, Mom. I was just curious, when are you coming back?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

“I’ll be home in about half an hour. Is everything okay?” Mom replied.

“Yeah!” I said too enthusiastically. “See you when you get home.”

 While I waited for Mom to return, Sophie and I sat side-by-side on my bed, me gripping an empty wrapping paper tube (the only weapon I could find in my room), and Sophie fast asleep on the afghan Grandma had knit for me.

 

Over the next three years, many changes occurred in the Gaber household. Dave started college at UC Berkeley, I began attending Berkeley High School, and Meredith went off to UCLA. Before long, Sophie and I were the only children left in the house.

One day, shortly after her eleventh birthday, Sophie didn’t eat her dinner. Since I was a busy fifteen year old distracted by the daily drama of sophomore year, I didn’t think too much of it, assuming that her sensitive stomach was upset from eating some human food she had found on the floor. I figured she’d go into the backyard, eat some grass, throw up, and be done with it. But when she barely touched her food for the next three days, alarm bells began ringing in my head.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Mom worriedly.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Mom replied. “I called the vet today but they don’t have any appointments until next week.”

On the third day of her anorexia, Sophie stopped using her back left leg, the same leg that kicked when I tickled her stomach. Clearly in pain, Sophie only got up and walked around when absolutely necessary. The rest of the time she stayed huddled on her bed in the living room. When she did walk, pitiful whimpers accompanied each labored step.

The next morning, Mom took Sophie to a veterinary hospital across town. Since Sophie had not eaten in nearly three days, the on-call doctor wanted to keep her overnight so he could put her on an IV and monitor her closely. The thought of poor little Sophie being poked with a needle nearly broke my heart. I consoled myself with the thought that she was going to get better at the hospital and that she’d be back home soon. 

Sophie did come home two days later, but she didn’t get better. The doctors at the hospital had told us that Sophie was suffering from acute arthritis, which explained her neglect of her back leg. Back at home, she took to cowering in the laundry room, one of the smallest and coldest spaces in the house. When she made the trek into the backyard, she would painstakingly hobble on three legs to the farthest corners of the yard where the overgrown bushes hid her from sight. She was returning to her roots, allowing her animal instincts to overcome her.

The constant crying and shrieks of pain soon became too excruciating for my parents and me to bear. We returned to the hospital with Sophie less than a week after her first visit. She stayed for two nights this time, and on the third day of her stay I accompanied Mom in picking her up.

When a nurse brought Sophie out into the waiting room, I was overcome with emotion. Images of the fluffy white and tan puppy I had fallen in love with all those years ago came flooding back to me. Convinced that everything would be fixed now and return to normal, I couldn’t wait to bring her home.

Before we left the hospital, the nurse gave Mom a brown paper bag filled to the brim.

“These are Sophie’s medications,” the nurse explained. She pulled out a packet of papers, which detailed the doses and schedules for each of the four pills Sophie was supposed to take. She would practically require a full time nurse just to keep her meds straight.

Sophie’s condition improved moderately in the next few days, but after half a week she was back to moaning and cowering in the bushes. Her food consumption had plummeted to zero, which made giving her the cocktail of pills she was supposed to be taking a nearly impossible task. Sophie’s pain was palpable, and we could hardly bear to watch her deteriorate so rapidly.

Over the weekend, I frequently stumbled upon hushed conversations between Mom and Dad. As soon as I entered the room the talking would cease, but I knew that they were discussing Sophie. I was not oblivious to the fact that her series of hospital stays and myriad medications were beginning to wear holes in their wallets.

On Sunday morning, Mom and Dad informed me that they were taking Sophie to the hospital again. I gently stroked Sophie’s back and kissed her head, thinking that she’d return in a few days like the last time. I made a mental note to add cheddar cheese, Sophie’s favorite pill complement, to the shopping list in the kitchen so we’d be sure to have plenty on hand when she got home.

“Bye, sweet dog. Get better, OK?” I whispered in Sophie’s floppy ear.

 

A couple hours later, Mom and Dad returned and entered my room where I was busy reading The DaVinci Code. Mom’s eyes were swollen and ringed in red.

“Hi,” I said. “What’d the doctor say?”

“Well, sweetie, we decided that the best thing to do was to put Sophie out of her misery. She was really hurting,” Mom said slowly, choking back tears.

“What do you mean?” I asked as my own eyes began to fill with tears.

“We had her put down,” Dad said.

I tried to speak, but my voice failed me. Instead, a torrent of tears rushed forth.

“Honey, we had to. She was in so much pain,” Mom said as she wrapped her arms around me.

“She’s much happier now,” added Dad.

But I wasn’t listening. The initial shock had worn off, and now anger and betrayal competed for dominance of my emotions. How could they have done this to me? How could they just give up? Sophie was going to get better! If she were a person, they would have kept trying.

The tears flowed freely, and, despite my resentment, I gave in to the embraces of my parents, who were contributing their own share of tears. The three of us stood there together for almost ten minutes, holding each other and letting all the sadness spill out. Deep down I knew that Mom and Dad had made the right choice, but at the moment all I felt was grief.

 

I spent the rest of that day cloistered in my room reading. I allowed myself to be completely absorbed by the plot of the book, forcing my mind to ignore the gaping hole in my heart. Periodically I would find a lone teardrop splattered onto the page in front of me, as the story’s heroine, ironically named Sophie, accompanied her friend in a series of perilous adventures and misadventures. I couldn’t help but think of my own Sophie, whose adventures will live on forever in the book of my life.