In Praise of Canines
Happy Friday friends!
A quick preface before I delve into the crux of the matter. One of my favorite writers and poets,
Belarus, 1972. It was a Monday. I remember it as if it was yesterday. Or maybe it was a Tuesday. On my way home from school, a local hood accosted me on the street. I was 9. He had a nose that’s been broken too many times and a crooked tattoo of an anchor on his hand. The woman with him had a couple of teeth missing. They both reeked of cheap hooch, similar to what my maternal step-grandfather used to make in his garage until he died of a stroke while drinking it.
Hood: Hey, kid, you wanna buy a brick?
Me: No, thank you.
I try to walk around them. But he stops me. Roughly.
Hood: Yes, you do.
He pulls a brick the color of a faded rose out of his moth-eaten overcoat. Holds it up to my face.
Me: I don’t need it. We have plenty of bricks at home.
Hood: You need one more. Trust me.
I try to mumble something.
Woman (giggling): If you don’t buy it, he’s gonna bury it in your head.
The hood presses the brick against my face.
Me: I don’t’ have any money.
Woman: What’s this?
She points to the backpack my aunt gave me for my birthday just a week ago. I slip it off my shoulder. Hand it to her. Before they leave, she pulls the hat off my head too, for good measure.
Going to the police was useless. My parents bought me a new hat and backpack. But I needed R-E-V-E-N-G-E.
“A dog, bro!” said my school buddy. He was two years older and much more informed than I was. “Not one of those tiny ones that meow. A big, mean mother that can rip the balls off an elephant. Like a Pit-fucking-bull! You walking around with a dog like that, nobody’s gonna mess with you. ”
So, I got a bunch of books on dogs and how to train them. That’s all I thought about for weeks. I went to bed and woke up with an image of a Pit Bull’s scowl in my mind and a pair of giant testicles hanging off her fangs.
But my parents were like a brick wall. They’d rattle off all kinds of reasons why I don’t need a dog, why I wouldn’t want a dog, and more importantly, why a dog wouldn’t want me.
Mother: Up and down, and up and down five flights of stairs? Morning and evening? Everyday? Who’s gonna do it? You? I doubt it. It’ll end up being your sister, or me, or your father, who works like a dog.
Father: We’ll get you a bicycle for your birthday. It’s much better than a dog. You won’t have to walk it or feed it. And it won’t pee on your pants.
A bicycle? Are you kidding me?! I had a strong urge to run away from home, go to Moldova or Lithuania, or some other godforsaken place where no one spoke my language and would want to bother me. But they’d just bought me a new backpack and a hat, which set them back at least $80 rubles (more than my mother made in a month) and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Maybe one day (soon), fingers crossed, they'd come around and see things my way.
Meanwhile, I became a surrogate father to the stray dogs in the neighborhood, hoping all the hoods out there would see me surrounded by mean canines and promptly erase the idea of ever messing with me from their underdeveloped minds. Every day on the way to school, I would feed a pack of famished strays the meat blintzes my mother made for me for lunch. One snowy morning, a black dog with almost human eyes and prominent ribs – I nicknamed him Blackie -- whose back seemed to have been broken, just stood there, staring into the distance, licking snowflakes off his snout. I thought he didn't see the treats I’d brought him, so I tried to gently turn him towards them. That's when he ripped into my right hand. I felt the top and bottom fangs tearing into my flesh and coming together with a grinding sound.
I came to at the hospital while a nurse was sewing up my wound. My mother, pale as a ghost, sat in the corner holding a cup of tea (she had passed out when the doctor showed her the through-and-through hole in my hand). Another nurse was sitting in a different corner, smoking and making disparaging comments about stray dogs. For some reason, all major events in my life seemed to have taken place in a tiny room filled with cigarette smoke.
The next day I had to get my first rabies treatment—a shot in the stomach. It's no longer done that way, I'm told. But... Belarus, 1972.
Twenty shots altogether. My entire midsection was black and blue for months. Later I was told that Blackie had been killed by my neighbors. I rarely cry. I didn’t cry during Bambi, or E.T., or even Schindler’s List, but I cried that day. If I hadn't tried to move Blackie that morning, he might have enjoyed the snow for a little while longer.
I’m pretty sure deep down inside my parents were ecstatic. I would picture them sitting at the kitchen table when my sister and I were asleep, smoking, drinking, and chatting.
Mother: He’s not going to want a dog now, that’s for sure.
Father: You’re right, pumpkin. And thank God for that!
They would clink their glasses and drink to my health. But, goddammit, they were wrong! When my hand healed, I gave them an ultimatum. Either they buy me a puppy or they’ll never see me again. Normally, my dad would just laugh at me and shake his finger in my face. But this time, he saw something in my eyes -- the brass balls of a young warrior? -- which made it crystal-clear to him that I meant business. That’s what my sister told me years later.
So… I put my name on the waiting list for the Minsk Military Dog Club lottery. You can imagine my disappointment when my winning ticket was a COLLIE. I loved Lassie as much as the next kid (the TV show was hugely popular in the USSR), but a Collie? To stop hoods with broken noses? I didn’t want to take a chance on the next year’s lottery and didn’t want to wait that long anyway. So, Collie it was. I named her Lada, after Dad’s favorite car, which he couldn’t afford to buy. She was gorgeous, and she smelled of my grandmother’s hair, and her nose looked like Cleopatra’s.
One day Lada and I were walking on the bank of the Berezina River. As I passed two pretty young ladies sunning themselves in the nude and drinking beer…
Pretty Young Lady 1: Gorgeous dog!
Pretty Young Lady 2: Too bad the owner is so-so.
I was a sensitive kid, so that hurt. From then on I was hell-bent on avoiding pretty young ladies, concentrating instead on studious girls with acne and glasses (but that’s a whole ‘nuther ball of wax for a different post).
And Lada was smarter than me too. I didn’t mind. I was happy that no hood ever bothered me again. Two years later, in 1979, my parents decided to emigrate to America. Lada was just coming into her own. She had already won several prizes at dog shows in Minsk, and that spring we had a show coming up in Gomel. And besides, I was on a local hockey team and had important games planned.
America? Are you kidding me?
Dad: A war in Afghanistan is brewing. You’re 16, almost military age. You want to have your legs blown off or die from a head wound in some cave in a foreign land?
I kicked and screamed. For weeks. But I knew they wouldn’t leave me in the USSR alone, so they had to convince me. And I didn’t want to stay there without them, so I needed to be convinced. Of course, we weren’t going anywhere without Lada.
There was significant paperwork to be dealt with, and eve more significant health certificates, which required bribes. Plus vaccination records and a bunch of other bureaucratic horseshit. We managed to jump through all the hoops and over most of the hurdles. Except one — a permit from the destination country.
We had distant relatives in Louisville, KY, who sent us an official invitation and promised to help us acclimate to the new land. They convinced us that it was impossible to get a permit for a dog, no matter how much they were willing to pay. They lied. Later we found out that some people managed to bring their dogs with them. They also lied about helping us acclimate to the new land. A week before we arrived in Louisville, the relatives moved to Palo Alto, CA under the pretense that the man of the house got a job there. I’m sure they lied about that too.
But I digress. Back to Bobruisk, Belarus. A few people made generous offers for Lada. None of us, however, was willing to sell a member of our family. We needed to find someone who would treat Lada as if she were their child. After a long search, a friend recommended a retired, childless couple who used to work as dog trainers at the Minsk Circus. They assured us they would love Lada and take care of her as if she were the daughter they never had.
We left the country on Jan. 2, 1979. The couple didn’t have a phone, so all the “Lada” news was given to us by friends of friends. Three years later we were informed Lada was poisoned under mysterious circumstances.
I haven’t owned a dog for over half a century. I was convinced that either I would be the death of her or she would be the death of me. So, I became a “grandparent” to other people’s dogs. I love them as much as their owners, but without the responsibility for their upbringing and comfort. My mother once said that if she had known how much easier it would be to deal with her grandchildren than with her children, she would have become a grandmother instead of a mother.
In the past few years, though, I’ve been wanting to get a dog more than ever.
My Wife: We’re not going to be able to travel, you know that. We have no one who could take care of the dog while we’re away. And putting a sentient being in one of those “hotels” is worse than flushing a chinchilla down the toilet.
I just sigh. She’s the boss. But one day I will surprise her. By George, I will.
Thank you for reading, as always.
’Till next time,
ak
I always wanted a dog when I was little. It took me almost forty years of my life before I got one and it is one of the best experience of my life. I hope, your wife will agree to a dog one day.
I really enjoyed that little story! Thank you for sharing.
Alex, another great story! We have three small dogs, which I half-heartedly describe to others as artifacts of our (adult) children. And while I typically classify dogs as 'tending towards' sentience, one of ours (Charlie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) seems to possess ACTUAL sentience, and this causes me to agree with your wife! So intuitive and communicative is he with his wags, snorts, pleadings, and intimations of disapproval, that I'll find myself apologizing for using foul language around him, as a hedge to the nontrivial possibility that I'm somehow destined to switch places with him in a future reincarnation...Of course, your wife is also correct about the traveling point, however we've found some boarding facilities to be now (thankfully?!) equivalent in hospitality (and cost) to three star hotels. So, that's a half-point to you. Another thought: You could always get the dog and blame me.