I hate to admit this because it is so petty, but I used to be jealous of Captain’s dog. This goofy, slobbering, carcass-dragging mutt seemed to get all the unconditional love and affection that I felt, as his wife, should have been mine.
The first time I came smack up against the deep emotion Captain had for his dog was shortly after we were married—which, I might add, occurred before we got the dog. Captain had to drive several miles to work, and the dog always rode in the bed of the pickup, back paws on the floor and front paws on the wheel well with her nose into the wind and ears laid back.
One rainy morning, as Captain was speeding down the highway, the dog lost her footing and went tail-over-teakettle out of the pickup. When Captain realized she’d fallen out, he stopped quickly enough to lay rubber on the highway and backed up to where the dog lay in the road. After confirming there were no broken bones, he loaded the dog in the cab and went on to work. When he called me to tell me about it, there was a degree of hysteria in his voice I’d never heard before as he asked me if he should put antibiotic ointment on her nose where she scraped the skin off.
A touching story, really, except when compared with the time I was undergoing tests with my physician for some suspicious lesions. In order to determine what the lesions were, I had to undergo a biopsy complete with stitches. When Captain heard about the biopsy and stitches, his immediate concern was not the state of my health—or even if I needed some antibiotic ointment—or the possibly negative results of the biopsy. Rather, he was thoroughly disgruntled about the disruption in our romantic interludes due to the location of the stitches. Maybe if I had scraped some hide off my nose I would have gotten more sympathy from him. Isn’t he precious?
Not too many months after the dog’s nose-scraping incident, she decided that a poisoned rat would be a tasty appetizer. The resulting frenzy of a panicked search found the dog lying near death behind the barn. Hysteria once again gripped Captain, and we made a mad dash to the vet’s office for a consult. The vet advised to leave her in the kennel over the weekend so they could do some blood work and monitor her.
It was I who visited the dog I didn’t like over the weekend only to be told by the vet that she likely wouldn’t live until Monday. I wanted to put her out of her misery (and mine), but Captain would have no part of it. By the time we went to pick her up on Monday, the bill was $450. To me, no dog is worth that kind of money unless she has an endorsement contract for Tuffy’s dog food. But looking into those puppy-dog eyes—Captain’s, not the dog’s—was more than I could resist, and I paid the bill.
Captain also was attentive to the dog’s needs. In her later years, she developed arthritis and couldn’t jump into the back of the pickup without a boost. After watching Captain gently lift her into the pickup bed, I remarked that he hadn’t been that attentive to me when I would try and climb into his pickup when I was 8-1/2 months pregnant and quite ungainly. He gave me a bland look and said, “You weren’t riding in the back, either.”
The question I always had was: what had the dog ever done to deserve this preferential treatment? By careful observation over the years, I found my answer. The dog faithfully followed Captain during his daily tasks, was always willing to listen to any complaints without judging, was always ready to love without condition, and was always present with a wag of her tail to encourage. I watched them romp together after a long day, walk together to inspect the cattle in the pasture, and saw the dog bound with joy when it was time to get in the pickup and head for the day’s work.
Comparing this to the rushed and often tense times of our busy household filled with requests for odd jobs to be done and precious few “quality” moments between Captain and me, I could see why the dog was way ahead of me in the battle for Captain’s affection. I took her lessons to heart and tried to mimic her tactics. Not that I slobbered kisses or barked.
With the passage of time, she ending up worming her way into my heart as well, almost without my knowledge, and firmly rooted herself in the fabric of our lives, and I cried just as hard as anyone when we lost her. Today, so many years after she left us, I see why she was Captain’s best friend and one of my favorites too.
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