Rusty-- a Dog of My Own

I always felt my mother's pragmatic approach to animals was the result of her being a farmer's daughter. It would be difficult to be sentimental about animals kept only for work or food. This cold calculation rubbed off on her relationship with other animals as well.

Our first dog Buster was a Fox Terrier-type dog whose purpose was to protect us from rats that would often invade our home. Once he attacked me, because of my own childish ignorance, my mother quickly calculated the benefit of his service was outweighed by the risks.

My father would have given Buster a second chance. He was a romantic, with excessive empathy for the underdog. By definition, all dogs fit that category to him. Through the years he was a one man shelter for neighborhood strays. At any one time he could have as many as six dogs in his personal pack. This was after my mother had died. She would never have stood for his St. Francis of Assisi act. It even took all his charm to convince her to let me keep Rusty, a dog that I felt was truly my own.

I was eight years old, long over the sudden disappearance of Buster after he had bitten me on the lip when I tried to pet him while he was eating. In those more innocent times we played out on the street. One day a rust colored collie-type dog was running after an older boy on a bicycle. It almost looked like he was trying to escape from the dog, but the dog was too fast and passed him and had to wait for him to catch up. The dog crouched down with its belly on the asphalt, then when the boy tried to break away on his bike the dog took off and circled it in gradually tighter spirals.

I blurted out how good looking the dog was. The boy pulled up to me and asked me if I wanted the dog. I said sure. ( My mother always scolded me for leaping before I looked.) He picked up the dog and handed him to me. The dog was light. Besides rust colored fur it had floppy ears and a short snout, with white boots and a fluffy curly tail topped with a white cap.

How old was he, I asked. The boy corrected me that the dog was a female and said she was three months old. You can tell the dogs a girl by looking between its legs he explained. Nothing there that I could see. I would have to confirm this with my parents. This guy didn't look too smart. After all, he was giving away this great dog.

I'm going to call her Rusty, I said, and I pulled the squirming puppy tight to my chest. I confidently bound up the stairs to my home. The older boy took off, standing up on his bicycle pedals to increase his acceleration.

My reception was not what I expected. Bursting into the house I proudly announced that I had a new dog. And his name was Rusty. At first only my father, sitting in the living room reading the paper, saw the object of my loud pronouncement. Then I heard my mother calling me from the bedroom. This was during the early period of her illness. Some days she was up and about like normal. Others she was in bed all day. I thought she had the flu. Even after she died a year later no one told me she had cancer. I found out years later only because I accidentally found her death certificate at the bottom of a drawer.

I walked to the doorway of the bedroom. The look on my mother's face was not kind. My father told me to take the dog out to the backyard, which was fenced in. The dog won't be able to run away out there he explained. I sat on the swing seat watching Rusty move around the yard, familiarizing herself with her new home. Her nose never seemed to leave the ground.

When you are eight time moves slowly anyway. Waiting in the yard seemed interminable. Finally my father came out. I could keep the dog. But she was my responsibility. I must feed her and walk her and keep her out of my mother's way. I never knew how my father convinced her. There was only disgust on my mother's face when she saw me holding the dog, as if she were thinking now I have this to worry about too. She knew me far better than my father. I was impetuous, a day dreamer prone to wandering off into my own world in the midst of a busy intersection. She both loved and worried about me. Having encouraged me to read and draw, to use my imagination, she also drilled into me the need for discipline and practicality to get along in the world. On the latter I was not doing so well.

My father had a simpler calculation. A dog was good for a child because taking care of it taught responsibility. Dogs, being faithful and loyal to a fault, appealed to my father. Loyalty was the trait that my father respected and demanded more than any other.

A month later I received my first Holy Confirmation. I have a picture from that day of me holding Rusty, with my grandmother and sister by my side. My father took the picture. My mother is not in the picture. She was in bed that day.

Throughout the summer Rusty and I had our adventures, most of which I imagined as I walked her around the block. My father spared her relying on me to feed her, learning what my mother already knew, that a life lived in the mind had very limited practical applications.

My mother died about a year after Rusty came into our life. The last four months of her life were spent in bed. It's puzzling to me how I never understood what was happening. I only realized something was wrong when the priest came to our house a few days before she died. I never asked why he was there. I intuited that something bad was going to happen. When nothing did that day, I let it slip from my mind and kept to my walking schedule with Rusty.

It was that following Thursday that my Uncle met me after school. I was in fourth grade and nobody had ever met me after school in all those years. That my mother was dead flashed in my mind like a billboard announcement. He stopped to buy me an ice cream. Then we walked home in silence. When we were home I was taken upstairs to my Aunt's flat. I sat in the kitchen waiting for something to happen. Soon my Uncle told me to follow him downstairs where I lived. My grandmother sat across from my father, her eyes red and swollen. My dad was in his usual chair. He looked at me and said simply mommy was dead.

I got Rusty's leash and took her outside. Several friends came up to me. I was a mini-celebrity. No one had seen a dead body taken from a home before. The goal obviously had been for my Uncle to keep me from accidentally seeing my mother being taken away in a hearse covered by a sheet. I left Rusty at home and went to play with my friends. For once I was the center of attention, the hero of our game. Rusty sat at home, no one paying attention to her.

As the years passed my walks with Rusty became fewer as I spent my time on other things. My dad was never the disciplinarian my mother had been, so my promise to take care of Rusty was easily broken. When I came home from college I gave her a pat and then mostly ignored her. Finally one day I received a call at school from my dad. Rusty had died. She was fourteen.

In the end, my father proved to be Rusty's best friend. Her life taught me the valuable lessons my parents tried to impart to me. A commitment needs discipline and fortitude. And loyalty is the foundation of any relationship.

Buster -- a Good Dog Gone Bad ?

There's been a run of bad luck in my building. First one of my neighbors lost her Bernese Mountain Dog to cancer at only five years old. Then another neighbor lost her Great Pyrenees, also to cancer. With the dog being thirteen my neighbor thought she was prepared for her dog to go, as that is old for the breed. But of course you never are prepared.

Although she was really a good dog she was not popular in the building because she was large and territorial with a deep basso bark, as you would expect from a dog bred to protect cattle and property from large predators in the mountains. She loved cats, but hated the interloper Hamilton. She was possibly an odd choice for a pet given the apartment living lifestyle of
Manhattan. But then on one of my walks with Hamilton I came across another Great Pyrenees and this dog was quiet and welcoming, issuing no threats to either Hamilton or myself. What differentiated the two dogs?

Recently someone mentioned to me that he would never have a dog. He had put down two dogs, a Rottweiler and a German Shepherd, because both had attacked his wife and children. These breeds are known to be intelligent and very protective of their pack and territory. Why would they turn on people their instincts would tell them to protect?

I had had my own experience with a dog that I thought was friendly and playful. Buster was a Fox Terrier mix. My father adopted him to give my mother some comfort around the house. We lived a block from the old Union Stockyards in Chicago. When I was a child Chicago still was hog butcher to the world. With that claim came all the attendant collateral damage, primarily rodents... rats actually, often as big as cats. They would wander from the stockyards down the alley and make their way into yards and often burrow under foundations and get inside homes, at least in between the walls.

My mother gave up on hanging her laundry outside because of the odors from the packing plants. Instead she hung them up in the attic, which worked fine until a rat poked itself out from between the eaves. The discussion with my father about that experience lead to Buster becoming part of our family.

My mother went nowhere in the house or attic without him. He had a sixth sense about rats. He anticipated a rat's appearance and before the rat knew it he was on it, his jaws locked around its neck, jerking his head until the vertebrae snapped. Once, out in the yard, he followed a rat down a hole under the garage, enlarging it furiously with his front paws until only his tail showed above the grass. He finally pulled back and reappeared with the luckless vermin in his jaw. He pranced around the yard with the rat jerking in his teeth. After his victory lap he abruptly jerked his head back and forth and the rat slumped quietly in his mouth.

My father must have thought it harmless to let me think that Buster was my dog. I was five years old and learning about life from Golden Books and comics. On television were Lassie and Rin Tin Tin. And wherever there was a dog there was a little boy just like me beside him. Of course those boys were portrayed as feeding, training and working with their dogs. I was doing none of this.

If Buster was not guarding my mother he was out on the back porch where his food and water bowl were kept. Although the porch was enclosed, my mother usually kept the door closed between it and our kitchen. If she needed Buster she would open the door and call him or go out and get him on her way to the attic. My interaction with Buster was close to zero. With my father's supervision maybe I would lightly pet him. But my mother did not share my father's indulgence of a boy and his dog. To her, Buster had one purpose, which he performed admirably.

Came the fateful day. I was on the porch unsupervised. A very rare occurrence by my memory. I was always with my mother. If she went shopping I went with her. If I was playing, she was in the room, cleaning, reading or just watching me. When she went to the attic with Buster I was left with my aunt who lived above us. How I came to be on the porch with Buster unsupervised I can't imagine.

He was eating. Maybe my mother had just finished feeding him and forgot momentarily that I was out on the porch or she became otherwise distracted, possibly by something cooking on the stove. In any case I decided this would be a good time to pet Buster like I always did with my father. Buster had other ideas. He was eating. Sharing his food with a stranger, and surely he saw me as that, was not a Fox Terrier's protocol, or any dog's for that matter.

He moved as quickly towards me as he did the rats. He lept and caught my lip with his teeth. I still have the scar. I yelled out and began to cry. Buster went back to his food. My mother rushed out ashen faced.

I was rushed to the hospital where I was given a tetanus shot. My father arrived from work. He and my mother had one of their quiet conversations. The next day I asked where Buster was. My father told me he had run away. A five year old believes his father. I did not miss Buster. I know he did not miss me. Some how my mother adjusted to the rats without him. It may have helped that the stockyards were winding down in Chicago and taking the rats with them to their new location out west.

I hope Buster was happy in his new home. He only did what his upbringing and instincts led him to do. After my conversation about the two dogs that had been put down I thought about Buster and wondered if my father had brought him to the pound. If so, he would have been put down too. It would be blood on my hands.