If dogs lived that long, this would have been his 55th birthday. He made it to 11 I believe. And then there was the moment in the garage when the dog suddenly howled at the landscape, saying his peace. He was getting sicker and wouldn’t live more than a month or two.
We named him tiger. Why we named him tiger, I will never know. He was not really much of a go-getter. He would sleep pretty much all the time or at least try to. He had no coloring like any kind of tiger. I don’t know how we came up with that name but that’s what his name was and Thanksgiving was his birthday. Thanksgiving 1969. We figured that because of this and that and the other thing and it took. It was a nice thing having the dog be a part of this holiday.
I was thinking about this because I’m looking at my catalog and there is a piece that is not mentioned and it is about the dog. It’s very small but at the time I genuinely felt it was a decent piece of writing. Let me put it here.
When I was a boy, I had a great dog. His name was Tiger and he was a Lasso Apso. Lasso Apsos are small dogs with long hair who bark a lot. Tiger was a very friendly dog and he was also very independent. However, he had one small problem- he loved to play with his plastic hamburger. Now, you might think that there would be no problem with a dog who liked a squeaky toy, but the noise from that hamburger made everyone crazy. My father, several times, hid the hamburger so that Tiger could not play with it. But every time I found it, I would give it back to Tiger because I knew that he would be happy.
One day though, we moved to a new house that had three floors and a big back yard. Tiger was playing with his hamburger all day and, to get attention, he would throw the hamburger off the balcony and down into the back yard and, of course, we had to go down and get it. This went on all day; Tiger would throw the hamburger into the back yard, and we would go and get it. Finally, tired of this game, my father hid the hamburger in the closet. But thinking that he would be happy, that night when we all had gone to sleep, I gave the hamburger back to Tiger who, straight away, threw it over the balcony. Nobody wanted to go downstairs late at night and we all agreed to wait until morning. But Tiger didn’t want to wait and, that night, when everybody was asleep, he went out on the balcony and, sure that the hamburger was only a few inches more ahead of him, he fell three stories down and into the bushes below. His scream woke me up. I ran downstairs but couldn’t see anything so I woke up my dad who got a flashlight and came downstairs. We found Tiger in a bush, breathing, but not moving.
Because we didn’t know any veterinarians in this town, we had to drive more than 100 kilometers to our old veterinarian. All the way there, Tiger lay in the car without moving. We were all crying that our beloved dog might die from this accident. At the Veterinarian’s, Tiger lay still on the table. The doctor looked at him closely, checking for broken bones or internal injuries but after several minutes, he straightened up and announced that there was nothing wrong with the dog that he could see. Hearing this, Tiger suddenly stood up and wagged his tail. I guess he was relieved to know that he was Ok. My dad though was furious and yelled at the dog asking him why, if there was nothing wrong, the dog had just lay there like death. The dog just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
On the way home, my mom and dad took turns saying bad words about the dog, who had woken everybody up at 3:00 in the morning just because he wanted his hamburger back. But I was happy in the back seat holding my dog. I was just happy he was ok.
I like the boyish quality of the writing. I was very inexperienced when I wrote this. I didn’t know what you could and couldn’t do. I just wanted to write a story down and it was on Thanksgiving. But also looking at this, I see something so maniacally evil that it hurts my eyes to think about it. I’m not even going into the slavery of dogs. I’m not even talking about being selectively bred into uselessness. I’m not talking about what it is like to be a living thing who has to ask to go to the bathroom every time and gets told when they can eat as a trick.
I was no Huckleberry Finn. I was no particular pleasure to that dog. It was all very sinister. And this business of the hamburger, is this not obsessive compulsive disorder? Because if you look at a sentient being trying desperately to hit the pleasure button, something to add relevance to its life, and even logically knowing that he’s about to drop for stories over the edge to get it, he will take that leap.
The original idea was that it was a squeaky toy. The dog knew it was making noise and therefore getting some attention. Getting attention was the most important thing. If people were around, the dog had to have attention. Where did the dog learn this? Oh yeah, the house had a mistress. The mistress had everyone as nervous as anything.
Any dog that had anything to do with that family was clinically insane.
We would take the hamburger away. We would finally alter them by pulling the squeaky out the side and letting the dog chew on the plastic. I don’t remember how many hamburgers that dog went through. Maybe he was parroting me! Maybe he was showing me my eating habits. Hey Mr McDonald’s! Would you like to talk about obsessions?
I wonder, if I could talk to my friend, what do you would say.
Oh yeah, those were tough times but they were good times too. You guys were something special. Everybody knew you guys. The loudest things on the planet. Disgusting. The woman! Should there never be such a force of nature again. Should we never conceive of such a being. But there was plenty to eat. You guys never forgot me for extra food. You didn’t care and just open the door and gave me the freedom to take nice long walks all by myself everyday. The neighborhood knew me and respected me. It was not such a bad life there on the hill. You were a crazy son of a bitch. But I identified with you as much as you identified with me. And I was as jealous of you as you were jealous of me. Your dad liked me better. I’m truly sorry about that. I don’t talk. You have no idea what you’re talking about but never stop talking. Big difference in terms of popularity. Big difference.
So there it is. Revisiting family on Thanksgiving. I don’t really think it’s necessary to kill a bird. I’m also not completely convinced that we need to celebrate the beginning of genocide in North America. But I have friends in the Midwest and apparently the Midwest controls the world.
So, on such a day and in such a mood I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and, maybe say a special thanks to our animal friends who made our lives richer and better. They give everything, the animals do. They give everything and all we ever do is take.
