Pepper
Dewy and Ham's little dog Pepper died. He’d been on borrowed time since the rope episode anyway. Not much of a bark left to go along with his poor eye site and patchy fur loss. No one quite knows what happened, he just went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up. Dewy said she thought something was wrong when he just lifted his head and watched her walk to the bathroom, instead of following her in the middle of the night like he usually did.
I feel bad for the girls ‘cause they had that dog for damn near ever. Ham’s already talking about getting a new one but I think Dewy’s still not so sure. As anyone who’s ever had a pet knows they don’t live that long, unless it’s a bird or turtle or something and it’s hard to get back on that bicycle after the big crash. I’m thinking Dewy just needs a little more time before she can let her heart go somewhere else.
Last night it rained. Usually the sound of it on the roof of the Airstream puts me right to sleep but not last night. I lay there in the dim light wondering why I was thinking about a dog I never cared for all that much anyway. Practically blind and dumb as a post, he would run around chasing things only he could see, leaping and barking at his ghosts or his demons or maybe just sleeping under the old picnic bench with his hind legs twitching. Do dogs dream of the catch or only the chase?
I think what’s missing these days is the insignificance of his action. How his lack of fierceness or a true enemy never stopped his incessant barking. I miss that due to his limited self-awareness he would, like Don Quixote, attack whatever windmills happened across his path. Throughout most his life he was the vigilant protector of all that’s imagined: A guardian from the monsters beneath the bed and behind the closet’s door.
My feeling is that when he lost his bark he lost his job. In a world where dancing shadows of cedar boughs move, unannounced, across the drive in the wind, what good is a near blind, mute old dog anyway?
Let's just hope they don’t go and get a bird or something in the hope that it’ll outlive them.
I feel bad for the girls ‘cause they had that dog for damn near ever. Ham’s already talking about getting a new one but I think Dewy’s still not so sure. As anyone who’s ever had a pet knows they don’t live that long, unless it’s a bird or turtle or something and it’s hard to get back on that bicycle after the big crash. I’m thinking Dewy just needs a little more time before she can let her heart go somewhere else.
Last night it rained. Usually the sound of it on the roof of the Airstream puts me right to sleep but not last night. I lay there in the dim light wondering why I was thinking about a dog I never cared for all that much anyway. Practically blind and dumb as a post, he would run around chasing things only he could see, leaping and barking at his ghosts or his demons or maybe just sleeping under the old picnic bench with his hind legs twitching. Do dogs dream of the catch or only the chase?
I think what’s missing these days is the insignificance of his action. How his lack of fierceness or a true enemy never stopped his incessant barking. I miss that due to his limited self-awareness he would, like Don Quixote, attack whatever windmills happened across his path. Throughout most his life he was the vigilant protector of all that’s imagined: A guardian from the monsters beneath the bed and behind the closet’s door.
My feeling is that when he lost his bark he lost his job. In a world where dancing shadows of cedar boughs move, unannounced, across the drive in the wind, what good is a near blind, mute old dog anyway?
Let's just hope they don’t go and get a bird or something in the hope that it’ll outlive them.
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