The Day I Wished My Dog Had Died

The final seconds of a Friends episode ran out while I swallowed the last french-fry from the greasy bag in front of me. I watched my phone screen fade to black as I contemplated playing another, even though I had seen the show about a million times. Nothing could beat the comfort that came with the familiar characters I had grown up with, even if there were objectively far better shows to watch.

I knew I needed to get back to work, or go outside and see the sun, but procrastination happened to be my drug of choice, and I was a heavy user. So I hit the play button and decided I’d deal with the consequences later.

However, not more than three seconds into the chirpy theme-song, I received a call from my brother.

“He probably wants to talk about some new video game,” I mindlessly told the stuffed teddy on my bed.

Then I let the call drone on until it was sent to voicemail. I was committed to my dazed TV lunch routine, after all.

But after a few seconds, the phone rang again. The incessant buzzing vibrated until I picked it up, eager to see what excitement had warranted back-to-back calls in the middle of the day.

“Hellooo,” I said. “Sorry I missed your first call, I was in the bathroom.”

“Hey,” my brother said.

He didn’t comment on my excuse.

“What’s up?” I flipped over on my olive-green duvet and yawned.

“Are you around this weekend?” He asked.

His tone was flat and almost robotic, and I could tell that he was distracted.

“Why?” My eyes narrowed, and I listened close. “Are you going to be at mom and dad’s?”

“I’m already here,” he said.

“Oh.” I paused.

It was the middle of the week.

Didn’t he have a job?

“So, are you coming?” he asked again.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do. Hopefully next weekend.”

I instantly felt homesick as my eyes licked my newly acquainted ceiling. I was still adjusting to living in the city, but I wouldn’t get used to it any time soon if I kept leaving to visit my roots. Plus, I had an amazing full-time job now, a loving partner, and a semi-firm grasp on my future. Change was always going to be scary, but I was finally happy where I had ended up.

“You should come home,” he said.

“I will soon.” I stared out the window.

The clouds were starting to gather, even though the forecast hadn’t called for rain.

“You should come home,” he repeated.

But this time, his voice trembled like a cracking rock. It was ever so slightly, but enough to make something twitch deep inside my gut.

“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

My forehead crinkled and suddenly I was aware of the heavy beat in my chest.

“Just come home,” he said.

Immediately alarm bells began to sound in my brain.

“But why?” I asked again.

“Lana, just take the hint,” he snapped. “Come home.”

“Henry, what’s going on?” I was completely upright in my bed as I waited for his tone to soften.

But it didn’t.

Instead, he just said the most frustrating words he could have in that moment:

“I don’t want to talk about things over the phone.” He kept his explanation tight-lipped.

“What happened?” I knew he wasn’t going to tell me, but I didn’t know what else to say.

My mind was racing in a million different directions, and it frankly didn’t want to land anywhere, because all of the options it came up with were too scary.

“How fast can you get home?” He countered. “I know you have work…”

“I’ll leave right now,” I said.

“Okay, good.” He spoke nonchalantly. “See you soon.”

And then he hung up the phone to the most life-changing call of my entire existence.

My body felt completely numb for a moment, like in a semi-lucid dream where you can control your thoughts but not your movements. My heart was shaking, and the acid in my chest threatened to crawl up my throat.

And then I completely broke down and burst into tears.

My brain had racked through every possible explanation, and I had finally concluded that there was only one reason to receive a call like that from my brother. It was so clear to me then, and I felt like an idiot for taking so long to get there.

My beloved family dog of fifteen years was dying. And there was nothing I could do about it.

The possibility had been a topic of discussion over the past few months, and even more-so in the several weeks leading up to the call. The sweet old lab, Calli, had severely declined, and she was no longer able to go for walks, climb the stairs, or always make it outside to use the bathroom. Dozens of surprise kitchen poops later, the arthritic family member was just not the same as she used to be for the majority of my life, and it was utterly heartbreaking.

There was also the matter of the benign lumps and bumps that now riddled her body. Every time I visited I noticed a new one, and double-asked my mom if they had been checked.

“She’s cancer free,” my mom would tell me. “The doctor said she’s healthy, other than the hip pain. But that’s just old age, even I have that.”

Time and time again I was assured that these lumps were just fatty tissue, nothing more than superficial flaws.

But now I feared that that time had come to an end. She had just had a recent checkup, after all. Something had grown, and this time, it was sinister. And at her age, and with her health, there was surely nothing they could do.

I remembered when one of my childhood friend’s dogs was diagnosed with cancer at just nine years old, and how quickly it attacked the gentle canine’s fragile system. One moment we were going on weekly dog walks together, and the next, her family had been cut short; her furry sibling gone.

I didn’t know how or if my friend had ever recovered from that, because she was never quite the same after her precious pet’s passing, and neither was our friendship. It truly showed how the weight of losing an animal could severely affect a person. It didn’t matter that the dog didn’t speak or walk on two legs, it was a family member, and losing a family member was the worst pain anyone could experience.

It was a pain I knew was coming soon, but truly had tried to avoid thinking about. Except when my brother had mentioned the horrible concept several months before, after a conversation he had with our mother. He told me that he basically had to convince her that if something were to happen to our dog, we would want to know right away, no matter where we were or what we were doing. Apparently this wasn’t an obvious assumption on my mother’s part.

The overly-sweet woman was like a Disney princess at heart, and would do anything not to be the bearer of horrid news. She had said she didn’t want to derail anything pressing in our lives by telling us if she didn’t feel like the time was right, but we assured her that we’d rather know, even if it meant completely losing our shit.

And that was why it was my brother calling me now, and not her. He knew I wanted to know right away.

However, now that I did, I wished I had never picked up that phone.

I had never felt so much devastation as I leapt from my bed and ravaged my wardrobe. I threw on whatever mix-matched pieces of clothing I could find, and then stuffed my travel bag with a couple of extra outfits. I felt like a robot with my wires plugged into all the wrong places as I jolted back-and-forth frantically trying to pack everything I needed while simultaneously calling myself a ride.

My eyes still burned with tears, and my two-day-old hair was a mess, but I was so aware of how little I cared about my appearance, that it was almost liberating. Traumatic moments were the most perspective-changing events to truly exist, and all of my priorities had been thrown so far out the window, I couldn’t even register them.

I didn’t even care that my Uber driver was clearly gawking at my puffy cheeks and snotty nose as I squeezed into his car. Luckily he gave up on small-talk when he saw my tear-soaked face and the way my fingers aggressively tapped at my phone screen.

I was futilely spamming my brother with follow-up questions, but was met with little response. However, I did receive the unsettling instruction to “not text my mom to ask her anything,” as if doing so might yield an answer.

But of course, like a little kid who was just told not to touch a hot pot, that is immediately what I did. I pounded on the keys with no regard for typos as I demanded answers from my mother. But just as I had suspected, I gained no answer in return.

I tried calling her too, but the phone went straight to voicemail. She rarely had it on silent, so that was hardly reassuring. Then I realized that she might not have been looking at her phone anyway, especially if she was held up at a vet’s office somewhere.

And just like that, a tumultuous stream of terrible images flooded my brain. I could see her stroking my dog’s yellow-white fur as Calli lay on an examination table. I could hear the dog’s little snout wheezing a heavy breath. I could feel the weight in the room as my mother juggled with the idea of putting her down.

Was that something that was already decided? Or was that why I was being called home? Or was it too late? Had our dog gone out to the yard to pee and never come back inside?

My tears reloaded as the questions added up, but before I could break into a full-blown sob, I received another call from my brother.

“Did you call mom?” He asked abruptly.

I sniffled and spoke quietly. “Yes, but—“

“I told you not to,” he cut me off. “Don’t call her.”

“Okay.” my voice was weak. “I just need to know what’s going on…”

“I understand,” he said, this time more empathetically. He must have heard the desperation in my tone. “Are you on your way home?”

“Yes, I’ll be there soon,” I said.

“Okay, love you,” he said, and then dropped the call.

My hands shook as I returned the phone to my lap, and considered the nightmare that was to come.

And then, just like a goddamn cliché, the rain started to fall outside my window. The droplets glistened as they smacked against the glass with an incessant little tapping sound, and I couldn’t help but stare outside like some melodramatic movie character.

My eyes fell into a daze as a reel of the last fifteen years flashed in front of them.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine my life without Calli, especially because she had been there for most of it.

I was only in my early twenties now, and we had adopted our sweet family pup when I was just ten years old. The day we brought her home had been the greatest day in my life.

Like many kids, I had begged and pleaded for a dog for as long as I could remember, and I had done anything possible to convince my parents. I had walked the other neighbourhood dogs for free, researched the best family breeds, wrote an essay on why I deserved a dog, and made a PowerPoint presentation on how I would care for one. I even distinctly remembered the purple cover of the dog-training book I had stolen from the school library when I was in the second grade. I was so desperate to keep a first-hand reference of dog care around that I slipped it into my bag one day and never told a soul.

My father had enjoyed my essay, as he always thought I was a good writer, but he wasn’t so convinced of my caretaking skills. So he waved the idea of a dog in front of me for years until my siblings and I proved that we could be responsible.

Then, on my tenth birthday, I received a pink dog collar and a plush dragon chew-toy as a gift, and my heart was filled with so much joy. Two months later our newest family member had arrived, and for fifteen years she had remained by my side. From family cottage trips, where we’d throw sticks in the lake for her to swim to, to Christmas Day, when she’d chew up her own stocking filled with treats. She even joined our famous surprise movie nights, when my dad would wake us all up at midnight with pizza and the latest flick. She’d always try to snag a slice, and bark at any animal on screen.

She was the best napping partner, the family therapist, and overall, just a really good girl.

And now I was going to have to try and exist without her.

I could barely breathe as the car turned down the street to my family home, and I could feel the sweat build on my forehead as my driver pulled into the spot in front of their house. I didn’t want to walk into a house without her, but I knew I had to.

So I finally took a deep breath and thanked my driver, then I grabbed my bag and slowly marched towards the red-brick facade of my nightmare. I entered through the garage, just like I usually did, and when I got inside, I kicked off my shoes and stared around the empty kitchen.

Where the hell was everybody? I had expected to be thrown into immediate turmoil.

I quietly creeped around the corner of the hall toward the living room, and closed my eyes before I looked over to where my dog’s bed lay.

But then my heart thumped and my voice caught in my throat. My eyes bulged and my brain swarmed with new questions.

My dog was curled up on her fluffy brown mat, sleeping peacefully.

“Thank god,” I whispered.

She was still alive.

Whatever hard decisions had to be made, my mom and dad had not had to make them alone. I still had time to say goodbye. I still had time to love her before she was gone.

Because that was the case, right?

But what if all of this was some giant misunderstanding? What if my brother had something else up his sleeve? Did he realize how worried I was? And where the hell was everybody?

The adrenaline kicked in right then, and I immediately dashed up the stairs and finally found my parents and brother standing in the hallway.

“You’re home,” my mom said quietly.

She didn’t seem particularly excited to see me, but she hugged me anyway.

I squeezed her quickly but backed off so I could ask my questions.

“Where’s Alice?” I asked.

My sister was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s still at work,” my dad said.

Good.

If she was still there, then it meant things couldn’t be that bad. She would have come right home if they told her that my dog was urgently dying.

“Well then what the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Why are you all up here?”

Why was my poor dog all alone, is what I meant.

“Come here,” my dad said, and opened up his arms.

I gave him a half-hearted hug, and then looked around at my mother and brother. Their sullen eyes bore through the floorboards as my dad squeezed me tighter.

“Will somebody please tell me what is going on?” I begged.

My father kept his arms around me and tried to pull me back but I was flailing like a fish on a hook.

“I’m trying to,” he said.

And then I finally looked into his eyes and realized they too were struck with tears.

I had rarely seen my father cry, and I never expected him to be so distraught over our dog. He loved her, of course, but he liked to pretend he was indifferent most of the time.

“So, you know how I just had pancreatitis,” his voice trembled. “Well, the doctor decided to run some other tests while I was there…”

My mind went completely blank.

What the hell was he talking about right now?

“Well,” he continued. “The test results came back… and… and…”

My dad broke down crying and gripped me so tightly.

“What?” I cried.

“It turns out I have cancer,” he finally said.

No.

Just, no.

That was the first and only thought in my head as his words smacked me in the face.

“What?” I begged him to tell me that my ears were broken.

“It’s not looking too good,” he said between whimpers. “It’s… a very rare and aggressive type… and they’re not sure how far it’s spread yet, but…”

My arms flew around his neck and I completely lost all sense of composure. The tears came so hard and so fast, that I thought they might physically knock me over.

“I thought it was the dog,” I wailed. And soon, my mother and brother were surrounding me in a full-swaddled embrace. “I thought something was wrong with Calli!”

It was supposed to be her.

It had to be her.

I never wanted it to be her.

But right then, I wished it was her.