It’s unavoidable. Even the best of us are susceptible to believing what we want to believe. I’m not immune. It’s true. Have I ever told you the story of my childhood dog?
When I was around the ripe old age of seven or eight, I got a dog—a dog for me. A pet dog. This was significant, because I grew up as the child of a rancher and a farmer. My family had pets we ate after fattening them up for a couple years. We ate my pet pig, Miss Piggy. We ate almost all of our “pet” rabbits. (A couple were nabbed by neighborhood dogs and one died of old age.) My dad had several hunting dogs and a cow dog over the years. While we didn’t eat those animals, they also weren’t simply pets. They had practical functions through which they could earn their keep.
My dog, Iye, was simply a pet dog. I named my pet dog “Iye” because I thought it was funny. I’m not sure what Freud would say about such a thing and what it might have indicated about my Ego, Id, or Superego. I’ll leave that for another post on another day. Iye, was a mutt consisting of probably somewhat equal parts black lab and rottweiler (amidst whatever other breeds found their way in). She was a perfect dog for a little boy coming of age in the countryside. She was loyal. She loved to fetch and play chase and wrestle and play tug-o-war. She was sturdy. She was personable. She was mine.
After school each day, I would release all the dogs from their dog runs (this included my dog along with whatever hunting dogs we had at the moment). The pointers and brittneys would run off to chase birds or engage with whatever they happened upon for the next couple of hours. Iye would chase after them for about five minutes. After this brief period of galloping madly around the property, she would return for our daily session of hide-and-seek.
Her five minute absence gave me the perfect amount of time to find someplace to hide. Instinctually, she understood her goal was to find me. After doing this almost everyday for years, she made quick work of it too. From the big pecan tree with the cable spool in it, to the dry creek bed, to the woodpile, to the well house, to the roof of the house, she would bolt from place to place until she found me. Then we would wrestle, play fetch, or do whatever for the next little bit until I had to go inside and finish my homework (or if lucky work on a project in the shop). That was me and Iye together.
Then I turned eighteen and left home for university. This gets to the part where even I believed what I wanted to believe. I left Texas to attend the University of Montana. I didn’t come home until Christmas that first year. I drove my blue 1984 Volvo 240 DL from Missoula, MT to Aledo, TX over two days. When I arrived home, I looked around for Iye, but didn’t find her. “Hey, where’s my dog?” I asked my parents. “Oh, that. You see…”
This is where my dad told me they had given my dog away to an elderly blind man who had needed the companionship.
Yep. That’s all I really remember about the story. Surely I asked some follow up questions, right? Maybe. I don’t remember. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I reflected back on this ridiculous story. A blind man? We didn’t even know any blind men. Who was this blind man, and how did my parents meet him? It’s not like Iye had been trained as a seeing eye dog. And while you might be able to teach an old dog some new tricks…come on. And why wouldn’t I be allowed to at least visit my dog. I mean, the blind man wouldn’t even have to know.
The answer to all of these questions is obvious. Of course I had to have known my pet dog was dead. Somewhere inside, I suppose I simply didn’t want to deal with the reality. I wanted to believe she was bringing comfort and solace to some mysterious old blind guy whom I would never meet. Perhaps, I didn’t want to know the real story surrounding her death. Based on what I know about my family history (and the culture within which I grew up), she probably got ran over by a delivery truck or a neighbor pulling a trailer, or most likely of all—my dad’s own truck. Maybe he didn’t want that sour taste to be the focus of my homecoming. I’ll never know. Truth is, I didn’t want to know. And there are times when that is the truth for each of us.
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