No-longer-empty nest
Here’s a story I’ve been thinking about lately. If you know me you may know that my six-year-old dog Saki died a few days before Christmas. She’d been sick with glaucoma and skin problems, but she ended up dying of aggressive lymphoma. I have so many regrets that come down to feeling like I could have been a more “present” pet owner. My older dog, Genji, Saki’s uncle, had been with me since before my children were born. So he was my only helpless charge for four years before having to adapt to my divided attention. We had long since bonded, and he had moved on to my mother as his primary sugar-momma for extra love and treats. But when I brought Saki home, I had an 18-month-old baby and was remodeling my kitchen. She was loved but not in the gushy Velveteen Rabbit way that I’d smothered my first dog — I simply didn’t have time. She was spirited and very intelligent, and I appreciated her spunkiness. My husband spent whatever time he could spare with her, and we took her to dog training classes. When she had behavioral problems (attacking the dog, beginning at age two), I brought in a trainer so that we could do what needed to be done in order to keep her. He was an elderly man who’d worked with countless dogs in Los Angeles over his long career, and he told us that she was the smartest dog he’d ever met. Eventually, we succeeded in stopping almost all of the attacks, but it was an uneasy peace. On occasion, she still attacked Genji, and she continued to be the 30-pound-menace to our local dog society. Our neighbors learned to cross the street rather than risk her sudden Cujo-like behavior towards their dogs. We weren’t quite pariahs, but rather avoided like low-level Mafia enforcers. We loved her, she was family, but we often called her The Bitch. Because she was an alpha bitch. And we grew to like that about her. We had been a human and canine family of appeasers, compared to her, and she was uncomplicated in the fact that she was delightful to humans and would not tolerate other dogs, except the uncle she lived with and domineered. I wished I’d had the stones to be as big a Bitch as she was.
When Saki began to have health problems, I was confident that we could nip all of them in the bud. Glaucoma? Well, I answered the escalating demands of round-the-clock eye drops with a homemade medical chart. Itching so severe that her belly turned black from licking? A full course of dermatologic meds, including custom-made injections. We went to so many veterinary appointments that I began to develop that relationship I’d always imagined I’d have with her. Only now instead of petting her while I edited my writing pages, I tried to be gentle while I held open her eye for a drop or grabbed the skin of her neck to administer a shot. I never pictured myself as a West Los Angeles crackpot willing to drive all over the city and pay ungodly sums to keep my dog from going blind or itching herself until we all went out of our minds. But here I was, doing just that. At times, my main communication with my spouse were terse discussions about whether or not he’d remembered the eye drops, and why the hell hadn’t he checked off and initialed the “evening” column?
Many months and a few costly procedures later, and after we’d moved into our new home in late 2010, we discovered that she had developed lymphoma, stage IV. Within a month of her diagnosis, she died, just three days before Christmas, which was also the ten-year-anniversary of my father’s death. My family, particularly my son and husband, were open in their grief. They each talked about how much they missed her, how special she had been. My daughter and I handled it more privately. She refused to talk about it and seemed to try to deny that Saki had ever existed, let alone meant anything to her. And I realized that I was feeling the same way that I had about my father a decade earlier — grief, regret, and shamefully, relief. My father had been a little like the dog — terribly ill for my entire life, an aggressive yet gifted and lovable person that I always had to make excuses and accommodations for. When he died, I no longer had to worry that he would freak out about some imagined offense or crash parties that he wasn’t invited to. And when my dog died, I no longer had to cross the streets to avoid friendly Labs and Pugs or worry that she would lose it one day and rip the other dog apart. The loss of her was something I hadn’t anticipated, and I wasn’t able to put it into terms other than to wonder where all of that spirit, the ability to kill a squirrel before I had even noticed it, the charismatic tail-wagging and smiles, had gone.
A few months later, we took the kids on a trip. I resort easily to bribes, and so I tried to coerce my son to stick with learning to ski. At first I tried chocolate and/or pizza, but the only thing that worked was promising a new pet. He had been begging for a cat or another dog, or any other animal. Out of my mouth came the promise of a hamster. He stopped crying, and muttered that he would give the snow another try. Nearby, his sister overheard us. She’d been learning with no drama at all, but she swooped in to demand her pound of hamster flesh too.
A month later my husband and I still had not delivered the hamster goods. I didn’t plan on reneging, but neither of us was in no hurry to add rodents to the our list of domestic chores. Our kids are not really old enough to do anything other than handle pets and help with feeding. We’d made calls around to pet stores, done Google searches, and finally, on Good Friday, we brought home two hamsters (And cages. And food. And bedding.) to two ecstatic children. By Easter Sunday, we were adjusting to having two stinky and not-yet-cuddly new pets. We went out to Easter brunch. Conveniently, there was a pet store nearby. We already needed new hamster supplies — tiny igloos to sleep in and pint-sized litter boxes in the vain hope that we could potty train them.
My husband and kids wandered about, and my husband ogled fish in the aquariums. We’d had one Frankenstein-like fish for years, the product of small-tank-incest, that had miraculously survived despite the extreme inbreeding. He went about picking out tiny neon tetras and guppies to keep our Frankenfish company. And I discovered Buddy the green-cheeked conure. I didn’t like birds, but this one leaned the crest of his head forward for me to pet him. So I did. And I began to fall in feathery love for the first time. My husband found me cooing over the rainbow-colored bird and petting him, admonishing him in an indulgent voice not to nip.
Standing there, I started to fixate on the idea of having Buddy as my bird. He was gorgeous, and had a weird yet recognizable way of asking for love. But I was determined not to impulse-buy a creature that had a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years.
To be continued.
