Our dog died the other day. He was technically my sister’s dog, but he really belonged to the whole family I think. Probably even the whole neighborhood. He went around door-to-door almost daily, begging snacks from all of our neighbors, and I think losing him had a greater impact on the community, my family and myself than I ever imagined it would.My sister and I were on vacation when he passed, and I was a little teary-eyed the whole drive home just thinking about how empty the house would be without him. How much I would miss him. How much I wished we could have seen him just one more time before he was gone forever.
The funny thing about Snowball is I didn’t even like him. He was a big oaf a dog, and he would plow through a room with complete disregard for its contents. I can’t tell you how many drinks he dumped onto the carpet with his unusually strong tail or how many pieces of furniture and electronics he destroyed with his lumbering oafishness. He smelled up our house, he woke us up with his barking, he licked me repeatedly despite my numerous requests to the contrary, and he had an uncanny ability to plop down in the one place on our four acres that was absolutely the most inconvenient, particularly right under my feet when I was trying to cook dinner or on my gym mats in the middle of my workout. He was a shameful beggar and a bit of a drooler and when he got wet he’d always shake off in the same place - right next to wherever I was standing. And he couldn’t be contained – he’d broken windows and doors and snapped steel chains to escape captivity. He could also open doors, most with just a powerful butting by his big dumb head, but others with some kind of doggie idiot savantism that he clearly possessed. We never did figure out how he was able to open the sliding-glass door.
And most people felt the same way as I did. “Snowball, stop!” or “Snowball go lay down” were cries heard repeatedly by our regular visitors, especially when he had to lick everyone who happened to be in whatever room he had just entered. The neighbors complained affectionately about how he would come and “visit” them as soon as they got home from work, demanding treats by his unyielding ability to bark until fed.
No, I didn’t like Snowball very much, but it turns out I loved him dearly. It turns out I miss him opening doors on his own and lumbering through the house. I miss him licking my knees and shedding his white Snowball hairs all over the house. I miss his big giant puppy-dog eyes (and he had the puppy-doggiest eyes of any dog I’ve ever known) and how excited he was to see us when we’d come home after an evening out on the town. He was a good dog, one of the best I’ve ever known, and I wish we could have had a little more time with him, even though he would have annoyed me for every second of it.
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is. It might be to appreciate what you have before it’s gone, but honestly I knew even before he died that I would miss him when he was gone. I think, actually, that the moral of the story (if there is one) is that it’s possible to love something even as it annoys you, and maybe that’s a little how it can be growing up with siblings sometimes. Snowball was a part of our family even though sometimes (lots of times) I wished he wasn’t, and I think what I learned after his passing was that I didn’t love him in spite of the things he did to annoy me - I loved him because of them. I loved Snowball, and if he wasn’t licking me or lumbering his way through a room, then he just wouldn’t have been Snowball. R.I.P., ya big dumb lug, we miss ya lots.
CB
