A lot of people have told me they don’t understand the relationship some people have with their pets; including mine. “Why do you have a picture of your dog/horse/duck on your desk?” ”You act like your dog etc. is part of your family.” For people that have never been around animals, like I have, this is a difficult question to answer. From the second I was brought home from the hospital, I was surrounded by animals. I had a large male black lab as a baby-sitter when I was an infant, and a pack of labrador pups for playmates when I was a toddler and thru elementary school. Later in life, I hatched a couple of mallard ducks and started my own little flock that waddled after me and even swam with me in my grandparent’s creek.
I have never told this story to anyone. I’m wiriting it in hopes that others will understand the strong bonds that form between dogs and humans. From the time early hominids ate meat, dogs have been by their sides as companions. Dogs are the only creatures (other than humans) that will experience mental abnormalcy without routine interactions with humans. Admittendly, my life would not be the same without the influence of all the different animals I’ve known in my lifetime, I owe my life, the shaping of my personailty as I know it, to dogs. This story is just one example of why that is.
I was 14 when my parents bought me Daisy from a reputable breeder in St. Louis. She was a fawn Great Dane, with a little white patch on her chest. When I was 16, my family and I moved to Reno, NV. I was torn from my high school and all my friends and the familiar place I knew as home. When I moved to Nevada, I was home schooled, I had no friends. Not only was Daisy my best friend, she was my only friend. I was a lonely 16 year -old, but I would have been lonelier still, if it weren’t for Daisy. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like those first few years in Nevada without her. When I started working part-time, I had become so introverted I wished and even imagined Daisy was at work with me, walking by my side like she did at home.
I still lose sleep over how she died. I still blame myself for it. Daisy died of mesenteric torsion. She had a gastric torsion a few months before and her stomach was tacked up, but she bloated again. Even the vet said he had never seen anything like it. The morning she died, it was July 5th, 2005, she was whining to go outside. I figured because she had to go potty. It was around 5 am. I told her to go back to sleep…I wasn’t going to let her out at 5 in the morning, I was 19 years-old and practically comatose at that time in the a.m. I feel like, if I had listened to her then, instead of telling her to go back to bed, I would have saved her life. She didn’t have to go potty, she was telling me that her mesentery was twisting. I think about that moment constantly. In fact, almost 3 and a half years later, I still hear the phone ring in my memory, hear the vet’s voice on the other end telling me there’s nothing he can do for Daisy. I see myself shoving the phone in my mom’s face and running to my room where Daisy’s bed was, where she was sleeping then whimpering, just hours before. I clutch her favorite toy and sob, and still feels warm to me. I run through that memory over and over and over…like a broken record. In fact, that same toy sits on my desk in my living room below her picture.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Blame ourselves for years later… I’d like to think a part of me died when Daisy died, or at least a big part of me changed. I felt like I had played god by getting her from a breeder. I’m not a religious person in the Christian sense, but I knew Daisy had changed my life and I wanted it to be for the better. I love animals more than anything in the world and every day I find they affect our lives more dramatically than most humans. Daisy made me think differently about dog breeding and now I get all my dogs from rescues. I still feel guilty for Daisy’s death and that if I had gotten her to the emergency vet a couple hours earlier she might be sitting with me right now as I type this, but at the same time if she had survived, how many more surgeries would she have to live through in order for her to live just a few more years, all to make me happy? And I might have gotten another dog from a breeder, another dog bred with the genetic disposition to torsions. Daisy taught me that dogs should not be bred for looks, but for health, for welfare, in order to live a happy life with humans, not to make humans’ lives happy. Daisy taught me, like all animals I’ve ever known, to look for the meaning behind the relationship and time that we had together. Animals have taught me more than any human.
Daisy is a huge part of my life. And I think in some aspects she has impacted me more so than any human. Perhaps people that don’t see dogs or other companion animals the same way I do, have, unfortunately, never seen how an animal can touch your life.
