Written Friday night, 9:10 PM.
I had this up on Kos for a while, but I was so drunk I guess I deleted it.
I had the hole dug to bury my dogs about half deep, I came in the house because I suddenly realized it was 40 degrees and I was wearing a T-shirt. A half bottle of brandy and about four beers down in a few minutes got me the courage to pull the 120 pounds of what were the two greatest friends I've ever had out of the trunk and into the hole. Rake the dirt back over.
Wait until spring when the day lillies bloom.
Put the shovel away in the garage. Nickers and Malibu are now buried in my back yard. I'm not even going to take a shower.
I posted part of this at Kos because I needed to be in touch with somebody, but I was so drunk and I realized it was just going nowhere - I guess a lot of people already saw it - I'm sorry - I was wasted drunk.
I just deleted it.
An angel who I've met in the last month came to my house and talked me to staying at her place for the last two days. I was so drunk I don't remember much, and that's probably a good thing.
The ad read
"LOST DOGS $500 REWARD"
UPDATE BELOW
[UPDATE:]
Um...I'm more than humbled that this made the rec list. I'm grateful for the outpouring of sympathy and humanity that is here; I've given up trying to rec everyone's comments and reply to you all - - I'm simply emotionally obliterated right now and I'm going to wail into my pillow for a while and exhaust myself until I can sleep.
And yet there is this part of me that knows there are familes in far worse straits than I right now; families of soldiers killed in battle - hey - we all know there are people dying in their cars as we write this. People losing their jobs, their homes. their life's dreams - So, with a little persepctive, I'm going to wrap myself in some kind of blanket and carry on.
The sense of community here at Kos is so sincere; so genuine. I've been so filled with rage since the Tea party bulllshit, and now teh socialism crap that is still going to give us a half-assed health care program that will still leave citizens hanging and only make the insurance companies and their stockholders richer still -
I want us to keep our eyes on the ball, and I'm a little apologetic that my second recommended diary in over three years is a personal one, not a political one.
But from the bottom of a very broken heart, I can only say in words what it means to have your encouragement and support.
Because I keep shivvering when I recall that vicious gale behind me as the semi blew past me. It was just so easy I don't know why I'm here.
Maybe you knew even then; I needed to tell you what it means to be heard and to be identified with; and to read all of your own pet stories to know I'm not as crazy and lost as I often feel. Or at least that I'm crazy and lost with company.
Good night, Kossarians, you have reached someone who needed it and he thanks you.
Ad placed on 10/30/2009
LOST DOGS
$500 REWARD
2 lab mix dogs. LOST 10/23 Near 309 in South Beltway. One red, One white - Last seen with white cone on head, stitches on right front leg. No questions asked. 570-***-**** or ***-****.
Nix and Mali. Knikers and Malibu.Nix and Mali. Knikers and Malibu
I'm in shock; I'm fucking drunk for the first time in a long goddamn time. I haven't hammered down liquor and beer like this since my "woke up in the trunk of my car with my keys up my ass" college days. Put bhe bottle of brandy to my lips and tilted taht fucker back ard, chased it with several beers.
There have only been two living souls in the history of the Earth that have loved me unconditionally - and they're both dead now.
I just put the shovel away after I buried those beautiful, beautiful girls in my back yard.
What have I done?
In inherited these girls because they were about to be surrendered to the pound. My last dog was a 22 pound pomeranian; in January 2008 I was going to adopt two dogs that would total 120 pounds - part pit bull - and my homeowners insurance was going to double.
"Dangerous breed" I was told. Let me tell you about sterotypes and labels, OK?
Nix was 8 years old when I got her; she was white with a un underbite that was at least an inch. How she ever ate anything I don't know. She had eyelashes. White eyelashes. Her tail had been run over by a car and the people who had her before me had nursed her back to health. She was the noble elder; no bad habits. I could leave her in the back yard and she'd never leave the property. She'd dig holes like she was going to unearth Jimmy Hoffa somehow, but she'd never leave the yard.
Malibu, or Mali was supposed to be a pure-bred pit bull.
Nonsense. She looked more like an Irish setter or a golden retriever with more red. She was wall-eyed and a little gonzo; about 8 months old in February 2007.
They were love puppies. Insurance called them dangerous - but let me tell you what dangerous was -
Nix
would run up to you and put her paws out in front and her head down - the epitome of submission - and if you had the courage (who'd have thunk to do this?) to slap her hard on her ass (the one that she had pooched way up in the air with her whole back end and tail wagging) she'd flip over in one fluid move that would make any olympic gymnast feel inadequate and lay there on her back with her front paws folded over waiting for you to rub her belly.
Mali was a bonzai love puppy.
She purred. When you had been away for a few hours - all dogs think that when you leave you're going to be gone forever - she'd go bananas when you got back. She'd not only lay over on her back like Nix, but she was jealous as hell. You'd better pet both of them simultaneously and mean it, or there was going to be some shit.
Mali purred. She slept on her back with her paws in the air like she had fallen out of a plane from 10,000 feet and landed that way; her hind legs spread in the most undignified of ways.
And she snored like a drunken sailor.
She'd finally thrust her head up under your hands to tell you that it was not permissible to pet Nickers and not Malibu - and if you put your hands behind her ears, Malibu would tilt her head back and close her eyes and the sound that she made was like a humidifier with syrup in the tank.
She purred, just to be touched.
Nix wagged her butt - she had a tail like a billy club that I was sure some day was going to smash my big-screen TV - and she had eyelashes. I can't put up a link now - not tonight - but goddamit the girl had beautiful eyelashes; Beautiful white eylashes.
I had just gotten them both spayed last summer - Nix at 9 or ten years old, and Mali at 3 - because the guy two doors down has purebred labs that would piss on my back porch to mark it and stalk my back yard when the girls were in heat - Of course, he built a big fence and his dogs are still alive.
I had just taken Nix to get a tumor removed from her front foreleg. Got her home from the vet and she pawed off the "cone of shame" and licked open the stitches. So after $150 for the surgery, let's add $350 for the emergency trip to the animal hospital at midnight last Friday.
On the way home from the vet I hit a temporary bridge on the interstate (the kind the US Army Corps of engineers drops into the hole when they blow one up in combat) and bent both front wheels.
It was a -($1000.00) weekend.
A week ago last Friday, a week later, I had just let the girls out in the backyard; Nix was back to her old self, even with the "cone of shame" on her head, so I let the two of them run together and went inside - for what I don't remember.
And then I forgot they were out there.
I do that. That's why I blame myself. You see, Nix would never leave the yard; but Mali was a wanderer. All I had to do was put her on the dog run that was already there.
She was a little wall-eyed, with the most beautiful green/yellow eyes I'd ever seen and a red nose. And she'd do that "SQUIRREL" stunt from the "UP" movie, or she'd just trundle off, and Nix always went with her as the older matriarch. Every time they would run off, in ten minutes or an hour they'd run right up to somebody, usually at the first intersection of Highway 309, which is a 4 lane, 50 mph local highway. The dogs would just jump right into somebody's car and I'd always get them back. Always together. They were gone for four days right after I got them - that's why I built the dog run.
I guess that's why I got sloppy, I got lazy, because I'd always get them back.
That's why this is my fault. That's why I have been a mess for the last three days.
Now you know why I don't have any children.
They were almost 4 miles from my house on an Interstate Highway when they were run over.
Mali was a pair of jaws - let me tell you - I finally got her a kennel about a year ago so that I could have some reasonable expectation that she wouldn't eat the house before I got home if I ever had to be away. One night I put her in the kennel in the back bedroom and the kennel was pushed up against the bed. When I got home, Mali had pulled the bedspread through the bars of the kennel and eaten about one foot on two sides of it. Just ate it - poly fill and all.
I have rope lights going up my stairs and down my second-floor hallway as night lights. One day I had gone into my bedroom upstairs to take a nap and the wind blew the door shut. Mali wanted to be with me, so she decided in her frustration to eat the rope lights. With the power on. She just ate four feet of plastic, wire and bulbs like it was licorice.
She ate USB cords, and my iPod cord - anything electronic and expensive was apparently caviar to this dog. The $15 KONG toys that dogs are supposed to chew on? Well although I bought about six of them, if you filled them with dog biscuits or food, sure they'd go bananas on them. But the minute the biscuit was gone, she'd move on to something plastic. One night the Kong toy got pooched under the couch before the biscuit was gone, and Mali just tore the skirt off the couch to get the toy out.
The most amazing thing about Mali and Nix was that they were inseparable. They slept on top of each other. They used each other for pillows.
When I found them on the highway they were 100 feet apart.
I may have to write out what happened that night, just for my own catharsis. It was brutal. They had been dead a week when I found them, and they smelled like a dead dog would after a week. I had one blanket in the car, and I wrapped Nix up and then carried her over to where Mali was, and put Mali in with her. Then I realized that I had 120 pounds of dog in a blanket. I was crying and screaming and angry at myself that I couldn't lift them into the trunk. I'm standing there on the median of an interstate higway and screaming into the sky while trucks and cars drove past me at 70 miles an hour.
I finally just threw myself into the effort and almost wound up in the trunk with them.
And then. Then the dark thoughts.
Have you ever stood on the side of a US Interstate highway on a Friday night and just tried to keep your wits about you when 80,000 pounds of semi-truck and trailer blows by you at 70 miles an hour?
I've been out of work for far too long.
I don't get along with a lot of people.
I feel worthless, and at times these two furballs with their wagging tail would lick my face like I was the last popsicle on Earth to let me know I was loved, and on those nights that was enough.
And as I crossed the highway last Friday night and had to run to avoid getting hit by a semi and I asked myself why I was running. All I had to do was slow down and it would all be over. I could go out the way I doomed my dogs to go. They had run free so many times I should have known. The damn lead for the dog run was right there by the door - all I had to do was hook Mali up and she'd be lying next to me, snoring right now.
But I thought they'd have some fun running in the yard - and I'd only be gone a few minutes - and me and my goddamned short term memory just forgot they were out there.
And that's how I came to bury them. Because I was stupid, they're dead. There's a line from "Top Gun" after Maverick and Cougar got 'shot down' in a training exercise where Cougar says "Tne navy regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid". I can't get that line out of my head now for three days.
I want to tell myself that they were dogs, and right up until the moment that they got hit, they were having the time of their lives. I like to tell myself that it happened so fast they didn't have time to feel anything. But I picked them up with my bare hands. I saw Nicker's underbite didn't matter because her jaw was shattered. I picked up her entrails that were stretched out three feet on the shoulder with my bare hands to pile them onto the blanket with her.
Mali was hit so hard her collar was gone. Her skull was completely crushed. She had her tongue hanging out just like she was happy as a clam - but she was cold and stiff and smelled like the compost pile she was always raiding when she scarfed rotten food that she threw up in my living room.
What did I do?
What did I do.
I'm not sure what I'm doing next.
We live on a planet, we live in a society that says "there are no points for second place"; we even use the phrase "dog eat dog" to describe how humans treat each other - and these two dogs were the only thing that loved me when the humans I live around are willing to "throw me to the dogs" without hesitation or apology.
Who do I run to now?
Who's going to make me feel like I'm still loved even when I lose my temper?
Who's going to make me feel like my only purpose in life is to put food in the bowl and open the door so the food I fed them yesterday can fertilize my yard?
I wanted to just stop running and let the truck do to me what it did to my dogs.
And I have no fucking clue why I didn't.
Do you know my favorite joke of all time?
"What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
...someone who stays up all night wondering if there really is a Dog"
My dogs were the closest thing to God I have ever had. Despite all the things Mali chewed up; all the carpets I had to clean, all the food I bought and shots I paid for and surgeries were all worth ten times over what money could never buy - someone who never argued with me, was always grateful for something so simple as just a friendly touch of my hands, and even forgave me - always - when I lost my temper and scolded them. I used to go bananas some times - If I ever had to do a repetitive task like moving laundry from one room to another, the dogs always laid down right in the path of wherever I was going to or from.
Whenever an exterior door was opened, a dog must go from one side of it to the other side; even if they had just gone in the opposite direction only 45 seconds before.
I often marveled how they could be so quiet while sneaking off amidst all the sticks and leaves in the woods around my house- but at 3 in the morning in the dark of my bedroom you could hear them licking themselves clean like their tongue an automatic carwash.
I used to bitch and moan about how Nickers was like Pig Pen from Peanuts - if the light was just right and she shook herself out, you could see the cloud of hair and dander flying off of her. There was always a white layer of hair on my orange carpet within hours of having vacuumed. My house has so much dander in it, you'd think it snows under my roof.
And now I won't have those problems any longer. No more turning around and stepping on a dog; no more fur and dander and brown muck. Every time they used to run away they always came back as if they had been to a mud-wrestling tournament. Oh, what I would give right now to be able to have my Nickers back to look at me with those sad eyes while I was trying to bathe her.
Mali had just learned to jump in the bathtub by herself when she was dirty -- she knew. She still got muddy, but she knew that the bath was what came next.
I know we're supposed to be able to get another dog, but it feels wrong. You don't just replace two beautiful creatures that gave me far more love and affection and understanding than so many of the humans. How can I have betrayed those two beautiful babies who gave me so much love all because I gave them food and shelter - when they needed me to keep them out of traffic. How can I let anything else depend on me if I'm that stupid?
I miss my gods. I'm so sorry that I wasn't smarter. I thought that letting them run free was a gift to them; and it probably would have been if I could just remember that anything longer than 90 seconds was going to lead to an expedition.
They were killed a week ago last Friday night. On Saturday morning, I had left the TV on after watching Bill Maher. "Marley and Me" was on when I woke up. I didn't know they were already dead; I was watching the rain outside and hoping they were all right and hunkered down somewhere.
And now I know. The guy who answered the ad left a message on my machine that he might have seen them get hit. I called the number and his wife answered and gave me some basic directions, and after wwalkign around and not finding them, I called her back and asked her to get her husband to call me.
Then I found them. Once they were in the trunk and I was in the car, he called. I told him that I had my girls, and he told me how horrible it was when he saw them get hit. He was crying when he told me. I keep thinking about him - crying - because he saw them get creamed at 70 miles an hour - and he knew how I felt, because I was coming completely apart, sitting in my car on the side of the highway with them wrapped up in the blanket in the trunk. I kept telling him "thank you" because I needed to know. He said "You're welcome. Take care".
A total stranger, and he knew.
I needed to be able to hold them in my arms and bury them - return them to the Earth - in my back yard beneath the Mock Orange tree. They are right next to Petey, who's been gone since 2005.
I'm supposed to be participating now in the 50,000 words in 30 days National Novel Writers competition; I'm not sure if I can keep all this down to only 50,000 words.
But politics or anything else just doesn't seem to matter much to me right now.
So many people have suffered much more devastating losses than I have; so many others have so much more to handle and to deal with, and right now I feel like I'm alone on the moon, having been exiled there by my beautiful girls for being stupid.
I don't really know what day it is. I don't really care either. Thanks to those of you who have or might leave kind words of consolation. I can't really read them right now; I'm going to be self-absorbed and just thrash with this in my own way until I get it out of my system.
Oh my Dog, I am sorry. Can you forgive me? Can I forgive myself -
Yeah, I know someone is going to give me shit for putting personal life on a political blog. But you are the friends I have left now that my gods are gone. That's all I can say. I'm stuck.