Man’s Best Friend, Mom’s Worst Nightmare

Most horror stories begin very innocently.  A good-looking family moves into a charming farmhouse in a bucolic town.  The kids excitedly run through the house, each claiming a bedroom.  The move itself plays itself out in pure fantasy, as neatly labelled boxes are placed in the appropriate rooms and each member of the clan smiling in their clean, crisply-pressed button-down shirts, casually cuffed at the sleeve.  Neighbors, armed with sweet delights and casseroles welcome them to the neighborhood.  But, we all know what’s hiding in the dark attic.

I had a similar experience, though mine didn’t involve a move.  Well, it sort of  didn’t involve a move.  Or a haunted house.  It did, however, involve a good-looking family.  And if you’re wondering…yes, that family was mine.  Random sidebar:  I gave up including photos in Christmas cards years ago when my thirty-seven years ago when my son was four months old. I just never got my act together after he came along. So, I would always write a little note, apologizing for the omission – as if anyone really cares about the pictures anyway – with the assurance that we were all, in fact, tall, thin and good-looking. 

Anyway, my horror story has to do with an insanely impulsive decision made in haste many years ago.

It was then that my husband and I were planning to move.  We weren’t moving far – still in the same western suburb the kids had grown up in.  Just from the east side of town to the west.  The move didn’t even involve a change of schools.  Nothing would change except the box we used to separate ourselves from the great outdoors. But the kids weren’t having any of it.  Finally, in an effort to sway the children, my husband (yes, I am going to dump this on him because he usually doesn’t read my stuff) told the kids that, if we bought a house with a nice big yard, we could get a dog.  Those words poured out of his mouth before I had a chance to murder him.

So, we bought a new house on an acre of property.  Soon after, the kids were all over us about the promised canine.  Actually, all of the kids except Mike, who had given up on the dream of puppy ownership and really didn’t care anymore.  I tried to convince the rest of the brood that, gee, I just wasn’t sure if an acre was enough room for a puppy.  That argument went nowhere fast.  Suddenly before I had a chance to throw myself under a bus (damn these suburbs – the bus routes are so unreliable), we were on our way to a breeder and the innocent start of my fourteen-year personal horror story. 

I have to admit, the golden retriever puppies were beyond cute.  We picked the one who ran to us first, paid a hefty price for this hound with “documented proof” of his questionable regal lineage, and headed home.  That ride would be the first of many, which resulted in Hoover throwing up.  I’m pretty sure we got the most neurotic brother of the litter.  We often wonder, now, if all of his siblings turned out as agoraphobic and smelly as he did or if we just got lucky.

We brought him home on a Sunday afternoon.  The next day was my birthday, which was also a school holiday…yaaayyyy 😒

I was greeted that morning by my husband telling me he did the best he could to clean up the mess before heading off to work…I’d have to do the rest.  Well, that didn’t sound good. What I was faced with was this:  the dog crate in the back yard, with puppy poop all over it.  And I mean, ALL OVER IT.  And the dog, leashed to a tree in the yard and partially cleaned from said poop.  And…woohoo, best of all the kids were off school.  Happy Birthday to me…

I decided to hire a dog trainer to train me how to live with a dog.  She was amazing.  She was actually kind of amazingly scary. I honestly think she had some kind of a sixth sense with dogs.  During her first visit to our house, she made a couple of hand gestures, to which he immediately responded by sitting or lying down.  She told me that dogs instinctively understand these commands.  Then at one point, as we were talking, she gasped and said, “Did you see what he just did?”  Of course my first thought was, “Oh great, another mess to clean up.”  But that wasn’t it at all.  She said that, in the course of our conversation, I had apparently said something (don’t ask what) causing him to immediately stand at attention.  She then very seriously pondered, “I wonder if he was a show dog in a previous life.”  Suddenly, I realized that I was alone in the house with a deranged dog whisperer.  My husband later told me that I should have responded to her inquiry, “No, but I was.”

Anyway, fast-forward fourteen long years and Hoover was still around.  And he still smelled pretty disgusting all the time.  In fact, one time, when I was picking him up from the groomer after a nice bath and haircut, the groomer apologized, saying, “I’m sorry.  He still stinks.”  Yeah, I know, I thought, he ALWAYS stinks.  How much do I owe you?  And before you start to school me about all the possible health issues that might have been the cause of his stench, I already know.  This dog had been on a myriad of meds for allergies, including  administering daily shots with our home supply of syringes and biohazard box for sharps (his allergies were beyond normal for dogs), thyroid meds, antibiotics and special dog food diets galore.  We had come to accept he was just…gross. And my husband very clearly asserted at one point that, if Hoover was ever diagnosed with something fatal, we weren’t going to employ any extraordinary measures to cure him.  I know now that he was just trying to raise my spirits.

There was absolutely no chance of Hoover ever succumbing to a tragic accident, though, since he never ventured anywhere even remotely dangerous.  When nature called, he would cautiously leave the safety of the house, walk about ten feet, relieve himself and run for his life back to the house.  He’d never dare to go into the front yard. EVER. When we were having our sliding door replaced in our kitchen, I asked my daughter to take Hoovie outside.  She took one look at the new, but temporarily unusable slider door and asked, “How?”  I told her to just take him out the front door and around to the back yard.  Twenty minutes later, they came back inside.  “He won’t leave the front porch, Mom.”  Seriously, this dog was disturbed.

Soon after, he started a habit of scratching at the carpet before lying down.  My husband, apparently trying to stave off my growing depression, said very authoritatively that this behavior was called “nesting” and it meant that he was getting ready to die.  Now, before you start getting all over me about being cruel and mean and heartless, let me defend myself by saying that as far as dogs go, there was no dog that could top Hoover’s gentle demeanor.  I mean, you could sit on him and he wouldn’t care.  He was never a barker, even when the doorbell rang.  Thunderstorms never posed a problem for him.  He did nothing all day except sleep, occasionally getting up to move to another spot to sleep.  He was an amazingly trained dog (thanks to weird Denise).  I mean, honestly, I often said if we HAD to have a dog, he was definitely a good one.  I never wish him harm.  I just didn’t want to live with him anymore.  I wanted him to go to sleep and not wake up.  That’s not a bad way to go, you know. 

So, anyway, armed with my keywords “nesting habits in dogs”, I googled away, only to find that it refers to dogs who are preparing for birth, not death.  I think that was kind of a mean trick he played on me.

So during the summer of 2014, we celebrated Hoover’s fourteenth birthday with a “Wow, REALLY God???”  I had finally come to accept that he would never die. And, NO, I actually AM a nice person.  Really.

That following spring of 2015, several months after suffering a suspected stroke which required us to literally carry him outside to do “his business” (no easy task with a golden retriever), we finally made the decision to put him down. My husband still teases me about my slight weepiness at the vet’s office that day, so I DO have some redeemable qualities.

Who was a good boy?? Hoovie was. 😌