Runt of the Litter

Katie Cavallucci

I was six years old and I was in love.

I loved this dog more than I had loved my preschool boyfriend, and I had loved him quite a lot. Standing on tip-toe trying to peek over the side of the puppy pen, I clutched his new collar with the blue bone-shaped tag attached, emblazoned with his name: Hunter. Frustrated with my small stature, I tugged on my dad’s sleeve, and he hoisted me up so I could see inside the pen. All of the other puppies were asleep, but not Hunter; he was wide awake, wagging his whole body, staring up at us with one dark eye and one blue.

He knows he is ours. He knows we’ve come to take him home, I whispered earnestly to my dad.

Indulgently, my dad lifted Hunter from the pen and handed him to me. The puppy was tiny, so tiny he fit in the palm of my minuscule hand, head cradled by my stubby fingers. In my head, I went over the spelling of “dachshund,” which I had been practicing for several days. I didn’t understand why we were allowed to get a puppy now—I had been begging for one for a long time, and the answer was always no, honey—but I didn’t care for the reason, only for his little damp nose pressed against my chin and body wriggling against my chest.

(My mother would tell me, years later, that she had thought about having another baby; her own mother had just died, and in the tumultuous months afterward, she and my dad went back and forth about the possibility of a third child. Eventually, they went with their second, lower-risk option: a puppy. If I could choose, now, between a younger sibling and the pup I fell in love with, I think I would choose Hunter. There is nothing I believe so wholeheartedly as the immutable fact that that dog belonged with us and we belonged with him.)

*

We could not have known, of course, that the lower-risk option was going to end up being almost as much work as a third child anyway. I was eight when Hunter began to wobble. I cannot remember, anymore, how it happened. Perhaps he began to limp slightly, or would tumble out of his bed, or would lose his balance and topple over in the hallway as he ran to greet us at the front door. But this is just a reconstruction. I know it must have been a gradual transition, from walking to not-walking, but the way I remember it now, it seemed to have happened overnight.      

I tried my best to explain to people: no, my dog was not paralyzed—he just couldn’t walk anymore. Hunter could scramble awkwardly on his side across the floor, roll around the couch, squirm into our laps. He never stayed still because he physically—neurologically—couldn’t; his eyes constantly flitted from side to side, and his head whirled about wildly, unable to support it properly on his own. We took him to the vet, to specialists hours away, and my parents spent what I now suspect to be ungodly amounts of money to get him tested for all kinds of conditions, but nobody could tell us what was wrong with him (and we would never find out).

I also tried to explain to people that my dog was happy, because he was. Hunter did not notice a difference in his life. I have no memories of him in which his tail isn’t a perpetually wagging blur. Some people seemed baffled that we decided to care for him, but the only choice, as far as I was concerned, was to keep him forever. He was ours. What else mattered?

(Eventually, Hunter would die at a younger age than a “normal” dog of his breed would. I knew this; I was not ignorant and had always been a smart child. The way he lived was not conducive to an exceptional life span. This only made our time with him all the more precious.)

*

As time goes by, Hunter dissolves into scraps of ghostly sensory experiences. Moments when I can feel the downy softness of his belly or his velvety ears between my fingers. I can hear him barking, but I can’t visualize the action of it, how exactly his little mouth opened wide. I can’t quite remember the physicality of him, his weight in my arms. I only know that when he was a baby, he could fit inside my mother’s sweatshirt pocket, and she’d carry him around like a joey in a kangaroo pouch for hours. He loved nothing more than being close to us. His needs were simple, he was simple—yet he was so profound that I am discovering it is nearly impossible to capture his essence with words. Just because he was a dog doesn’t mean he had nothing to teach. Just because he could not speak doesn’t mean he had nothing to say.

*

I was nine when I realized how much work Hunter was going to be. For a long time (much to my chagrin, now), I would view taking care of him as a daily arduous undertaking.

Feeding Hunter involved sitting on the couch beside him and supporting his head while he devoured kibble, attempting to keep him from bashing his nose against the inside of his food bowl. I would carry him over to the water dish, position his unsteady body between my ankles, and cup his head in my hands, making a valiant effort to prevent him from snorting water up his nostrils as he drank. Then, it was bathroom time; we used what we affectionately called “wee-wee pads,” and Hunter knew to do his business on the pad when he was laid on one.

He was a good boy, and he knew his routine, but of course there were accidents. In his dog bed, on the couch, on my bed, in my parents’ bed. Sometimes I would get home from school and Hunter would be halfway down the hallway, eagerly scrabbling toward me through a puddle of his own urine. My brother and I became masters at scrubbing the floor, cleaning dirty sheets and towels, and bathing a constantly wiggly dog. I would soon forget that other people did not have to do the same with their dogs.

And yet with all the messes, with all the hardship, Hunter continued to be the embodiment of pure, unadulterated joy. With his ineffectual little legs and paws, Hunter grabbed life by the horns. Dogs are, above all, highly adaptable. He soon knew nothing of walking and did not care that he was entirely dependent on us; he knew only affection, tenderness, cuddles, and how marvelous it was to chomp on a bone that I would hold in place for him. Hunter never met someone he didn’t like—in his eyes, every soul was splendid, worthy of a ridiculously rapid tail-wagging and exuberant lap-crawling. As a consequence, he was loved by everyone who ever met him. Sometimes, I doubt that there was ever a creature so loved as that dog.

*

Hunter’s life could, in general, be seen as a drawn-out series of tumbles. He was constantly rolling off things; it was simply a hazard of his condition. The amount of times he floundered off the couch or a bed and remained unhurt was nothing short of a miracle. He was always taking falls that we had to laugh at because, mercifully, they never ended badly.

On the day of my brother’s eighth grade graduation, my family gathered on our deck to take pictures. I was twelve and didn’t think much of my brother; he was annoying and mean and didn’t do his chores. We brought Hunter outside with us to enjoy the warm spring air, rolling him up burrito-style in a fluffy towel. Between one second and the next—between one glance at him to make sure he was still cozy and safe, and the glance away—the quietness was shaken by a loud splash.

Before any of us comprehended what had happened, my brother took a flying leap into the water, fully clothed in his dress shirt and slacks and shiny new shoes. When he broke through the surface with Hunter in his arms, soaked and spluttering, we all couldn’t help but crack up, the kind of collective laugh that grew until we were shrieking, doubled over and nearly crying, ribs aching in the best way. Hunter yipped enthusiastically, without a care in the world. He was just happy to be part of something that made us happy; the sound of laughter was probably one of his favorite things.

(My brother and I are not close, but sometimes I am struck with that image of him jumping into the pool after Hunter, and I remember that he is capable of compassion. My brother never loved anything as much as he loved that dog. I will never forget the split second of terror on his face when he realized Hunter had disappeared from his sight. I will never forget how he clutched him in the car and sobbed like a little boy on the way to the vet on Hunter’s last day.)

*

I believe there is no decision, for dogs, to love you or love you not. There is no metaphorical flower to pick petals off of, no choice in the matter at all; to love is all they know, only asking to be loved in return. I was convinced, even as a child, that Hunter’s heart beat to the singular thrum of lovelovelove. Maybe I am anthropomorphizing, maybe I am projecting, maybe this is the tale I’m telling myself to make his life seem happier than it was. Or maybe it’s true—he was the happiest animal who ever lived. I find this to be more likely. Faking it is a human quality, and there is rarely any facade with a dog. When Hunter was elated, we could tell, and, impossibly, he was elated all the time. When I occasionally find my own heart beating out lovelovelove, in gentle, quiet moments that feel like epiphanies, I know I have found him, dissolved some unseen barrier of time and space to rediscover this universal truth that my dog, of all people and of all things, managed to reveal to me: if we do not live for love, then why live at all?

*

Hunter lived longer than anyone thought he would—ten years—but he didn’t make it long enough to turn gray around the muzzle, to really slow down.

I spent a few hours alone with him on that day we took him to the vet’s office and left without him. I sat on the couch and cuddled him close to me. He was uncharacteristically quiet. I pet him slowly, gently, tried to forever ingrain the sensation of my fingers dancing across his fur  in my mind. I kissed him all over but it did not feel adequate to express how I felt about him, how much I would miss him. I whispered to him for a long while, whispered all kinds of things I cannot entirely recall now. I remember saying I love you. I remember saying Thank you, thank you, thank you.

(I will never forget how, the night beforehand, my parents and I had lain with him on the bed while we cried quietly, knowing what we had to do the next day. What do you think, buddy? my mom asked Hunter, stroking his ears, not expecting an answer. Are you ready?

Hunter, who had been tired and sad and silent all day, thumped his tail once, twice, against the bed. He made it as long as he could and then told us when it was time to go.)

*

Maybe writing about Hunter is cliché. Maybe it’s overdone: just another dog story. Maybe there’s supposed to be a metaphor behind all of this, a revelation at the end, but there is no metaphor here where my dog stands for something else. His existence was not abstract. A dog is a dog, and Hunter probably was not a superiorly intelligent being—joyful, but dumb. Maybe this is not the story you want to hear, but I am trying hard not to romanticize the canine mind. This is not the story where the dog must really be a human reincarnated into a small, furry body, where the dog holds the unseen wisdom of the world in his eyes.

But it is the story of my childhood, shaped by a creature who was wholly and undoubtedly happy. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about him was his realness: he was sweet, loving, jubilant, but he was an utter mess, too, rolling in pee and poop, falling off couches, beds, and decks, all with his tail flying back and forth in absolute glee. Nobody (and, I suppose, no dog) is ever entirely what you think they are going to be: my puppy was not perfect.

And so the revelation doesn't come at the end, doesn't come after he died, in dramatic moments of emotional, wistful nostalgia. The revelation was, and is, continuous; the revelation was his entire life. The revelation was ten years of holding a wobbly dog in my arms, of cleaning up any and all messes imaginable, of kissing his bony little head, of growing up slow and sleeping with a warm, soft body keeping me company at night. Sometimes, the runt of the litter will worm his way into your lap and you will know it is meant to be. The revelation is: when you are a girl growing up with a dog, he will change your life.

*

The summer before Hunter died, we had to vacate the house and sit outside while a cleaning company prepared our house for my brother’s high school graduation party. I took charge of Hunter, who had not been outdoors in a long time. I tried to keep him on the blanket I had placed in the middle of the lawn, but he kept squirming away, making for the grass so he could dig his nose into the ground and absorb some magnificent smells (but which were probably remnants of deer scat and stray cat markings).

I finally gave in and plopped him in the grass. I laid beside him and traced the dapples across his face. He had calmed down, tail wagging gently, content to just be there with me. I could tell he liked the way the smooth grass felt against his body. I did not know that this would be the last time we would do this. I just laid with him while he looked at me with his wide, always-roaming eyes, one dark and one blue, faintly reflecting my own face back at me. He wriggled closer so he could stick his wet nose against mine. I thought, He knows he is ours. He knows this is home.

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