Why I Love Dogs
Angels without wings
I have not always loved dogs. I grew up in a house about six-city blocks from the public school. No one thought anything of a five-year-old walking herself home from kindergarten each day. One spring sunny day I spotted a back dog coming my way. I froze. The dog kept coming and stopped about a foot away from me. We locked eyes. In my five year old brain, hours passed. The spell broke when my mother called my name;
“ Sally, Why are you just standing there?” My mother’s worried face peered out at me from the car.
“ The dog is in the way!”
My dad decided we needed a dog. My mother, with four kids under the age of five vetoed the idea, but my dad came home with a dog anyway.
We were eating dinner when the backdoor crashed open, and in a blur of brown and white fur, a giant dog barreled into the kitchen and ran around the table panting and yelping. The baby started screaming. My mom started yelling, and both my dad and the dog ended up outside. Dinner ended early.
In the week that followed, the dog ran away four or five times back to the original owners until my dad built a fence. We named her Cash because my dad said he spent all of his money on her.
My mom took her to the vet to get spayed. She and I became friends when I sat on the floor next to her and held her head in my lap. I remember when she first smiled at me. I fell in love.
My siblings and I wrote and acted in plays and Cash wore any costumes we created for her.. I kissed her before I left for school each day. She hid under the table at dinner to catch the vegetables we threw her every night.
Cash licked my tears away when I told her secrets no one else knew. Her even breathing and warm body hugged mine on those nights when the house shook from my father’s alcoholic rages.
I took her on walks, and we raced for hours in the field. She never tired of catching a ball or being by my side.
And like all dogs, one day, she went to heaven. My heart broke into a million pieces. I’ve heard it said that dogs are angels without wings. I know dogs are the definition of unconditional love.
