5 short stories about dogs

A chicken bone that could have killed me.It was Texas winter: small flutters of snow and brief bursts of cold that rolled in and rarely lingered. We were walking and I was mindlessly listening to a podcast while you pulled me through the winding streets of a neighborhood I never lived in. I was waiting for someone to come back but wasn’t sure how long they had been gone. You were hungry and gobbled up a cooked chicken bone someone threw out onto the street.

I spent the night panicking and spiraling; assuming the bone would splinter and break off into tiny shards that would pierce your guts and bleed you until you died. You seemed fine. No complaints. Outside the snow kept piling up—the most we’d seen in decades.

Online they were talking about tidal waves smashing against New York; snowstorms in Los Angeles; tornadoes in Tennessee.

You always seemed fine. Dusty sometimes, maybe a little dirty. You once spent the whole night whining for me to let you out. When I did, three AM, you ran outside and stopped midway in the yard to stare longingly at the moon, howling to some old friend I had never met.

In the morning you were fine. You woke me up early to go outside. I packed my clothes into a duffle bag, careful not to leave anything behind, and left for work. The snow had melted, and the sun was bright and hot. Someone on the radio mentioned the New York City streets were dry—a miracle, they said, and I wasn’t sure if I believed them.There are so many small things that can hurt us. Fragments of things we thought we devoured rising up again to do us harm. I marveled at the way you consumed them all.

The death of childhood, to the tune of country Christian music

You should have been an inside dog but my parents hated the idea. Now they have their own dog and she sleeps on all the bed linens and crawls outside to lay on the picnic table that was your home.

You stayed outside and we would play sometimes: pet you, and give you food. I think you must have been unhappy. I hope you weren’t.

You always bolted from the backyard. You snapped at people. You got hurt when you were young and I am sure that made you weary of the things around you trying, so hard, to give you love. One time you ran out and got trapped under some rocks. They had to find a way to safely pull you out, careful not to trigger you and cause you to bite someone else.

When it was cold they let you stay in the laundry room.

You died sometime around when I went to college. My mother cuddled you while she blasted Christian country music. I wouldn’t have another dog until I graduated college.

A short bit on a dog I barely met.

You died after we visited you. When the other dogs played with you the older one would grab a toy and place it softly by your body. You were frail and could barely walk, but still tried to keep up.

When you were young (and in your prime) you were adopted by a king. He ruled a nation that kept expanding. A wartime king, he brought you along to every battle where you, valiantly would devour anyone who stood against him.

As the kingdom grew they erected monuments to you. Men and women would leave offerings at your shrine: meat and bones and wedges of cheese that would all find their way to you eventually.

Soon, you grew bigger than the statues themselves. Brick by brick they built you a new bigger house in the center of the kingdom. Once they did, you renounced your wartime ways becoming a pacifist, a healer instead. Sick children, old women, men who had lost arms to war or famine or disease, you would see them all, licking the sickness from their body, ingesting it into your own. Each time you did, you would grow frailer, less mobile, and smaller.

Soon you could barely move, hear, or sniff a scent. The king kept you close to him, carrying you when you could no longer walk. The other dogs would watch over you, offering up their mouths, their food, and their warm bodies in the harsh winter nights as a token of respect.We raised another dog and she, brash and young, barrelled right through you—always oblivious to the space around her. When you died she took your place at the king’s side.

The kingdom held a funeral for thirty days. They adorned your statues with fresh wreaths and scraps of meat. They burned your body at the end of the month, the plume of ashes rising in the night sky, up toward the moon.

All the dogs of the kingdom watched, heads tilted to the sky and howling.

You would be the first dog to go to the moon. Centuries later another would be shot into space by the Russians where she would die: burning up on re-entry.

An apology

What was your name again? I’m certain I remember it, it is on the tip of my tongue.

I think we met at a party. I was already drunk and anti-social, hanging out on the sofa and petting you while talking in a funny voice.

I was so much different than. Skinner than I’ve ever been and chronically anxious. I stole you from the party, though nobody knew that. We walked around your neighborhood and into the park where you laid down to smell the flowers.It was early spring in Texas when the weather was just right and the oppressive heat of summer had yet to take over. I told you about my plans to move to San Francisco after I graduated. There was a man there that I had fallen in love with, you see. We had found a place to live together, a small apartment that cost way too much money. I was going to become a writer, a publisher, an activist—something fun, something stunning.

You whined, so I took you back. Nobody noticed you were gone. The other man I came with had already left with someone else. I walked home alone and drunk, thinking about San Francisco and how I wanted to take you with me.

You were great, but you needed someone with a big backyard and lots of care.

I’m bad at sharing my emotions and letting others in.

For one hour I took care of you the best I could. I told you stories and let you sniff the flowers, stroked your coat, and patted your hair.

I never drive by that house anymore. Someone else lives there now, though I’m not sure who.

We never went to San Francisco. Three months later the big one hit and fractured the city in two. Thousands died and we lost the bid for our apartment. The man I fell in love with moved to be with someone else: a professor in Chicago.

I want to tell you I’m sorry, but I know you wouldn’t understand.

I know that if I ran into you, you wouldn’t know who I am, and truthfully I have forgotten your name or what your breed was: something mixed, I think.

On a pug

We went to a pug meet and greet over the weekend. He held a cute pug and beamed a smile. He is the type that loves small dogs. I’m the type that’s always falling in love with the type that loves small dogs.

When I first met his parents his childhood dog was dying.

I’ve been writing short stories about dogs who die and couples with depression and intimacy issues.

Some Tuesday in the summer the third dog I ever had will die and I won’t be there to send her off. We will be walking the pug to a coffee shop, to sip on lattes made with oak milk and dab at our sweaty foreheads.

I will tell you, sometime in the night, about when my father’s father died. The catholic funeral they had was long and generic, lacking personality. How at the start of the procession, my mother would grab my father’s hand and walk him up the aisle without him reaching. Or about how my grandmother died shortly after we said goodbye. Or about how, before the first dog that went to space, was shot into space one of the mission scientists took her home to play with his children.

She was" “quiet and charming” and he “wanted to do something nice for her: she had so little time left to live.” The quiet ways we learn to love each other. The unremarkableness of it all.