Puddles, My First Dog

My first dog was Puddles. Actually, her name was Cindy, but we never, ever called her that because we got her as a puppy, and before she was potty-trained and before we learned her very obvious cues for “gotta pee!” she left puddles on the linoleum, so her nickname became her forever name.

 

The only time her name tripped her and me up was the time we took her to the vet to have her spayed.

 

When the veterinarian asked me her name (because she was “my” dog, you know!), I started to say, “Pud–” and then realized how rude it was to expose her to ridicule because of her earlier “calling card,” so I quickly amended, “– uh, Cindy!”

 

So, dear Puddles had to endure an entire day and night of being called by a name she had never heard before… But by golly, she arrived and left with her stellar reputation intact, even though her reproductive organs were no longer in the same shape!

 

 

I pulled out and scanned the only two images I have of her (without looking through boxes filled with decades’ old negatives) to illustrate this piece so you can get a sense of her.

 

But the interesting thing about the images is that I don’t remember her ever being this large a dog!  I guess that’s because we got her as an eight or ten-week old puppy from our farrier (the fellow who shod our horses) Gordy Woods and, like every good parent, I retain in my mind heart and memory the image of her as a much-smaller puppy…

 

As puppies and children grow, they do it so slowly that unless we measure it on a wall, as we do with human children, it never seems to really happen and suddenly, they’re adults (but still our “wee ones” forever in our hearts).

 

Here’s a more recent example of the same phenomenon: Two of the goats in my back yard right now are five years old and as big as their mamas, but to me they’re still “my kids”, the ones I helped birth, who came out weighing probably three to four pounds (the Nigerian dwarfs; the pygmies were even smaller). I “see” them at their present size when they’re standing right in front of or next to me, but my mind reverts to “baby goat-ling” when they’re out of my sight again. That’s what happened to all my memories of Puddles after she was gone, I’m sure.

 

According to these images (which look to me now, in retrospect, like something someone had fun with decades before Photoshop, having tuned her into a giant version of herself in my lap and on the picnic table) it  turns out she was about as big as my “serval son” Deaken, and perhaps even a tad larger…  which is shocking to me.  She almost looks like a yellow lab in these pictures, which makes sense. Our other dog was a male black lab and Puddles was slightly smaller… Whoa!

 

Anyway, now that I’m past the shock of realizing how the mind retains image memories, I can proceed with the trajectory I originally planned for this narrative!

 

Puddles was my best friend. She was my confidant. She was everything a kid could ask for in a companion. She learned to come, sit, stay, roll over, sit pretty for pictures, bow, and fetch. Even better, she learned to read me. When I was happy, she wagged and grinned and wiggled. When I was sad, she commiserated, bringing herself close to me and staying still right next to me. I cried into her fur  more times than I probably remember.

 

She never judged me. She was a happy, helpful, lovely “therapy dog” without a stitch of training for the role. It came to her naturally.

 

She was also — before Snazzy (our black male lab) got neutered — the neighborhood police  chief. Even though she was smaller, and Snazzy was a snarling, fight-happy, testosterone-driven menace to other dogs who entered “his” territory, she took no guff off him.

 

When he’d get into a dogfight, no amount of thumping, yelling, screaming or water-spraying by humans could dissuade him from  ripping the trespasser to shreds, but Puddles would jump in, grab him by the neck or throat… and he’d give it up. Just like that.

 

Game over. STOP!

Yes, ma’am… 

Like pulling the plug out of a wall. No more juice!

Puddles was no wimp.

She took care of business when it was called for!

 

Luckily, it didn’t take Dad long to decide that Snazzy needed to lose his gonads or he’d remain a menace for life to other dogs. After neutering, Snazzy became a mensch. Still robust and energetic, but his pursuits revolved around hanging out with us and, during the fall hunting season, going pheasant hunting with Dad.

 

When we moved to Cle Elum from Tacoma in 1960, Puddles and Snazzy and our five horses (Sugar Babe, Stormy, Shorty, Charlie and Lady Bird) came along, of course. In Cle Elum we lived on a 300-acre farm/ranch.

 

In Tacoma, we’d lived on maybe an acre and a half, not counting the barn and pasture and our next door neighbors were probably 40 feet away on both sides.

 

Our nearest next door neighbor in Cle Elum was at least a quarter mile away; the others were farther than that beyond them. Talk about rural!  Our property abutted the Snoqualmie National Forest, so we often saw deer, bear, elk,  coyotes, herons, beavers and other wildlife.

 

Puddles and I spent hours wandering our property and beyond. She watched and waited while I fished in irrigation ditches Indian-style (sneaking up on fish and grabbing them) or on a larger stream or pond with a pole and worms. She followed me when I rode Sugar Babe or Charlie or Shorty to friends’ houses miles away. She was just always there, like a quiet, welcoming shadow. I’m afraid I took her for granted, as so many of us tend to do with our personal treasures at young ages.

 

Until….

 

She grew old, arthritic, and less able to get up and around. She no longer followed me, she just watched me go, wagging and grinning her blessings as I left.

 

We began to talk, as a family, about when might be a good time to have her put down. I hated the topic and pretty much always shut it down as soon as it started.

 

Great ploy.

Obstruct!

Topic forbidden!

Kris has spoken. Puddles is her dog!

 

I remember one occasion especially. We were returning from a trip to western Washington, heading home over Snoqualmie Pass, when the topic, it appeared, was about to be raised again from the front seat, where my parents sat.

 

I shouted, “No! Just no!” (OK, I’m crying as I remember this part, because it’s so damned painful.)

 

Rallying to the cause of my now-ancient ally, I added something like, “What should we do when you get old and gray and arthritic? Call it a day and just put you to sleep?!”

 

Mom was silent in the front seat. I thought she was listening. I thought I had won, hands down, with that final flourish, convinced them of my case, and saved the day.

 

What I didn’t know at that moment was that either she had already taken Puddles to be put down before we headed to western Washington or she had asked her friend Ida Mae Thomas or her husband to come by after we left to have it done while we were away, to spare us all as much agony as possible. I’m not sure, to this day, how it actually went down.

 

Whatever she did, I know to a dead certainty that I put my mom through a special kind of hell a second time within three or four days with that little speech, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.

 

Finally, she told us, “It’s done. It’s already done.”

 

I didn’t apologize to her then. (I hope I did later. I don’t recall.) I burst into tears. I was so mad, and so sad, and so upset that all I could think of was “She can’t be gone… she’s always there… in the garage…in her box… wagging hello and goodbye as we come and go…)

 

(Today I ask myself, had she been there when we left? Had I seen her then and said goodbye, told her we’d be back soon? I simply don’t remember. And not knowing is painful.)

 

What I do know is that I never got the chance to give Puddles a recognized final goodbye, or a thank you, or the opportunity to tell her how much I loved her.

 

But surely she knew…

 

I forgave Mom, of course. I hope to God I apologized. She did for me and for Puddles what I couldn’t have done for her–released her from what had become mere, painful,  largely solitary existence, nothing at all like the life she’d actually enjoyed before. I’ve had to do the same thing for other pets since then, my own and friends and family members. It’s an awful responsibility–but a responsibility it is.

 

Mom spared me that with my first dog. She took the hurt upon herself to spare me as much pain as she could. And I was a jerk in response. An innocent enough jerk, a righteous jerk to be sure, but a jerk nonetheless.

 

But guess what? Perhaps as a result of this traumatic, unresolved parting, for more than fifty years Puddles has populated my dreams on so many occasions I’ve lost count. I’m always amazed because, in every dream, I count back to her birth year and think, “There is no possible way this dog can still be alive. She is thirty/forty/fifty years old now!”

 

Yes, there is a way.

She will remain alive as long as I do.

She will always be in my heart, in my mind and in my spirit.

 

And if there’s a Rainbow Bridge beyond this life, I expect to see her again and to spend the rest of eternity with her…and with the other unrepeatable animals and humans I have been blessed to know and to love.

 

If there is no Rainbow Bridge, I prefer no afterlife at all. No heaven would be complete without the loves of my life in it. I’d be utterly miserable there.