Shelby

Feeling nostalgic, Melissa decided to go through the old shoe box of pictures from when she was a teen that was sitting in the top of her closet. It had been years, decades, since she opened that box. It’s an old Eastland’s shoe box, wrapped in purple construction paper and bejeweled with fake gems and glitter – very nineties.

She popped open the lid and sitting on top was a ticket stub to the movie ‘Titanic’ that her and her friends went to see six times at the theater. She laughed at the memory of them crying their eyes out in the theater as Jack’s frozen body sank beneath the icy water. She occasionally watches the movie today and it doesn’t have the same effect.

Along with that was a ticket stub paper clipped to a picture. The stub was to a Pearl Jam concert they had to drive to Chicago to see. The picture was of her and the group of friends she attended with, wearing their concert T’s and ripped jeans with flannel shirts around their waists. She reminisced about her Eddie Vedder crush and the posters in her room. She and her girls used to drive around all night looking for some place to party, singing ‘Even Flow’ at the top of their lungs.

On top of the other photos, she found her old Digipet. She remembers spending hours trying to keep that thing happy, feeding it and playing with it and whatnot. It was a fad really. She actually found the thing annoying, but it was so much a part of her teen years she felt compelled to throw it in there.

Melissa flipped through the pictures, each one conjuring up memories of when she took them: birthday parties, sleep overs, school events, and graduation. One picture, however, stuck out because she didn’t remember taking it. It was a picture of a golden retriever, more white than gold, wearing sunglasses in the passenger seat of her car.

“Shelby,” she said aloud, as she stared at the picture.

Shelby was her Christmas present when she was six. A lively little pup whose energy matched her own. They were best friends from the start. A faded memory floats through Melissa’s mind of her dad bringing in the squirmy bundle of joy after she had opened all her other presents, disappointed that she got mostly clothes and just a couple toys. Shelby had made up for that. Dad had sat the puppy in her lap, and it kissed her face nonstop. All she could do was laugh. She named the puppy Shelby after the cutest boy in her class because he was the cutest dog she had ever seen.

She remembers Shelby being a bit of a rascal as a pup, stealing food and chewing things up. Her favorite memory is of Shelby chewing up her dad’s mounted rabbit that sat on an end table in the living room. He also chewed up her dad’s coolie cup in the same instance. The rabbit was expensive to have stuffed. The coolie cup was fifty cents. Dad was mad about the coolie cup but didn’t care about the rabbit. That made mom burst into laughter and Melissa still grins at the thought of that day when they came home to that mess.

Shelby had taken to learning tricks fast. Anything for a treat. She taught him to stay, come, sit, sit pretty, lay down, roll over, and spin. All her friends were entertained by this when they came over. As she remembers it, Shelby helped her make friends wherever they went. They would take him to her brother’s baseball games and all the kids knew Shelby. They’d get excited to see him and had to pet him and play with him, which meant they talked to and played with Melissa. Fetch was a part of Shelby’s repertoire, so she remembers all the kids taking turns running the dog ragged. He loved every minute of it.

The photo takes her back to playing outside with the other kids. If Shelby was left inside, he would go crazy. He figured out how to open doors. No matter where she was, he would come running with his tail wagging. No matter what she was doing, he had to be in the middle of it. One time she was playing touch football in the neighbor's yard with the neighborhood kids. Shelby opened the back door, climbed the wood pile, and jumped the fence to get to her. They were using a Nerf ball, easy for the dog to put in his mouth. The game soon changed to catch Shelby. Eight kids ran around the back yard, falling over themselves, trying to get their ball back. Shelby thought it was the greatest game ever.

He wasn’t all about constant motion. When she settled in at night to watch TV she would usually lay on the floor. Shelby would lay with her while she petted him. If she stopped, he would roll over and paw her in the face which led to them wrestling. That usually got them in trouble for making too much noise. They’d get sent to her room where she’d put on some music. Shelby would lay down and look pathetic as if he wanted to listen to something else. When it was time for bed, he had a bed next to hers, but she woke up every morning with him at the foot of the bed.

They became running partners when Melissa got older. She hit a health phase where she was very concerned with her appearance. She had to look good for those boys. Shelby would run with her, but he would annoyingly stop every so often to mark his territory while Melissa impatiently jogged in place. Overall, though, she was happy to have the company. It motivated her.

When Melissa got her driver’s license, her first passenger was Shelby. Unlike her mom and dad during her permit days who acted like they were going to die; Shelby was excited about the new adventure he would be taking just the two of them. Of course, he got to ride shotgun for the first time, which she could tell made him feel cool. He would stick his head out the window and scare her to death when he would stick half his body out. He would eventually pull himself in and look at her as if to say, “This is the life.” It must have been then that she put the sunglasses on him and took the picture.

Their jogging days slowly came to an end. Shelby started tiring out long before Melissa. She would take breaks with him, pet him and talk, even slow her pace. She could tell he was trying, that he wanted to run with her, but age was catching up with him. Soon it was hard for Shelby to move around at times, his hips had gotten stiff. He got around, but not like he used to; much, much slower.

Melissa went off to college. By the time she came home for Christmas, Shelby could no longer climb the stairs. He tried so hard to follow her up to bed, so much so that it broke her heart. She grabbed a pillow and blanket and slept on the couch next to him during that visit.

During Melissa’s junior year at college, she got a call from her mom to come home. Shelby had been blind for almost a year, but he had recently stopped eating and drinking. By the time Melissa walked in the door, Shelby was hardly moving, and his eyes were bulging, tongue hanging from his mouth. His breathing was shallow, and he was having difficulties swallowing. He had lost a lot of weight. The state he was in brought her to tears. She scooped him into her arms and her dad drove her to the vet. When they got there, Shelby had passed.

The memories that accompanied the photo of Shelby brought a tear to Melissa’s eye. She took the picture of her dear departed friend and put it on the fridge. She shoved everything back into the box and put it back in the closet. She fixed herself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table staring at that photo of Shelby. He filled a portion of her life somewhere between friend and family. Unconditional love to the utmost extreme. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed that until that moment. She grabbed her coat and headed over to the local pet shelter. There she found a little golden retriever pup that reminded her of Shelby. She took the pup home, naming this one Alby, figuring it was time to make new memories with a new friend.