In the Eyes of a Dog

I yawned and gave a big stretch. I wished I could sleep in the living room again, but I knew my human needed me. My human moved to much in her sleep for me to sleep soundly, but I knew I needed to sleep beside her in case she woke up from another nightmare.

The nightmares started right after that man stopped coming around. The man had been coming around for almost two years when suddenly he stopped coming. I didn’t miss the man, he took my human’s attention away from me, but my human seemed to miss him.

“Good morning Buster.” My human said to me as she woke up.

Good morning, I barked back to her.

While she doesn’t understand me, she usually knows what I mean. There are a few occasions where she doesn’t know what I am trying to tell her and let me tell you those times can be wild. For example, the other day a man in a brown uniform appeared at our door and he left a suspicious looking box. I tried to let her know what was going on, but she ignored me. Finally, she looked out the window and she realized what I was trying to tell her, but instead of being careful of this strange box she brought it into the house and opened it. It only held some books that she had ordered, but what if it had a cat in it or even worse, a vacuum cleaner. While I love my human, sometimes she does not think.

But for every time she doesn’t seem to know what I mean, there is a hundred times where she does. There are days where I will beg for food and she will give me some and days where I want to go for a walk, and she will take me. Many times, we can just communicate through looks. 

“Let’s get you some water and me some coffee.” She told me as she helped me down from the bed. “Then I’ll get ready and take you for a walk.”

I made an annoyed face at her which she understood right away.

“Yes, I know you are getting to old for walks, but the vet says you have to go for walks to help you.” She turned away from me and started brewing her coffee.

I absolutely hate the vet. First off, I hate new people and my human knows that. So, going to the vet once a year is terrible because I must see all these new people and they all touch me. Second at the vet something bad always happens. Do you know where they put thermometers? I do and it isn’t in a great spot. Last time I went to the vet she put me to sleep and for a month afterwards I had to wear a cone and wrap my leg. Because of that last visit I had to go in four times in one year.

I don’t want to go. I whined to my human.

“You are going and that’s final.” My human said firmly.

I sulked off into the kitchen, where I hoped I looked so pitiful that my human would let me stay home instead of walking. Of course, it didn’t work, and I was put on a leash.

You don’t have to wear a leash. I tried to reason with my human, but this was one of the times she didn’t know what I meant.

I remembered this movie my human and I watched once. It was about this dog that finds his human another human while the dog also found a mate. The movie had a lot of puppies in it, I want to say a hundred and one puppies, but that doesn’t sound right. I thought I’d do something like that, minus the puppies and minus a mate. I knew I was getting old and that my human would be left to alone if I didn’t do it.

I had it narrowed down to two men we have seen at the park. There was the man who sells hot dogs from the cart. We walked by the cart every day and when I tried getting my human to talk to him, she just kept telling me no hot dogs. This was another one of the times she didn’t know what I meant. That left my other choice, the man who reads in the park.

I couldn’t let her misinterpret what I meant with this man, so I ran to the man when I saw him that day. My human was not prepared for me to run, so she dropped the leash. She chased me and ran right into the man, causing him to drop his book and look at her, just how I intended. They talked for over an hour, only stopping because the sun was setting.

He came by a few days later and then he came by a few days after that. He came by until one day he moved in. By that point I was grateful he was there to sleep in bed with my human because I couldn’t jump into the bed anymore.

When I died, I thought of my human as she held me tightly. She was crying, and at the time I couldn’t understand why. Of course, going to the vet always made me want to cry, but it wasn’t that bad for my human.

 As I fell asleep in her arms for the last time, I thought about how I had changed my human’s life, for what I hoped to have been for the better. I thought of the time I made her get out of bed in the mornings even though she was too sad to, and the times we’d eat dinner together. I thought of the walks we had together, and I thought of all the times she’d play catch with me in the backyard. The last thing I thought about was my human in a white dress walking towards the man I had found for her. She was happy and it made everything all worth it.