Puppy Paradise

One cold winter night I was cuddled up with my father on the verge of sleep when he began to cough. I didn’t think much about it at first; my winter coat was growing in and I was leaving a cloud of golden fur everywhere I went which was irritating his throat and lungs so severely that he had installed a humidifier in the corner of the bedroom. But when he began to wheeze and shake I knew something was wrong. He reached for his phone on the bedside table and dialed a number. I heard a shrill, unfamiliar voice coming from the speaker. “911, what’s your emergency,” it asked. But my father didn’t respond as his body tensed and shook with another fit of coughing. I was terrified, I began licking his face in an attempt to comfort him, but his skin was so hot it nearly burned my tongue off. He continued to hack and wheeze until he spit out a huge mouthful of hot sticky blood, staining the front of his baby blue pajamas crimson. Then his body stiffened and the coughing ceased.

I curled up next to him.“Are you still there?” asked the lady on the phone. My father remained silent. In the next ten minutes his body went from burning hot to ice cold, and the damp air took on a toad-green hue. I usually bark my head off when I hear sirens, but on this night I quietly remained by my father’s side until a bald man who wore steel toed boots and smelled strongly of smoke shoved me off the bed, placed my father’s body on a stretcher and carried him out of the room. I followed him and his crew, all wearing navy blue clothing and steel toed boots, as they rushed my father down the stairs and out the door. I whined and barked louder than I ever had before as I tried to force my way past the bald man and up onto the stretcher with my father, but he kicked me back and slammed the door in my face. This was my first encounter with death, and I didn’t yet understand that it was something permanent.

I waited at the front door barking madly until dawn when a woman in a van pulled into the driveway. She was plump with a dusting of freckles on her cheeks and flaming red hair pulled into a messy bun. Slung over her shoulder was an olive green backpack and in her right hand she carried a leash. 

 I continued to bark and snarl as she walked up the steps leading to the front porch. When she opened the door I ran as fast as I could to the other side of the room and ducked under my father’s desk. The lady followed me and squatted down where she could see me.She smelled of other dogs. “It’s alright Ollie,” she said softly, “I’m here to help you find a new home.”

 What?! I thought to myself. I already had a home right here and I didn’t need a new one. Imagine how awful it would be when my father escaped the bald man and returned home only to find that I’d abandoned him for another family! That would be devastating!   

The lady with the flaming red hair slid her backpack off of her shoulder and began rummaging through it. She pulled out a silver bowl and a clear plastic bottle of water. She poured the contents of the bottle into the bowl and offered it to me. I didn’t trust this lady, but my throat was so dry from barking all night that I couldn’t resist taking a drink. After I had drunk my fill she carefully poured the water back into the bottle and twisted on the lid before placing the two objects back into her bag. Then she pulled out a tupperware container of brown pellets. Treats. I knew I shouldn’t have been accepting treats from a strange lady, but the smell was so enticing it clouded my judgement. I followed her, gobbling up each tiny morsel of deliciousness as she set it on the ground. Before I knew it I had walked all the way down the driveway and into her van. Shit.

She took me to a brick building that smelled of dog poop and flea medicine. At first I refused to get out of the car, but thanks to her seemingly endless supply of treats the redheaded woman was able to lure me into the building without much trouble. Why did I fall for the same trick again!?

Inside there was a brightly lit lobby with two men seated behind a rounded desk that sat opposite to the front entrance. One of the men walked out from behind the desk and took my leash from the redheaded woman. He was short and thin with dark skin, deep wrinkles and eyes so grey it looked unnatural. He reached down and gave me a scratch on the head. I liked this man a lot more than the redheaded lady. He smelled like other dogs too, but it was masked by a pleasant, soapy scent. He reminded me of my father.

“Hi Ollie,” said the man, “I’m Theo, let me take you to your kennel.” I followed Theo back behind the desk, through a heavy metal door, and down a long hallway into a big room. I was greeted with a noisy cacophony of barking as I walked inside. I looked around, the space was filled with rows and rows of big metal cages, within them were dogs of all shapes and sizes. A six pound chihuahua glared at me from across the room, and a massive rottweiler cowered in the corner as Theo walked me to my cage. We stopped in the third row at a pathetic little kennel with a flat, grey bed, a food bowl, and a water bowl. “It’s not much,” sighed Theo as he squatted down to scratch my head, “but it’ll do for now.”

The next few days were torture, I spent the majority of my time staring out the bars of my kennel barking for my owner. Most of the other dogs did the same, and together we made quite a racket. When it got particularly rowdy, Theo would come in and spray us with a toad-green liquid to shut us up. A rotating cast of strange humans including Theo and the redheaded lady would take me outside every few hours to use the bathroom and I’d get fed a scoopful of stale kibble every morning and night. More and more dogs kept coming until every last kennel was full. As this happened the humans catering to us gradually stopped showing up, and the ones that remained hacked and wheezed as they worked. The only person who still looked healthy was Theo, and after a while he was the only one who still came.

One evening about two weeks after I arrived at this strange place Theo came in and unlocked each cage one by one, putting leashes onto each dog. He walked us out into the hallway, all thirty of our leashes looped around his thin arms, and loaded us all into the back of a truck. He didn’t even need to stop and catch his breath, which I thought was remarkable for a human of his size.

We were on the road for about half an hour, it was very cramped and smelly in the truck, but I was lucky enough to get a seat right next to the window which was open just a crack for ventilation. As we went along I noticed that the streets were strangely empty, and the humans I did see were behaving quite oddly. They all sprayed perfume bottles with an odorless toad-green liquid inside. The mist it created was so thick that all I could see were the humans’ unnaturally steel grey eyes, like stars in a dark green sky. Theo’s eyes. I shuddered, I hate spray bottles.

We stopped at a huge pasture full of dog houses, barns, burrows, cat trees and litter boxes. On one side there was a crystal clear lake full of glimmering fish and colorful plants, and on the other was a forest abundant with wildlife. In the pasture cats, horses, dogs, sheep, rabbits, and hundreds of other animals roamed together. It was nighttime, but the area was bathed in light.

 There were humans there too, all of them with the same steel grey eyes. Theo unclipped my leash. I started to run off and explore but then I paused. How would I find my father if I got lost in paradise? I looked up at Theo, and he kneeled down to stroke my head. “You’re finally free Ollie,” he said, “you can frolic in nature until the end of time just like God intended. We finally got rid of the ones who restricted you.” 

Got rid of? I thought to myself. That means gone forever, like when my father got rid of my lamb toy after I ripped the squeaker out. 

That was when I realized what death really was. I would never find my father. Theo and his grey-eyed companions had “got rid” of him and he was gone forever, just like my lamb toy.

I crawled into a dog house and laid on the fluffy bed inside wishing that I could be “got rid of” too, and that was where I stayed.

 For eternity I will continue to lie here drifting in and out of sleep and dreaming about my father. I should have starved and dehydrated by now, but living in paradise means that I will live forever regardless of the torture I inflict upon my body. It’s strange how missing one crucial element can turn paradise into a living hell.