Beloved

Long ago and far away, in the city of Chicago, two small dogs were found in the street and taken to a shelter. They were covered in scars, and some people said it was likely they had been used in dogfighting, maybe as bait dogs. 

The two pups, a male and a female, were named Nick and Nack. 

There was something about Nack that everyone noticed: she was so lovable. When she timed out at the first shelter she was kept at, the staff didn’t want to put her down, so they sent her to a second shelter. (What happened to her brother Nick, I’m not sure.)

Nack timed out at the second shelter, but the staff there sent her to a third shelter. From there she went to a fourth, and more after that. 

Finally, after timing out at multiple shelters, Nack was placed with a foster family, though she was still up for adoption. 

Meanwhile, a married couple, my parents, with a young daughter, me, were looking for a dog. 

My mother found one online. This was before the age of clear digital photos and many videos on the web, so the pictured dog’s eyes were glowing, the tapetum lucidum catching light and throwing it back at the camera lens. 

That’s our dog, my mother thought. She was absolutely sure that was the one. 

“That dog’s too big,” my father told her. 

My mother insisted, and they went to see it. 

The dog’s name was no longer Nack. “I changed her name to Suki,” the foster woman told my mother. “It means ‘beloved’.”

Suki had grown, and she was a big dog—a Rottweiler-German Shepherd mix. She had ‘happy tail’, which was an affectionate way of saying she wagged her tail like crazy whenever she was happy. 

Some of her German Shepherd parent’s genetic influence had come out in Suki’s tail, making it long and slightly feathery. Her coat was also longer than a typical Rottweiler’s. Since she was so big, it was hard to find kennels that were the right size for her. Suki’s happy black tail had gotten dragged back and forth across metal bars in shelters so many times that the end had split. The foster family got the injured part amputated, but not to the shorth of a docked Rottweiler tail. Suki’s tail stayed an odd raggle-taggle middling length for the rest of her days. 

My mother set me down on the bed where Suki was lying, and I began crawling around near the enormous, heavy black-and-brown dog. 

“Get the baby,” my father urged nervously. 

“No, she’s fine,” my mother said with a smile. That was true of both the dog and me. Suki was looking up at them with her brown eyes, half tail wagging. 

Not long after, Suki came to live with us. I didn’t seem intimidated by Suki at all, and was perfectly comfortable near the large animal. I would even crawl into Suki’ open crate and play in her bowl of food. Suki would turn her head away and pretend she didn’t see until I was finished playing and crawled away. 

Suki was so big in comparison to me that she could hurt me accidentally, even though she would never do it on purpose. One day Suki did just that. My parents had bought her a ham bone, which she was happily carrying around. Unfortunately, when Suki decided to drop it, I happened to be underneath. It fell on my head, and I cried, but my mother came to comfort me. Of course, Suki didn’t mean to hurt me. She was never once aggressive towards me.

Suki was so loving, and she didn't seem to know her own strength and size. My father has always asserted that she thought she was a lap dog. That not-a-lap-dog weighed over eighty pounds.

Suki turned out to be anxious, and a chewer. The foster family had Suki on an all-raw diet. They’d told my mother that any other food seemed to give Suki digestion issues. My parents later surmised that at least part of Suki’s digestion issues stemmed from her anxiety. The big dog suffered from separation anxiety, and when she was anxious, she would chew things. Suki had a powerful set of jaws. The giant ham bones she was given lasted only a few days. Some of the things Suki stress-chewed and destroyed were a breast pump, most of a set of thick wooden alphabet fridge magnets, and a set of just-bought and unopened expensive paintbrushes. 

Suki didn’t just like to chew. She also liked to eat. Once, when the family took her on a visit to my father’s parents’ home, they left Suki in the house while they went out. When they came back, they found that Suki had discovered the open forty-pound bag of dry dog food in the basement that belonged to Mousie, the house’s resident dog. Mousie never paid any attention to the open bag, only eating what was put in her bowl. 

Suki came groaning up the basement stairs, bloated beyond belief. She had eaten all the food in the bag. She was sick for days afterwards. 

There was a dog park near the condo in Chicago where my family lived, which my mother often took Suki to. There were some interesting characters there, like the policeman who would practice hand signals with his dog, both of them so intent on each other it seemed as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, and the beagle who carried his own personal water bottle around in his mouth. 

One day, my mother went through the gate to leave the dog park before realizing that Suki wasn’t with her. She turned back and called the dog to come. 

Suki turned around and around, frantically looking for my mother. When Suki finally spotted her, she began running in a beeline, not towards the gate, but towards the fence. Just before she reached the barrier, Suki took a flying leap into the air, sailing over it and landing with a pleased, albeit panting, smile. 

On another day at the dog park, it started raining. My mother called Suki to come as everyone else collected their dogs and left. Suki didn’t obey, or else didn’t hear. As soon as the rain started, Suki began tearing around in happy circles, and when she found bare dirt that was turning to mud, she layed down, rolled over onto her back, and began scooting along like that in the mud. 

When Suki eventually did listen, my mother took the mud-coated dog home to the condo and put her into the tub to give her a bath. When that was finished, the entire bathroom was dripping. 

Suki had a heavy, compact black body with brown undersides, lower legs, muzzle, and eyebrow spots that came from her Rottweiler parent. When she barked, she sounded ferocious. 

My mother discovered a few interesting, and perhaps telling, quirks about Suki. Whenever a cyclist rode past on a bicycle, Suki would bark and growl at them. She did the same if children she didn’t know ran past shouting, screaming, and making a ruckus, or if anyone approached wearing a hoodie sweatshirt with the hood up, even my father. Once he took the hood down and exclaimed, "It's me, Sukes!" she would come wiggling across the yard, tail wagging so hard it was no longer just the tail, but her entire back end moving, and she could barely walk.

After a time, my parents moved from Chicago to the town where Dad grew up. The family they’d bought their new house from hadn’t yet finished moving out, so we moved in with Dad’s parents. 

My father and grandfather went for a walk, taking Suki with them. As they reached the edge of town, several deer ran across the road, and Suki took off after them. Dad shouted at her to come back, but the dog didn’t listen, disappearing into the brush. 

After waiting around for several minutes, my father thought, Well, there goes the dog. She’d never been here before, and had no knowledge of the surrounding land. My father and grandfather headed up the hill, back towards the house. 

When they got to the top, Suki was sitting by the door, and she started wiggling with excitement. She’d found her own way back. 

My grandmother would sometimes take me for a walk in my stroller, and Suki would always come with. Suki never let the stroller get ahead of her. She was guarding me, even though my grandmother was there. She loved her people, and would protect them from any threat.

When it was time to go outside, I remember that Suki would always barge out the door, once nearly knocking me over. 

I remember that Suki loved to chase frisbees and balls. She would speed after the flying discs, and leap into the air to snag the toys. But they often didn’t last too long, due to her chewing capabilities. 

After a number of years living with us, Suki started to slow down. She favored her left front leg. We took her to the vet, and learned that she had cancer. 

The leg needed to be amputated, but we didn’t have the money to pay for that. My grandparents paid for the surgery, and Suki came home without even a stub. The leg was just gone, the space on her chest where it should have been remarkably empty. 

I remember a friend of my dad’s coming over to talk to him. He commented about how our screechy screen door was a good intruder alert, and Dad laughed and said he’d designed it himself. Suki was happy to see the friend, and tried to do her ‘shake’ trick without being asked. With only one front leg, it was impossible. She sat and kept trying to lift up her front right leg, but would start to fall over, and put it down again. She huffed and whined, seeming upset that she couldn’t greet this man in her usual way, but didn’t want to stop trying. He bent down and took her face in both his hands, rubbing it as she made a sad face. 

On three legs, she was just as fast as on four, and still vigorously chased frisbees and balls with abandon. I remember wondering how she could still be so happy when she was missing a leg. She seemed the same as she ever had been.

Suki started to slow down again. It got to where she had trouble moving, and couldn’t get up or down stairs. She parked herself in our tiny entryway, and the only time she moved was to drag herself outside to relieve herself. She couldn’t even make it up the three steps into the main house, where she wouldn’t have the door pushing against her every time we opened it. She was vomiting up blood, but she still wagged her tail and lifted her head to be petted. 

My mother was eight months pregnant with my second sister at the time, and she could barely get in and out of the door with Suki laying there. She didn’t think she could handle sick Suki and a baby at the same time. We knew that the cancer had gotten worse, spreading to the rest of Suki’s body, but we didn’t have the money to pay for treatments, and weren’t going to ask Grandpa and Grandma to pay for the vet again. 

Mom and Dad negotiated to surrender Suki to a foster family who had the money to take care of her medical treatments, and one day we put Suki into the back of the car and drove to the animal shelter. 

My sister and I brought some little animal toys to play with. We had identical mute swan figures, and I remember sitting on the hard, cold floor, silently making my little swan toy fly around, feeling extremely angry at my parents. I didn’t understand why we had to give Suki away. I didn’t understand how much pain she was probably in, and I didn’t understand medical treatments or money or how much medical treatments cost. 

Then we went out to the car and got Suki, and walked her into the shelter. They put her into a kennel that looked like a prison cell to me. The walls were cement blocks that were a weird, faded green color in the dim, buzzing fluorescent light. Suki went inside like she went everywhere with us: happily, wagging her short, happy tail. I remember wondering if she knew we were leaving her, and that we would never see her again. I wondered whether she would care if she did know. 

The new family ended up putting her down. Since we had given up ownership of her, we weren’t allowed to see her again. The cage in the animal shelter is my last memory of her. 

Of course, I’m no longer angry at my parents for what happened with Suki. They did the best they could. 

My mother has told me that she learned a lot from Suki once Suki got sick. Suki was always joyful in all circumstances, whether she was chasing a frisbee, only had three legs, or was coughing up blood.

Suki loved life, and never gave up. She was beautiful, and the name ‘beloved’ perfectly fitted her.