Christmas From the Dog's Perspective

“Can dogs get seasonal depression?” Amanda asked whoever she was on the phone with. The cellphone was pressed against the side of her head with her shoulder while she tried to type at her computer. 

The other person said something and Amanda laughed. “He just seems so sad.” 

I returned to my spot on the couch, it was directly next to the radiator and the window. Amanda’s apartment let in a draft through the window and the radiator made up for it. Somehow this spot on the end of the couch was the perfect temperature. 

I’d only been here for a few months. Sleeping by the radiator, going for walks and wandering around the duplex when she wasn’t home. It was, all together, a pretty good life. I had my warm, soft place to sleep, lots of toys and three meals a day. 

Amanda put her phone down and walked over to me. She scooped my head in her hands and kissed a spot above my eyes and between my ears. 

“Hi baby.” She said, scratching the spot behind my neck, “I don’t know why you’re so sad but it’s going to be okay.” 

I’m not sure why I was so sad either. I believed Amanda when she said it was going to be okay, I loved my quiet life here. It was like my body was betraying me, like my legs were sewn together, I didn’t want to chase the mice around the grass behind the house, I hadn’t been exploring for weeks. The lethargy was only compounded by the freezing cold outside. 

The only thing I’d really had the energy to do was bark at the Christmas tree while Amanda put it up. I even had time to ask myself why I was doing this, what threat did the Christmas tree pose? I felt bad, I never meant to upset Amanda, just something about it set me off. 

Amanda coaxed me off the couch, her hand was gentle, she treated me as if she’d already hit me and was apologizing in advance. I followed her down the creaking stairs and onto the back porch. There were two units in the duplex, the other half of the building was occupied by an older woman and her little terrier, Angel. 

Angel did not live up to her name. She was an untrained aggressor who I would describe as “an acquired taste,” but over the months, I’d come to like her, insanity and all. She wasn't malicious, just crazy.

The pair was already in the grass behind the buildings. I sat close to Amanda, I didn’t have the energy to talk to Angel, I hoped she might not even notice me. 

“I don’t know why he’s like this. He won’t play, he barely eats, it just seems like he’s depressed.” Amanda said. 

“Well sometimes people get like that around the holidays.” The older lady said. She took out a cigarette and lit it. She offered the box to Amanda, who took one and put it between her teeth. 

“He’s a dog. They don’t have a concept of Christmas. Plus he loved Thanksgiving.” 

“The holidays bring a lot of change, dogs don’t like change.” She blew smoke out of her mouth. 

“I guess. He really hated the Christmas tree. I wish I knew what happened to him before I got him.” 

“Do you think he’d been abused?” 

Language was complicated for a dog. Words meant entirely different things to us. Nouns made the most sense, they had definite terms. The park was the park and the vet was the vet. But verbs confused me, euphemisms confused me more. 

Abused, as far as I could tell, meant I might flinch hard if something touched me when I hadn’t seen it. It meant I liked to be touched only on parts of my body that I could see. I wasn’t aware that was something that made me unique, Amanda had the same issue. 

“I mean probably.” She said, “but the shelter found him roaming around, no one ever came to get him.” 

“Poor Maxwell.” The older lady stroked my head, “I wonder if something happened to him on Christmas.” 

Angel walked up to me. She wagged her tail and indicated to me that she was ready to play. I wagged my tail back at her and trotted over to the grass where I ran a little with Angel. She seemed to run circles around me. 

“Something hurt?” Angel asked. 

“No.” I said, “I’m sad, I think.” 

“Like your brain hurts?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Never happened to me.” 

“Okay.” Even though I'd decided to like her, it was still very annoying to talk to Angel.

I tried to indicate to Amanda that I wanted to go inside but she just patted my side. I sat down next to her again. 

“He’s an EMT, hoping to go to medical school in a few years.” Amanda said, “I really like him.” 

“He’s nice to you?” The lady said. It seemed like she’d started another cigarette. 

“Not like before. He’s genuinely nice.” Amanda looked away, she stomped her cigarette out in the snow. 

“I just don’t want to have to call the police again. That was scary, I’d hate to see you throw your life away.” 

“I promise.” She said, “I really like him. He cut down the tree for my living room himself.” 

I started to whine. I hoped it would get Amanda to bring me back inside, to close the door and let me sleep in front of the radiator for the rest of my life. Amanda pulled me inside, she said goodbye to the older lady and went back to her laptop once we got to our apartment. 

“What happened to you?” She asked as I sulked back to my spot.  

At this time last year I was asleep on a dog bed in front of the fireplace. Carson was there in mind rather than body. I could fetch things for him, but as the days dragged on he stopped asking or being able to ask, I’m not sure of the difference. 

Carson had raised me from birth, adopting me from one of his neighbors when her dog fell pregnant. He was a gentle old man, it seemed like he was old his entire life. But that last year, he’d seemed older somehow. A nice woman came a few times a week after that, she had soft hands and a propensity to give me table scraps. 

Family is another one of those words that makes sense to me. The three of us were a family— a dog and all of the people that loved him. Amanda and I were a family, just the same. 

Amanda patted me on the shoulders. A spot I couldn’t see but one I allowed her to touch. I trusted her, I felt like she understood more about me than I did. 

The sun set and the light faded. Amanda turned on the Christmas lights, shadows danced on the walls between the couch and kitchen. I didn’t mind the tree now that I’d gotten used to it. A lot of the things in my life were just that, only scary in the unknown. 

Carson had died sometime around Christmas. I don’t keep track of the days like people do, but I knew it was Christmas because he told the woman with soft hands to be with her family for the holiday. Confusing usage of the word family, but I could smell another dog on her. Someone can have more than one family, I knew that for a fact. 

I remember that the Christmas tree was on for three days. Carson laid there for three days. I barked for two days, my voice was raw. The neighbors eventually knocked on the door. When no one but me answered, the firefighters and police showed up.

In the rush of people and stretchers and panic, someone left the door open. I stayed in the house and waited for someone to come and get me. It was cold outside, it was Christmas outside. Without Carson there was nothing for me inside, yet, I had nowhere else to be. 

I knew Carson was dead probably before he did. I don’t know if it’s the soul or not but I could sense when his body was just a body. No longer containing the person I loved. 

Dogs understand death and loss and grief, it’s just that there is not ritual or shared feeling. I think people do a better job of death. For days I paced the floors of his house trying to understand that I had lost my entire family, that I had lived my entire life with someone who could die so quickly and easily. 

I knew abuse to be physical. When the shelter picked me up I lived with a family who kicked me. I understood that to be the worst thing anyone could imagine I might experience. 

But the reality was, nothing physical could be worse than what I felt after Carson died. It was as if I was missing some important part of me. Like I had no tail and couldn’t tell the world when I was happy. Maybe I just no longer had use for the one I did. Carson was gone. I was alone. I had been suddenly made aware that being capable of great love opened up me to great loss. 

I had Amanda now though. I had a warm spot on her couch and soft squeaky toys to chew on. No one in our little family raised their voices or kicked me. Everything was on my terms. And I’d let myself love her the same way she’d coaxed me out from under the bed that first night. Gentle and patient. 

I found myself missing Carson though. The Christmas tree reminded me of him, yes but his was never real. He had a plastic one I used to chew on as a puppy. Amanda had a real one, it smelled familiar somehow, but mostly it smelled like farms and far away places I’d never see. It was a home I’d never return to and a family that no longer existed. 

Amanda sat on the floor next to the couch, her head near mine. I moved to kiss it, delicately. She giggled and scrunched her face. 

“Maxwell, I’m going to have a boy over.” She said, her big brown eyes looked into mine, “if he’s anything like the last boy that was here, I need you to bark and attack. Okay?” 

Maybe both of us had trouble telling the difference between verbs like love and abuse. I put my head back down, hopefully she understood my affirmation. 

The firefighters that weren’t handling Carson sat with me for a bit. I worried that they would take me away, pull me into a car somewhere that didn’t have trees or mountains. I’d have to live in a city or a shelter or on my own. 

Carson told me once that if I died he’d kill himself right after. It was a joke he made that got more concerned stares than laughter from other people. But to me, it was comforting to know he had a plan. What was I supposed to do? 

When the apartment buzzed, I jumped off the couch. Determined to put myself between Amanda and the stranger coming in. Why did they have to be so loud when they announced their entrance? Amanda patted my side and opened the door to a man who smelled like the Christmas tree and the outside.  

He leaned in for a kiss with Amanda but missed her head slightly. They laughed and both tried again. Amanda was more anxious than normal so I stayed near her. 

The man complimented her on the tree, put his coat on the chair and sat down on the side of the couch. My spot. 

“That’s where Maxwell sits.” Amanda said, she turned from the doorway into the kitchen. 

“Oh I’m so sorry Mr. Maxwell.” The man got up and I retook my rightful place. He looked like he was planning to try and pat my head but thought better of it. 

Amanda walked back into the room, she had a tin of Christmas cookies for them to eat. She patted my head, which I accepted. 

“Amanda.” The man said, “This might sound crazy but– I know this dog.” 

“What?” 

“We’ve met before. I came to do a wellness check on his owner last year on Christmas Day. He was dead.” 

“Are you sure?” Amanda said, “No offense but you probably meet a lot of dogs.” 

“He’s got a tan spot on his back. I remember that because it looked like my dad’s dog. We had to go to the hospital pretty quickly and I never found out what happened to him. I figured the guy’s family would have taken the dog but–”

He pursed his lips at me and said, “I guess they didn’t.” 

“It’s a pretty small town.” Amanda said, “Still, that seems like a ridiculous coincidence.” 

“You told me on the phone he was sad, like he was seasonally depressed.” the man said, reaching for her hand, “This would explain it.” 

Dog’s don’t have a concept of fate. Life for us happens mostly out of our control. I was born on accident, but loved on purpose. I was hurt on purpose too. All of these things were not the hand of cards I was dealt by some deity or the universe as a whole, but by people. 

There’s a lot of comfort in my gods being flawed and imperfect, reacting on ego and pain. Fate has no purpose when I can see who's in control. 

Amanda believed in Fate. She believed in the concept of invisible strings that tied her to the people she was supposed to meet. For her, this was confirmation that this was predetermined by her own gods. She’d followed her own path towards me and towards him to find someone that she could eat christmas cookies out of the tin with, who might get out of the dog’s spot, someone with clear enough conceptions of love and abuse to steer clear of the latter. 

I leaned over to kiss the man. 

“Oh my god, he likes you!” Amanda said, moving to scratch my ears, “if Max likes you, I guess you can stay.”