When I was in fourth grade, my parents let me walk the half-mile home from Somerset Grade School. One afternoon, as I stepped into our black-stained cedar house, I found my mom holding a dog in her arms. The dog had a wiry, white coat with irregular brown spots like misshapen pancakes. We were standing in the open-floor-plan living room of our 60s contemporary ranch home. That room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows along the back wall, was the place where my sister and I had spent hours singing along to Broadway musical records—and where we had played many games of tug of war with Domino, our beloved Dalmatian who had long since passed away from old age.
My mom announced the dog’s name was “Whippet,” and she said that was also the breed of the dog. She told me it was a stray she had found wandering around our backyard while she was watering our tomato plants. To my excitement, she told me that Whippet was now our family’s dog.
My dad came home per usual at 5 p.m., eager to take his half-hour pre-dinner nap. But not that day. He couldn’t believe that my mom had taken in a dog without consulting him first. My dad was rarely angry. But that day, his anger spilled out. He tied my mom’s action to her previously going out and buying corduroy drapes for our living-room windows without telling him, and her agreeing to pay Lou Charno’s photography studio an exorbitant amount to take our family’s portrait.
My dad declared we were not going to keep the dog even overnight, and that he was going to take the dog to Wayside Veterinarians to be put down. Today, as I picture him whisking the dog out of my mom’s arms, one of his repeated aphorisms comes back to my mind: “I believe in equality, but when push comes to shove, the husband should have the final say.” My mom meekly accepted his judgment, but I remember her crying lasted into the next day. After that night, I never again heard my parents speak of Whippet.
Nearly a decade later, and several years after my mom had been left bedridden by M.S., I tried to raise what happened with my folks one quiet evening. I started by simply asking them what they remember about the event—in part because I just wasn’t sure how much to trust my fourth-grade memory.
But behind my opening question lay deep, unanswered curiosity. I wanted to ask why this little dog had to die, instead of being taken to the pound, where it would at least have had a chance to be adopted. How did we even know that the dog, who looked purebred, was a stray? Is there a chance we killed someone’s dog? Did the vet have any qualms about euthanizing a healthy animal? Or was the vet’s willingness to put down the dog evidence that the dog wasn’t so healthy—which might somewhat justify my father’s behavior? Did my dad’s conviction that “husbands should have the final say” explain or even justify my mom’s decision to keep the dog without telling him?
I also wondered whether what came to pass had any meaningful connection to how my family reacted to my mom’s M.S. I had been frustrated that my mom and dad were too quick to adopt a fatalistic attitude and even needed me to acknowledge that my mom couldn’t do anything to maintain or regain her mobility. Just as my mom had accepted there was nothing she could do once the dog was taken from her, I worried that she too quickly concluded there was nothing she could do to walk again.
But almost before we started, my sainted father shut down the conversation. “Why are you bringing up upsetting memories?” he chided me. “You’re tearing our family apart.”
Both my parents have since died. My questions about Whippet were never answered, and I’ve had to accept that they never will be. My father was a kind and decent human with a joy for living that, to this day, I try to emulate. He ended up caring for my ailing mom’s every need for her last 16 years of life—cutting her hair, preparing her meals, stretching her legs, cleaning her bed pans and catheter bags. I regard his killing of the dog as an aberration and the worst act of an admirable life. Yes, I had to confront his fallibility at a young age, but for many reasons, I still choose to love him and remember him fondly.
