The First Dog

Don’t mistake me, I like dogs. There was always a dog in the house when I was growing up. There was also a cat but when I came along, Mother thought it would not be safe to have the cat around a baby and so she gave the cat to one of my baby nurses. As I grew up, it gradually occurred to me that Mother very often seemed to worry about things that were not as important as she thought they were. And she did not worry about things that were quite important to quite a lot of people. And it always seemed strange to me that she never talked about the cat that was given away. Did she really love Fluffy or could animals or babies just be disposed of without a second thought?
The house in Connecticut was closed up during the WWII when I was about 5 and we went to live in NYC as Dad’s job in the Army in WWII required that he had to report to duty in Newark, NJ on a daily basis. Mother refused to live in NJ. Evidently she had decided that there was no “decent” place to live in Newark, the social life would be zero and the inconveniences of shopping for anything would just be too great to bear. So we moved into a apartment at the Barclay Hotel. It was far different from living in a 6,000 sq ft house on 2 ½ acres of land but I liked the compactness. It meant I could be close, literally, to people without too much effort and that made me feel warmer inside myself.
I decided that I was going to make friends with Sandy, the middle aged cocker spaniel who hadn’t really taken to me at all. I never could understand why Sandy hadn’t been given away too, just like the cat. I once asked Mother that question and she looked at me oddly. “Well, Fluffy had claws that might have really hurt you. Besides, cats like to lick all sorts of things and I didn’t want Fluffy to lick you with a dirty tongue.”
Mom and Dad had gone out to a cocktail party and Catherine, the nurse, was giving my younger adopted brother his dinner. I wanted to turn on the radio, but I couldn’t get to it as it was wedged in between a lot of books in a bookcase and I didn’t see anything that I could drag over to the bookcase so I could climb up and try to turn the knobs so that some music would come on. I loved to move to music.
Having nothing else to do, I approached Sandy in the living room of our apartment. Sandy was brown all over, from head to toe. I thought that it would have been much more interesting for him to have other bits of color on him. It seemed to me that all humans wore different colors at the same time. Sometimes when I was taken for a walk, I saw dogs and cats that were dressed up in various ways with fancy collars and sometimes sweaters and vests. But Sandy never had any special clothes. I thought that was a little unfair because it did seem that my family had enough money to buy at least one outfit for Sandy. And I felt a little sorry for him because Dad said “he’s getting old” with a sad voice. I concluded that “getting old” was not a good thing.
And so I was wandering around the living room, humming to myself and trying to make a little dance to go along with the humming. I was trying to remember just what the song sounded like on the radio before it was turned off as Mom and Dad had gone out to dinner.
Sandy was standing near his dinner bowl which on the floor a foot or so away from him. He looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to eat or not. So I decided that this would be a good time to try make friends with him He never seemed to like it when I tried to pet him and I had gathered from adult talk that he might be jealous of me because I got so much attention when I came into the house, newly adopted, and he was not the biggest attraction anymore. But, it seemed to me that the way to start a relationship was to start asking some him some questions.
The obvious subject at hand to start talking about was about was his dinner. So I bent down, and tried to ask him if he wanted his dinner now or not. I began pushing the bowl toward his nose and then pulling it back trying to get him to tell me if he wanted to eat or not. It never occurred to me that he would not understand that I was trying to be nice to him. And that I wanted to be his friend.
After about five of my “questions”, Sandy gave me his answer. He lunged at me and grabbing my left hand in his mouth, bit down hard making my hand bleed. He had really hurt me and I decided right then that he was never going to be my friend.
I now had another problem as I walked around the living room in silent tears, sucking the blood out of the bite on my left hand. I could not disturb the nurse, Catherine who was definitely not my friend. She had made it clear to me by ignoring me and clucking incessantly over my brother, Ted, that she was not interested in me at all. So at all costs, I had to keep this injury out her sight or I was going to be in trouble with her.
I saw one of my father’s handkerchiefs that had been left on a small table and wrapped it tightly around my hand. Then I walked into my parents’ bedroom and climbed up on the bed trying not to think of the pain in my hand. Being in that bedroom put me as far away from Catherine as possible as she was giving my adopted brother his dinner in our bedroom which was on the other side of the apartment. After a while, I went back into the living room, found one of my books, climbed up on a chair and spread the book out on my knees so that I could put my injured hand under the book which helped to steady the book and then I could turn a page or two with the other hand.
It was a picture book of Goldilocks and the three bears. Somehow the story seemed a little familiar but yet opposite to the drama that was playing out in my living room right now. The bears were being thrown out of their beds by Goldilocks but in my life, the bear (Sandy) was throwing me out of his room. I thought, people were supposed to be in control of things, especially dogs. But I certainly was not in control of Sandy. Everything seemed to be upside down.
But the bigger issue was to stay out of Catherine’s sight and I managed to do that until my parents came home. As it was not too late, Ted, Catherine and I greeted Mom and Dad in the living room. I made an exaggerated point of keeping my left hand behind my back.
Catherine told Mother, “Both of them were good as gold”.
Mother looked at me. “What’s the matter with your hand, Patty?
“Nothing”.
Mother whirled on Catherine, “What happened?”
Catherine stared at Mother. “Well, Mrs. Marvin, I don’t know that anything happened.”
Mother stepped forward and pulled my hand out from my back and saw the bloodied handkerchief.
Her eyes drilled into me, “What happened?”
“Sandy bit me.”
“Catherine, get that wound attended to and then come talk to me. Alone.”
Catherine, silent and white as a sheet, bathed my hand and put antiseptic and a bandage on the place where I was to carry two scars on my left hand from then on. After Catherine bandaged my hand, and went to her conference with Mother, I went into the living room.
My Dad swept me up in his arms. “Now tell me what this was all about.”
I told him, sobbing, that I wanted to make friends with Sandy and that Catherine liked Ted and not me and that I didn’t have anyone to talk to. That I couldn’t even reach up to the radio to hear some music. I told him that I didn’t like being alone and that I felt that if I had Sandy as a friend, I wouldn’t feel so alone so much of the time.
He rocked me in his arms and told me he was sorry that I felt alone. He promised me he would spend more time with me and would make sure that Mother would not get angry with me over what happened. His eyes were misty but his hugs made me feel so much better that I hopped off his lap and asked him if he would put the radio on so I could listen to music. Some Big Band music flooded through the room and I began to dance. Nothing was upside down anymore. And to make things even better, Catherine didn’t work for us very long after that night.