My Dog Tully

 

My dog was not a “fur-baby,” and I was never her “Mama”.

My dog was not a human being; she belonged to another species called Canis Lupus Familiaris.

She came from an ancient lineage of pack hunters that somehow managed to domesticate human beings and teach them how to cooperate and co-exist with an alien species.

My dog had a name that I gave her— “Tully”— and she recognized it, but she didn’t give a shit about names. She didn’t have ambition, or play politics; she never felt any need to impress anyone. She barely even cared when the weather was bad, charging out the dog door into rain and snow and galloping down the stairs to bark at imaginary cats in the apple tree.  She did love to lie in the sun, though.

I am glad my dog was not a human being, because she helped me forget about all the awful things that human beings do to each other. She never gave a single thought to global warming, immigrants, real-estate prices, LGBTQ rights, poverty, or anti-vaccers.

To her ‘social justice’ meant that her expectation of being fed in the morning was perfectly justified.

She used to make hilarious groaning and yawping noises, but these are not the equivalent of language.  She did definitely act like she liked it, though, when I got down on the floor with her and made similar noises. She talked with her ears and her tail, and the shape of her lips, but the things she said had nothing to do with human concerns. She never expected me to understand what she said, but she appeared quite gratified when it seemed that I did.

She knew things that no human being knows. She saw things that human beings can’t see, and smelled things that human beings can’t smell.

She astonished me by looking where I pointed with my finger.

She amazed me by gazing at me in such a way that I received a telepathic message direct from her mind to mine.

I fear I frustrated her more than I amazed her, though, especially when I had no clue what she was barking at.

I’m certain that I loved her, and I’m equally certain that it isn’t relevant whether or not she loved me.

It was altogether fine that she wagged her entire self whenever I came home, and that she woke up when she wasn’t sure whether the noise I was making was laughing or crying, and would come over to put her chin on my knee. It was quite a bit more than fine when she wagged her tail in her sleep, or fell down without warning to present her belly to me to be scratched. In fact, these things were so satisfactory that I was entirely willing to put up with my Kindle being chewed, and my bird book shredded, and my hand-lotion eaten.

I promised that I would never demean my dog by gushing over her, or expecting her to play the role of a surrogate child. I promised that I would never make high-pitched squealing noises at her, or pin her head to my chest in a hug, or make her wear a pink sweater, or torture her nose by letting the groomer spray perfume on her coat,  or confuse her by insisting that she be the one in charge.

I promised that I would learn the customs and language of Dogdom, and that I would never expect her to be something she is not. I promised that I would treat her with dignity and respect, because that is how dogs treat humans.  

I kept all my promises.

It was never necessary for her to make any promises to me, because dogs have built-in integrity, and are always true to themselves without having to even try. This is exactly because dogs are not human, and that’s what makes them so inimitable.

I thank God that Tully wasn’t a human being, because if she had been she would not have been able to teach me all the wordless things that I didn’t realize I knew until after she was gone.

I know these things now, because of the shape of the hole in my life that she left behind, which is bigger than the shape and weight of her ever was.

That hollow, which Tully filled with herself, now has a different shape, a shape that reminds me of all sorts of mysterious things which can only be hinted at, that can never be reduced to a description or a set of instructions.

 

Now that she’s gone, the space of my house still bends around her absence.

 

Now that she no longer hears my voice, all the things I say somehow have less meaning.

 

Now that she can’t touch me anymore, her weight still leans on the empty air.

 

I never knew how immense a space she occupied, until emptiness came in to fill it.