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alley13 · 5 years ago

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My Girl

When I was thirteen, I found a female Labrador who, we learned later, had been abused as a puppy.

She was adopted by a man in the military when she was almost six months old, then left in the care of a family friend when he was shipped out, only for that friend to ship out the week after. His parents came and picked up his Male lab, but left her because she was afraid of loud noises, and too skittish for them to take hunting. She was jumping out of her yard, looking for food, then returning to her yard. One day, she followed me home from the community mailboxes at the entrance to the trailer park.

She quickly became my best friend.

I took her in and every day after school we would go for bike rides and long walks, on the weekends, we’d play fetch and romp around in the fields that surrounded the mobile home park I lived in. She followed me anywhere, never even needed a collar or leash. There were days that she would be outside waiting for me at school because I walked the two miles to school every day, or rode my bike. I had a friend who lived a block and a half away from the school and when I stayed the weekends at her place, my girl would come looking for me.

One day I came home from school and there was an unfamiliar truck in our driveway, and there was a man talking to my mom on the porch, and Alley, my girl, she was in the house, barking. He was from a Military Canine Training Facility where she’d been trained when she was younger, and they were going to take her to their Kennel to wait for her owner to come back from overseas, someone had finally contacted him about her. We had sent out letters and made phone calls for weeks, with no answers. We’d had her for almost four months by that point.

But I didn’t have a choice. I had to let her go; and I had to pick her up and put her in the truck because she refused to go near the handler at all.

Three months later, I walked passed his trailer, and she was outside in the yard. She jumped the fence and followed me home, the next day, he showed up to retrieve her. Every time I passed the house, if she was inside and she saw me, going to school, or to the mail, she would bark, and cry and scratch at the windows.

I learned later that she had torn up his furniture, his trash, the curtains, his walls, and had even gone to the bathroom in his house. She’d never acted out like that with us or for him before he’d left, the vet he spoke to said she had separation anxiety and as long as he lived in the same park where she would find my scent or see me go by he would probably struggle to re-bond or retrain with her.

Two months passed, I was certain the longest two months of my life, and he was ordered to Germany. He came to my house, asked my mother if I could keep her, because she couldn’t go with, and he handed me her leash and that was all it took.

She was mine again.

She was with me through everything. Fights with family, and friends… moves, church, trips, camping, break ups. Everything that went on in my life, she was by my side. I got older, and so did she. I got busier, she slowed down, but she stayed my best friend. We moved across the state for the third time two years after we got her, this time to a camp ground with a pond.

My mom managed the park, I cleaned the bathrooms and helped at the radio station on the weekends.

I went boating in the pond one day – it was roughly the size of a football field. Alley – well, she was terrified of water, didn’t like rain, sprinklers, hoses, baths, spray bottles, pools. (Her terror of water, specifically hoses, was how we figured out she was probably abused early in life.)

She was so determined to be with me where I was, she got on this damn tree that had fallen halfway across one end of the pond, crawling on her belly, trying to get out to where I was rowing. She was so scared she was shaking violently. I got her into the boat with me and she practically sat in my lap, vibrating, until we got back to the sandy banks.

We lived there when I eventually met someone and I fell in love… My mother kicked me out before I finished school because “I was going to leave her for him eventually anyway” so I lived with my boyfriend at his college for awhile before we got caught and he moved me to his parents place.

I went home to visit when I could so I could spend time with her; I wanted to take her home, my parents offered to cover her food costs, but he told me I couldn’t bring her to live with us because his parents wouldn’t allow a large dog in the house but he promised it was temporary and he was looking for a place for us.

I was with him for almost a year – he became emotionally abusive. He hit me once. He kept me stuck at home, I had no car, no cell phone, no laptop, I could apply for jobs, but getting to interviews was a problem, I couldn’t get back into school because I didn’t have a legal guardian since my parents wouldn’t sign the necessary paperwork.

He controlled me, took me to see friends when he felt like it, usually his friends, then got angry if I spent a day or two with my friends if they picked me up and I was out of his reach. I was depressed, I gained mad weight… and one day a few days after my 18th birthday, my parents came to visit, to bring gifts and take me to dinner, and they brought Alley with them to surprise me because my depression was worse due to a recent miscarriage.

I played with her outside for awhile, I loved on her and babied her, then when it was time to go to dinner, I went into the house to grab my sweatshirt and my backpack and my dad tried getting her back into the car. I can only guess she thought they were leaving me behind because she panicked, and she snapped at him and bit him…

It wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, but it was enough to cross the line.

I made a few phone calls to friends, no one could take her, she couldn’t stay with me, my now-fiancee at that point, told me his parents would never allow it because she didn’t, and she was acting out with my parents and after biting my father, they weren’t willing to take her back home…

So that night I put my best friend to sleep. I stayed with her until she was gone, and I sobbed until it hurt to breathe.

I thought I’d done the right thing, the vet, a cold, unkind man, said she was depressed, and suffering from separation anxiety and that the only alternative was drugging her for the rest of her life with people who would take better care of her. My father insisted the deed be done, however, and afterwards, we went to Walmart so I could buy a new shirt before dinner; the one I’d been wearing was still covered in her fur. I ran into my Fiancee’s mother, she worked in the clothing department.

She saw that I’d been crying and asked why and I told her about my girl, and she was so angry, not at me, but at her son because he’d never even asked them about her, and they would have let me have her in a heartbeat.

They knew how miserable I was, but that I loved their son despite his flaws, and he had literally taken the one thing in my life I cherished above all else because he did not want to share my attentions.

He and I broke up barely three months later because he was cheating on me, and had been for some time. I lost my best friend to my naivete and my love for him, and honestly, ever since, I’ve never been able to lay eyes on a lab without experiencing the heartbreak I felt when I realized I had made the wrong decision the night I put her to sleep.

Every year I post in her memory, and I miss her every damn day, even now, ten years later.

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