This was originally posted to Reddit, but I typed too many words and it wouldn't fit in the box:
Some post about dogs made me remember my family's other dog, who was in many ways the epitome of "there are no bad dogs, only bad dog owners". We never trained Muddy, and she was always scared of everyone not from the family and so big that she'd knock over my mom's geriatric friend even when trying to be friendly[1]. She could get violent, and once I ended up having to wack her with a broom to keep her from killing a possum. [cw:I ended up cutting it's head off after it suffered in pain for like eight fucking hours, and god that fucking sucked, especially when everyone I follow on Twitter seems to think possums are cute and kept retweeting them. ] She almost did the same to the half-feral cat my uncle brought over and stuck in the garage when he was staying with us[2]. For whatever reason she was always trying to dig and get at small animals. She wasn't even the one who'd been found in a sack that was thrown in the river, but she was so scared of anyone new. But other than that, she was a good dog[3]. Well, okay, not really, if you tried to give her a bath or cut her nails, or tried to take food, she'd bite. We even had to drug her to take her to the vet. Never had a dog that would take a bath. Hell, it was easier getting the cat to stay still and get washed...
But everyone loves their own dog, no matter how bad it is around other people, so it still made me feel numb when I woke up and found out she'd gotten out—the day after she slipped through an improvised barrier and nipped at a guy from the oil company—and the animal cops came and told my mom that she needed to be taken in. After so many nips and attempts to murder rodents[4], and even breaking my mom's thumb and giving her stitches, Muddy was gone. I'm told that my mom and her friend were allowed to take her in themselves, and the animal cop, or maybe the receptionist, told her that they'd try to retrain and rehouse her. But I was too much of a coward to call them and check up on that and try to make sure they followed through. I didn't want to learn if they were lying.
So you can see why, because of how Muddy was, I didn't like the way my mom kept saying they were going to get a new dog. They already had one skittish one who kept trying to get out while simultaneously being terrified of everyone, and an elderly dog. He wasn't on death's door yet, but my dad's health had already started failing and he'd had a heart attack or two. With the incident with the cat and the possum already, and the way she'd snap at Brindel as if there weren't enough food for the both of them, I'd even thought Muddy might kill another animal.
But then they brought home a tiny little thing from my mom's sister and her husband[5], who are hillbillies that keep dogs in a some fence with a shed and probably shoot them if they're bad at hunting or get an injury. But everyone knows how the "we're not keeping it" stories tend to go, and this puppy was also skittish and afraid of everyone. So I pulled him out and got him to eat. And from that moment on he loved me[6] My fears about how Muddy would get along with a puppy were also proven wrong. Brindel liked him as well. At least, back then. Also, God, I forgot that he was really well behaved the first time we took him to the vet. At perhaps the last minute I also convinced my mom to go with Achilles instead of "Mochaccino"[7].
A month or so later, we ended up taking in another dog from my aunt and uncle, Achilles' brother. Jack was so scrawny. We just helping give him away to someone so my aunt and uncle didn't throw him in a sack or Ol' Yeller him or leave him out of the kennel fence for bobcats to get to or something. But that meant keeping him for two days. I think Achilles liked seeing him again. They were so cute. But also despite being the runt, he was better fed and also starting to show signs of being too rough. I had to break them up a few times because Jack started yelping and went on his back. But I fell in love with that dog, and Achilles, rough as he was, did too. And I think Jack loved being with us as well[8]. Which is why it hurt so much giving him away. While my mom was talking with the woman and her daughter who would be taking him and giving him another name, I sat with him for the last time. Let me tell you, being thirty and closeted trans, you tend to learn to bottle up your emotions. I might have been quiet the whole ride up to the Walmart parking lot where we met the woman, because this was last July, before the plague, and you could do that kind of thing. But the moment she and her daughter had Jack and we left them, I bawled my fucking eyes out. I cried so much my mom was actually worried, and kept saying that we could see about getting the dog back if I wanted. I was crying like I cried when my cat of ten years or so died in my arms. I didn't cry half as much when my dad died a few months later. I was fucking sobbing. But like I said, my family are clearly terrible with animals, so I hope that little girl loved Jack, or whatever she called him, much better than we could.
Anyway, if you made it this far into this deeply depressing and also adorable trip down memory lane as I look through old photos of my family's dogs and remember our pet history, thank you for reading. If you didn't make it this far, fuck you, not that you'll read this, because you didn't make it this far. But here's more dogs. Here's me and Muddy and Achilles. Taking a picture like that was tough. Here he is pulling at my hair. Here's the closest thing I have to all three of them. Muddy's ass is in frame, at least. Here's Achilles laying on me when he was tiny. Here's Achilles when he was small and cute enough that he could get away with following me into the bathroom. Here's he and Jack doing it. Here's him doing it when he wasn't small and cute enough to get away with it, and he knows it but doesn't care. Here's Muddy and Achilles. Here's a compilation of Achilles tugging at or biting my feet. Here's Achilles from Hades[9]. Since I cycle through like the same three pair of sweatpants you can really see how the ankles of that one pair get torn over time. Not to mention the half dozen slippers. Here's Brindel looking old.
There's a certain irony that I've spent the last... good lord, three fucking hours?? no wonder I got hungry again... going through an old memory card and typing all of this up about the various dogs of this family instead of actually giving those dogs attention. So I'm going to go do that now. Send your Ks or whatever it is you folks like to do.
[1]That racket there was to keep her from jumping all over Brindel, hence her guilty look
[2]That cat was not happy when my uncle finally moved out and, after a month or so, we finally trapped the cat to take to the ASPCA. 16 years earlier this was the same uncle that my mom, who hates cats, took a cat from because she was afraid he'd get it killed. I loved Mew 😭. I think he did actually get a second cat back then, though I don't know if it lived for 10 years or so as well.
[3I'll be honest, only some of the trash is because of dogs.
[4]Yes, I know a possum is a marsupial, shut up, there were also probably mice she kept trying to get at
.[5]Different uncle. Aunt's husband, as opposed to mother's brother.
[6] Or at least, how I taste.
[7]It's not a perfect reference, but, like... Achilles. Heel. He bites my feet is the joke. I've had to wear slippers since April of last year. And I've gone through like six pair.
[8]By "us" I mean me and Achilles. Who cares about the rest of the family. I think we might have been keeping him separated from Brindel and Muddy because he had worms or something? I don't remember.
[9]Not relevant, just seeing if anyone is still paying attention.