my first dog

My first dog was a beagle mix that I named “Boy” by default. I couldn’t come up with a name until he had already started coming to “here boy.” Boy was a classic dog whose image deserves to be immortalized in a Norman Rockwell painting, although he was my dog in Colombia, S. A. where I lived as a child. I don’t remember where my parents bought the dog; I have only the vaguest of recollections of picking him out of a litter. Boy was white with brown splotches just as one would expect from a dog with beagle ancestors. He was a good natured and cheerful dog, always a friend and ready at my beck and call. I wasn’t interested in teaching him tricks, so he wasn’t beleaguered by absurd commands to perform like “rollover”, “sit” “lie down” etc. It never entered my mind to manipulate him or dominate him with such lessons in human caprice. I was content to return his love and respect in equal measure. We were true friends. Boy was given a lot of freedom for a dog. He ran around the neighborhood and palled around with stray dogs from the hills nearby our house in Bogota. He must have been attracted to the life of the free pack, but he never failed to return home by the end of the day. Boy taught me a lot about loyalty and love, important lessons for a six year old American kid who was a cultural transplant from the age of three.

One day I arrived home from school and I went looking for Boy as was my habit. He wasn’t waiting for me as usual and was nowhere to be found about the house. I walked down and across the street calling his name. Opposite our house was a gully in which a small mountain stream ran. Boy and his dog friends liked to hang out along it as did poor people who improvised shelters and washed clothes in the stream. I clambered down the embankment, walked along the stream calling boy’s name. Sure enough I spotted the pack of dogs in a clearing but something odd was going on…..they were milling about in a kind of excitement that was unfamiliar to me. Boy didn’t come running as he normally would have and there he was in the middle of the pack somehow wrestling with another dog. I was alarmed and thought the other dog was somehow hurting him; although he was on top he seemed to be in some agonized spasm. Not knowing what to do about my poor dog, I ran home calling for help. My older sister was the first in earshot. I pled with her to come help save Boy. We ran to the site by the brook and beheld Boy still in the throes of passion. My sister, just older enough than myself to know what was really happening, immediately started reassuring me that Boy was in no danger and that the encounter would end well. Sure enough it wasn’t much later that Boy came trotting home with a happy smile on his face.

Unfortunately, some time later Boy brought home something not so welcome. One day, he seemed to have some kind of flu. He didn’t want to get out of bed. But loyal dog that he was, he struggled to his feet (sic) at my encouragement. He was wobbly and seemed to be choking and he drooled. Fully alarmed, I ran to my mother this time for help. She looked at Boy and was puzzled. “He’ll be better tomorrow, Tommy.” But the next day he was worse. My mother decided he must have a bone in his throat and so she held his mouth open and fished in the back of his mouth with her fingers. Finding nothing she resolved to take him to a vetenarian. Arriving at the vet’s with the sick dog, the doctor took one quick look at Boy and diagnosed “dumb rabies.”

My recollection fails at this point. We didn’t return home with Boy, and he drops out of my memory as if he had been erased. Now, I realize that the realization  of his loss was just too painful to hold or to retrieve. Boy was my first great friend.