Sweetiepie. Warning: Dog Blog

She was Bill’s dog, a fine looking Fox Terrier. He got her from someone—there was a story, but I don’t know it. She could do tricks, we were told. She would even get cigarettes from a pack for her former owner. This I never confirmed. It was supposed to be a big deal because, so someone said, dogs hate the smell and taste of tobacco, though how anyone would know that I can't imagine.

Anyway, she came knowing how to lie down, roll over, sit up, shake hands, fetch the newspaper, fetch the mail. Daddy taught her to run upstairs and fetch his slippers, too. I laugh now to think of it, my dad and that dog, how he'd talk to her with no doubt of her understanding. “Bring me my slippers, Sweetiepie,” he’d say. Or anyone could tell her to go get Daddy's slippers and she would do it and drag along his robe, too, if you asked her to.

Daddy also taught her to dance, but her most complicated trick was catching a raisin off the end of her nose. Daddy would place a raisin right on the tip of Sweetiepie’s nose. “Hold it, hold it, now. Don’t move,” he’d tell her. She would hold herself still as a stone. “All right,” he would say at last. “Catch it!” She’d toss the raisin up, catch it, and then chew it up, which always looked like the hardest part of the trick. By the way, dogs don't like raisins either.

Sweetiepie would crawl up on your lap, put her front paws around your neck and give you a love, if you asked her. She would play dead or just play with you. She would run to meet you when you came home from school and jump up to your arms before you turned the last corner for home. She could feel you coming, I guess. Bill’s dog? Yes, but I knew she was mine, and we all felt the same way.

Mama never wanted a dog in the house. With Sweetiepie it was different. She stayed in the house with the rest of us, like one of the family. And Grandma hated dogs. Couldn’t believe Lola would have one in the house. But when Grandma came to visit, who do you think followed her everywhere? Who sat at her feet or on her very lap? Who loved her like none of us kids ever did? The dog, of course.

Sweetiepie loved to ride in the car. A curious passenger, she never sat down, left nose marks on the inside of the windshield because she had to see where we were going. Or, if the window was down, she would stick her head out the window, ears blown back by the wind.

I have not forgotten the look of the man driving the car that hit Sweetiepie in the street by our house. I was in the back yard when it happened. The man didn’t stop, just drove on. It took Sweetiepie a while to die. Sterling and I watched, helpless and heartbroken. When she was dead, I went in the house crying and drew a picture of the man’s face.

Sterling buried our dog out under the apricot tree in the back yard. The tree and yard and even the house are gone long ago, replaced by some unsightly apartment building. One that none of us, including our dog, would ever live in. Are you under there, Sweetiepie? I hope you remember me. I’m counting on seeing you again.