My Puppy Was My Only Friend

Prozac and a dog.

When I was in kindergarten, I used to come home after school every day so excited about what I’d accomplished. I’d tell them how I’d pasted the macaroni pieces into the “Mr. M” outline, or how I’d never been tagged during tag at recess. As far as my parents knew, based purely on what I was telling them, I was thriving at school.

But none of it was true.

When my parents went in for their first parent-teacher conference they were given some shocking news. My teacher, Mrs. Cobb, informed them that I was quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I hadn’t said a word to her.

Not a single word.

They — Mrs. Cobb, the guidance counselor, Mr. Hank, other teachers — had been observing me. It’s not like I was mute because they saw that I did interact with the other kids when I wanted to play games. I’d stand in the middle of the circle, head down, and wait to be picked. Nevertheless, the school was still concerned, as were my parents, so plans were hatched. At home, that meant promising me toys and other rewards if I spoke a certain amount each day. At school, it meant regular meetings with the counselor.

But come January, when my parents went in for the second parent-teacher conference, things got real serious. I still wasn’t talking.

So they shipped me off to Dr. Diane Schekty, a psychiatrist well-known for working with young criminals (granted, my worst crime up to this point was stealing my brother Chris’ Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from his Halloween candy stash and hiding them behind my radiator — so not only was I not talking, I was also stupid enough to hide chocolate behind a radiator).

Once a week, my parents would get a babysitter for my siblings and bring me to her office — a large log cabin-like building — and sit with me in the cream-colored waiting room until it was time for my appointment.

Dr. Schetky — or as I unfortunately called her due to the lisp I had when I did talk, “Dr. SexKey” — would take me into a little playroom and sit with me at a little wooden table while I played, and then after my sessions with her, she’d meet with my parents while I continued to sit in the playroom. I don’t remember what we talked about, or if I even talked to her for that matter. I’d make chains out of construction paper for which I favored the blue-red, alternating combination. I didn’t mind these play sessions, probably because I thought they were play sessions and I had no idea that the big glass-looking thing was actually a two-way mirror and that I had an audience on the other side sitting in the doctor’s office. All I had to do was go and play for an hour before I could get a hotdog at Wasses — my favorite hotdog place — on the way home.

It was in that room on the other side of the glass that Dr. Schetky told my parents she was prescribing me Prozac because apparently I had mild selective autism and anti-depressants would make me relax.

From then on, every morning, my dad would pour me a glass of orange juice in my Winnie the Pooh cup and slip in a green pill. As any five-year-old who kept discovering little green pills in their juice would do, I asked what it was. It’ll make you relax, my dad explained. And apparently I relaxed enough to make it through kindergarten.

But everyone involved was still concerned about how I would react to the changes brought along with first grade so it was decided that I should spend the summer getting to know my future teacher, Mrs. Snow. So how did I spend the summer before first grade? Walking down our long dirt driveway with Mrs. Snow and my sister Molly (who my parents had presumably forced to join us). We’d look for the Ring Pops that my mom had spent the morning hiding along the side of the road. Or at least that’s what Molly and Mrs. Snow did.

I was more interested in the fourth party present, Blackie.

Around the same time I started popping my Prozac, my family got a dog.

The first time we went out to the farm to see the litter of puppies, I stood there and stared at the black lab-coonhound mixed puppies running around and around their barn stall in a counter-clockwise circle. Except one of them wasn’t running. One of them, with a white patch on her chest and deep brown eyes, was just standing there in the middle of the barn stall, with her sad eyes and fluffy, droopy ears. I was mesmerized. A week later we went to pick her up and take her home, and my life was never the same.

With this beautiful puppy, I had someone to talk to and do stuff with. I finally had a friend.

Every night I would lie on the living room floor next to Blackie and practice my reading. I’d take her outside and make her do an obstacle course, incentivizing her with canned tuna fish. We’d play catch (or I’d pretend to throw a ball for her, making her run a few feet and then actually throw it). I’d listen to her deep breathing while she slept and then turn it into words. I finally had someone to run away with too (ex. When I was seven, I accidentally broke my cello. I thought it was worth more than my dad made in a lifetime, so I packed my lime-green LL Bean backpack, grabbed my blue blanket and set off down the road with Blackie. We hid out in the woods for a few hours before the cold weather forced us to the garage where my dad found us and informed us that the cello was worthless. We could come home).

We had our moments, sure, but as best friends do, we found a way through them.

Blackie and I grew up together. I brought her to public places on a leash. She bellied my social anxiety and allowed me to have a topic of conversation. I even had a shirt screen-printed with her picture that I wore proudly to school to show my friends and teachers. And as much as I wanted to bring Blackie to church on “Bring Your Friend to Church Day,” she wasn’t allowed (I instead brought my large stuffed bear; the one that I zipped my windbreaker over to make look more human because, you know, I thought it did).

The older I got, the less I relied on Blackie but it was because of her that I had real, human friends. Blackie, as with any dog on this earth will do, gravitated towards my father. I’d still have moments or days or weeks where I need her, though, so my parents would still occasionally wake up to find me sleeping on the floor of their closet next to Blackie.

When Blackie started to get up there, I started to worry. I started to fear the day she would die, as if when she went, so did my comfort in life. She began to slow down, hampered by arthritis (that I’m convinced was my fault because of the countless times I tried to ride her like a horse). But she kept going, riding shotgun the time I took my mom’s car out for a joyride without a license. When I turned 15 and left for boarding school, I left Blackie at home with my parents (plus lovely two cats and another dog). Every time my cell phone rang or I saw that I had an email from my parents, my heart would speed up and I’d go into a panic. What if it was dad, calling to tell me Blackie had died? What would I do without her? But I’d go home for breaks, and there she’d be, hobbling over to the garage door to greet me with her collar jingling and howling a distinct howl that annoyed everyone in the house but me.

The summer after my freshman year of college was different, though.

Physically, I’d suffered an abdominal injury that no doctor or trainer could explain. Some days, I was fine. Other days, I need help just getting out of bed and going to the bathroom (spoiler, it turns out I had a hernia). I was miserable. Something else was off, too. Blackie was quieter. I was quieter. I lost touch with friends. I’d put Blackie in the boat and go out in the middle of the lake on the pretense of fishing but really, we’d just sit there starting at each other because I didn’t want to do anything else. I began taking Blackie on walks after dinner every night. We’d shuffle down the driveway together, turn left and shuffle down the road, past our neighbor’s house. One day, my friend Mike was in his yard and he called out “Jesus Christ, Blackie is still alive?”

“Yes” I said, as she tripped over her own feet. I choked up. It was coming.

At the end of July, my family flew out to see my brother Michael be promoted to Captain. I refused to go, and Michael understood. I refused to put Blackie in a kennel, instead getting up with her and our other animals at 4:30 every morning to pee and eat. One night, as the sun was setting a few days into our staycation, I watched in horror as Blackie struggled to walk in a straight line. I watched as she kept turning to her left, going in a circle. Gus started barking and I sprinted down the hill — doctor’s orders be damned –to my best friend in the entire world. When I got to her I enveloped her and kissed the top of her head.

As I carried her up the hill to the house, I kept saying “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay,” more for myself than anything else. I tucked her in for the night then, with a lump in my throat, called my dad. He told me it would be okay. But I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was coming.

Two weeks later, on August 13, my parents and I were returning from a trip to Portland. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to buy a rotisserie chicken for Blackie because it’s all she would eat. Every night we’d slice some up for her and mix it in with her kibbles. She’d eat a few scraps and leave the rest of her food for Gus.

But when I walked in the door that night, I didn’t hear the familiar jingle of her collar as she pulled herself up, nor was Gus at the door waiting to go out. I felt the bags drop out of my hands and I just started sprinting into the living room. There she was, lying between the couch and the wall, whining with pain. I screamed over my shoulder to my parents to come quick.

The next few hours were a blur. Blackie couldn’t stand and she could only lay on her right side. We pulled her dog bed out to the living room and I set her on top of it, where she and I spent the night. I tried to move her every few hours so she wouldn’t get soars, but she couldn’t handle it.

I couldn’t handle it. Here was the only living thing I had ever said “I love you” to, dying in my arms.

The next day was horrible, and so was the day after that and the day after that. She couldn’t walk or bark or swallow anything. My parents briefly discussed putting her to sleep, but my dad refused.

“She deserves a chance to get better.”

So instead, we stripped her of her dignity.

We strapped diapers to her because she couldn’t control her bladder. I’d force feed her Pedialyte and protein shakes with syringes my dad brought home from the hospital.

But on the day the vet told us there was nothing we could do, she started to move a little. Then one night, about a week after her stroke, Blackie made a bark-like noise. I jumped out of my bed and flicked the light on in time to see her pull herself up. I cried as I watched her drag her body down the hallway, her emaciated body careening into the walls. She stopped at her water dish in the kitchen and began to lap up water for the most joyous five seconds of my life.

I started taking her outside, holding her around her sunken stomach, as she moved her legs. Soon, I was watching proudly as she stumbled down the hill to go to the bathroom all on her own. She reached the bottom, and together we just sat there for a few hours. I’d talk, she’d listen, and then I’d translate her breathing. When the time came to go inside, I’d go get the car, load her in the back, and drive her back up the hill.

Eventually, my parents decided it wasn’t healthy for me to be doing what I was doing, so they moved Blackie back into their room. But I’d carry her outside in the morning, and we’d just sit outside all day in weather that wasn’t too hot and in a breeze that was just right. Just her, a few books, and me. My dad would come home from work and join us, and he’d make jokes about how she had cared for me when I was little, and now the roles were reversed but we knew they weren’t jokes. We knew it was the truth.

For three days that’s what we did. And then I realized it was time. She was never going to get better. I was never going to stave off death by forcing liquid down her throat and changing her diaper every night.

It became a waiting game.

Two weeks after the stroke, I awoke on a Sunday morning around 5 a.m. to the faintest sun poking in through my window.

I heard my dad in the kitchen pouring coffee, and then I saw him through the crack in my door enter his bedroom with two steaming mugs.

“Oh good, you’re up,” I heard him say to my mom. There was something about his voice, though. And then I knew why.

“She’s gone.”

I got up from bed and closed my door, clicking the lock shut. I just lay in bed, not knowing what else to do. A few hours later my mom knocked lightly on my door.

“Kate…”

“I know.”

I stayed in my room for three days.

I cried more times than I had in the past 10 years combined.

I cried for the first time without Blackie by my side.

Since it was a Sunday, my dad had had to place Blackie’s body in the large freezer in the basement. The only time I left my room was to go down and stare at the freezer.

Monday morning, my mom asked me through my door if I wanted to give her a kiss before she brought her to the vet to be cremated. I walked to the garage door but turned back before I got there. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t real.

How could my best friend be dead?

Four days after Blackie died, I packed up my car — the car that just two months before Blackie and been the first passenger in — and headed back to school for another year; the worst year of my life. Physically, I was hurting. I didn’t just need help getting out of bed or going to the bathroom or putting on pants. It hurt to cough. It hurt to sneeze. It hurt to laugh. My physical ailments announced my mental anguish. Some nights, I sat alone on my bed in the dark, drinking straight vodka from a mug. Some nights, I didn’t want to be alone so I’d go sit with my friends while they studied, drinking vodka from a water bottle. Some nights, I don’t know what I did.

I don’t know when or how or why, but I finally was able to comprehend that Blackie was never coming back and many tears and conversations later, I was able to look at things more humbly. I became systematic.

Eventually, I was able to realize that, physically, I’d never be able to do what I did before. Eventually, I was able to appreciate what I had had and what I would have. Eventually, I was — as stupid as this feels to write — do what Blackie wanted me to do: move on.

I replaced the continuity that I had lost — that I had known for what felt like my entire life — and replaced it with routine. I said “I love you” to people and things not named Blackie; I progressed from walking, to jogging, to biking to yoga, regaining some semblance of physical fitness; I took Gus — a dog that I had ignored for years because I loved Blackie so much — on walks, and we were often joined by an indigent little puppy named Meghan who would soon become wrapped around my finger; for the first time in months, I laughed without grimacing; I finally, in a way, grew up. I no longer had my emotional attachment to my silent childhood. Blackie had raised me and given me everything that I needed — it just took me her entire life to figure that out.