I Hate Dachshunds. It’s Genetic.
I hate dachshunds. I know that they have cute little pointy faces and lovely silky ears. That their sausage belly bodies are ripe for a tickle and they walk with such intent that they should be wearing little bowler hats as if going to work in a bank.
I can see all the redeeming qualities of this pedigree and I understand their popularity, but I hate them.
Here’s why.
On the morning of my 7th birthday I was up earlier than anyone else in my household. Birthdays were a big deal in our family. No matter how mixed the messages I received of my validity or likeability as a person, a birthday was an opportunity for others to compensate with some sort of kindnesses that they never felt the need to extend for the other 364 days of the year.
A birthday. No matter what, at the very least you had this day to mark your arrival and no one could take it away.I descended quietly down the staircase from my bedroom and there, outside the sliding glass doors, sat a large steel cage with a handwritten note on it.
The note read,
“Hello Emily, my name is Sarah. Happy Birthday. I’ve come to live with you.”
Shaking, I pulled the note from the top of the cage.
And there she was. A beautiful big glossy white bunny with red eyes and a wet pink nose and whiskers that went on forever. My first pet. Of course, we had other pets in the house but as number 4 in a pecking order of 5, the luxury of my own pet had been denied me til now. There was the family cat, Cassius Clay (in hindsight a highly inappropriate name for our black cat who was fond of fighting), and there had been litters of guinea pigs that my sister had lost track of or eventually buried in the back garden. But not like this. This was a solid pet. A big, huggable pet. My pet.
When you come from a large family, ownership is a big deal. With so few resources, almost everything is part of the collective, which sounds like a lovely socialist fantasy, but the reality was crap. By the time the clothes and the toys get to you, some 6 or 7 years after their purchase, they are pretty tired and worn.
But Sarah? She was a brand-new addition to the household, and she was mine.
Now we are talking 1976, and rabbits were not the designer pet they are today. Sarah wasn’t from a pet store. She had come from the animal breeding facility connected to the laboratories where my Dad worked.
My Dad was a scientist at the Institute of Child Health, a small operation with a handful of scientists on the grounds of the now demolished Royal Alexandria Hospital for Children in Sydney. Dad worked in molecular biology, primarily genetics.
Back then the average person was still deeply suspicious of this new scientific concept. That we had some code in our cells that determined everything about us. It was science fiction. There were no kids turning up in their ‘jeans for genes’ with their gold coin donations as there are today.
My Dad was an outlier. For sure. In many ways.
Other people’s Dads worked for companies like Coca-Cola Amatil, that distributed chips or sodas. They were businessmen, or lawyers, or accountants. Their work was relatable. Professions that were accessible and concrete.
I got tired just thinking about the space between what my Dad knew or was trying to discover, and what I could ever possibly understand as a child.
He was in paediatric research. Now I knew paediatrics meant child health, but not much more. I also knew that there was a huge gap between what was happening in the labs with their fascinating machines like centrifuges and autoclaves, and the children I saw sitting in the courtyard of the hospital with their families, with their hair falling out and their bodies wasting to nothing.
My Dad wasn’t working at the face of paediatric care, he was working at the desire of it. The always furrowed brow that was trying to decode this double helix matrix that held so many mysteries.
The unsolved codes of illness and biological identity that expressed themselves through the tiny bodies of ill children. Almost always fatal. At the very least, severely debilitating.
The animal breeding facility was a long low building that housed the purebred species required for experiments.
Mostly mice, rats and rabbits.
One of Dad’s favourite tricks was to walk us in to the rat room where the rats scurried around in their cages and when we had gained enough courage to move closer to the cages to inspect their razor teeth and dead eyes, flip the light switch and have us run from the room shrieking. Yeah. Seventies parenting. Apparently, parenthood back then was triggering your child’s’ terror and finding it hilarious.
My rabbit Sarah was a New Zealand White.
The New Zealand White are a rabbit breed that came originally from the United States but are believed to have originated in New Zealand. They were bred for their pelts that shimmer translucently in the sun and take up any dye with magnificent richness. I’m imagining her beautiful fur in vivid colours as I write this. Prussian blue. Vermillion. Cadmium Yellow. Viridian.
And meat. They were a hearty family meal size. The New Zealand White is a huge rabbit.The does are larger than the bucks and weigh in at about 5.3 kilos. Now that’s a lot of rabbit. That’s what I mean by huggable. She was the size of a dog. She was so fluffy and placid and calm. She would sit on my lap and I would pat her til my rapid sparrow heart slowed down. I was the quiet child in this loud and rambunctious household. From a young age I would collapse into tears easily, overwhelmed by the endless activity I had found myself born into the middle of.
In hindsight, my Dad’s intuition in getting me that rabbit was spot on. It allowed me to find a quiet calm space and self soothe. I loved my rabbit. She became part of the tapestry of my everyday.
Dad built her a solid hutch to live in. It was a large box with a hinge-topped roof that I was just strong enough to open.At the front, it joined a large wire cage so she could hop in and out, from the warmth and security of the box, to the cage with its view of the courtyard, the shade of the huge flame trees, the scent of the wisteria and jasmine heavy in the summer air.
Her hutch was by the side of the carport and I was happy to take responsibility for the reward of just holding her and feeling my anxiety diminish. Cleaning out the under tray. Hosing them down. Keeping her water topped up and fresh pellets in her bowl. Additional treats of lettuce leaves and carrots secretly smuggled from the vegetable crisper.
Time passed. My Dad was still working at the Institute of Child Health trying to provide for a family of five children on a meagre science salary. With the two boys now at an elite Jesuit private school, money was tight. My mother returned to work.
My younger sister and I would catch the bus home from school and go to a neighbours’ house until my Mother returned from work. I envied the latch key kids who had their own kingdoms to reside over while the house was unsupervised.
Not us. We were still too young.
After checking in at my neighbours, I headed down to the carport at home daily and spend time with my silent friend, soothing me with her soft fur and warm body.
Rounding the corner of the driveway to an empty silent house felt strange. My older siblings were at band practice or gym, or football or cricket and it was the only time I remember in my childhood where I could hear myself think. When no one was around.
On this day I could hear barking as I reached the top of the drive. My pulse quickened. She was safe in her cage I reassured myself. Nothing could get her in her little fortress.
As I got closer, I could see two dachshunds inside the cage. They couldn’t get past her body to the dark hutch, and were unable to escape the way they entered, by pushing the floor of the cage up. They were trapped at the scene of the crime.
As soon as I saw her, I knew she was dead. It was the first time I had seen a warm-blooded animal dead. The first time I saw someone I loved dead.
I ran to the back door and opened the house with the spare key under the flowerpot.
I called my mother at work crying hysterically.
“Sarah’s dead! The dogs got in the cage and killed her!”
My Mother tried to convince me to go back to the neighbours until she got home but I was having none of it.I went to Dad’s workshop under the house and found some rope.I pulled them out of the cage, one by one by their collars and proceeded to tie them up on the wisteria.
After they were secured, I tentatively opened the top of the hutch to see my Sarah lying there, still, with no marks on her. She had broken her neck trying to jump out of the cage and escape her predators. Or they had shaken her to death without breaking the skin. These were the different possible scenarios, both as awful as each other.
I sat on the cold pavers with snot and tears pouring down my face. Staring at these killer dogs and wishing that I could just wind back the clock and undo this.
That I could have my Sarah back.
That these dogs weren’t able to get in her cage and she was safe and protected. Because of course, at 8, I felt responsible for failing to protect her. Never mind I didn’t really have the insight to outthink a determined tiny dog. And what was the likelihood of any other shaped dog being able to fit in underneath that cage? None.
No other dog breed could have scrambled their way into that cage. There just wasn’t enough space between the cage floor and the ground beneath.
I recorded the details on their tags. The owner’s phone number. Their names.
I don’t remember clearly what happened next. But hey, that’s trauma. Your memory just bolts and locks the gate on those moments that are too uncomfortable to remember. I do remember that when Dad came home, he let the dogs go and I was angry. Why didn’t he call the police? A crime had been committed. Murder! I was told it wasn’t important enough for the police.
I retreated to my bedroom and curled my little body around the new hole in my heart. For my Sarah. For me, who was unable to keep her safe.
Later, Dad told me he called the owner of the dachshunds. He told the owner that his dogs had attacked my rabbit and she had died. That he was now home from work, trying to console his bereft little girl who had just lost her pet.The owner was defensive. Unwilling to take any responsibility, or even commiserate over this sad event.
He asked my Dad what on earth he thought he could do about it? They were dachshunds. It was instinctive. Dachshunds killed rabbits. Something about his delivery really got to Dad. This undertone of pride in his killing dogs that had fulfilled their biological destiny.
My father suggested that he have his dogs fenced and not allow them to roam the neighbourhood unsupervised. Then it got ugly. The owner said that he wasn’t responsible for his dogs if they roamed. To which my Dad responded that he wasn’t either if they turned up on our property again.
A couple of days later, they turned up again.
They no doubt had a memory or scent or intuition or whatever it is dachshunds have in those tiny little skulls. That if they came down that black lane and headed onto our battleaxe block they might find another afternoon of entertainment. Of killing. But they didn’t. They found my Dad, with a rag of chloroform and a tub just big enough for the both of them. An ending to their little sausage lives.
Now I didn’t witness any of this. I was totally ignorant to what was going on. It was only later that I imagined in my minds eye my Dad picking up the struggling puppies in the darkened cellar, smothering their muzzles, one by one, with the chloroform-soaked rag and dropping them in the tub. Fastening the lid.
My Dad. The puppy killer.
That night my parents were entertaining a visiting professor from Denmark.
The five children dutifully sat around the table, the progeny of the paediatric scientist and charmed him with our achievements. I struggled to keep up the show in the face of my terrible loss. Once Sarah had been buried, I was not to discuss it again.
“We’ll get another one,” my Mother smiled at me, as if Sarah was as replaceable as a lost sweater. (She encouraged much the same when my husband was killed, gifting me a little black dress with a plunging neckline only a matter of months after the funeral, but that’s another story).
It was only later that I heard reference to Sarah in the dinner party conversation as I was crouched behind the heavy double doors to the dining room. I would often hide here and listen as the adults talked.
“Oh Peter,” my mother giggled seductively as my father relayed the story of his harsh retribution. The justice he sought for his daughter’s loss. The dog corpses silent and unmoving only metres below where they sat.
I didn’t trust what I’d heard. I couldn’t believe this horror story. I went to bed and tossed sleeplessly. I saw Dad’s eyes, cold and unsmiling as he suffocated them with the soaked cloth and flung their bodies in the tub, imagining their cold stiff little bodies in the cellar below.
What to do? Was it true? Could I trust what I had overheard?
If I tried to have the story confirmed, then I would be in trouble for eavesdropping on adult conversation.
In my household, this was a serious misdemeanour.
It compromised the dual narratives that played out between the adults and the sparse sanitised version of reality we were served. The arid space where we planted our own understanding of things because what we were told made little sense or was in direct opposition to the facts that were so clearly evident. This dilemma became even more complicated for my eight-year-old grieving heart.
But it haunted me. I couldn’t keep my silence. I waited until one quiet Saturday afternoon when Dad was down the side of the house mending the crumbling concrete path.
The cricket commentary hummed in the background, the low-level static broken only by the thwack of the leather ball on the bat and an excited flurry of description as the batsmen claimed their runs. Inching slowly in dribs and drabs to a torturous victory over days. The garbled chat resembled the disengaged sermons I suffered every Sunday at Mass, where I was challenged to reconcile my ‘sinful’ existence with my innocent reality.
The house sighed in the heat as if aware of the surgery at hand. It’s crumbling perimeter smoothed over, a piece at a time, to keep its’ inevitable decay at bay.
The big oak tree was thick with crows, running their own commentary on the strange disjointed lives they observed in the neighbourhood.
All seeing from on high those crows.
“You know at 91 they drink until they fall over.”
“The woman at 71 prank calls her sister every day from a payphone then consoles her when she calls and tells her about it.”
“William at 42 is sleeping with Barbara at 101. His wife knows and doesn’t care. He’s a dud lay.”
“Your Dad’s a murderer.”
My neck jerked up as I watched them. Glassy-eyed.
A murder of crows.
I looked across the lawn to a patch of dark turned soil beneath the lemon tree.
“That’s it” the crows told me. “The bodies are buried there.”
I knew that Sarah was buried under my favourite tree, the gardenia, the heady scent of the blossoms masking the smell of decomposing animal flesh at its base.
“Dad?” I squeaked tentatively.
His bare skin glistened with the sweat of Sydney summer heat.
“Mmmmha?” he turned and noticed me.
I had distracted him from whatever was going on.
The concrete, the cricket, his thoughts. Who could know? He shared little.
“Where are the dogs?”
I was shaking. Vertiginous as I stood there in my quest for truth.
He didn’t speak. His whole body shifted and recoiled in distaste. I had done it again. How on earth in my so far brief life had I become so good at creating discomfort for my parents? It was, to date, my most pronounced skill.
“They’re gone. They won’t be back,”
He returned his concentration to the trowel, smoothing it over the concrete like icing on a cake.
“But how do you know that?’ I asked, primed for entrapment.
He looked at me with his direct cool grey gaze. He had no interest in trifling child’s play.
You ask, you get.
“Because I killed them and they are 3 feet under the lemon tree over there,”
I don’t know how I was meant to respond. Should I have been giddy and triumphant in this revenge my Dad had meted out? This grand gesture made in an attempt to even the karmic pet kill count?
I was just starting to come to terms with the death of Sarah. The loss of my rabbit. Although I was upset, I knew that the dogs weren’t malicious. They were doing what dogs did. Now I had to wrap my little head around this new tragedy. That now three pets were dead, and Dad was responsible for two of them. The bodies were stacking up.
Where would it end?
I hated the dachshunds for killing my Sarah. I hated my father for killing the dachshunds. But what I hated most was that I had to live with the knowledge that my Dad killed them. That he was capable of murdering puppies.
I raced off up the stairs to the cellar. The scene of the crime. The sandstone walls were cool and crypt like. Death happened here. I sobbed quietly, imagining their last breathless moments. Then panicked about how I could appear normal when I was called to the table for lunch.
That I struggled as a child to keep my emotions regulated was already perceived as flawed. I was faulty in this Von Trapp soup of repression and ambition. Too many feelings I wanted to talk about. I was always in trouble for crying. Just keep smiling. Everything is fantastic.
The last thing they would tolerate was that I turn maudlin and they found that they had in fact produced a Wednesday Addams.
That’s the mindset when you are a geneticist. None of us were truly ourselves in our own right. There was no sovereignty to our way of being in the world.
We were spiralled chains of deoxyribonucleic acid expressing secrets held by our ancestors for thousands of years. One could not conquer the stone-cold reality of our DNA. It was coded and there was no escape.
Our experience was the test of our DNA, not the shaper of our destinies. Epigenetics was the anti-story to the hypothesis he was betting his career on.
I fell asleep restlessly that night, knowing I had inherited the DNA of a murderer. That this impulse to kill was marinating my soul until the moment it would one day own me.
It’s genetic.
