I Let My Dog Die Alone
And I’ve lived with the guilt for decades
If this story attracts any hate mail, I don’t blame the haters. I deserve it. I’ve been sending myself hate mail for nearly thirty years, in the form of self-deprecating thoughts over my first dog.
Only a monster would let their dog die alone.
Jessie was our first family pet. I was seven years old when my mom brought the little bundle of joy home to surprise my older sister and me.
She was a German Shepherd mix and of course, as a child, I knew nothing about dogs except how to play with them and brag about having a puppy.
My mom was a single mom so as my sister and I grew up the responsibility of dog care became more our duty and less my mom’s. Completely valid and we didn’t mind at all.
Jessie wasn’t an easy dog, though. None of us were privy to actual training. Our family just “had a dog,” like all the other families. We pretty much entered pet ownership blindly.
She was an unsettled, high-energy dog that probably would have flourished had she had better owners. She used to drag me down gravel pathways as a child, leaving me with scraped up, bleeding legs.
She went mentally insane over hot air balloons in the sky, and back in those days there seemed to be a…
